I spent this morning going through my closet, looking for two dresses: one to wear to a wedding and one to wear to a funeral.
Sigh. This grand pageant of life can feel less than grand sometimes.
I have a whole team of people I call when the going gets tough. But who am I kidding? The going is always tough. So I just keep my team on call.
My team consists of my dream analyst, close friends, far friends, my Martini Club, my family…
But with this new round of loss, I have two new permanent team members: Grief and Loss.
I call them Griefella Gold and Lossella Loves-a-lot because then they sound like fairy tale characters so it makes them seem less scary.
Also, something about looking for dresses and the feeling of tumbling about on a wheel and the piercing needles of grief reminds me of a certain spinning wheel and a little maniacal rascal who spun straw into gold… golden what? Golden thread to hold things together? Golden fabric, perhaps to make a dress one could wear to a funeral, or a wedding?
I’ve never really understood that little rapscallion, and yet I find myself thinking about him sitting in the corner, spinning, spinning, spinning…
While fairy tales and myths don’t make sense to my conscious mind, they make a lot of sense to my subconscious mind, which never makes sense to anyone, especially me, and therein lies the secret to life… or not.
If you accuse me of spinning out, you wouldn’t be wrong.
I find the idea of spinning wheels comforting somehow, quiet, in their quiet simplicity, even though they always play the role of changemaker, transforming wool into yarn, silk into thread, and a girl and her kingdom into a 100-year-sleep surrounded by thorns so thick no one can reach her, though many try. We know she was a beloved daughter, hence the fairies and the wishes on her birthday, but no one has said whether she had a sister. I think she did.
Spinning.
So what in the world do spinning wheels have to do with Griefella?
She does the same thing:
She changes everything she touches, everything she touches changes.
She might be the biggest changemaker of them all.
With the loss of my sister, Griefella has taken me by my hand and is now my permanent companion. And what’s really strange is I’m not even upset about her perpetual place by my side. Is it shock? Resignation? Surrender? The stunned bug that hits a window and is knocked on its back?
Grief used to feel like I was being beaten by a vicious shadow, dragged down a street made of sharpened razor blades.
But it doesn’t any more.
Now Grief is just here, quietly holding my hand, coming with me everywhere, with Losella in tow.
I don’t know how or why this shift happened. It could be because I’ve spent a long time being flung about the spokes of a spinning wheel. It could be because I had to surrender to the truth, that so many people I love are gone. I know this. I have always known this. I have worked with terminally ill children for decades; I have lost so many of my beloveds; I’m well-acquainted with the idea that gorgeous souls come into our lives for one day or a thousand days or a hundred years, and the only certainty in life is that one day, they will disappear from this realm. I want to surround them all with love for as long as I can.
And I also want them to stay. But life doesn’t work that way. Nobody gets to stay.
So what does stay? Anything? Love, the ocean, starlight, and stories…
There’s something there, something just beyond my grasp in the old stories.
When I was a Waldorf teacher, I learned how storytelling and particularly fairy tales are nourishing to the human soul. They are magic keys that can solve disputes, calm the frazzled mind, create an entire world made from the human voice.
The old stories teach us things beyond logic, things like monsters are real and can be vanquished with courage, kindness, and a sharp sword; that people leave, wishes can be granted, and magic is all around us all the time. They teach us that bad things happen to good people, but in the end, living with integrity and love can make our dreams come true.
When I taught preschool one year at a little one-room schoolhouse on an island, I told my preschoolers fairy tales every day, but I wanted to change the tales, to make them less scary. I told my mentor, “I don’t want to give the children nightmares! How can I tell them there are witches in the world with houses made of candy designed to lure little ones inside so she can eat them?”
She told me there is ancient wisdom in those tales, and yes they are scary but they are also empowering. The main characters in the story don’t get eaten, they find a way to survive even though they are small and vulnerable, and everyone underestimates them.
She told me to imagine I am wrapping my littles in a protective cloak while I tell the stories, and trust in the ancient wisdom. She told me my job was to teach the littles that the world is a soft and safe place, but we all know that isn’t true. The old stories teach them how to survive, that they are not alone, that they can make it through the night.
And so I told them story after story, about an abandoned girl on her knees each day, sweeping the ashes of her life out of the fireplace, while still cultivating kindness; an old woodcarver longing for the wonder of a child, so creating one out of wood; a happy and curious young girl falling asleep for 100 years until love cuts through her thorny walls; the little elves that come in the night to make a perfect pair of shoes, the little goats who trip-trap across the bridge and must trick the troll who threatens them, and of course that little troublemaker Rumpelstiltskin, turning straw into gold.
And, since this was a Waldorf school, one of our weekly activities was spinning wool.
For real.
The local farmers would bring in wool from their sheep, and my class and I would wash it, card it, comb it, dye it, and finally, spin it. Me, a city slicker, combing wool. Coming from a place where I only bought clothes in stores and had never really thought about where it came from, spinning was like magic.
It was a marvel to me to knit a long stocking cap from wool I had spun myself, a cap that kept my head warm even in the fiercest of storms. I started knitting pink stocking caps and raspberry scarves and gave them out as gifts to friends. In true Waldorf style, I made several thumb-sized fairies from wool I had dyed purple and tied with golden thread. I put them in boxes and gave them out for Christmas gifts and when my nephew opened his box, he pulled out the fairy, and said, “You gave me a piece of lint for christmas?”
I burst out laughing when I saw he was right–it looked exactly like a piece of lint that he kept hanging over this bed for the next several years.
I have a Joseph Campbell quote on a pink post-it stuck over my computer: “The richest place I can live is in the truth,” and the truth then was my magical fairy gift looked like I had raided my dryer’s lint trap, and the truth right now is, I’m sad about my sister.
But I’m glad that my last words to her two weeks ago were, “I believe in you.”
I told my sister this because she was struggling, and when a friend said these words to me recently, they were a glimmer of hope I caught in midair. Whenever I falter, stumble, think I can’t do this anymore, I hear Sunny’s words, “I believe in you,” and it feels like I have donned a dress that works for both weddings and funerals, and every other ritual for healing and transformation, a dress of golden yeses, one I spun myself, from golden thread that magically embroiders “yes” into every stitch.
(A dress not made of lint.)
So maybe I should write my own fairy tale about Griefella Gold and Lossella Loves-A-Lot and their changemaking magic, their ability to spin straw into gold that looks a lot like a tiny tuft of a fairy, a story told to children on a stormy night by the fire, or an old stocking cap knitted from an angora sheep named Peaches, a cap with the words, “I believe in you” sewn inside.
And maybe I’ll write one more thing inside: nothing gold can stay.
I guess that is what makes it all so precious.
(See below for one of the stocking caps I knitted)
