Red Cedar

The first time I was invited to a Jewish Passover Seder twenty-five years ago, I was struck by the traditions of welcoming that open and close the ceremonial part of the dinner. The first is the invitation for the stranger to join the table, accompanied by an opening of the front door. The second is the invitation to the prophet Elijah, who has a place set for him at the table and a glass of wine poured. At this recitation, the household door is opened again, an invitation to the prophet to take his place at the table. The Seder recounts the flight of the Jewish people from persecution, wandering in the desert as refugees from slavery in Egypt. As people who have experienced the pain of being “unwanted refugees”, it is no wonder one of their central rituals involves welcoming in strangers and blessed ones alike.

As a young social justice activist, I was moved to learn of a tradition that encoded the act of making space for the wandering soul in need. It defies “charitable” giving (a hierarchy which I despise); it is not the act of setting food outside one’s door or dropping a couple of cans into a hamper on the way out of the grocery, which is so often where our notions of giving end. The opening of one’s door and home is an act of solidarity and intimacy. It is to join another as an equal at the same table, and participate together in a ritual of sharing and nourishment.

After that first seder, I thought about that type of invitation a lot and how to bring it into my own practice of potlucks and household gatherings. At that stage of my life, I lived with a changing cast of roommates who all cooked for each other and friends regularly. There was almost always a stranger at the table (or sitting on the floor in the living room) back then. I lived most of my life by this admired principle. But as I’ve grown older, my life has become more private and to some degree more constricted by work and a need for order. In middle-age, my husband and I do not live in a way that invites people randomly into our home though we both live with the expectation that someone might just show up – having come from households where that happened (we both grew up in families that took people in – it’s how I ended up with a “foster” brother).

In pre-Covid times, we hosted large dinners at our home with some regularity. Given our very loose invitation policy and the fact people ask to bring a friend, or cancel at the last minute, errant place settings frequently end up on the table. When a gathering is particularly sizable, we put on an extra setting or two intentionally, just in case we miscounted our numbers. Brian and I refer to this the place for Elijah, in the nod to the tradition of inviting in both stranger and prophet (who may be one and the same – prophets do not always come in a guise we recognize). It’s a symbol of our approach to both hosting and helping, something that shows up in our daily practice of making enough food at every dinnertime so an unexpected guest can be fed, and the fact we keep a spare room ready for overnight guests.

We don’t do this out of “kindness” or charity, but frankly, because it’s a joyful way to live. To shout over the fence at a neighbour walking by to join us for dinner is to enliven the day with unexpected company. To have a guest bring an add-on is to meet someone new and expand our circle. To hear about the struggles of others is to widen our compassion and empathy for those living in different circumstances. To fire up the oven to cook and bake for others is to warm the house. For all of the quiet days Brian and I choose to live together, we welcome the chaotic ones even when they are inconvenient or a bit messy. It’s one of the things I value most about our life together – the willingness on both our parts to attempt a response to what life is asking of us rather than shutting the door because it is too much.

Covid has made it difficult to imagine inviting in friends, let alone strangers. But the needs of others persist, for community, kinship, and help in getting by. As things start to shift over the next few months, I hope we can collectively let go of some of the fear and start letting people back into our lives. We have found it difficult to live with a mostly-closed door in the last year, not because we want to get on with shopping and international travel, but because our lives are poorer for the strangers we have not met and the friends we haven’t broken bread with in all this time. After this first shot we are opening our door little by little, in hope that by autumn we are flinging it wide open for a 30-person Thanksgiving feast!

I know that summertime is not really here yet (we still have June-uary to get through), but the last few days have been turning towards summer and it’s a very welcome change after a coldish April.

I’m having a hard time separating the days from each other lately. It seems to me that the last month has gone by in a single block of time and I’m not sure how that’s happened. It seems sudden that the days are really long, the garden demands daily watering, and it’s light enough in the mornings to consider going for a run before work (to beat the heat). I suppose this is why I document here, so that I have a record even during the times when I am not paying that much attention.

The most exciting thing that’s happened in the last week is that we got vaccinated on Sunday! First shot of Moderna is done, and while we did have some side effects (sore arm, exhaustion), I’m feeling back to normal and much better about the future. Apparently 50% of the province has now had their first shot, with a lot of people still in the queue to receive theirs. I won’t be surprised if that number is 60% by the end of the month and that is trending towards herd immunity and a resumption of normal life by the fall when we all get our second shots. Though many people have reported feeling relieved at getting their vaccination shot, I have to admit that my reaction in the hour that followed was more one of frustration. We’ve been waiting so long, and some part of me wanted things to be different *right away*. But of course, they weren’t and so we went back home and our lives have continued along in quarantine, something that I’m definitely reaching the end of my patience with.

My workouts this week were definitely impacted by the shot. I didn’t have one at all on Monday. Tuesday I went for a run and my app showed me that I “worked harder than normal” (according to heart rate) even though my pace was significantly slower. I’ve managed to get through the last two days of strength workouts, but only by taking maximum rests in between sets. It’s interesting because in my daily life, I don’t feel much of a different in energy levels, but in my workouts I’ve noticed a downshift. It’s not something I’m concerned about because I know that as my immune system processes the input, things will return fully to normal.

I don’t have any new weaving to show off this week since I’ve been winding some new warps and working on re-tying the treadles on my Berga Savonia loom (for the billionth time – my approach keeps changing). I am looking at investing in a bit of equipment to assist the tie-up since I’ve never met a loom that has a more awkward position for the treadle tie-up (you literally have to sit in the loom, under the beamed warp in order to reach the lamms and treadles). You can see from this picture, a tall person would be very cramped (you have to sit on the back of the treadles underneath the warp which you can see running across the top as a white line)! But even for a short person like me, my hips do not like being scrunched up in there for too long. There is a system called the 20+ which changes the tie-up position from inside the loom to the back of the loom. It’s called the 20+ because it’s said to add twenty years to your weaving life. A lot of people end up leaving weaving because it’s too hard to get under the loom, down on the floor as they age. This device brings the tie-up to the back of the loom so that the weaver can sit on a stool and do the tie-up with more ease. I love everything about the Berga Savonia loom except its treadle tie-up, so it seems like a no-brainer to sort that out and make my weaving life easier – once I save up the money I’m going for it.

It’s Brian’s birthday today and so I’m skipping out of work early and have planned a picnic at the beach for this afternoon. Though it’s a bit windy, the weather seems to require that we get away from our desks to enjoy it and I’ve planned super-yummy foods to take with us, including mini-apple pies, pesto pasta salad, and ham and brie sandwiches. He’s turning 49 today and our hope is that by his real milestone birthday next year, we’ll be able to throw some kind of great party – but for this year we’ll enjoy what we have available which is miles of beautiful beaches and good weather. Can’t really complain about that.

This week has been all over the place in terms of time and routine. A bit of time off, some (more) dental appointments, and then full days of online union convention yesterday, today and tomorrow. While I am glad I took a day and half off at the beginning of the week, the rest of the changed schedule reminds me just how much of a creature of habit I am. I’ve been eating at weird times and working out in the morning instead of the afternoons. I’ve been having difficulty finding the energy to write and play music in the last couple of days especially.

And yet, it’s been a fairly productive week all round. I did manage to record three violin tracks on Saturday and Sunday for my husband Brian’s new album, and listening back to them, I feel pretty good about what I did – both in terms of how I divided the recordings up for a more professional approach, and also the parts I picked out to go with the tracks already laid down. I have been playing my violin steadily now since December, 3 or 4 times per week, the longest run of regular practice I have had in fifteen years.

I had almost forgotten what it’s like to play freely, without hesitation and stiffness – but it’s coming back to me now as my joints become more fluid and the instrument more of an extension of my feeling-self again. I’m not sure I will ever get back the dexterity I had when younger, but can tell you that the nascent arthritis in my hands has completely disappeared since January. At the very least, playing will keep my hands flexible longer. Sometimes the issue with dexterity isn’t so much the joints themselves, but the connection between my brain and body, and that’s something I know has gotten slower with age. The muscle memory doesn’t lock in quite as quickly as it once did.

Besides that productivity, I finished weaving and hemming the hand towels that were on the loom last week, and warped again with what I think will be a table runner (pictured at the top). Having Monday and Tuesday morning off work really put a dent in a number of small projects around the studio, and I even got started on a bit of sewing for the first time in awhile. Studio time has been mostly flow-state lately, with one project morphing into the next, and tidying going on simultaneously so that things really keep moving. I wish it was always so easy!

I’m looking forward to my next projects which include experiments in weaving linen, some more tea towel gifts, getting the big loom up and running with shawls (treadle cords retied and we’re a go), and an overshot project in silk.

I think I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’ve returned to running – just a couple of times per week, but I’m enjoying the bit I’ve been fitting in. I’ve also made some new fitness goals for the spring/summer – to push my power-lifts up in density, to get additional outdoor activity in every week, and to stretch for at least five minutes aftder every strength workout. My strength training the last couple of weeks has been fairly intense, but I am very satisfied to complete the workouts. Ever since I started doing Stronger by the Day about five months ago, I’ve really noticed big differences in my body composition. I look the same to folks on the outside, but my muscles are much more present and defined. I find it hard to show this stuff off because I’m not much of a muscle-flexer, but its real and I can link my growth in muscle over the last eighteen months to better posture, better metabolic rate, and more stamina overall. I just finished reading the book Exercised by David Lieberman and it was one of the best books I’ve read about why we resist exercise (evolution, obviously), but what it does for us – especially as we age. It’s some of the best work I’ve read about fitness and evolution, science-based and not at all faddish.

Union convention continues through the weekend so I am definitely tied to my desk when I’m not playing for the next few days – but then next week is back to my regularly scheduled life.