I loathe being born in Sucker Moon. At best a sucker is a leech, a thing that attaches to your skin and sucks through it to feast on your blood. At worst it is profanity. In between it means a gullible fool. None are symbols I want to be associated with.
I prefer Owl Moon. This is the month owls swoop on silent wings through the forest in search of mates. I love their fierce wide eyes, their distinctive call, the strength of their talons. They are sacred to Athena, goddess of night, moon, wisdom and weaving. I do not mind being associated with these.
My daughter loves the moon. She looks for her and talks to her. She bids her to be careful, not to fall. She sings to her and tells her good night when we enter the house. She names the fullish moon Lady Moon, the wisp of a moon is Baby Moon. Once I showed her the moon in the morning sky, to her three-year-old delight. She goes to every window from where she has seen the moon, looking for her.
My Solveig is a daughter of China, a child of the land that celebrates the Moon’s birthday. I want to collect for her all the folk tales about the moon, and tell them to her as we lay in our hammock watching the moon during summer nights. I want to be her own Sheherazade, weaving stories for a thousand and one nights.
The hardest part of my sojourn here at the Casa del Sybilla is being parted from my daughter. I miss her spindly little arms around my neck, her nose to nose stare down, her dancing and singing, her sass. I hope she will forgive me this hiatus away from her.
I have sent post cards, and received back a letter from my family. They are well. Life is going on as usual. I am missed, not just for the tasks I do for the family, though my sons grumble about having more chores to do, but for myself. I am not missing housework. It is pleasant to be waited on by the invisible servants of the Casa. I do not see anyone making my bed or cleaning my room, but it is always clean, though I keep it picked up. I enjoy the tidiness of my surroundings. The orderliness is soothing.
The notes within the letter, the grumbles about chores. bits of news, little drawings and rows of x’s and o’s, make me homesick. Though I miss my little girl most, I miss my sons too. And my husband, of course. But I have missed him for a long time.
I am lonesome in my marriage. I have heard of couples drifting apart so often I believe it is an normal stage of marriage. Not inevitable, but not catastrophic either. I understand better now why long married couples may be tempted into an affair. I can understand why it would be natural to seek the affirmation I crave from my husband, and am not getting, from another instead.
I cannot pinpoint what is wrong exactly. Part of it is the wear and tear of the work of survival. Fate has not been good to us and Fortune has entirely passed us by. We live simply, but even so making ends meet is difficult. Our bitterest arguments are about money, with the division of labor being a close second.
When we were first married his great aunt Louise told us, “Pull together, children, and you’ll never pull apart.” She described the happy marriage with her late husband, husband number three. How he shared every good thing with her. “It’s your turn,” he would say. We are not pulling together, we are not sharing. Our life together feels like a competition, it is definitely a power struggle. It hurts.
The other day our kitchen scissors broke. The pivot pin is loose, so the blades are too far apart to work. It brought to mind an analogy I heard once comparing a marriage to a scissors. Without the connecting piece, commitment, a scissors is two blades that can only stab. With commitment, those blades are united to work together creatively.
Our commitment is there, just too loose to keep us functioning as we should. Closeness is lacking. We are together, just not connected right. But we are fixable, yes, definitely fixable.
But will our scissors be fixed?
I pray that it will. Perhaps I will find a cure here in Casa del Sybilla. The very walls exude wisdom here. Sybilla is an oracle, not because she can see the future, but because she understands the questions. I have not asked her any real questions, just queries to make sense of the Casa. But I have heard her answer others who asked, “what is the meaning of my life?” Her cryptic answers do not obscure truth, but force one to look squarely at truth, especially at truth you do not want to see. But if you choose not to see, you will never heal.
My days are peaceful here. I spend much time in study, in thought. I read, write, draw, paint, walk, enjoy the opulent surroundings. Every afternoon after a nap, Lucia and I meet in the courtyard to do needle work. I embroider my dress; she cards, spins and knits.
Through her knitting, I have discovered how I am linked to Lucia. A few days ago she was knitting brightly colored yarn in a pattern that is very familiar to me, the Oxfam Sweater. Many years ago I found the pattern in an old magazine and started making them. An American craft magazine carried the article and gave an address to send the finished sweater. From there they would be distributed around the world to children. I started making them. My favorite was one of bright rainbow stripes with tassels along the side where the colors changed. It looked so happy when I finished it. As I knit I pray for the recipient, even if it is someone I do not know. God knows. And God answers prayer for our benefit.
Lucia was the child who received that rainbow sweater. She showed me a photograph of her as a little girl, hiding her face behind her hand, but obviously proud of her sweater. Her brown eyes sparkled in the picture, she looked so beautiful. She wore the same expression showing me this treasured picture, and looks as beautiful still. The sweater I made of leftover yarns blessed her. Now she is blessing other children with pretty sweaters. And she blesses me with her companionship and assistance.
Sybilla told me Lucia’s story. She was abandoned in Katmandu, Nepal just around the corner from an orphanage. It is likely her parents were poor and broken hearted that this little daughter was born with a cleft palate. The orphanage took her in, of course, and she grew up there. She was four years old before a volunteer surgeon from Canada repaired the cleft. With every year that passed her chances of adoption grew less and less. She was taught to card, spin, weave, and embroider, showing amazing aptitude and creativity. In time she found her way to Casa del Sybilla.
“How did you know I made Lucia’s sweater?”
Sybilla smiled, “I am del Sybilla.”
The following day we went to the bazaar. I felt shivery, excitement tingling my spine and nervousness prickling my skin. We departed in the morning, before the day was too hot and while the produce was freshest. The air was crystal, dew pearled on every leaf. The walk pleasantly wound along the river, shafts of rising sunlight illuminating our path.
We entered a city gate into a world aflame with color, scent, and noise. The bazaar is a maze of tent covered booths overspilling every plaza down almost every cobbled street of the city. Brightly colored carpets are heaped with wares, shaded by equally bright awnings, shading vendor and customer. Merchandise is wonderfully jumbled together, bolts of colorful cotton and shimmery silks next to shelves of polished bronzes, next to rows and rows of glittering beads. Glassblowers rub elbows, literally! with herbalists’ trays of medicinals. Mounds of mangoes, apples, lemons, spill into the embroidered slippers next door to them. Chandlers create next to tinkers repairing pots. Next to them an artist paints a child’s portrait watched an awed audience. There a woman sells love charms. Here a young boy squeezes oranges into tall glasses. Tall vases of fresh flowers create a garden before the door to an Internet Cafe. Tables of books front a pastry shop. Amid the hullabaloo three little boys are giving away chubby puppies from a basket. Across the aisle their sisters are giving away kittens.
Everywhere there are people; hawking, laughing, talking, haggling, gossiping, in languages I do not understand. Musicians wander up and down, or sit in the middle of plazas, cups next to them to receive offerings. Already cups are nearly full of gold and silver coins, flowers and fruits are also laid near the musicians as tribute. The music is barely heard over the din of voices.
A blind girl, draped in a glittering red sari, sings so sweetly the noise around her is stilled. She seems to rise out of an island of flowers. Like everyone else, Lucia and I stand entranced by her song. When she finishes we discover we had stopped breathing to listen. Lucia quickly purchases several golden roses to lay at her feet.
I am dazzled by the smells. Fruit, flowers, the musk of people’s bodies, bread, sizzling meats, coffee beans being ground mix with the amonnial smell of animal dung. When we passsed a spice merchant, my eyes began to water and my nose went numb from the intesity of the smell – pepper, chilis, ginger, cumin, aise, cinnamon, cloves heaped in pungent mounds. Livestock, butchers and tanners are kept separate, the smell of their trades repel customers even as they attract flies. Here bleating, braying, clucking and quacking increase the volume of the bazaar’s cacophony. Lucia and I scurried away, unable to bear the sight of creatures in tanks and cages waiting to be butchered for dinner.
Lucia is my good angel, without her I would have wandered helplessly for days among the stalls. She held my hand, leading me faithfully to the very center of the bazaar where the Golden Bone Chair awaited.
It stood on a dais under a scarlet canopy upheld by polished black spears. We listened to a woman weave an enthralling tale of a Scottish doctor’s encounter with the fey – an exquisitely chilling story.
Then it was my turn.
A very queer feeling tickled behind my breast bone as I took my seat. I laid my sweaty palms on the lap of my gown to still their trembling. I sat straight, praying I looked calm, at a loss as to what I would say. I had rehearsed a dozen stories a hundred times, but still nothing seemed right. I met Lucia’s beaming eyes. Sybilla stood next to her, nodding encouragement. She took it for granted that I would do well. She knew I would which is how she knew I could! The realization galvanized me. Del Sybilla knows! Her confidence in me is based on knowing what I would do, not just because she had faith in my potential.
I breathed deeply and began. The stories and study of the past few weeks spun together. The words flowed from me. They knit themselves together smoothly, creating a garment beautiful and whole. And exactly 1001 words.
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My knees wobbled as I stepped down from the dais. Lucia put her arms around me, steadying me. Sybilla took my face in her hands to kiss my forehead. Those who had listened smiled and bowed when they met my eye. Some gave me flowers, some slipped coins into my pocket.
I had a sudden thought. “Sybilla! How do they understand me when I don’t speak their languages?”
“It is the magic of the Golden Bone Chair. Those who speak from it are heard by those who listen in their own language.”
As we passed through the bazaar returning home, the merchants pressed me to take from their wares. “Sybilla, what do I do? I cannot take these things, I don’t need them.”
“It is good to be prudent in what you choose, but please accept some of what is offered you. It gives the merchant status when a Golden Bone Storyteller chooses their merchandise. Your choice endorses their quality.”
“How can they know I told a story? Most did not hear me.”
“When you tell a story of exactly 1001 words on the chair, a golden mark appears on your forehead. When you choose from a merchant, a golden bone will hang at his stall. The more golden bones, the more prestige the merchant has.”
“The storytellers in the bazaar will repeat your story exactly as you told it until everyone has heard. You are famous here now.”
Lucia guided me through the bazaar maze, shaking her head for me, helping me accept only a little. We ate fresh pastries and drank lassi flavored with rose. I accepted a kitten from the little girls, a tiny cream and brown smidgeon with blue eyes. Because a Golden Bone Storyteller chose their kitten, all the kittens were assured a home. Henceforth, all the kittens the mother of my kitten ever birthed would share the distinction of Golden Bone Pedigree.
Lucia helped me choose floss to continue my embroidery. Today’s adventure must be stitched on my gown.
for more information about the Oxfam Sweater and Guideposts Sweater Project go to
www.guidepostsmag.com/sweater
