Greetings Dear Ones,

My office manager, who is a stickler for temporal hygiene (and absolutely no other kind), reminds me every day precisely at 1:20 pm that it is time for our daily walk through the graveyard. Why he has chosen the time 1:20 is anybody’s guess but he is nothing if not punctual and adheres to his routines with the relentless devotion of a Jesuit. No matter what else I might be up against or underneath or getting on top of, suddenly there he is, at my side, requiring my obedience. Immediately. I never have any idea that 1:20 is approaching, and he doesn’t even own a wristwatch, so his punctuality is impressive. I’ve stopped asking him “How long will this take?” because it just doesn’t matter. We set off, wordless, at a brisk clip to do our usual loop. Discreetly, I carry a small compostable bag in my pocket just in case he decides to defile one of the graves.

The graveyard is particularly gorgeous this time of year. We cut through the back of our parking lot to access the maple-lined trails of peace. The headstones are hot in the sun but the paths around them are shady and cool. Ever since a friend turned us on to these trails, we have found it a mid-day blessing to walk silently among the dead and literally “take a breath” from Life. It is here, during this daily memento mori that I embrace the absurdity of my rushings and doings and return to my hemming and mending soberly relaxed and refreshed. I used to muscle through a whole day in one big hairy gulp but this office manager (who, no doubt, will sleep the rest of the afternoon curled up under the serger table) has shown me that breaking the day into smaller bites actually makes it easier to chew and swallow. Smaller bites are easier to savor. As I pass by in the cool shadows around the graves, I wonder what these people were good at? What occupied their days? What hot thoughts blistered their brains with anxiety? What cooled and soothed them? Who loved them? Who were they before they were empty seeds planted in rows in this vast garden of stones?

How many times did they wonder “How long will this take?”

So often I am rushing to catch up to a Time that seems to have left without me. What a cool and pleasant blessing it is to Let it Pass in the presence of Eternity. During Prom Season, I have felt like Lucille Ball in that episode where she and Ethel work at the chocolate factory. The prom gowns kept coming faster and faster than I could stuff them anywhere. (I even thought about eating some of them.) I worked nights and weekends and still the shop was a forest of fabric dangling from every possible hook, hanger, and peg. Finally, the last gown left on Monday. With a huge sigh of relief tinged with mourning I see that season close out. Time has passed again. All those “How-long-will-this-takes?” have been answered.

It’s sheep season now! During the month of May, I’ve been spinning wool and telling stories at the Historic Deerfield sheep festival and helping a friend show her sheep at the Massachusetts sheep and wool show. This weekend, I’ll get around to shearing mine. I’ve been honing the blades in the cellar. The sheep are ready. On hot days, they stagger panting into any shady place. Waiting. How long? They wonder.

The three days I spent demonstrating in Deerfield were really fun. I love spinning and I love teaching—so to get to sit still and do both at the same time is Pure Delight. But the question I got asked the most often is one of my least favorite, that haunting: “How long does this take?” Some were people who wanted to learn how to spin themselves and were worried that there wasn’t enough Time in their lifetimes to manage it. Does one have to spin for fifty years to see progress? Does one have to spin for hours a day to get enough yarn for a mitten? What happens if we prick our fingers and fall asleep for a hundred years?

I don’t know what it is that irritates me about this particular question. It has pungent whiffs of urgency, exasperation, and defeat emanating from its very pores. Perhaps it is that it comes as some sort of “bargain” motivated by some inherent, invisible, but palpable sense of capitalism. “Time,” they say, “is money.” No one wants to waste it. Someone wants to know if her investment in a new skill will be “worth it.” Worth it to whom? I wonder. What are you normally doing that is more important than honing a new skill? (These are usually people Prudence assumes watch too much T.V.) Ask yourself who you will become if you learn this new thing? Who will you be if you do not?

Essentially, they want to know “how long it takes to be GOOD,” as if the being ‘good’ part is the only thing that matters, utterly divorced from tactile pleasure or kinesthetic connection to history. “You are literally asking me ‘how long is a piece of string?’” I tell them. “You are going to spin a certain length of terrible yarn and that is a necessary fact you must deal with. It could take you anywhere from six weeks to six years to complete your first skein. It depends on how much you work at it. One thing I know for sure—To make Good yarn, you must make some bad. To make Good music, you must make some terrible. (Ok, quite a LOT of terrible.) The only way anyone ever improves anything is to practice mindfully, noticing everything Good and doing more of that and noticing everything bad and repeating it less often in the future.”

“What if I never make good yarn—er, the yarn I want to make?” asks a nervous young woman who has just graduated from college.

“Well, I think the yarn authorities come and confiscate your spinning wheel and Rumplestiltskin shames you in the town square and you are forced to eat nettles without boiling them first. I’m not really sure. It’s actually never happened…” I say.

She looks first alarmed, then relieved.

“You have no idea how proud you will be of your first yarn—it will be filled with lumps and snaggles and underspun wool fluffing out next to wool that is overspun to the point of snapping. But it will be YOURS and you cannot imagine the thrill of observing yourself “getting it” by and by. One day, your spinning will be so even that you will miss the lumpy yarn and not be able to reproduce it, no matter how you try.”

Her eyes are shining as if I am describing a mythical place where she wants to buy a timeshare. I invite her to try my wheel. I guide her hands, I manage her feet. She is like a puppet I am trying to get to make her own strings. She has good hand coordination and does well with the wool. Her feet, on the other hand, (ha!) will take some time. Often, the hardest thing about spinning is getting the foot to treadle slowly enough and still keep the wheel going in the same direction.

“You know how difficult it is to write your name with your non-dominant hand?” I ask her. She nods. “Well, my left foot cannot spin. Only my right foot can. If my right foot gets tired, my left foot goes next to it to help but it cannot do it alone. I practiced so much with one foot, my brain wired that foot only. Brains are efficient, i.e. lazy; they only do what is necessary or demanded. To learn these skills, we literally rewire our nervous system. How fast you learn is partly dependent on how fast you can strengthen the message relay races running around your body—from eye to brain, brain to hand, brain to foot. This is the stuff of months, not days. Years, not weeks. You need to start TODAY, right NOW.”

She laughs and nods vigorously. She is so much the “me” I once was too, before I learned to spin, that I want to hug her.

Everything we do or learn changes us--neurologically, physically, mentally, spiritually. The other truth is that NOT doing things changes us too. Feeling our way out of the bodies we built in the past and into skills we want for the future takes a lot of patience and persistence. But it’s the most exciting work we could possibly do. We don’t have to be who we have always been. We can reach for possibilities instead of limitations. We don’t have to lament “How long will it take.” Instead, we can simply bend our heads and focus on doing more of what is getting us Good Results and less on what is getting us the bad ones. Go for what’s possible and seek to improve that. It’s the same for yarn as it is for racial equity and sensible gun legislation. It’s true that what stands between us and the Quality we seek is not just time but Devotion as well. And we cannot worry about how long that takes. We aren’t deciding what to make as much as deciding Who We Are and what we make always reflects that.

True Quality is Timeless. So is Love. I send you all the love in my heart, Dear Ones. Keep up the Good Mending!

Yours aye,

Nancy