“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise so I am changing myself.” --Rumi

Greetings Dear Ones!

As Andy Warhol observed, “They always say Time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” In a tailoring shop, all I do all day long is make changes—well, except for the long, painful moments when, scissors, ripper, or razor poised, I stare at something until Time stops altogether, terrified to make the first cut—a cut that will forever sever What IS from its past rendition of itself so that a new version can be reconstructed from the wreckage. Neither Time nor Change is happening then.

Change is tough. In my line of work, it’s virtually impossible to change anything for the better without destroying it first. I have come to see Destruction as the necessary second stage of Progress. (The first stage is Dissatisfaction.) Dissatisfaction and Destruction are not generally perceived as “positive” events but they are essential to transformation. It’s like all the folks who insist they want to go to heaven but they do not want to die. We all must climb the ladder from Despair to Joy, whether we are surviving a recent flood, teaching a teenager to drive, shortening a skirt, observing a political debate—or realizing with sweet relief that bikini season only lasts about three hours in Vermont.

A customer who is very price conscious comes in and wants a vintage blouse remade. She wants to know how much this will cost. When I tell her it’s about the same price as two bean burritos, she wilts visibly. “Why so much?” she wants to know.

“Because Time is known as Burritos nowadays and what you are asking me to do is hard; it will take a lot of beans. Much, much more than you think. Not to mention, I need a steady supply of burritos to live.”

“What’s the hardest part?” she asks, turning her attention to the blouse.

“The Undoing,” I say. “The deconstruction of brittle stitches in ancient fabric is tricky. Everything about this is fragile. Vintage. You cannot be rough on vintage things.”

She balks at the word “vintage” then sighs. To her, the item is still new. The yesteryear she bought it feels like last week to her. She agrees that old things should be treated kindly but bristles at my efforts to be kind to her.

“How about if I do all the hard stuff myself? How much will it be then?” she snaps.

“If you can do the hard stuff, why let me do the easy stuff? It’s…well, EASY. Why bring it here at all?” I ask as gently as possible. She looks at me warily and stuffs the blouse back into her bag.

“I’ll think about it,” she says, and leaves.

I have learned to soothe quickly the sting of such interactions, the way one grabs a nearby dock leaf and rubs it into nettle rash. I “get it” that a lot of people, especially women who “can sew,” think of this kind of service as a luxury they should forgo—that if they were somehow more skilled or simply more virtuous, they would do everything themselves simply because they can or “should.” And while I champion self-sufficiency and empowerment-through-knowledge (I regularly have people come share my space so that I can mentor them on how to fix their own stuff FOR FREE) I also think most people miss the fact that the hardest part is almost always the part you cannot see: the planning, the care, the tedious work to destroy the problem before creating the solution. The cutting, the ripping and unpicking—Good Destruction is half the battle. There is genuine skill needed.

I despair when customers bring in items they have worked on themselves before and have created an unnecessary complication, or devised a “solution” that is not in any way related to the actual physics of the garment. I want to charge double burritos for that kind of mess. I had to beg one fellow NOT to take his clothes apart before he brought them in because I learn a lot about how a garment is constructed as I take it apart. He would bring me random pieces of a puzzle with no idea how they were supposed to fit back together again. “At least take detailed pictures of it before you do that!” I pleaded.

One of the hardest things about Change is the paralysis that overtakes one prior to the change. When I tell people that a certain project will be billed by the hour, I always remind them “Don’t worry! I won’t charge you for the hours I will spend staring at this in a daze, wondering why the heck I promised such a transformation!”

Permanent change is scary. When possible, I do avoid it. I hide the seam margins I refuse to trim; I put growth pleats or extra hem lengths into everything intended for children. I know which of my beloved customers are not going to stay the same size by Autumn. I tread the fine line of Realism, leaving room for Flexibility, Doubt, and the relentless repercussions of Change or cheesecake.

The biggest fear of Change is in making a ghastly mistake. Yes, I know that “mistakes are how we learn,” but I try to avoid that kind of learning at all costs, the way I won’t let my feet touch the bottom of a murky swimming hole in July. As a person who once chopped off the legs of NINE pairs of golf pants at the finished length (which is two inches shorter than the cutting length) and spent an entire day splicing those cut bottoms back on, I have learned to measure many times before I cut! Contrary to popular belief, “Haste” does not save time. It chews up and spits out the time you didn’t have to start with. It makes Waste. “Hurry Slowly” is a better option when one is making drastic, permanent changes. Take your time.

And… let Time take You.

Time has been behaving rather weirdly for me recently. For once in my life, I seem to have enough of it. These days are filled with a strange Grace. Contentedly, I linger in the garden over watering and weeding; I follow my animals as they graze—singing to them and hugging them, with no forward momentum to the early morning at all—and then find out I can still get to my shop on time. I am getting things Done. The garden is mulched; the hay loft is stacked with bales exhaling the sweetness of summer clover, timothy, and orchard grass; the steer have a vast new pasture to roam within fencing they respect. Even shortening the sleeves on a man’s sport coat seems to take half the time it used to.

I almost don’t know what to do with myself as a person who has Time. Do I need more work to do? Should I start knitting a sweater riddled with intarsia? Take up a new hobby? My inner worker bee panics when I spend a half an hour gazing at honey bees returning to the hive.

“How’s your summer going? Are you busy?” are frequent questions asked by customers.

“A lot is happening but I don’t feel busy,” I confide to one of my favorites. I point to the half empty rack in my shop. “What’s up with this? I’m actually on top of things! Ever since my friend passed away, I seem to have so much Time on my hands. But the weird thing is that she didn’t actually take up any of my time! I talked to her each day in the car, or as I was doing something else. Why does it feel like I have so much extra time now that she has passed?”

She laughs. Light pours out of her heart and eyes. She says “I am Lakota. What is happening to you makes total sense to me. We would say you are experiencing Wakan. Those who grieve are enfolded in sacred energy, closest to the Quantum, Divine, Spirit, Love—whatever you choose to call the sacredness that resides in everything. Our deepest connection to this energy comes at our birth, our death, and when we grieve. Because the Lakota believe we are all One, we recognize that when you lose someone dear to you, a part of you becomes connected to the realm where Time does not exist. To grieve is to remember Love. To align yourself with that Love is to free yourself from the usual attachments we humans suffer around getting things done, believing that we are running “out” of time…”

“But I don’t actually feel sad,” I say. “I feel incredibly peaceful.”

“That’s Wakan,” she says, smiling.

Time and Change are measured in relation to each other (and in burritos!). One cannot happen without the other. Previously, I’ve viewed Time and Change as unsavoury characters lurking out behind the pub, waiting to rough me up as I try to make my way Home. Suddenly, with Love on my side, they feel like bullies without much punch. I’m finding that when we sidestep Time, for a moment to be fully present with a plant, an animal, another soul, a mountaintop, or a river, we give ourselves a sip of eternal serenity that defies Change. It is beyond it and above it.

This is peace.

This is Joy.

In other news, today is the anniversary of me moving to this wee homestead-haven, affectionately nicknamed the Land of Lost Plots! I’m grateful for the Time, the Changes, and the reminders that neither of them matter too much in the grand scheme of things. Of course, it’s easy to persuade myself that there is still so much to do. No doubt I will fall back into my hurrying and scurrying soon.

Meanwhile, let us destroy carefully, thoughtfully, skillfully what must make way for Better, if not Best. The greatest musicians are those who have learned to harness their dissatisfaction, not so they can live in the misery of self-correction, but so they can be freed to caper, romp, frisk, and frolic and otherwise “play” in Tune for our collective inspiration and delight. Destruction is but one half of Creation. Let’s honor gently that which is “vintage” and has stood the test of time, while we seek eagerly a better fit for today’s life. Let us do our work with and for Love.

Let the Mending continue!

With sew much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy