Wraps Are Chocolate

It's been a long week.  Someone is stealing from my home, and I've been incredibly anxious, not to mention afraid to leave the house lest it happen again.

And last night something fun happened: I bought a new wrap.  But not just any wrap.  There is this new company called Pavo, and they use historic mills, and the wraps are really beautiful and they are supposed to have amazing wrapping qualities.  But there's not many of them, and when they offer a new style it is sold out in minutes.  And then people who don't love the wrap can trade it, or turn around and sell it for several times the original price.  I'm not about to pay hundreds of dollars for a wrap, so it's a matter of waiting and being in the right place at the right time.  Pavo released a new style that was sold out within about two minutes, but then some other people listed the wraps they already had.  And I saw one that I really liked, in my favorite size, for about the same as retail, only a couple minutes after the owner had put up the post, so I managed to buy it.  It was very exciting!

Why does it matter?  With so much else going on in life, and so many important issues, why do I care about buying yet another pretty wrap?  As I was lying in bed (and lying and lying there, not sleeping, because the worries had come back), it came to me: wraps are like chocolate.  Or maybe wine or artisinal beer or whatever it is that one personally really likes.

You wouldn't eat a chunk of a Hershey's bar with peanuts, and say "that is the best thing I've ever tasted," and then just buy Hershey's with peanuts for the rest of your entire life. (Okay, some people would.  A couple.  But not most of us.)  We like to sample different kinds, and sometimes we're in the mood for something dark and sometimes for something sweet; maybe you eat your childhood favorite on a sad, blue day; maybe you like to pick out something new at the grocery store to reward yourself for making it through the trip; maybe you're intrigued by chocolate with sea salt or nibs or cayenne (and maybe it turns out you hate the cocoa nibs!); or maybe you stick to the "snacks" aisle and are drawn in by white chocolate Kit Kats or the newest offering from Mars; and when you're on the San Francisco pier you go and sample Ghiridelli.  Everyone I know buys special chocolate eggs at Easter and santas at Christmas and eats the ones that come in the heart-shaped box at Valentine's or Mother's Day, depending on your time of life.  So why eat all those chocolates instead of just Hershey's with peanuts every time?

But the joy of chocolate isn't just about choosing a new kind of chocolate, just like the oenophiles I know aren't wine lovers because they love looking at a wine list.  The joy is because you really like the whole experience of chocolate, especially the part where you eat it.  But once you know how much you love to eat chocolate, it is also a pleasure to contemplate eating it, and to walk into a chocolatier and imagine which one you would most like to eat, and even to look at the chocolates you have saved in your cupboard and know you will get to eat them.  And that wine list might not be the height of glory for the oenophile, but it becomes a wonderful part of enjoying the wines.

Wrapping is a visceral experience, like eating or drinking something special.  There is the abstract part, of reading about wraps and seeing pictures and deciding what you would like to try out, and then the excitement of trying to trade for exactly what you had in mind.  Then the real-life part each day, when you think about what you want at the moment, and select the wrap from your stash.  Then you need to find the middle marker in order to place the carry correctly, so you unfurl the whole thing in your hands, the colors swooping open and the fabric rippling under your fingers; it might still have the scent of drying in the fresh air or soft milky bodies.  Then you hold the little person you love, and move the fabric around in different ways, feeling it under your fingers and moving over your bare arms.  Then, for minutes or for hours, you feel the pressure and the texture against your body, and you see the sweeping tails in the corner of your eyes, and maybe adjust the passes or wipe your face with the extra fabric.  Even the acts of washing and folding and ironing the wraps have joy in them, perhaps when you remember a special time you wore that wrap, or perhaps as a chance to examine the design more closely, or perhaps just as quiet sensory moment.

And then, wrapping itself is a little meditation.  I am not very successful at the "real" meditation where you sit quietly and clear your mind, but I appreciate activities that clear the mind to be aware of one thing.  The act of wrapping is both familiar and repetitive, but at the same time must be done carefully and thoughtfully enough to not allow the mind to wander.  I can talk with my children easily, but I don't end up thinking about unrelated things.  It's a little pause in the day.  It connects so many different parts of the brain and the soul: the relationship with your child, the tactile sensation in your hands, muscle memory, and the proprioceptive sense of where objects are around your body, and on and on, depending on the wrap and the moment and the child.  Sometimes the sunshine is warm on our bodies or sometimes my toddler is singing to me.

I rarely eat chocolate during the day.  I save it until the evening, when the children are finally asleep.  I pile up pillows -- and wraps! -- and lean back on the couch with a cup of tea and a couple squares of chocolate.  It is a precious time, and I savor every sip and every bite.  As a mother of three young and needy children, I don't get many moments to sit quietly; not many moments to relax and be in the moment.

But I have my wraps.  Those are the moments I get to savor throughout the day, and savor together with my children.

So I bought myself something beautiful.  And I'm enjoying the beautiful things that I have.