Warp And Weft

I've been employed here at the Guild for just about a month, and I'm not going to lie--there are things about being a receptionist that are demoralizing. Let me re-phrase that: there are things about being a part-time, underpaid, undervalued receptionist that are demoralizing to a person who is no longer young. Not that I'm having feelings about my approaching 30th birthday or anything.

The positives of this situation are few but distinct: Little is expected of me. It is peaceful here amidst the yarn, spinning wheels, and looms. And I have the opportunity to learn about woven textiles: how fleece straight off a sheep is transformed to a finished rug. Things happen here. And I'm grateful I have the unique opportunity to witness these things and hopefully make use of this information elsewhere in my life.

I have yet to use a loom, but I'm all signed up for a class in November and until then, I'm learning on the fly. What I've learned so far is that the strands that run the length of the weaving, that hold the whole thing together and represent the foundation of it are called the warp. Warping a loom, or putting the warp yarns onto the loom to prepare it for weaving, is the trickiest part because it takes a lot of time and is a bit of a tedious process. The warp yarns have to be just so. Held in perfect tension, able to withstand quite a bit of maneuvering as you wind the crosswise pieces, the weft, between them in the pattern of your choosing. The warp is the constant, the weft is the variable.

I've been thinking about what might represent the warp and the weft in my own life. What holds me in place and what bends back on itself, creating patterns? It's been unsettling at times to start over in different areas of my life: new house, new jobs, new climate, new routines, new friends and community. Everything feels so new sometimes that it can feel like I've started another life, like I've left myself back in Texas. It's heartbreaking to claim a new home, disappearing into the Midwest. It's helpful to think that I am weaving new patterns on the same warp that has supported my whole life. Certain threads stretch back behind every story I've lived already and extend out before me, there to hold whatever pattern comes next. Some of them are hard and knotted, some are fine and light, but they run through the whole of my life, characterizing it as my own no matter what choices I make from here forward. The parts that turn back on themselves a thousand times, ending and beginning on their own terms, the coming and going of people and loves and moments and even places in our lives that pass and merge into something else--these are the weft. They create texture and depth, patterns; they transform us. Only by beginning with new weft from time to time can we grow and determine the patterns that will emerge before us, can we ever begin to feel that our lives are intentional. And almost always, new weft makes us see the warp differently. Where we are from looks different in each new place we go.