An old woman made her yarn on useless beach house days.
Rhythm rain. Rhythm heartbeat. Rhythm breath and blinking. Her foot worked the pedal. Rhythm rain, breath, and wooden pressing rubber down. Inside on the porch during the rain her hand held a strand between two old purple-veined fingers, rolling, twisting, holding the newly-made thread out at a full arm’s length, and on a spool spun dandelion-dyed woolen-stretched rhythm and wooden pressing rubber down.
But. That’s later. First the old lady picks through the wool loosening the fibers, getting rid of any debris.
The waves and seasons and tides moved on. Spring tide. Neap tide. The sun and moon came to her porch painted gray. Under the privacy blinds sea treasure that little hands had run offering and wondrous for generations covered low bookshelves that somehow held up under the weight of so many lives lost. Among them a horseshoe crab, a ten-inch whelk, and an elegant, black, desiccated pouch of skates’ eggs. Sea glass rescued and reclaimed sat amidst this happy desolation that ocean-edge collectors find so soothing. No one walking on a beach—looking, searching, hoping—thinks much of dead droves of sea creatures or of the churning, sandy, blasting hell where sharp brokenness is pummeled to nothing. No. Beachcombers seek only perfection.
Children built her house. Such children had gone off and come back parents and grandparents. And on the smooth wooden painted floor this great-aunt/grandmother/mother/sister/daughter/wife’s pedal hit in quiet rhythm with wooden pressing rubber down, and rhythm afternoon slant light, and blackberry-stained ghosts spinning down the beach from Penny Rock and Briar Croft, with their headless chickens to scald, and their dead footstep rhythm pressing memories down from Mile Rock to Port Jeff.
Perfection. Uniformity. What nonsense and bother for a woman who raised five kids under the moon and sun’s tense constant dance of evasion. Why worry? Just make enough yarn for all the sweaters, all the hats, all the knitted winter days.
During her breaks she handed out sandwich cookies from special kitchen jars and was part of three hundred familial years on that land against water. She could laugh, joke, carry on, and tell stories until no one could breathe. Old ladies don’t smell like smoke anymore. But with that strand of wool held out at arm’s length and that pedal working over and over and over and over she focused on nothing but uniformity. The pedal hit the hollow wooden porch floor. And the waves hit the pummeled-nothing sand. And the heat hit the middle-of-nowhere house roof. And the steel flag clips hit the factory-made pole. And the bottom of the sailboat hit her gravelly stretch of beach, got pulled up above the endless tide line through innumerable presorted, shell-marked graves. And the rubber-edged garage door pressed down softly against moss and evening as it ended her driveway.
She was caught spinning and was rhythm witness to summer migrations. Rolling the thread up with two fingers and dropping that spindle again she fed clouds into simple machines after all the required rhythm to tease and coax oily wool—full of seeds and twigs and leftover sheep curls—into something useful.
She lays some fiber on the bed of nails. It’s called carding. Have you seen it done? Imagine holding two pet-grooming brushes, one in each hand, used to pull hundreds of slight-bent wires across each other and across the wool. Over and over and over and over those wiry cards with handles got caught in each other’s grip as her wrists flicked, her hands flipped, and the wires yanked through a woolen puff until every tangled twist let go. A childhood friend might ask why. The old lady in her housecoat all zipped up modest and warm would answer, “So the little hairs all go in one direction.”
The kids never told.
On the deck, where flag shadows flapped on sunny days, the gray paint was hotter than such a light color should be and rhythm feet ran up from their swims, from their high-tide screaming cannonballs off barnacled jetties and their 9.5-rated Olympic swan dives off smooth-topped granite boulders into her jelly fish-strewn seaweed waves. She didn’t have to look up and look out to see all the cousins swarming Dragon Rock and racing to find Swim. She heard those children playing safe in the warm rain. She heard their rhythm laughter as they ran like a troupe of high-wire performers through beach grass along the blistering creosote-coated bulkhead. She heard their plans to sneak up the cliff through wild roses. She heard them chase, race, and pant at the hose rinsing off sandy feet before daring to come inside onto her crewel rugs.
Rhythm witness the slow heat of afternoon sleep. Wakeful but dreaming. She didn’t care how many little eyes watched the wheel go round or the wooden pedal pressing rubber down over and over. Rhythm dunk lift and twist in the dandelion dye. Rhythm dunk lift and twist all the wool-washing kinds of preparation that she did out back in big steel pans of blue borax water nested in deep, cool shaded sand near a feeder for birds. Just like she did to rhythm dunk lift and twist ten swim suits at the end of the day. Tart lemonade refreshed burnt-skin children that stood watching the sun catch slow drips off the row of hung-up suits. Rhythm breath and blinking.
Huge screens inhale and exhale on maybe-a-storm’s-coming breeze. Warblers pretend to be lost in the grapevine. The smell of sandalwood drifts through the slow-tossing briar and locust brambles as does the sound of laughter. Some loved ones are playing cards.
Up and down stairs. Up and down suns. Up and down flags. Up and down drop-spindle, round and round wooden wheel, spinning on, making wool, making sweaters, making blankets, making hats, making mittens, making gloves, making scarves, making socks, making enough layers to keep us all cozy. She was rhythm witness and a BLT; one blue foot on top of the other in the kitchen. Emphysema laughing over on you, holding your arm—with strong, strong hands.