After the terrible news of the US election results and the resulting noise, noise, noise, I decided to take a break from the news. I don’t know how long it will last but I am finding quiet again and the best thing about that is that I’ve been working on Easthope, a novel-in-progress. I am a handful of pages from finishing it and I have to say I’m drawing out those pages. I still don’t quite know how it will end. I’ll find out by going there. It’s a novel about a small village and how it allowed two people to find a new life in an old house they’ve inherited from a bachelor uncle. There are old marine engines, a community hall that acts as a hub for dances, handwork circles, political meetings, weddings and funerals, and a seafood dinner held every year. A few years ago I had the idea that it would be good to gather together profiles of community halls around B.C. and I began trying to get the project off the ground. A number of people said they’d love to write the history of a particular hall but didn’t want the job of editing the project. I have to say I was one of those people. My skills aren’t up to the organization required to keep the whole thing moving forward. Instead, as a consolation prize, I began a novel.
Tessa continued to sketch ideas for new paintings. The man floating down the Sovytsya River, away from his little family on the bank, the cow grazing nearby, her horn tied to a tree to keep her close. The summer kitchen with its abundance, the women carrying platters, the branches of dill and strings of peppers against the weathered wood. And the latest sketch, a small shadowy house, night sky overhead, a lit window showing a woman, a child, and the cow again, this time lying in straw by the door. Outside, the glint of a rifle held by a man pausing by the gate.
At the handwork circle, she brought her embroidery and described what she was learning about the symbolism entwined with the usefulness of the ritual linens. Making one, she told the others, is an act of safeguarding the traditions and also of creating something, well, like an amulet in itself, a way to encode messages and events. I have to confess I’m not fluent in this kind of work yet but my cousin says that the best teacher is the act of doing. So I think of this as a language lesson, though to be honest I’m trying to learn Ukrainian too online and it’s really hard. Rebecca Warren looked up from the socks she was darning and said it was good to think of the doing as the best teacher, though what lessons she was garnering from repairing the worn heels of her husband’s work socks was still unclear. After everyone laughed, she added, But I know that doing this work with others is really good. I watch what you’re sewing or knitting or weaving, find moments of inspiration for a time when I might actually have time to do creative stuff, and I think of women gathering like this for all those centuries, handwork itself almost a code for so much that would have been forbidden or dismissed. We’ve solved so many of the world’s problems here with our needles, yarn, scraps of cotton patched together until there are enough for a quilt. And that means something, even if the powers that be aren’t exactly listening to our solutions.
I know we’re laughing, said Marty, but to be honest, I think this is a very important thing to talk about. We’re not designing cluster bombs or planning stealth missions. Ever since a woman invented string, and I’d stake my life on it having been a woman, we’ve been doing this work. Our handwork is practical, yes, but it’s also a way of making a world we want to live in. We knit our families together, we keep them warm, we keep the stories stitched with red thread in linen – Tessa, I’ve loved hearing about your newly-found relatives in Ukraine and how you continue to get to know them by stitching – and we keep our communities intact by caring about each other.
Oh, we’re a philosophical bunch today. Sonia looked up from her sketching, turning her clipboard so they could all see the paper she’d been quickly moving her charcoal pencil over. And here’s the record of the whole proceedings, socks and all.
...Theresa Kishkan 