The Width of a Loom

The other day I took Isaac, who needed some time with me, on a trip to the market. He is such a great companion, especially if you are wide awake and can be fully present. He is full of observations and ideas, words and thoughts.

He helped me carry the groceries and waited with them while I brought the car closer. Living here means being able to leave Isaac sitting with the stuff on the curb, under the watchful eyes of the aunties who sell fruit and have known Isaac since he was born.

He watched some people wearing traditional clothes, and pointed out that the people in the village we visited recently look like the people in Nam Hu, another village nearby, where Chinua teaches with Ro each week.

“Yes,” I said. “They are both Lisu villages.”

We talked about the different clothes people wear from tribes in our area. He couldn’t quite picture a Karen shirt, so I told him I would show him mine when I got home.

Later, after eating papaya salad and playing cards, we went home and cooled down from the heat of the market.

I showed him the Karen shirt and told him about backstrap looms and weaving, how Karen people are known for their weaving and how the shirts are a certain shape because of the width of the loom.

The reasons are so easy, sometimes, here. To find a reason for something you only need to look at the shape of the earth, or the consistency of the seasons, or the width of a loom that creates a need for a shirt with two long panels, sewn together.

Bamboo has its own reasons.

Rice has its reasons.

Some things do not have reasons.

War and killing do not have reasons, they are unreasonable things- in Myanmar right now, they cause gentle Karen people to need to leave their looms, their fields, the shelter of their bamboo houses and run out into the night to hide from bullets.

We didn’t talk about this. I still feel the need to shield my son from the unreasonableness of war. I wish I could shelter every child from its lack of logic and its terror.

There is just no point.

There is no reason to kill people who live in the forest, who tend their rice and weave.

These are not reasonable things.

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