Untangling Loose Ends

Tapestry weaving school

I learned to weave tapestry this January in a 150 year old schoolhouse. The fir floor boards creaked and a massive splash of weaving history covered the plaster walls. Students don’t sit at desks to learn the 3 R’s anymore there. Instead they sit on squat chairs that face Navajo looms the size of large windows and doors. The works in progress rest while their makers are away and flaunt patterns and colors that only emerge after months and years of work.

I learned to make butterflies

In class, I learned how to make butterflies of yarn. This is a handy formation which allows the weaver to carry many different colors at a time when working a pattern. It helps the weaver manage all of the loose ends they must keep track of while they form shade and shapes in the weaving. At my highest number I had 6 butterflies going in a “meet and separate” stitch. It got confusing and frustrating because each color’s movement across the warp influenced the next color and the next and the next. I got lost and tangled and had to take a break.

And then just got overwhelmed

I walked around to admire the Navajo rugs that the folks who weave at the school every Tuesday were making. Some of those weavings had up to 20 dangling butterflies. The patterns were so rhythmic and complex it made me dizzy trying to imagine how the artists knew where to lay the weft. Jesse was there working on a rug. It was so stunning, I couldn’t imagine ever feeling comfortable walking on its luscious sea blues. I asked her how long she’d been working on it. She laughed a bit and gestured to a section that measured the size of her hand, “This section has taken about a month.” She smiled and offered, “I’ve calculated how long it’s going to take for me to finish and if I keep going at this rate it will take another 13 years.” I raised my eyebrows in admiration. All those dangling butterfly ends and all those years.

What to do with all those threads?

It made me think of old friendships and how Jen and I walk together. We’ve walked miles of beach and woods and cities over the 30 years we’ve been friends. Rain and snow and sun don’t stop us because we know the moment we fall in step with one another it’s like picking up where we left off. Even in the rough years, when our kids were small and all manner of hell was breaking loose in our individual lives, when the amount of time between our walks stretched too far, nearly breaking—when we did finally visit and we did walk—it was like no time had passed at all. This must be how Jesse feels with her rug. When she sits on that short chair each time, all she has to do is pick up those ends of color and start.

All those dangling ends?

I think we all walk around with threads dangling off of us. They are the unresolved, unsettled, need-to-follow-up-on kinds of threads. They wave their frayed ends at us in the middle of the night and say, “Remember to check on Susan. Her texts are too short and there must be something going on.” And, “Milo’s hooves need iodine again—can’t let that foot rot come back.” And, “I never followed up with Eileen about her teenage son—did she confront him about his drug use?” The threads are the lists of ideas, the worries, the dinner and lunch invitations. They fringe our very existence with so many waving ends it’s impossible to address them all.

Friends help sort them out

When Jen and I walk, we come together with all of these strings dangling from various limbs and shoulders and heads. They float and fly around in the wind. There are obligations strings—clients, Jen’s mom who has dementia, our kids, painters who don’t do their jobs, and people who crash their cars into us. Some strings are pulled way too tight and others are just bobbing around willy-nilly. We are flailing and awkward unattended puppets, unmoored sailboats, beginners’ tapestry disasters. Walking, Jen and I take turns picking up a string, “Is this one it? Let’s talk about it. Your mom doesn’t recognize you? She’s mean and demanding? It’s straining your marriage? I hear you.” And I hold onto the string for her, loosen it from around her wrists and her neck, so that she can breath just a bit easier. She takes one of mine, “You are lost in this new life? You can’t go back but don’t know where to go forward?” She hears me, she holds me, she winds the string into a butterfly and neatly places it in the palm of my hand. “I’m here. I’m always here.”

A lifetime, work in progress…

Our walks involve our feet, one step in front of the other, for a very long way. But they also involve the beautiful caring activity of picking up the threads, sorting through and making nice neat butterflies. Each walk leaves us more sorted, more clear, more able to keep going. We’ll probably be doing it long after Jesse has finished her rug. We’ll untangle those loose ends for each other and marvel at the tapestry of our friendship.