May, 2020 | Tramite

2020-05-192022-01-25

You Are But You Don’t Want to Be

This was a silly piece I wrote quickly one day and emailed (BCC) to several friends and then put on Facebook. The responses I received prompted me to post the piece here — not because it’s a masterful work, but because I found the consistency of the responses, especially on Facebook, so funny.

Most of the women to whom I sent this wrote back, “I’ve turned into my grandmother”. When I posted the piece on Facebook, I received many personal messages from women, again stating “I’ve turned into my grandmother” and “I really liked this” — yet I don’t think any one of them shared or publicly gave the piece a thumbs-up!

Perhaps I should add to the following list one more point: “You know you’ve turned into your grandmother when you don’t want anyone to know you’ve turned into your grandmother!”

You know you’ve turned into your grandmother when:

Your pockets are filled with tissues you used lightly to wipe that smudge off your iPhone because why waste, you just might need a tissue later.
Your large framed photos all have corners jammed with tiny photos of your spiritual teacher and images of your favorite saints.
Your windowsills and door jambs all hold small statues of a divine incarnation.
Your doorknobs, rear-view mirror, and shift lever all bear rosaries or malas; the one on the shift lever usually makes its way into your hand when you drive.
You say prayers as you get into the car to go anywhere.
You swear profusely at semi-truck drivers who nearly side-swipe you on the highway, and when you’re going 92 mph in the middle lane, you both swear and flip off the kids who have the gall to pass you on the right.
You have to consciously control your eye-rolls when talking with males wearing the robes of ordination and/or carrying cameras with large lenses.
You secretly give food and money to people who need it.
You carry seeds and nuts to the park to feed the birds and the squirrels.
You’ve given names to the birds and squirrels, and they know what time to expect you — and are waiting if you’re late.
You worry about the birds and squirrels when planning your (frequent) trips, and have a little talk with the critters before you go so they know you’ll be coming back.
You’ve taken the screen off your kitchen window to better be able to lean out and feed the birds and see what’s going on up and down the street.
You scold the drug dealers who park on your street and tell them to skedaddle after they laughed off and ignored the Men In Charge.
You don’t give a S#!t what people think, yet are polite enough not to state this directly.
Your own version of a silent glance rivals that of Dame Maggie Smith.
You read stuff like this and think it’s funny.

2020-05-102022-01-24

Appreciation

Both this article and this exercise may be “too long” for most people!

Want to appreciate someone you may have never before considered?

Take something apart.

I’m not kidding. This is an important lesson, especially if you’ve never made anything by hand.

If you have never whittled, worked with wood; sewn, worked with fabric; welded, riveted, worked with metal; or made something by hand—then take something apart. Carefully, methodically, and thoughtfully, undo all the pieces of something that a person used their hands to make.

A shirt, for instance.

Find a (discarded) well-made, long-sleeve collared dress shirt, preferably of 100% cotton. Get a seam ripper or Exacto knife, and set aside an hour or two.

You’re NOT to destroy the shirt by shredding it to pieces — that would entirely circumvent the point of this exercise.

Study the shirt, and with the seam ripper, carefully and methodically undo each seam, each stitch, each button, and each label. As you take the shirt apart, lay each piece of the shirt on a table. You’ll probably find there are more pieces than you realized, more seams than you imagined, and wonder how in the world someone stitched all those pieces together. Or even figured out how to design and cut the pieces so they fit together perfectly.

That’s getting to the point of this exercise.

As you take the shirt apart, consider the pieces. How were they sewn together? How were the pieces of fabric cut before they were sewn together? Look at the little edges folded under — consider the dexterity of the fingers that folded the fabric so precisely. The skill of the fingers that guided the fabric through the sewing machine, fingers next to the needle going up down fast fast fast so fast that needle-hole marks punctured too-close fingernails.

If there’s a pattern to the fabric, does the pattern match where the seams fasten together different pieces of fabric? What kind of skill did that take, to cut and to sew and to design the shirt so the patterns matched across fabric pieces?

Can you easily get the seam ripper in between the individual stitches of the collar? Can you even see the stitches? Think of the person sewing the collar — what would their eyes feel like at the end of the day, after making the shirt?

What about the buttons? The placket? Do you even know what a shirt placket is? Or the yoke?

Don’t give up. Don’t put the shirt down and forget about the exercise.

Think about the person making the shirt. They didn’t put it down and give up on making it.

Finish taking the shirt apart. Your taking it apart was easier than their making it — and you probably never thought of who made your shirt before, or the skill, the time, the difficulty of making it.

Yes, the shirt you take apart was probably made in a factory, by several people, each sewing a particular part. But years ago, a tailor, or your mom, would have made the shirt for you, to your specific measurements, stitching each piece at their machine. Even further back in time, they would have stitched entirely by hand, without a sewing machine.

The hours, the abilities, the love of the tailor or mother for their craft: So much once went into the making of a shirt, and were valued by the shirt’s owner and wearer.

Now, the maker of the shirt is too often lost, a faceless factory-worker who has become, like the shirt itself, a commodity to be discarded.

And you — the wearer of the shirt — feel this lack of care just as much as the anonymous maker of the shirt, but you probably don’t have words for the sensation. Blinded by labels and advertising, fashion and merchandizing, clothes-wearers pay for expensive brands, yet feel a lack of . . . something.

The “something lacking” is NOT a new fashion, not a replacement shirt, not a different brand shirt.

The “something lacking” is the spirit of the maker.

Mass-produced items don’t have the same anima, the same spirit, as a handmade item.

Items made with care and love bear the spirit of the maker. Mass-produced items bear the ghost of industrial production, the shell of spirit.

We feel this, yet most can’t name what’s missing: the anima of the item and the spirit of its maker.

We’ve discarded them.

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Posted on Mother’s Day with much love and appreciation for my mom, a master seamstress who made, among other things, many shirts for me, and fostered my appreciation of the handmade and hand-makers.

The photo is of a handmade shirt by Angelina Pirastu of Samugheo, Sardinia, Italy. I’ll be writing more about her and the costume soon!

2020-05-062022-01-24

May Each of Us Be a Rose

Walking through the rose garden in the nearby park, admiring the beautiful buds, rejoicing in the open flowers, enjoying yet somewhat lamenting the now-fully-bloomed, petals-about-to-fall roses, and delighting in the intermingled perfumes of the diverse bushes, I also marvel and learn from our rose-siblings.

Roses are roses, and beautiful in every way.

Roses don’t question their spirit, their anima, their life as a rose. Even after having been cut down, roses flourish. After all, that’s what flowers do.

Rose buds don’t question whether or not they should pursue blossoming. A bud does not think, “There are enough roses of this color. I don’t need to blossom” or “Why bother? No one will see me” or “I wish grew on that side of the garden; more people would see me. It’s not worth blossoming here.”

When the rose blossoms, individual flowers don’t compare themselves to others on the same bush or another bush. They don’t try to steal another blossom’s sunlight, block their water, or try to be better than other flowers.

Fully-bloomed, petals-about-to-fall roses don’t lament their stage of life. I’m the one who labels them and feels a tinge of sadness at their scattered descent to the earth.

The petals fallen on the ground are beautiful, even when their edges are curled. I stop, pick them up, and offer them with a prayer to the bush, to nature, a saint, a friend, God.

The rose did not consult any petal usage statistics and determine whether to grow, to blossom, to give happiness — to be.

Completely and fully, the rose is.

And if no one sees it, if no one collects a fallen petal and treasures it, the rose bush still grows and flourishes. It does not doubt its existence or importance in the grand scheme of life.

May each of us be a rose.

~KMK