Hello Friends,
Phew! We made it! I (Katy) am so happy to be sitting here with you in this new year. I just got back from a foggy, January morning walk, with the light and clouds sitting in such a way over the lake that it looked like everything on the water was floating in mid-air. A kind of a magical, foggy illusion. I have been thinking back over the last year, as I am sure many of us have, wondering how we got through it, remembering when I first heard the words "corona" or "covid," remembering when things started to shut down in March and April. My incredible nervousness before the first lottery sale after the shut down, wondering if y'all were going to show up. My amazement and relief when you did show up. Our incredible gratitude as we were able to conduct business as usual over the last year when so many people were unable to. Your incredible generosity in the auctions we held for local businesses during the late spring and summer. There is a lot to remember.
But also so much loss. I haven't hugged my mom since last winter. Some of you I'm sure have lost people you love to Covid. Sometimes this all feels very overwhelming. But then, the world spills over me, in all of its sumptuousness and beauty, and I am reminded of why we all keep holding on to each other.
Ok, prepare for a long detour into literary land, because this has been on my mind:
Last month, I re-read the novel Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. One of its stories describes a man named Kevin who has had a very difficult life and is thinking of committing suicide. He has driven back to his hometown of Crosby, Maine to say a kind of goodbye to it, and he's sitting in his car looking over the bay, considering what he's planning to do that afternoon, when his old math teacher, Olive Kitteridge, knocks on his car window. He rolls it down, and she asks if she can come and have a seat, and she plops herself right in. Kevin is...horrified. But also, he can't help but be pulled back into the world while she is sitting there in the passenger seat, asking him about his parents, talking about her life. They watch a young woman who works in the cafe across the street, walk over to the edge of an embankment overlooking the bay. Suddenly, Olive shoots out of the car. Patty, the young woman, has fallen down the embankment into the water. All of a sudden, Kevin, who that afternoon had been planning to end his own life, is saving someone else's. Strout writes (and my apologies for this incredibly long quote, but I just love it all, especially the end):
He stepped from the car, and was surprised by the force of the wind that whipped through his shirt. Mrs. Kitteridge was shouting, "Hurry up! Hurry!" Waving her arms like a huge seagull. He ran to where she was and looked down into the water...Mrs. Kitteridge pointed with a repeated thrust of her arm, and he saw the head of Patty Howe rise briefly above the choppy water, like a seal's head, her hair wet and darkened, and then she disappeared again, her skirt swirling with the swirling dark ropes of seaweed.
Kevin turned, so that as he slid down the high sheet of rock, his arms were spread as though to hug it, but there was nothing to hug, just the flat scraping against his chest, ripping his clothes, his skin, his cheek, and then the cold water rose over him. It stunned him, how cold the water was...His foot hit something steady in the massive swishing of the water; he turned and saw her reaching for him, her eyes open, her skirt swirled around her waist; her fingers reached for him, missed, reached for him again, and he got hold of her. The water receded for a moment, and as a wave came back to cover them, he pulled her hard, and her grip on him was so tight he would not have thought it possible with her thin arms that she could hold anything as tightly as she held him.
Again, the water rose, they both took a breath; again they were submerged and his leg hooked over something, an old pipe, unmoving. The next time, they both reached their heads high as the water rushed back, another breath taken. He heard Mrs. Kitteridge yelling from above. He couldn't hear the words, but he understood that help was coming. He had only to keep Patty from falling away, and as they went again beneath the swirling, sucking water, he strengthened his grip on her arm to let her know. He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing through each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean - oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on.
That's how I feel about this past year. An onrushing tide. The crashing waves. The what are we going to do. The calling for help. But also, the finding of the pipe, unmoving. The fierce holding on. The strong grip. The sun flashing through each wave. This insane, ludicrous, unknowable world. How we keep wanting to live, keep wanting to hold on, even when this past year has felt like an onrushing, swirling tide.
So, I've been looking out for the sun flashes. The fierceness of the world spilling out in front of me. The foggy morning. The text from a good friend. My husband practicing cello, determined to learn Bach's Suite #1. Kale from the garden, steamed with butter and vinegar and honey for dinner. What is it for you, the grip on your arm that keeps you holding on, keeps you going, even after 2020 kept trying to knock us all over?
One piece of beauty, and this is me getting back to the fact that this is a sale newsletter for a knife-making business, and not Katy's journal, is that this month, when Luke and David were sanding into a piece of maple burl, they found a little tiny galaxy:
Isn't that amazing - a miniature universe in a piece of maple that was headed for the trash bin.
I hope that as 2021 marches in, that we can keep holding on to each other and keep looking for the way the world surprises us with goodness. Even in tiny ways, like the soft, copper fur behind my beagle puppy's adorable ears.
And another way the world surprises us - that you keep showing up and letting us have this business, making beautiful, long-lasting tools for you and cultivating the land and relationships around us in a way that is life-giving. Thank you. I hope the world surprises you in wonderful ways in this new year.
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