November 26, 2010

Aging Gracefully On Slender Threads


This week's beauty is Kay Moates who is 66 years old.  Kay is a lifelong dancer & teacher who also creates a line of beautiful hand knit shawls called On Slender Threads.  Made of  luscious fibers and earth gems, Kay specializes in wraps for all the transitions and celebrations in life including marriage, birth, illness, and mourning. Her shawls empower, ground, and delight.


Etchings
By Kay Moates

My entire story resides in these lines . . . lines on my face, lines on my hands, lines on my sagging body, even I’m guessing, lines on my heart.

Probably I’m on the fringe, maybe even the edge, about many days in one’s life. You see, I didn’t know my grandparents and to this day still feel slighted. There’s an empty space within me from not experiencing their embraces, words, and personalities; also, from not breathing the same air with them. Oh, long have I looked at their wizened faces staring at me from familiar shaped heads, knowing eyes, and silent lips. Living in their gene pools I could sense their wisdom sparks but photographs didn’t fill the void. This not knowing gave me a different perspective from our culture’s views/pressures/lack-of-teachings about aging. Sounds strange even to me, but at 16, I was wishing to have white hair as I aged. Got that wish in my thirties.

As a young adult, I found Sulamith Wulfing’s work The Transition. It is a powerful symbol/truth holder companioning my way as each decade asks me to make changes either physically or energetically. Some are slight, others massive. Mostly the massive ones have been soul shifts, radical new topography offering release of obsolete patterns. Done in my 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and now my 60’s these shifts are teachers softening my opinions, waking me to the moment, adding time to my day, and giving me my self. Wonder if modern psychology will ever offer retrieval of our inner elder?

The unspoken truth behind denial about aging is our culture’s extreme fear of death. Death is the other side of the living coin, the kiss between two consciousnesses. It’s as natural as each line that marks me. Here I am a new Grandmother late in my days, yet early enough to leave vibrant memories speckled with wisdom . . . where my many etched lines are signs of wonder, streaks of mystery, keepers of stories, harbingers of hope.

Kay's shawls are available on Etsy and Craft is Art.



On Slender Threads is also on Facebook.
Thank you Kay for being this week's beauty.