In the bleak midwinter/Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron/Water like a stone
Snow had fallen/Snow on snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter/Long, long ago

Greetings Dear Ones

Ordinarily, there is nothing I like quite so much as a Bleak Mid-Winter. That carol, “in the bleak mid-winter….” often plays in my head as I trudge the grey and bluish circles to the barn and shop. I confess it soothes my inner hermitess to have snow days and be cut off from civilization and be “forced” to sit by the fire with a good book, a new fiddle tune, or some yarn. The subtle luxuries of ‘snow on snow’ cannot be underestimated. I have lived in places where people gritch about the weather. Here, we embrace it with relief. We love wool. We love lumbering around as androgynous mammals. We are invigorated by air that feels like a paring knife. Our willingness to be slightly uncomfortable occasionally makes every comfort sweeter and opens us up to thrilling opportunities those that want to live at a steady seventy degrees farenheit must decline.

Best of all is the deep quiet of a slumbering Spring beneath the grungy blanket of white. It’s too early to wake her, shhhhh…. Prune the blueberry bushes as quietly as you can. Don’t think of hot, full birds and berries. Just use this time to snip away all that is dead. Let the rest slumber. The Bleak is as precious as anything is that is Temporary.

But this year, my normally deliciously bleak mid-winter is being interrupted by loud pronouncements of something truly Bleak—that it’s going to be a whole bleak YEAR—that ten months of an election cycle will become twenty five (or at least feel that way) and that we are all only living for one day, a certain Tuesday in November. Exhausting prognostications are heavier to bear than layers of quilted overalls under a Carhartt. The rest of our days don’t seem to matter much—the constant out-gassing of the punditry puts us in a paralyzing fog. We need true Rest, Deep Sleep, A Long Winter’s Nap. We need a cup of Joy with our daily broccoli. Instead, we are anxiously anesthetized. Like most of you, I have been reading, listening, fretting, obsessing… It’s making not just winter but Life feel bleak. And it doesn’t feel temporary.

“When you can’t get out of it, get into it!” is one of my mantras so recently, I read an outstanding book for anyone feeling bleak. It’s “The Diary of a Man in Despair,” by Freidrick Reck, the journal of a German nobleman in Bavaria in the 1930’s. In it, Reck talks a lot about how his fellow citizens are “losing their sense of humor” and replacing it with fears, suspicions, paranoia and distrust. He traces the emotional decline of a country where neighbors used to joke with each other and treat each other with gentleness and tolerance, with generous laughter at each other’s quirks, and gradually become the tortured souls who report each other to the authorities for acts of unsanctioned kindness. To say Germany “lost its sense of humor” in the 1930’s is an understatement indeed. (Reck was later sent to Dauchau and died there for “embarrassing the fatherland” with his writing.)

Just as when one begins to lose one’s hearing, it’s hard to know when we are losing our sense of humor. We can’t tell what’s missing. What used to be funny that isn’t any more? Yesterday, I micro-waved broccoli as a part of a healthy lunch and it made a healthy smell which wafted all throughout the north end of the building.

“She means the shop smelled like a port-a-potty,” says Prudence.

Several customers came by to collect their finished items and wrinkled their noses. Do I show them the broccoli and advocate for myself earnestly as if I am on trial, or say nothing, shrug, and let them think I’ve been eating bean burritos for a week? What’s funnier?

“Neither,” says P.

Mistakes are a perfect time to decide if something is funny or not. Also yesterday, I chopped the sleeves off a man’s expensive dinner jacket in order to shorten them from the shoulder. (It had working buttonholes at the wrist so it was impossible to shorten from the bottom.) Carefully, I marked all the seams and relevant joining spots with colored thread so that I would know exactly how to align the sleeve on the jacket again. Normally, I do one sleeve at a time, but I was tempted to try a new shortcut I had seen online, so I did both sleeves at once. Cleverly, I used different colored threads for each sleeve so that I could tell left from right at a glance: Red for right, bright blue for left (naturally). All was going great until I realized that in trimming the excess length from the top of the sleeve, I had accidentally also cut off all my thread markings, which went into the bin with the fabric I had just trimmed (doink! Pause for sound of hand slapping head). Do we think this is FUNNY? Do we chortle aloud knowing that we DO have the skills needed to tell a right sleeve from a left without the benefit of color coding? (We do.) Or do we panic, flap our arms, do a tiny poop in our pants and blame the smell on the lingering broccoli?

A sense of humor is a choice.

Humor is horror that includes Love. Do you forgive me? Do you love me even when I do dumb things? Or do you think I should be reported to the tailoring police?

“At the very least, you should be reported to the broccoli police,” mutters Prudence into the vintage hanky clamped over her nose.

Finding things funny implies forgiveness; it implies safety. It means I can mess up and still fix things. Humor implies Faith that all shall be well. It means we are going to be ok in the end, even if we wear jeans that give us seamstress crack (a close cousin to plumber’s crack) when we crawl on all fours attempting to mark a hem on bridal gown with a three acre train.

Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves; we shall never cease to be amused. If I can laugh at myself, I can laugh with you too at your dumb things without judging you. Shared Laughter creates community. It helps a lot with Mending.

When my sense of humor is depleted to the point that my inner fifth grader is too tired to roll on the floor giggling because the whole shop smells like one gigantic fart, I know it’s time to go on a Joy Safari and fill our spirit cup. We’re empty. I look around for things that make me happy. I look at the giant rack of thread spools on the wall and think of the visiting five-year-old who informed me “that’s NOT a rainbow, but it’s trying to be.” I smile. I see my button collection and remember the customer who told me his favorite color was “beige.” I grin. I gaze out the enormous windows to the north and see homes and trees, and tendrils of river mist rising like smoke. Behind them all, as ancient and steady as a prayer mound, rises Mt. Watasticut—pristine, glittering, white. All of Nature is a wedding dress. I inhale the Beauty and the Promises.

Bleak mid-winter is a wonderful time to go on a Joy safari. Joy can be hard to spot on a summer’s day when her plumage blends so naturally with the swing of a hammock, an outdoor bath under the stars, and the taste of sun-warmed blueberries and fresh sweet corn twenty minutes from the stalk. Pretty much anything can feel like Joy then.

Against the backdrop of mud ruts in the snow and intermittent sub zero Bleakness, Joy looks a little different. She’s easily missed. Sometimes, you just have to have a party and invite her and see if she shows up. I did this past Sunday. I went to the barn, cranked the tunes up to volume 11 and grabbed a pitchfork and a wheel barrow and mucked out the cow shed. Joy and I danced in our thermal welly boots and sang at the top of our voices to songs we didn’t know all the words to. The Beloved Hermit of Hermit Hollow appeared in the doorway and said, “Wow! Sounds like a party going on in here!”

“Yep!” I panted as I charged past him with a load of frosted dung. “Every party has a pooper and this party happens to have TWO! Lucky us!! Two great big poopers pooping everywhere.” Gus and Otie, the ox-lings, mooed their affirmatives from the paddock. Gus smiled and cocked his tail to drop even more.

There is Joy in hard work. There is Joy in seeking the comfort of those you love. There is Joy in witnessing their pleasure. It was a Joy to replace filth with clean fresh shavings. I made a large pile in each stall and then hung on the open gate and watched the Moo Crew charge in and do battle with their bedding. They snorted and tossed it everywhere with their horns. They had a ball, smiling, pawing the ground and playing with the wood chips. Occasionally, each one would pause and regard me with bright, interested eyes and bovine gratitude. Everything “new” is a game they want to play and Fresh bedding is especially exciting for them.

“Why don’t YOU ever trample your bed on all fours, snorting and tossing your clean sheets over your head?” asks Joy. I don’t know. How many things in my life am I doing without a sense of celebration or pleasure? At feeding time, everyone I live with either wiggles, hops, barks, or bahs with joy. Do I? Do I wiggle with glee at my broccoli and carrots? Or slump and meow that it’s not French fries?

“Life is supposed to be Bleak,” insists Prudence. “It’s inappropriate and hedonistic to revel.”

Joy disagrees.

“How can we be given anything and refuse to take delight in it?” she asks.

Just for today, as an antidote to terminal Bleakness, I choose Joy. I am going to moo and wiggle and stomp my feet when I get fed. I’m going to make a riot of my clean bed. Joy is not in getting “more” or different but in celebrating what we get. I get a LOT. And I am deeply, joyously Grateful.

Life is not so Bleak. Don’t let the pundits tell you otherwise. Heaven forbid we lose our sense of humor, Dear Ones. Keep mending. Thank you for doing your Good Work! As always, thank you for commenting, sharing and subscribing.

With Sew Much Love,

Yours aye,

Nancy