Basket Weaving With the Natives

The reasons I chose basket weaving from the list of non-credit courses at the Columbia Greene Community College were:

·      I want a nice basket for picking my chilies and tomatoes. 

·      I can't sew, knit, or do anything requiring any hand-eye coordination, but I think I can handle the thick reedy things that go into apple basket making

·      It's cold, there's not much to do now, and the college is only a quarter mile away.

I was nearly late for the first class, and about a dozen women were already sitting around a square of white tables pushed together. The teacher, Joyce, is a heavy woman somewhere near sixty, which basically described most of us students, except for a mother and daughter team who sat next to me.  They were both thin and blonde and looked out of place among us solid oldsters

After introducing ourselves, Joyce gave us each a small square of Masonite with a cork stuck into a nail in its center. That was our tool: a tiny birthday cake that had been ironed and intended for an impoverished one-year old. She then handed out 16 flat reeds (called stakes), about half an inch in width and told us to locate the middle of each one and mark that with a pencil.  We then removed the cork and forced eight of the stakes through their marks onto the nail, spacing them evenly apart in a pie-slice shape. Joyce then directed us to a bucket, where long stringy reeds were soaking and we each took one. So far, so good.

Before the actual weaving started, Joyce asked if any us were left-handed and one woman raised her hand. I raised mine tentatively, since, being mixed dominance, I wasn't sure yet whether this would be a left- or right-handed project. (It's a question for me with any new manual task.) Fortunately, Joyce only noticed the true leftie. She threw up her hands and announced with frustration.  "There's always one."   The sinister woman, who had a nice looking pink round face, stared down at the table while Joyce proceeded to explain unnecessarily that she would have to do everything backwards. To be fair, Joyce was suffering from a sore foot and recent attack of diverticulitis, which she mentioned before the class started, but over the course of the two classes it became clear that there wasn't much room in her life for slackers or people with awkward hands.  She might have smiled once, but if she did I missed it.

We began to weave, threading the long stringy reeds around the cork, in and out of the stakes.  It would have been zen-ish, if the reed wasn't so long and stringy and didn't circle my wrist python-like and get its tail caught under my shoe.  Nevertheless I was delighted to see a little circular mat forming from my efforts and it wasn't pockmarked or humpy. I came to the end of my reed, at which point in order to continue, I needed to add another on.  When Joyce had explained the adding on part, I thought, "This is a piece of cake."  ("Take your new reed and place it four spaces back and lie it flat over the first one. Then thread it back through the stakes to where it meets up and covers the first reed end and continue." Easy.) As she had so clearly instructed, I took my new reed and stuck it underneath a stake slot that appeared to be four spaces back and wormed it to where the first reed had stopped. Unfortunately, the new end had popped out, the part of the rim where I had threaded it was baggy, and none of it looked all nicely tucked away and neat like what Joyce had done.  I waved her over, and she explained the process once more, adding the new reed as she talked until it reached to the point to start the next clean round of weaves.

Off I went, threading through the stakes like skis through powder, pleased and a little puffed up. Then, the second reed ran out and I had to add a third.  This time, however, I believed I was pretty deft, and I placed my latest reed the requisite four spaces back, then poked it over and under the stakes until it met up with the ass end of its brother.  Addition accomplished!   Unfortunately, the lumpy track I had just laid looked suspiciously like my first attempt.  I kept my hand down this time, however, and wove on.  After a couple rounds, Joyce sidled up to me and stared down at my work. "Creative.  But not right."  Saying nothing more, she took the basket out of my hands, unraveled the reed, repaired the addition, handed it back, and I continued on.

Two friends who had joined the class together were hooting and nudging each other, being constantly amused by each other's very minor foibles.  Joyce gave them a wry look, "So we're getting mean early."  Huge chummy chuckling erupted from the other women. The class was still in its start-up phase and everyone in it except me and the mother-daughter team were already mysteriously in cahoots. I had an attack of déjà vu.

After a dozen or so more rounds, we now had something that resembled a small woven hot pad, which we were instructed to press against our knee while we wove the next few rows.  To demonstrate this. Joyce ruthlessly grabbed mine and proceeded to do the entire step, passing back to me what now looked like a Cooley hat.  She didn't inspire self-confidence.

Our next task was to reverse whole thing and weave from the outside, therefore, if done in basket heaven, producing a curved rim around the hat.  Direction is not my strong suit.  After I had completed a couple rounds I looked up and noticed that everyone's straw crowns were all pointing opposite to mine. I had the duh moment; the shape was now supposed to go against the crown, not with it, which made sense if I had actually looked at Joyce's finished basket in front me.  I didn't want her to notice my error, so I quickly started to weave the other way. With the ferocity of a weasel, I jammed the curve into what I hoped was the right shape, hoping to compensate for the original error. I wove on, and with the inevitability of death, the reed ran out.  I furtively was adding the dreaded new one when Joyce caught me.  

As she fixed it, explaining once again, with just the slightest sigh, the correct method of addition, she noticed my curve.
"Hmm," she said or, more accurately, grunted.  "You're not weaving from the outside."

"Huh, I thought I was." I mentally scratched my head.  "Maybe it's because I'm mixed dominance."

"No. That's not it." With a pretense of patience, she grabbed the thing and corrected my curve. After finishing, she handed it back, and asked, 'Are you dyslexic?"

"Yes! I am."  I felt a great relief in confirming this diagnosis.  Even though I don't think I am dyslexic, Joyce would no longer think I was incompetent -- just genetically feeble.  My fellow classmates stared at me with pity, as if one of Jerry's kids had suddenly been exposed.

On we went to thicker reeds and the object began to resemble a sombrero with long woody fringe.  "We could wear this," I said, maybe a little too loudly. No one laughed. Perhaps because I'm disabled they didn't want me to think they were ridiculing me.  They are not mean girls.  

However, in spite of my impairment, I did get everything right for the remainder of the class. My hat brim curved correctly, and I began to confidently weave the sides, stake over stake, which were supposed to go straight up.  At the end of the class, few of us were done with this step and we were sent home to complete it. Needless to say, my basket bulged a bit, but I had 8 rows to go so I was hopeful I could correct it. To my right, the mother and daughter team had completed their sides, perfectly straight, supported by elegantly curved bottoms.  By then, I had concluded they were reenacters from a reconstructed Colonial village, sent here undercover in mufti to scout out talent or check competition (neither of them me).

The following week, I arrived at the second and last class with my homework completed, and I finished the basket without incident, even successfully adding on a couple new reeds.  Joyce only had to take over two of my tasks -- shoving the handle in and winding a couple grumpy lashings over the top rim.  (As I write this, I realize Joyce completed or did part of every process for my basket that required anything other than poking the reeds in and out of the stakes.)

The night would have been uneventful except for a brief conversation with Dorothy, a fellow classmate, who had been talking to some of the others about their involvement with 4-H.  

"Oh," I said eager to take part in the fellowship of the reeds, "I went to 4-H camp when I was seven."

"The one in Averill Park?"  She asked.

"Yes!  I grew up there. Did you go to that camp?" 

"Yes." 

"When?"

"A long time ago, around 1950."  "

"That was when I was there!"

 "I remember looking up at the stars at night."  She said wistfully.

 "I kept planning my escape.  I spent all my time in the infirmary." 

She returned to her weaving.

Light bulb. I was back in high school, surrounded by my old classmates, like me grown old but still incomprehensible to each other, still not laughing at the same things, not even thinking the same things about the same things we were doing.  We could go to the same basket weaving class, share the same recipes, and even share the same memories, but there was a tribal edginess between these women and me. 

My mother had been a city girl who raised us in the country and probably went a little mad.  She was weird.  We were weird.  As soon as I could I fled to the City and hid out there for fifty years among my own kind, rearing children, doping out romance, whittling a satisfying career from a few basic secretarial skills, living the life she probably would have loved.  Now I had come back, living upstate, still alienated from the women who had chosen to stay and continue their 4-H experiences.   But it was ok. I had pretty much done what I envisioned as a lonely isolated teenager sitting on a hill outside Averill Park and looking south.  Now, it was time to sit on a hill again, plant my vegetables, and, in company with the natives, figure out how to weave baskets to hold them.

In any case, I think my basket, with its subtle peanut shape, looks pretty good.  (Here's a picture of my basket at home, containing my mittens and a furry scarf, which my daughter told me looked like a wolverine.)