The ritual as I remember it, was unchanged. I would come home from school, make tea, put it on a special table, and start sewing while watching Little Women on VHS (the 1949 version). Back then I did tapestries – large vividly printed designs on canvas that I filled in with thick, wool-like yarn, a kind of tactile colouring in. I only remember one design, a tiger. School was tough – loud and chaotic. It was my way of self-soothing. The comfort of a familiar movie, tea and the rhythmic, hypnotic action of hand-sewing. The film begins with the four sisters having tea and waiting for their mother to come home. It felt, with my little tea tray, that I was part of their conversation and I needed that. I was lonely. As I pushed the thick blunt needle through each square, the day would melt. With each stitch, the struggles of being an introverted teen were carried away.
Thirty years on hand sewing is still what I turn to.
I recently pulled the Tarot card the Four of Cups. The card speaks to apathy, perhaps a little self-pity? Feelings I have had recently. Moving from a home that you’ve had and loved for 14 years to a new country with no job or fixed place to live yet can take it out of you. I grieve for that life – the community we had become part of, the roots we put down, the life we had created.
And yet looking at this card, taken from the Tarot of Mystical Moments, I see that the duck holding the umbrella is reminding me that there are things to be grateful for and really good reasons for making the change. This change was intended to afford us more freedom creatively and professionally. I am choosing to look at the deficits when I need to embrace the abundance. If I don’t I will remain in this stasis and my connection with creativity and the divine will be muted. I risk squandering this chance we have been granted.
So instead of mourning for what is gone I make some tea, but a movie on (a Wes Anderson one will do the trick) and I turn to my needle.
Open Coven 
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