The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.”

–William Shakespeare’s “Julius Ceasar”

Greetings Dear Ones!

Is reorganizing your vintage button collection while singing sea shanties in a muppet voice losing its usual thrill for you, too? Does life these days feel as full and dull and messy as the back seat of my Ford? Is it because you haven’t slept for more than three hours at a stretch for over six years now? Is it because your budgeting strategy for the New Year does not involve actually looking at your check book? Is it because the last “vegetable” you ate was really just ketchup? Because there is a Pandemic raging for a second year in a row? Because you haven’t danced (with a partner) since January of 2020? (cleaning the kitchen to ABBA blasting doesn’t count.)

Naw…. It’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than National. It’s bigger than Global.

It’s Planetary.

Regardless of what you think Mercury in Retrograde is all about, the fact remains that I had nineteen phone messages on my business line that I could not access without spending two hours in my local Verizon store yesterday, pestering a magical woman with serious Superpowers where technology is concerned. A gentleman customer had limped all the way up two flights of stairs to let me know that my (phone) mailbox was full and that the downstairs door, which I said was “red” on my website was now actually painted green. It was a wonder he found me, he told me with considerable astonishment. From the looks of him, it had been a rough journey—starting years ago—that got him to that moment. After he recovered and we’d discussed his business, he had no idea how he was going to make it back to his car, as he could go UP stairs but not down. I wound up taking him on a long, meandering walk to the other end of the building, where I loaded him in the industrial service elevator—the kind that is like a huge cage that slides down inside a bare brick tower—and escorted him to the ground floor. Once there, we wandered a while until we managed to find a side exit to the parking lot. I don’t even know if it is possible to navigate successfully from the south end of the building to the north and remain indoors. I’ve never done it.

It’s been a somewhat glitchy week. A week that reminds me to Slow Down and be thoughtful, to double and triple check things—like that vest I almost gave back to a man without sewing the inside lining shut, or the coat I almost gave back to another gentleman without also returning the contents of its pockets, which had scattered on the floor when I turned the thing inside out—a summa cum laude pin, a pen that didn’t write, and a vintage envelope of extra buttons. The spare change I kept and deducted from his bill, since it rolled too far under my cutting table for me to retrieve it.

The Man Who Could Only Go Up left his old ski coat to be repaired. “I love this coat,” he says fondly “No sense getting a new one when I am already so attached to this one. It’s been good to me.” He speaks with the resigned devotion of a long-married spouse. Most of my work these days involves coat repair—mostly zippers. I’ve decided zippers are going to be my Superpower. When you can’t get out of something, “Get Into It,” I say! I now find myself in off hours perusing sewing supply websites for vintage zipper parts the way some folks shop for jewelry.

At least the weather has been mild. Jeff Foxworthy was right; if you think ten degrees is just “a bit chilly,” you probably live in Vermont. Ten degrees in the sun felt positively balmy after last week’s stint at sub zero. I had my coat open and my gloves off as I did my evening chores. If it gets above freezing (32F) and you think “Oh, whew! Now the bees can take a dump!” you are probably also a current or former Bee Keeper. Honey bees only take “cleansing flights” when the temps are above freezing. The rest of the time, they hover around the Queen, trying to keep her warm, while they clench their bums, hold it, and hope for better weather. Each day, I look at the forecast and picture their tiny, grimly determined faces, looking oddly similar to those one glimpses on documentaries of the residents of Buckingham Palace. The only one hovering around me to keep warm is wee Nigel and he doesn’t hold anything in! Neither do the sheep, who have taken yet another cleansing flight in their heated water tub.

“Wally did it,” informs Miss Prim. Wally says nothing but looks at her darkly.

“Do you believe in Mercury Retrograde?” I ask the sheep. I am still moving slowly after falling out of the hay loft last week. “Am I supposed to move slowly, Reflect on the Past, Address stagnant energy? Is that really what this is about?”

“What’s Mercury Retrograde?” Ask the calves. “Will it eat me?” worries Gus, the shy one. “Can I eat it?” Odie wants to know with bulky interest.

“Mercury Retrograde is that happy month that happens three times a year when Nancy gets to blame the alignment of the planets for why she cannot find her car keys,” says Willow.

“Who does she get to blame when Mercury is not in retrograde?” Prim wants to know.

“The rest of the time, it’s her own damn fault,” says Willow, not unkindly. She’s an old ewe who tells it like it is.

“Well, how else can you explain all the chaos in the world right now?” I ask.

“What chaos? There’s chaos? How can there be bad stuff happening in the world when there are so many women buying crystals?” interrupts Prim innocently.

“I’ll say what I always say,” says Willow. “It’s not about looking back or looking around, but looking Within. Try that. See what you see.”

I agree. This is what I see:

A friend brings in a beloved coat of hers—“I think the zipper needs to be replaced,” she says forlornly, apologetically. “I’ve read your blog and I hope I am not guilty of zipper abuse!” She is as penitent in confessing as I was when I handed a clump of phones and wires to the Amazing Verizon Maven. Upon closer examination, her teeth are fine and only the pulley needs to be adjusted, which I can do while she waits. (I’m talking zipper here, not Verizon personnel, though her teeth are also good!) The best news is that we get to have a nice visit while I convince the pulley to do its job correctly.

“I got this jacket when I was pregnant,” she says wistfully. Her children, like mine, are in their twenties now.

“That went fast, didn’t it?” I say laughing. I think of the Robert Burn’s quote “the Life of man is but a day at most.” Coats, of course, live much, much longer. This coat looks virtually unaltered after twenty years of wear, though I cannot say the same for my friend, who has grown far more beautiful with age, especially since she’s let her wispy curls turn silver around her temples. The escapees form a halo around her in the light of the dressing room and I cannot help but think that fine lines from smiling give her eyes a knowing merriness that younger eyes could never have. Joy has been a long and ready habit with her. Who needs wrinkle cream when twenty years of life can make one look so Experienced and Vibrant?

Virtually the very next day, a young pregnant woman sits in the exact same chair. She too is absolutely gorgeous, but her story is still in her stomach not on her face. I have to fix her coat—a large, soft, retro thing that seems to be part blanket, part trench coat—the same day because this is the only one that will close over the unborn son impersonating a basket ball under her sweater. She only has a few weeks to go before summoning her home-birth team to welcome the boy she cannot name until she meets him face to face. We talk about what it is like to anticipate the birth of your first child—the excitement, the fear. She gets up and stretches several times as I sew. She has reached that uncomfortable point in her confinement when she cannot be “confined” in any position for too long.

I smile at her with an unexpected rush of tenderness that startles me. I remember being Her—a young woman hugging a large belly full of aches and untold stories (and a little gas). I wonder if I will see her again in twenty years (which is but a moment) and if the coat will be the same. I know that after twenty years of life with a son, she will not. By then, her heart will have grown to be a one-size-fits-all, ready to wrap around any fault or failing of his. Her temples will be as silver as her tears. She will see him in the faces of all other children and see other children, perhaps even herself, in him. Her eyes…her eyes will be deeper, brighter, with scribbles at the edges where children drew her smiles.

She holds on to herself, happy to wait…for the coat, for the birth, for the next twenty years. She is not in a rush.

I look at her with admiration for her graceful patience, her Serenity—the mirror image of my Yesterday friend’s grateful Acceptance of Life on its terms. Was I that way at their age? I think not. I rushed. I scurried. I was all over the place. My whole life has felt like it was one long hectic planetary Retrograde, punctuated by howling full moons, high tides, droughts, and blazes, changed plans, lost wallets or car keys. I grew up hearing old people say my generation hadn’t a clue and I believed them. They said we “didn’t know how to work” so we stayed over-busy. We “didn’t know how to save” so we pursued ridiculous bargains on cheap stuff we did not need. We had “no values” (or value) so we spent years in therapy blaming them for trying to do a better job than their parents had. “Youth was wasted on us,” said our embittered elders—survivors of wars, bell bottoms, linoleum, shag carpeting, Agent Orange and tie dye… so I became a little old lady when I was very young, nostalgic for a past I never knew, before I had even given birth to myself.

I thread my needle, do my Mending, and look backwards, inwards, through the lenses of Time and Story and marvel at the young people I see today (whipper-snappers as young as 97!)

They are incredible. Nothing is wasted on them. They honor the past in their thrift-store finds as they hold the future. There is no real Retrograde—it’s an illusion. But if we need to sit down and rest, to stretch while we wait, that’s ok. We only appear to be going backward. Even in our pausing, there is only ever forward. In a few weeks time, there will be babies born, more seeds to plant, gardens to tend. Migratory birds will return. This cold, chaotic darkness has a necessary shelf life. Grab your Long Winter’s Nap while ye may!

Beneath Her ancient maternity cloak, Nature nurtures a dark, and feminine magic--creating within an unseen future we can only name when we meet it face to face.

Wishing you peace, tranquility, and Every Blessing as you Mend,

Yours aye,

Nancy