The Woolly Animal of Dawn
Words and photos by Christina Socorro Yovovich
No matter when I go to bed, I wake between 4:30–5:00 a.m. Months ago, I gave up fighting this and decided these predawn hours were for me. My husband often stays up late and has admitted that he relishes these solitary midnight hours because everyone else is asleep; nobody is going to make any demands on him. He can do what he likes – work until the wee hours, read old comics, watch shows I have no interest in. I understand, because for me the predawn hours are like this. And what do I do in these hours where nobody makes any demands? I create. Sometimes I knit. Sometimes I write. But mostly, I spin.
I always open the west curtains covering the patio doors first, to let in the darkness. My spinning wheel lives in front of this floor to ceiling window, and when I am seated on the ottoman I place in front of the wheel, at first all I can see is my own reflection. Some mornings I put on a fiber arts podcast or an audiobook. Other mornings I choose to let my thoughts drift where they will. I pull out the wool of the moment, sometimes something sheep colored, sometimes dyed in the hues of a sunrise or a body of water, and I begin to spin.
It is a tactile occupation. No matter how much I try to learn about the technical aspects of spinning, in the darkness at 4:30 a.m. spinning is simply me holding the woolly animal of dawn in my hands as my feet treadle in rhythm to my breaths, and I draft and let in the twist and then let the newly made yarn wind onto the bobbin, and none of it is thought, but feeling, an occupation of instinct. Although I only started spinning a year ago, my body believes it has been longer. My body believes I have been spinning since the predawn of agriculture, my hands setting a spindle twisting against my thigh over and over again as I draft the fiber in my hands. Don’t reason with the body, ever.
There are thoughts as I spin, sometimes a tight focus on a book being read over my phone’s speaker. Sometimes simply my thoughts, going where they will. I am bipolar, having been diagnosed so for nearly three decades, and I have complex-PTSD, having been diagnosed so for less than a year. I have thoughts, hard thoughts, and though I try not to drown in them, I’ve found that if I let them drift through me while I spin in the dawn, they do not overwhelm me. My feet are treadling, my left hand holds the roving, my right hand lets in the twist. I am rooted and no memory can completely overtake me.
I began knitting the year I turned 49, and a large reason was because I read knitting has a similar effect on those with PTSD as EMDR therapy. Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy is a mental health technique that involves moving the eyes in a certain way under the direction of a mental health practitioner while recalling a traumatic memory. Its aim is to help a person process the trauma so that it becomes a thing that happened in the past and not a thing that still overtakes them in horrible flashbacks. I do not understand how or why it works, but it seems to have something to do with using different parts of the brain and with crossing the midline of the body.
A couple months after I picked up knitting, I began to spin as well. I have not read it anywhere, but surely spinning, with how it uses the whole body, both sides of it, the feet in rhythm, the hands each with their separate task, surely spinning is the same as knitting when it comes to processing trauma. It allows me to have these memories without being overwhelmed. They come and then leave, and through it all, I am okay, still rooted to my wheel and my wool, not floating through recollections in a way that allows them to traumatize me anew.
My window faces west, so I don’t see the sun rising over the Sandia mountains. Instead, I see the black sky gradually become alight. First just a hint of something not black. Then a rosy dawn. When I see the pink sky outside instead of my own reflection, I cease spinning. I have spun in the day. It is time to rise from the wheel to step into the bustle of making breakfasts, packing my son’s lunch, being a part of a family and community that does make demands on my time. I do so joyfully, fortified by my predawn creativity, by learning to let memories be memories and not things that overtake. I have not been a spinner for long, but already I cannot imagine a life without its grounding presence.
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Christina Socorro Yovovich has lived in New Mexico since 1998. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Hunger, Cagibi, MUTHA Magazine, the Atticus Review, and elsewhere. She is currently working on and seeking representation for a fiber arts memoir about wool, mothering, and mental health. She can be found at https://christinasocorroyovovich.com/
