Within

“I love writing about my job because I loved it, and it was a particularly interesting one when I was a young man.  It was like holidays with pay to me…. I think it was the fact that I liked it so much that made the writing just come out of me automatically.” –James Herriot

Greetings Dear Ones!

Whew… Last week carried with it some intense energy and challenges!  (“And you say that as one always in keen sight of THE EDGE,” marvels Prudence.)  How long is Mercury in Retrograde, exactly?? Is it nineteen years?? (slump) The current theme seems to be ‘releasing what was formerly held within…’ Whether it’s Good, Bad, or just plain Ugly, Life continually offers us gifts, opportunities for learning, and wonderful silver linings within… Being With what is IN takes courage. Some of the discoveries are nasty. 

“What the hell are you doing?” I say to the gravity fed steam iron in my shop.  It is burping ominously as I hold it up to the hem of a prom dress.  It starts to spit.

“I don’t feel well,” it mumbles as I quickly hold its face over a linen pressing cloth.  It proceeds to throw up black gunk all over the cloth. Like an eighteenth century quack physician, I give the thing a damn good bleeding. I drain steam until it turns to water; I empty the water tank and flush all the tubing; I scrub the face plate until it gleams.  As a precaution, I even order all new replacement parts from the Cleaner’s Supply outlet where I got it.

“How can you DO this to me?” I say to the iron.  I am frantic. “Do you KNOW what season it is?  It’s PROM season.  I have no less than twenty gowns to hem and five, count them, F-I-V-E lily white bridal gowns hanging on the rack waiting to be done. I need you, damn it!”

“I’m sorry,” says the iron, continuing to burp up watery stains tinged with rust, “I don’t like Prom Season.”

“That’s no reason to go on strike!” I say, “Do you think spraying ink makes you into a writer?  All I see in the Rorschach blobs you are creating is tales of disaster.”

That iron is no longer my friend.  I cannot trust him. Who needs a passive aggressive iron?  Around denim he’s totally normal.  Work gear, fine. Get him near a wedding gown and he’s spits like an umpire for the Yankees.  Apparently, he sees himself at one with the proletariat.  Bourgie prom gowns be damned.  The betrayal is hard for me to take.  In my shop, we serve EVERYONE.  We draw no lines.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to a bride trying on her gown in the fitting room. “My iron is on the blink and I didn’t dare smooth out all those creases after I let out the other stitches.”

“Oh, I’m so grateful!” she gushes.  It’s hard to be thanked for NOT doing something that really should have been done. I glare at the iron, who is gradually sliding off the metal stand and working his way towards a fall onto the ironing board, where he threatens to burn the whole place down.  The insubordination is astonishing. I’ve had to bring in a smaller, domesticated iron to replace him.  This one is dainty and requires distilled water to function.

I’m also seeing the inside of every sewing machine more regularly than I might wish.  We’ve had a rash of broken needles due to sequins.  The needles hit the sequins at speed and splinter, requiring me to pick all the shards out with tweezers when they fall into the bobbin mechanism underneath.  One gown, which resembled the skin of a mackerel, took five needles to make one lap of the hem.  I briefly consider adding a “needle surcharge” to the bills that involve beads, sequins, or glitter then decide against it.

Such events require me to “Go within” myself, to reach for reserves of Patience I save for special occasions and when it’s really NOT ok to throw a disgruntled steam iron out of a second story window.  I think about my customers and how much I truly love most of them.  The prom kids are adorable, especially when they arrive in giggling gaggles, forget their shoes, and have to stand on piles of books to have their dresses hemmed the right length.  They remind me of lambs balancing on an apple wood log. The brides are radiant with hope and lists of “all they have to do yet,” one of which is inevitably to get the fiancé in to have a suit altered. In the midst of all these determined damsels, I even have a dashing knight who brings in a sweat-stained gambeson for me to repair.  He is heading for tournaments and workshops where he wields a broadsword.  I love these people, their stories, their events and dramas.  I love chatting to funeral directors who refuse to allow bereaved relatives to fill the pockets of those soon to be cremated with popcorn, strong, lithe women who dismantle antique houses, and cheery education consultants whose friends want them as bridesmaids. 

“It must be heaven to work alone,” says one.

“It must be hard to work alone,” says another.

I am never alone.  I am surrounded by stories—some haunting, some inspiring—and beset by constant visitors.  And I get to work with my hands in a Time-made-tangible sort of way that is immensely satisfying.  This job is a joy. Especially when one can trust one’s iron!  It’s a wonderful place to Mend and be Useful.

Of course, my other joy is the farm.  Apple trees in blossom are like bridal veils strewn throughout the meadow. Gus and Otie just turned two and have a new yoke to fit their larger necks. They are back to work and very happy about that.  On days I cannot work them, they stand and “complain moo” over the fence.  No amount of hay shuts them up.  They want to Work! And a good grooming wouldn’t go amiss either. (I know how they feel!)

The sheep are slowly getting back to being things that eat grass and don’t cause too much trouble.  Putting Primrose in a headlock until she accepted her babies worked beautifully.  She is now a decent mother to both twins, who go sproinging about the paddock like wooly popcorn with the rest of their pals in soft, lambie jammies.

Lambing season came to a dramatic end Monday night. Poor Waterlily, the last to deliver, had a rough time of it. She’d been off her feed in the morning and I was surprised to come home from work and find no lambs tottering behind her.  Most of the sheep have delivered within a few hours of refusing food. She looked into my eyes with a soulful gaze that told me something wasn’t quite right.  Half an hour later, her water broke and I thought things were finally moving along.  Not so. Two hours of hard labor later, she had nothing to show for it.  I called my dear fellow-shepherdess friend. As we talked, I could see a nose, then a head, emerge from underneath Waterlily’s tail.  There were no feet.

“Scrub up and get in there,” said my friend. “Push that head back in and find the feet.  The feet have to come first.  She will die trying to get a lamb out head first with no feet. Call me back when you’re done!”

All the James Herriot books came flooding back to me as I scrubbed up, donned gloves, smeared the head of the lamb with Vaseline and tried to push it back where it came from.  Waterlily was not having it.  She’s worked too hard to get that much done. She jumped up and started running around the pen with an unembodied head sticking out of her backside.  With no one to hold her down, I had to wait for her to lie down again on her own.  This time, as she pushed one way, I pushed the other.  Eventually I won and the lamb went back within. I slipped my hand in too.  Sure enough, there was a foot, resting right on top of the lamb’s head.  Wait… On top??? I inched my fingers up the leg. The ankle bent the wrong way.  This was not a foot that belonged to this lamb. It was a hind leg of another lamb trying to come through backwards at the same time.  I followed the face of the lamb, past an ear, to the neck, and down the neck to where I could feel the shoulder.  Below it was the right leg. I was able to grab it and draw up next to the face. Below it, slipping away from me, was another leg.  That one was very hard to get into place.  With the next few contractions, I managed to get one leg and the head back out of the ewe.  It was a huge lamb.  I could feel it wiggle and struggle, making sucking movements with its jaw against my arm. It was Alive!  Suddenly, in a big, slippery flop, there it was on the hay behind the ewe. I cleared all the slime out its nose and mouth and it instantly popped its head up and began to mew.  The mother sat up and talked back to her. All three of us took our first big breath in a long time.  The second lamb came along, back feet first, about fifteen minutes later, without too much effort from Waterlily.  It too was a huge ewe lamb. Sadly, it was stillborn.  

All month, I had been wondering what secrets Waterlily held within her.  She was so rotundly pregnant, I assumed she had triplets.  Some days I feared she had as many as nine in there.  Was her birthing going to be like one of those clown cars where more and more babies keep rolling out? In the end, it was just two.  A triumph and a tragedy.  Both Huge.  A charcoal (dead) baby and an ivory little fighter lying there together on the straw like Yin and Yang.  

There’s some of each inside us all, I suppose.  There is the garbage the iron needs to spit out.  All that does not serve us must be purged. There is also the living dream that needs light and air to grow or it will die.  Things get jammed in the birthing canal when we try to produce too much at once.  The next step is always “bury the dead; care for the living.”  Keep working with our hands to do some Good in this world.

That’s how it’s going here---on the farm and in Prom Season.  It’s a blood and glitter sort of Spring. May you be filled with the Joys and Heartaches of a life well-lived, Dear Ones.  May your hands find the work they are meant to do.

With SEW much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy

P.S. Waterlily and baby are doing GREAT. Shetlands really are rugged little creatures!