[SB] Sabbath Blessing

[Molly Wolf]

The Fair

Properly carded or not, the silver-grey fleece spins up a treat. I have 
brought my portable wheel with me, camping; at the Heath Fair -- an 
old-fashioned, serious country fair -- I have found other spinners. I have 
unloaded the wheel and my hand cards and the bag of fleece, and now I am 
sitting under a large green-striped canopy happily treadling and drafting. 
Next to me, working at a Louet wheel, is a beautiful young woman with a 
wheat-gold plait to her waist, which is thickening with her next child -- 
her third or third-and-fourth, depending on whether it's twins. An older 
woman crafts a hooked-rug picture with hand-spun, hand-dyed yarns, as 
another woman spins multicoloured rovings on a superb Polish wheel. We are 
entirely contented.  There's no strangeness when you wander into this world 
of fibers, only a shared language and an unfailing welcome.

The yarn I'm spinning -- it's going to be a three-ply -- is for a very 
specific project: I am going to use it to knit a hat. The hat will be in 
Shaker rib, a stretchy, resilient stitch, very warm, a toque with a 
turned-up bottom. I'm not going to wash the mildly sheepy smell out of the 
yarn; I'm going to leave it. I want the hat to convey this reality to the 
man I'm making it for, sheep-smell and all.

I'll call him Toby; he's a big, handsome guy in his late 30s, very bright, 
an artist and writer; he is one of the most genuinely good people I know, 
and also one of the most tragically flawed. The flaw blew open last fall, 
rather like the side of a volcano blowing off in an eruption, and Toby is 
now behind bars. He will likely stay there for, oh, at least 10 or 15 
years, likely longer. You see, the eruption occurred when he was on parole 
from a previous eruption. He's older and wiser now, and I think in the very 
long term, he's going to be okay; this time, he's surrounded by a circle of 
support and accountability, as he wasn't before. He's very much loved, and 
that makes a difference. But still, it's going to be a long, long time -- 
if ever -- before Toby walks in fields like these or can go to a small 
country fair.

And so I spin the fair into my dove-grey single, twisting it in. I twist in 
children's laughter, the bleat of penned goats, the bray of a donkey. I 
twist in the quiet chat of my spinning companions. I spin in the 
seriousness of the rabbit judging competition, and the poultry; I spin in 
first-prize ribbons on jams and cakes. I spin in the smell of bruised grass 
and of the chicken barbecue put on by the volunteer fire department. 
There's a spatter of light rain and I twist that, too, into my wool. I work 
in the men just next to us, who are showing people how rope used to be 
hand-crafted; I add the woman carving wooden spoons, the man demonstrating 
butter-making, the old guys showing off lethal-looking two-man saws. 
There's a duet going on in the music tent, folk songs sung well and truly 
by a man and a woman, with fiddle and banjo and guitar, and little kids are 
dancing, and I work that in as well. I spin in the town library display, 
and the school display, and the quilt raffle, and the concession stand. I 
want the whole fair in this yarn.

No doubt all the people wandering through this gentleness are as flawed as 
Toby and I are, although I hope they've suffered far less. But the place 
itself has an innocence about it; it's a place and an occasion testifying 
to the goodness of Creation. Both the place and the fair tend to attract 
people of sound soul and kind heart; they do not attract people with 
pretensions or illusions of importance. It has, and has always had, a 
mildly zen feel to it, of wisdom, not cleverness.

The animals in the long judging barns -- sheep and cattle, oxen, horses -- 
are well cared-for. The judging's been done thoughtfully and with respect. 
Much affection went into the planning of this fair -- I know some of the 
planners -- and that love spills out among the long rows of parked cars; 
it's in the fresh lemonade and the famous fried dough cakes.

It's a place where soul can bump soul, and that happens; I have a long, 
rich conversation with a man who's a writer like me, and with his beautiful 
wife; we are at once in a space of truth and intimacy and an understanding 
of truths that this good, truthful place deeply understands but that the 
world of midways will never get. I set my spinning aside for a while, just 
to talk to these people. The young mother spinning next to me looks up from 
her white roving and says wisely, "You are having such a rich afternoon." 
Yes, I am.

It's in this landscape; there's something about the place, everybody knows 
that. Half a mile south and straight downhill from here, there's the white 
Union church where Reinhold Niebuhr first said the Serenity Prayer. That's 
what I want to twist into this yarn for Toby's hat. It's what I want to 
convey to him.

But more than that: I believe -- as do the others here -- that this 
peaceful goodness, this quiet beauty, is of this one still-standing moment, 
but it's also of eternity. Toby doesn't yet know that, but we do: that this 
moment is perfect in itself, but it also represents a perfection yet to 
come, when we stand on the other side of the River and breathe that 
kindliest of airs. I know that; the young woman beside me knows that, as do 
the author and his wife and the people who planned the fair, and it only 
increases this moment's joy. We don't have to cling to the joy; we can just 
let it be, because we have it always.

That's what I'm really spinning into this yarn; that's what I want Toby to 
have wrapped around his ears in the prison yard when it's January and 
bitter cold.  That's what I'll ply when I twist three singles together; 
that's what I'll knit in with every stitch. Toby, this isn't it. There's so 
much more to come.

This is my last day camping; tomorrow I'll pack up and head home. I'll give 
my new grey yarn a wash in hot water to set the twist and let it bloom into 
whatever it's supposed to become, and then I'll start a swatch. It's only a 
hat. It shouldn't take me long.