Reflections on Penelope’s Loom
What to do in the times of waiting and searching
Between the pencil-smudged and crossed-out pages of the spiral-bound journal I use to jot down ideas and drafts of poems and stories, I found the title “Ideas for a Website Name” and, under it, a short list of titles for a blog I had thought about starting, but abandoned because I didn’t feel like I had a clear direction for it. “Penelope’s Loom” was scribbled on the page.
I can’t remember what I was thinking when I had that idea. Judging by the other titles, I was trying to come up with an evocative name that connected a literary allusion with something deep about how I feel about writing. Like dyeing the water to make a kid’s blow-up pool look like a bottomless well. But Penelope’s Loom lingered in my mind. An accurate, though perhaps over-dramatic, description of how I view my current habits.
Penelope found herself running a large household alone for twenty years while her husband Odysseus was fighting in the Trojan War and making his way back home. The rest of Ithaca assumed that Odysseus was long dead and, consequently, a long line of men formed to audition for “Odysseus’ replacement.” But Penelope remained faithful. Knowing she couldn’t hold them off by physical strength, she began weaving a shroud for her father-in-law and promised to pick a husband when it was completed.
“So by day she’d weave at her great and growing web —
By night, by the light of torches set beside her,
She would unravel all she’d done. Three whole years
She deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme…” (The Odyssey, 2.116–119)
Penelope had moments of doubt, but never let the doubt dictate her actions. She acted with hope even when she didn’t feel it. She created without wanting or knowing the end result of her work — she had no intention of a final product, nor did she know if Odysseus would return.
Life is full of seasons of waiting. Waiting for “the next step,” a vocation, a spouse. Sometimes we have clear vision of what we want and what we’re waiting for — graduating medical school to become a doctor, to finish college, for engagement to end and marriage to begin. But there are also times of aimless waiting. The times when we know that something’s next, but we’re not sure what. We want a fulfilling career, but we’re not sure in which direction. We want to “do something meaningful,” but the specifics are hazy. We want to marry, but have no idea to whom.
But we can’t press pause on our lives during these seasons. Penelope doesn’t throw up her hands and sink into depression, nor does she cave to the suitors because they’re the immediate options available. As Penelope weaves without aim, she creates with purpose. Her work is essential to her survival (not life-or-death survival, but the survival of her ethos, identity, and values), even when she doesn’t know if a point to her survival exists.
And so I write. Not because I have a vision of a novel or of a syndicated column someday, but because to create without a grand blueprint is better than to do nothing while waiting for a plan to drop in my lap. We have to be like Penelope — avoiding the clearly wrong options, but willing to work in hope of a purpose we cannot see.
