Weekend Idyll

I don't have any pictures, but I hope someone else will post some (or send some to me).  My camera is in Wyoming with my family.

This has been a lovely weekend.  A fiber festival.  A keg party (no, really) attended by a delightful collection of knitters and spinners and bloggers and friends (coined, by blogless Marcy, as a blegger, thank you Marcy).  My house was full to the brim with friends and fiber and good conversation and good beer and good times.  There were wheels and wheels and a pile of fleeces by the side of the door.

I'm recovering now, though no recovery is really necessary, because for me, at least, the weekend was an utter joy.  I feel bad about my house sometimes, but you know, it's at its best when filled to the rafters with wool and good people, and it makes me glad for all that I have.  And truth be told, the weekend was a recovery of sorts itself.  I miss my family, but these few days of unscheduled relaxation, this is the restoration I've been needing.  I'll be a little bit more put-back-together when I see them next.  And that can only be good for everyone.

This was my second spin-a-versary, as we've apparently been taking to calling it.  Sheila Bosworth taught me to spindle at Cummington two years ago, after a few unsuccessful tries on a wheel the previous winter.  Blogging started shortly thereafter, a by-product of my trolling of the net to learn about spinning and deepen my fiber knowledge.  I confess to being a pinch obsessed with all this; I'm like that sometimes, but I've also been recovering from infant twin mommyhood, from infertility, from a couple of complicated journeys my life has taken me on, and which have brought me to this rather bright and sunny and wonderful place and asked me where I want to go next.  There's a very conventional life out there that I could choose, and I'm certainly conventional enough in many ways.  But the wool and the fibery life is an answer, for me, for the moment, to the question "what else?" 

Moms of infants can lose themselves, and honestly, I encourage surrender to the musty, wonderful world of soft downy baby hair and milk and diapers and life in two-minute increments.  I think moms of multiples lose themselves even further than most, and while I don't regret a minute of it, I am nothing like the person I was before.  Today I'm starting from here, from this place of who I am now and all the history that's behind and all the disparate parts of my self (my self?...My selves).  The wool and the blogging and my participation in this community has been part of the process of reconstitution of the selves of my life, and there have been moments when I've despaired of ever feeling whole again, ever feeling like me, or even knowing what that meant.  I've been playing catch-up, sneaking in moments of self-development like I sneak a few stitches on a sock while waiting in line at the pharmacy.  Busy-busy.

But this weekend was expansive, and it brought together people whose values make sense to me, who invest themselves in something as common and ancient as getting wool from shepherds and making it twisty and putting it into loops and then wearing it.  People with passion that might be a little crazy, but who aren't afraid to admit to that and remember that life isn't all about what car you drive or what your house looks like.  People who measure the world in a way that makes sense to me, and if that just shows that they're not any more normal than I am, and well, I suspect none of us thinks normal is a compliment, and that right there shows me I'm in good company.

There's sadness this weekend, too.  Too many people I know are wrestling with their own private heartbreaks, and there were moments when I breathed loss in the air at the festival.  This Cummington marked too many remembered tragedies and too many fresh ones.  It is, after all, a weekend of memorial here.  Communities are complicated places with webs of relationships that flex and stretch in ways that aren't always comfortable.  But this weekend drove home, even more than ever, why I want to do the work to be a part of it, and why I hold the joy and the sadness of those in my life, together.

So here I am, in my happy, wooly house, feeling the remembered buzz of the humming wheels and the laughter and the friendship.  I'm doing laundry and putting the dangerous and fragile tools away in preparation for the children's return.  But I'm holding on to the shimmering vibrations left in this room and the joy of it, and I'm remembering that there is a world, however far-flung and complicated, to which I can bring a self that is, as near as I can see, just about whole.  That there is a world in which the simple, long-remembered motions of drawing up to a wheel and starting to treadle helps to make the stories and jokes and confessions and boasts spin on with the hum of whirring axles; one where the things that don't matter really don't.  A community that is by necessity distant and separate from quotidian reality, but one I love even a little bit more than I did before.

So thanks for coming.  Thanks for being exactly who you are and expecting nothing less from anyone else.  And if you weren't there, know that you were missed, and know that when I say I wish you had been, I mean you, with all your complications and contradictions and confusion.  But thanks for bringing those things here to my virtual living room too, and I hope we'll sit our wheels or our needles or just our chairs nearby one another soon and have a chance to catch up.  And you'll remind me again who I am, and who you are, and how much more there really is in this crazy old world that sometimes gets so narrow.  So thanks.  Just thanks.

Next year, more room for chairs, though, in the real living room.  I'm just saying.

Comments

[julia fc]

Thanks for the thoughts on the weekend, Cate. It's like I was there. My reasons for being here are much like yours, and like you, it's a bright patch in the woods for me, this fiber community of ours. Thanks for being part of it.

[Rachel H]

That's lovely. Thank you for letting me be part of your community.

[Cara]

God Cate. I'm so glad to know you. Even just a little bit. Thank you for your post.

[Kelly]

That was a beautiful post. I'm glad you got the relaxation you needed. Every mommy deserves some time to rest and do somthing for themselves.

[Katy]

My brief visit to the festivities chez mamacate was such a breath of fresh air. And the whole finding yourself after the irst years of motherhood (and whatever journeys got us there) resonates deeply with me. Thanks for such a thoughtful post. (And I note that you managed to write it while your kids were away. My soon-to-come post will provide quite a contrast: Quick! jot down words! lol)
Good thing there will be room for more chairs next year--I have a feeling you'll be needing them.

[mote]

What a beautiful post. I'm glad your 'spin-a-versary' treated you well.

[Laurie]

Perfect. (And I didn't realize we shared spinaversaries.)

My caretaking of the husband unit made me understand, even just a little, what people with kids go through. I can see the inevitable loss of self.

[Carole]

Yeah. Not much else to say because you said it all so eloquently. I feel blessed to know you and to have been among "our" people this weekend.

[Lee Ann]

Dude. I missed you, too. You and your warm fuzzy stuff have quite literally changed my life...geez, now I'm going to get all weepy...

[Sara]

wow - I was thinking of you and Cummington all weekend. I very nearly openened my mouth (but not quite) to try and convince Terry to impromptu-like hop in the car - or at least hop in the car with the kids myself. But they would have missed seeing Henry and Eleanor, and it's a lot of driving for them for a mostly grownup time - they would have enjoyed it but it really would have been for me, KWIM? Anyway - thanks for such a thoughtful summary - you really captured many parts of it all.

[Debbie]

I really wish I could have made it this weekend. Your post made me feel like I was there. It really is an amazing community we've got going and I'm so glad to be a part of it.

Great post!

[Judy]

Cate, what more to say than 'thanks'. For everything you did you bring everyone together this weekend and for continuing to do so in your beautiful post. Thank you.

[stephanie]

Cate? I just love you.

[Kristen]

thank you. from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

[melanie]

You write so beautifully and have a gift for articulation like I've never seen. Tears in my eyes. I wish I could have been there. I'm making an extra effort for Rhinebeck though...

[amysue]

Beautiful post and while I'm sorry I couldn't be there (decided to throw the brakes on for a few days) I'm happy to hear it was so restorative. L'shana haba b'Cummington (or at least chez mamacate)! (next year in Cummington!)

[carolyn h]

Very nice post. I wish I were there, I'm not a blogger, so not a part of the get togethers, I'll have to assert myself and commune next time! Peace.

[Lisa]

I was in New Jersey this weekend, but my thoughts and heart drifted north now and then and thought of the good times going on.

[Norma]

That is just beautiful. I was entrenched in my own little world of loss, and not, this weekend, and that's as far as my thoughts wandered. I'm glad you had a wonderful weekend of restoration and rejuvenation. XO

[blogless sharon]

thanks for your wonderful thoughts. it was a great weekend and so good to see everyone. And hubby had a chance to see what it was all about.

[Marcy, Blogless]

Lovely, Cate. Thank you. And thank you for all the fun at Casa Mama.

[Lucia]

I wish I could have been there too. I hereby vow: nothing is getting between me and Rhinebeck. (Warning to anyone who tries: I am armed with pointed sticks.)

[Martha]

That was a beautiful post. And you expressed exactly what it is I like so much about this community: the things that don't matter really don't. It is very easy to get swept up in the car-you-drive, house-you-own crap and in the past few years my life has become a conscious effort to step outside of all that. It's a saving grace to have found kindred spirits.

[Risa]

What a beautiful post that spoke to me in so many ways. I was sorry to turn down the invite this year and even more so now. I'm glad you had such a lovely weekend.

[claudia]

Thanks for throwing such a fabulous blegger. Fun times!