“If you cannot fly then run, if you cannot run then walk, if you cannot walk then crawl but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s back to being brisk here at the Land of Lost Plots. So brisk in fact, that some things have ground to a halt, like outside projects not directly related to survival. After a few days last week at -9F, with wind chills near 20 below, yesterday’s high of 27F felt like a bloomin’ heat wave! It’s up to 5F this morning, as I write. When I went to the chicken coop, I could see tiny puffs of vapor, the size of tears, emanating from their beaks. They have a heat lamp they can gather under and thus remain plucky and good-natured. Not me. A few feet from the wood stove and my blood gets slushy and I cease to be able to move. Back-snapping cold like this is nothing to the native Vermonters and Canadians around me. With cheerful stoicism, they go about preheating their cars, walking or skating on ice, dressing like contented bison. They carry on their duties, wearing the large, unisex parkas and boots that are de rigueur here nine months of the year. Too late, as a seamstress who dreads zippers, I realize I have moved to a land where the average person has on her body at least ten pounds of wool and 1-4 zippers (and is mildly abusing at least one of them) at all times.

This week a young man called and said he had no time to come in to the shop but that the zipper on his only winter coat was broken and he needed it fixed. I arranged to meet him at the local grocery store and look at the zipper and, if it could not be fixed that day, measure it to order a replacement for him. When I got the replacement, I would call him and do it the same day. No one can be without a coat in this weather!

I can always tell where I am in my spiritual development when I get a lot of zippers to repair/replace at the shop. Am I approaching each job with patient, even joyful, curiosity? Or am I judging the total nincompoop who destroyed this zipper? (People should not make me judge them!) Very few zippers break just because they are “bad.” People don’t treat them well. And because zippers cannot stand up for themselves, (I mean literally…that’s why they come in to see me) we denigrate the victims—we blame them instead of the miscreants who did not seat them properly and carefully before yanking on the pulley, or putting too much lateral force on them.

“This zipper has quit. I don’t know what happened to it but it just won’t work anymore,” they tell me time and time again.

“Hate the crime, not the criminal!” says my better angel.

“Oh, hell, hate the criminals too” says Prudence. “We wouldn’t have crimes without them.”

The truth is, my old friend Zippy—Dear, departed Zippy, who used to do most of the zipper repairs at the old shop—was right. If you do enough zippers over time, they become a lot more fun. These days, I am getting so much better at them I actually enjoy them. I absolutely LOVE when doing a hard thing becomes easier. It’s SO satisfying! I’m not as fast as she was, but I’m Good. I usually have to do one side twice and the other side three times to get them to turn out right—but that score is getting better all the time. (I used to have to reposition them as much as ten times!) I replaced one last week that took four hours and filled the entire shop with down—it was one of those nasty, waterproof kind in a coat constructed in such a way that there were no external seams on the outside of the coat. Everything had to be done from the inside. I ate enough goose to think I’d had a Christmas dinner. But it looked perfect when I was done and the woman who owned it was thrilled.

In other news, I have been called up for Jury duty. I have been sent a lengthy questionnaire designed to assess my suitability for judging my peers. Ooooh… the State of Vermont has no idea how proficient I am at judging my peers. Especially when they wear zippers. [People! Again, I beg of you: make sure the bottom of the zipper is securely seated before you begin yanking! And those with luscious curves, don’t be dragging those jeans over your hips with the zipper only half-way down. This is how tragedies occur.]

Apparently, the district court system wishes to know what news media I subscribe to, any social media I follow, what my hobbies are, and especially if I have any religious objections to judging others. After reporting that I don’t watch any TV at all, EVER (never have), rarely listen to news (used to obsessively but have had to limit it due to the anxiety it causes), don’t subscribe to a single pod-cast, and spend my precious spare time playing music, chatting to sheep and admonishing mouthy oxen, my housemate commented dryly, “They aren’t even going to have to sequester you, if you get chosen. They’ll probably have the whole jury to live here for the duration of the trial!” Ha!

Yes, It’s true. I do live in a Happy Bubble of general obliviousness. In theory, I DO have spiritual objections to judging my fellow humans but I cannot help it. I’m pretty low down on the social ladder and spend a lot of time looking up at things people don’t think I can see. From here, I get to see a lot of what my young son used to call “bummage.” America is full of it at the moment.

A few days ago, I quite literally got to lie for a while at the bottom of a ladder I had recently fallen off. I had been rushing around in the hay loft and my feet were numb inside my boots so I lost my footing coming down. I got a swift opportunity to think about things from a new angle, while the sheep and calves watched from their pens with mild astonishment. They were not quite so concerned about my welfare as with the fact that I was not giving them supper with my usual efficiency. Instead, I was crawling to a hay bale to try to sit up, mentally counting each of my bones and wondering what a ruptured spleen might feel like.

“Well, this is certainly a fall from Grace,” commented one.

“I thought her name was Nancy,” said another.

“Really, the fall was from the absence of grace,” piped up Prim, who knows all the answers.

“What’s Grace?” asked the young Jerseys hungrily. “Can we eat it?”

As a result of what turned out to be only minor bruising, I got to spend Martin Luther King Jr. Day resting at home with ice packs and Epsom salts, thinking about the Justice system and my upcoming part in it, the social justice issues still present since the Civil War, hoping for Change, feeling the need for healing in our hearts and in our politics (not to mention our backsides!) It was a precious day of peace and pondering. What is a ladder anyway, but another form of zipper?

I remember being in middle school and having our teacher play a recording of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech and crying. We had never heard it before. I distinctly remember thinking “that man is somebody’s daddy...” and he feels so sad for his children. It was enough to make me weep and get excused to go to the girl’s room to blow my nose. I was shocked to learn that his family was not like my family; his children not like me or my white and freckled friends. I truly believed (and still do) what I had been taught thus far, that we are ALL God’s Children. Ever after, this holiday has filled me with sorrow. I had no idea that I would grow to be an old lady before anything changed for my brothers and sisters.

I had a chance to chat with the sheep about it on MLK day as we watched the snow piling up around the barn and listened to answers Blowin’ in the Wind. “You guys are all sorts of colors,” I said. “Are you ever mean to each other based on the color of your wool?”

“Never,” said Willow.

“We are mean to each other to get at more food. That’s all. Seamus is eating way more than his share of the Christmas tree, so we have to smash him occasionally,” said Blossom, pushing her way forward, threateningly.

“Seamus? Who’s Seamus?” I wanted to know. “We don’t even have a Seamus.”

Blossom rolled her eyes and nodded with her mouth full towards Chip.

“Whatever… Him, then.” She has never managed to learn the name of her own son, whom she rejected at birth.

“Well, Chip? How do you feel about this? Do you carry any core wounds from childhood that make you mal-adapted for society? Are there ancestral healings that need to take place?” He just shrugged. With his one horn, he looks rakish, no matter what he says.

“Nah… I just live in the moment and eat all I can.”

Fair enough.

I wish we humans were like this. But we aren’t. We DO have core wounds. We do remember our history. Well, some of us more than others… And it’s a tough history indeed.

If you really believe there is such as thing as a “them,” Darlings, you are sadly misguided and only Rot, numb feet, and Falls will ever come of that. There is only an Us. Only We. WE the People. Let us not be deceived by our own proud or petty insecurities. Some of us think differently, perhaps even behave differently, than others. That’s a wonderful thing. We certainly don’t all have to vote the same way, but we should all get the chance to vote. We don’t all eat the same things but we should all get the chance to eat. We don’t all pray the same way but we should all get the same chance to pray.

Zippers may be testy but they have unique power to bring a Left and a Right together. They are hard to manage and difficult to replace. But we need them. Now more than ever, especially in a world that is SO COLD. Whatever you are doing this week to mend, to heal, even if it is just your own dear Spirit (or bruised ribs), keep at it Dear Ones! Menders are in short supply. Sometimes the hardest work is the most satisfying—especially when we get Left and Right to come out even. We don’t want the children of today to grow into little old ladies and men in a future where nothing got fixed!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy