“We must pay with some toughness for a gentle world” –May Sarton

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s a gorgeous May morning! Spring has arrived with all its scents and zephyrs, tugged Northward in gritted teeth beneath a thousand tiny wings of the dreaded May flies questing blood. I am re-amazed by how hungry my hollowed winter eyes have gotten for Green. I am like the crazed barn animals out on fresh pasture. The sheep refuse to eat their hay now, turning their noses with haughty disdain when it is served. Flies or no flies, they just want to be Out. All around the Land of Lost Plots the forest and meadows are greening and my ravenous eyes slurp and gobble every blade, branch, and blossom. I cannot look at it enough. Frost was right. “Nature’s first green is Gold.” The golden evenings stretch and blur in ever-widening margins to a heavenly twilight that is warm, welcoming, inviting me to linger outside. After a full day’s work, there is still time (and energy!) to potter in the garden, to mulch the orchard, or simply to stand beneath the marvel of a giant pear tree in full bloom, watching the honeybees work.

At the shop, I am still hacking my way through that Formalwear Forest in the dressing room. The teenagers know exactly how they want their dresses to look. (“They want them to look Impossible,” harrumphs Prudence.) The older women, those chosen as bridesmaids or mothers of brides or grooms, have significantly more trouble deciding on hem lengths, sleeve lengths, and cleavage depths. They have been trained to Please. “What do you think looks best?” they say but what they mean is “I need to make someone happy and you’re the only other one here.” I have to hold a very firm boundary on my opinions as I am begged, even pleaded with, to give my thoughts. Nothing incites panic in them like when I say: “This is your dress, your day; how do you want to feel?” One dear soul, who was contemplating what length she should make her dress, decided to take it away, pins and all, so that her cousin could see it first. Then I received word that my steers escaped at home and I had to leave the shop before she could return.

The barn is the opposite of the fitting room. Unlike people, cattle should not be encouraged to think for themselves. (The problem is that too few people try it and too many cattle do.) The dear young cattle I know personally don’t have the best ideas. They will eat a lot of things that aren’t food—like hats, nails, and my hair (which, to be fair, really does resemble hay). They have invented all sorts of rough games with their water tub—everything from turd basketball, to wrestling, dumping, and making a water park of their stall on a regular basis. They are losing respect for fencing, since it’s abundantly clear to them that the better grass is on the other side. They poke their horns into it, lift it up, and shimmy underneath like sleek Caribbeans doing the Limbo.

They love the fresh taste of green grass (the steer, that is, not the Limbo dancers) and lap it up with wide tongues and contented grunts like the folks with fully loaded waffle cones at the local ice cream stand, which, these days is doing a brisk trade on any day over forty degrees. Their necks are getting thicker (again, cattle that is, not the folks at the ice cream stand) so I was unable to work them for a few weeks after an Alarming Incident in which I stuffed Otie (the chubby one) into a bow that didn’t fit any more. Before I could get Gus hitched up on his side, Otie had collapsed on the ground at my feet. I must have cut off his air supply by accident. There was no struggle involved. It wasn’t a “Jersey flop,” as there was no temper, no spirit of rebellion. This was a more of a Jersey crumple. His knees buckled and the next thing I knew, a five-hundred pound animal was having an unexpected nap on my foot. Luckily my dashing young lodger was helping me and he was strong enough to hold up the yoke and the other steer (who was getting pulled down) while I worked the pins out of the bow trapping the first guy. He came to as soon as we got the bow off him and was totally fine afterwards. But naturally, I was reluctant to try such a stunt again. Without schooling, they have been acting like little bullies, pushing and shoving and thinking they are Big Stuff.

Last Sunday, my friend and mentor H. brought a new yoke for them, made from a tree he had cut himself, and bows he had shaped by hand in his cellar. We hitched them up in all their gorgeous new finery then gazed in dismay as they took off lurching towards the blueberry patch without either of us driving them. Like the strong, ambitious adolescents they are, they thought they could just go it alone, without guidance. We watched as they smashed into the blueberry fence and Otis got his horns stuck in the wire. Helpful Gus pulled his buddy free and they swung around and went thirty miles an hour into the nearest peach tree behind them. As they strove to keep going, like linebackers pushing a sled (in this case, a peach tree) their hind ends passed their front ends on either side; they dropped their heads and “flipped” the yoke. Wild-eyed, they tried to run but didn’t know where to go or how to go there together.

H. stood stock still. His face never once changed expression. I was doing my best to breathe but I’m pretty sure I was sounding like someone playing double time on an out of tune accordion. After a moment, the boys came to a stop and just stood there with their heads down, looking tense and confused, out of ideas, the yoke dangling under their jaws. Almost casually, H. walked up and silently laid a hand on the nearest one. I could see their taut bodies relax at his touch. They didn’t move. If anything, they looked relieved.

“Fetch the halters,” he said in a tone one might use to indicate yes, you would like another biscuit with your tea. In utter silence, we put their halters back on, then led them back to the hitching post and started all over again. We unhitched them, repositioned everything, and started again as if nothing had happened. When they were all put back together, he looked at me seriously over their backs and said, “Never Chase. Never. They start to run, you let ‘em go. When they stop, then you go up to them and act like nothing happened. Never punish. Never hit. Never yell. That’s the trick. You must become their safe place. Build their trust. They’ll know they made a mess and they’ll look to you to fix it, to help them. If you yell and scream or get hysterical, they will just get scared and think they’ll have to solve their own problems, which will be more of a mess. You don’t want to reward them either—so don’t fuss over them. Just act like it didn’t happen and in another minute they’ll forget all about it. But you’ll have gained their trust.”

He talks quietly, encouragingly, as if I am one of the animals he is trying to soothe. He wins my trust. As with most of his advice, it strikes me as something Bigger, Universal—like he’s just revealed the secret for dealing with relationships of all kinds from cattle to teenagers, or any fool, customer, or lover. In his words I find that divine paradox of being tender yet fierce, gentle and strong, letting Go in order to win back. So many relationships depend on that paradox—from raising our children, to advocating for Justice, or simply handling insecure women who have no idea how much of their legs or ankles should show at a wedding.

My heart aches with shame at all the times I have run, flapping and screaming and chasing towards Love and other would-be disasters in progress, trying to avert them before anyone could learn for themselves that I cannot actually Control Everything. (Shhh!!! Don’t tell Prudence!) Our modern landscape is beset with disasters in progress. No one from our Congress-critters to our own partners, spouses, children, and pets wants to do what we think is Best. It’s tantalizing to think we can charge right in there and smack and yell until they get it right but H. shows me how counter-productive, and possibly terrifying that is. True Teamwork requires something different.

Working cattle with H. has mended me more than any best self-help book I have ever read. He said in the beginning, “this is going to be the training of you. And maybe in the end you’ll have a driveable team as a bonus.” He’s right. I wish I had learned these lessons years ago—when my angry teenagers went through micro-phases of hating me, when my marriage dissolved in bewildered despair, when supposed “friends” neglected, gossiped or betrayed. Each time my heart was broken—when a dream person, a dream plan, a dream house, the dream job I desperately wanted did not “choose” me but ran sideways instead. I wish I had known to “let ‘em run.”

All Teamwork, transactions, and collaborations are about Energy. Don’t send yours off to pursue Chaos. Pause. Hold Steady. Hold onto your power. When the chaos subsides, be there to help. Don’t be part of the problem. Never amp up the drama. Give a project the time and space it takes to do it right. Don’t rush. Don’t quit.

Become the one they Trust.

To achieve Peace, one must be able to win a fight. To be Gentle, one must be very strong. When all seems lost, just wait. Then begin again. It’s ok Relax while you steadily keep working. The best dreams you have ever dreamed—the ones that will All come true—are the ones you don’t even know you are dreaming yet. I know this.

With Sew Much Love, whether you choose it or not, (I can wait)

Nancy