Our family has been making ropes for a long time. The idea caught fire at a church camp, where someone brought a contraption that turns yarn into cohesive cords. Children lined up all afternoon for a chance to crank the handle and witness the unlikely transformation of thirty threads into a unified cable. 

 

If you have never been privy to the process, it starts slowly. The child ties the yarn to a hook, and then loops it back and forth in plodding repetition from the sled to the crank. Multiple hooks allow for a stronger outcome, each with its own supply of strands. Having a similar number on each hook keeps the balance. There is a paddle that upholds boundaries between each component. After a few minutes of effort that seem to go nowhere, the magic steps in, and the yarn suddenly reacts to all that tension by spinning. Each strand does its own dance in one direction, and for reasons I can't explain the three parts rotate in the opposite direction. This contradiction holds everything together without a need for adhesive of any kind. Finally, the maker ties off the beginning and the end with a decisive knot. 

 

A friend brought his rope machine to a nephew's wedding, along with a box of yarn. It was a popular activity, with lots of multicolored successes going home as party favors. 

 

I love the symbolism of two people joining their lives in marriage. Surely John and I have been pulled in ways that would have made us snap, facing them alone. The hospital runs, the car accidents, the turmoil around mental storms, all yanked us. Hard. Yet, here we are forty-four years later, still pulling our weight. Sometimes we tug in different directions, like a current one about what Benjamin eats. John wants to eliminate all sugar. I lean into letting him be generous with treats. Maybe there is sturdiness in there somewhere. 

 

The metaphor of twisting fits as well, because life has demanded that I turn away from resentment a thousand times, over and over until I felt like I was caught in a revolving door. Keeping our boundaries intact has been vital, remembering to work on my own foibles without the distraction of bettering his habits. There is the knot that we began with, the one we tied on a summer day on a hilltop. Gradually, I believe, all this repetition will pull us into one rope, that is both flexible, and strong.