An Irreplaceable Cog in the Wheel

I went to a contra dance week at the end of 2022. In exchange for admission, I assisted the cook – a Quaker woman whose main aim seemed to be to push people out of their bubbles and tell her what they wanted – in the kitchen. She’d say, “If you’re not good, we’re not good.”

Yes, I was here to work for my dances. But she wouldn’t be telling me what to do.

“What’s your favorite bread recipe? Make a list of the ingredients you need,” she told me.

When it came time to open the snacks, she’d ask me, “Which containers do you think we should use for the pretzels?”

She wore homemade aprons with loud prints. She was there to have fun. But she also made sure the musicians had food, hot and ready the moment they laid down their instruments. She had a rack of dresses she’d made to sell, and half of the dancers were twirling in them. When she wasn’t cooking, she was dancing, and when she wasn’t dancing, she was gossiping at the puzzle table with her friends or mending her friends’ clothes nearby on her sewing machine. When she arrived, she came with a trailer, possessing everything anyone might need for a week of dancing.

I was confused for the first couple days. This woman didn’t dump any of her workload on me. Neither was I let off the hook at any moment. I was merely expected to reveal my capabilities, to live up to them, and to enjoy myself.

After a day it didn’t feel much like a work trade anymore. If people were fed and I was happy, I was free to do my own thing. I commandeered a section of a kitchen as my own, made my friends breakfast, filled bowls with crunchy snacks, and danced while the bread rose, or the beans boiled. I grew accustomed to the woman’s antics, and came to like her and respect her many skills. When it was time to part ways, she made me promise her that I’d visit in a couple months to go fabric shopping.

When we parted ways, I said, “You seem so essential to the dance community.”

She bristled. “I am replaceable.”

Stupefied, I tried to argue with her. “But they wouldn’t know what to do without you . . .”

“They would do just fine,” she insisted. “I’ve taken care that, any time anyone starts talking that way, they know they don’t need me, or I’ll leave. Because when I die, or when anyone else they deem irreplaceable dies, I want them to know that they can keep dancing without us. The community won’t perish when I leave.”

I continued to argue: “It is good to rely on people. It’s healthy to be needed.” I felt, as most people feel, the need to be special and irreplaceable to someone, to be admired, to be the one others sought out when they had a great need.

“But you are irreplaceable to your husband,” I added.

She held her ground firm, “Even spouses must not view each other as necessary to life. One must continue to feed and dress oneself.”

I couldn’t believe her. I’d prided myself on having a reputation as being the friend who never failed to have what was needed, be it onions, spices, tea, tape, glue, or scissors. It was good to be the one people went to when they needed something, wasn’t it? I had been taught that “behind every great man is a woman.” I had visions of being that woman behind a man, of rocking the cradles of great people, of being a matriarch.

I wanted to become irreplaceable.

We rightly cherish the cornerstones of our communities. The great-grandmother who facilitates the family get-togethers and mends the elbows and embroiders the stockings. A bachelor uncle who takes the young boys camping and teaches them how to carve birds out of bits of wood. The old man who delights his relatives and neighbors with odd treasures and tales, and who knows just what to do with a bored child. An aunt who bakes the pies – nobody makes them quite like she does because she uses secret ingredients.

But when we live with the belief that this woman or that man is utterly irreplaceable, then there will be none to take up their work when they are gone.

When you make yourself irreplaceable, you put a time stamp on that which you love. You become a cog in the wheel. Yes, while you live you are viewed as necessary. The wheel turns and everyone is nourished. And then you are gone, an irreplaceable cog in the wheel … it stops turning. The glory days are remembered well – but what good are they when that which you offered is no longer accessible? Your gift has expired, because you lacked what it took to become a conduit – the vision clogged, stopping with you instead of flowing through you from God to others.

Photograph courtesy of the author.

It hasn’t always been this way. An improper balancing of priorities has caused modern culture to forget that the village who raised the child does so in order to replace its members with new life. Our irreplaceable friends mean well … very well. They are doing the work that industrialized society claims to have no need for; they are sustaining the heart with romantic reminders. And they do this, yearning for their young to take an interest in self-sacrifice while believing education for the success of the individual is every person’s ultimate right. Others must think of retirement, not legacy, but they will keep the flame burning, even if the bushel is only ever occasionally removed.

It’s not enough to pass along traditions and skills to another. It isn’t for the individual’s benefit. We’ve lost more than homemaking skills. Our culture has forgotten how to have a collective spirit that flows from one generation into another. These are things that are passed not just from individual to individual but from many established cornerstones to many saplings. In doing so, young people will be capable of carrying the torch their ancestors kept lit.

It is not an easy task to make oneself replaceable. One must deny the desire to be praised, and must commit to the hard work of instilling skill into those who are our protégé – be they students or offspring. By our witness and instruction, we can guide them to do as we see must be done. It would be easier to clean the house and bake the bread and cook the meals without interruption – and yet what good is a clean home and a full stomach if nobody can continue the good work tomorrow without you? However validating it may feel to be indispensable, our true mission is to have those under our wings become our apprentices. Instead of offering your guest a glass of water, tell your child to carry it until your child is naturally hospitable on his own.

The mother’s worth is not devalued in her replaceability. Her duties and responsibilities aren’t stripped. She does not make herself less worthy in God’s eyes or in the hearts of her husband, children, and neighbors. She retains less pride, and a magical sense, her dignity may increase as she recognizes that the world doesn’t center around her place in it, but that her place in it is to humbly give to others what she might keep for herself so that the world and the life in it might continue to spin because of her gift.

O’Hurley’s General Store in Shepherdstown is worth a detour if you’re ever passing through the state of West Virginia – or if you happen to be near DC and need some life breathed into your veins.

Mr. Jay O’Hurley is one of those souls who saw past himself when he dreamed. His vision – now a legacy – has eclipsed the man’s bodily presence. I hardly even interacted with O’Hurley, and yet I felt greatly impacted by his existence – a solid, mostly agreeable classical man.

I remember the first time I stepped into his general store. My best friend had worked for him when she was a young teenager. He hadn’t seen her in years, but he remembered her, and welcomed me as her friend. There were many rooms in his store – he took us to the one at the very back. Handmade rockers and chairs circled under a ceiling painted with cherubs. He hosted a music jam here every Thursday night and played a hammered dulcimer. Nearby was a chimney and a blazing fire. O’Hurley motioned for me to look above the fireplace, and he lit a match.

“It’s Rufus,” he said.

I saw a gnome’s face about the size of a quarter, two beady eyes gazing straight at me.

O’Hurley said, “If ever you feel lonely you can come talk to him. Sometimes he talks back. But don’t ever shine a phone light at him – he only likes match light, as long as you don’t touch the fire to his nose. Here’s where I keep the matches.” He pointed above the mantelpiece.

My friend took me further back in the store and told me to peer into the garage through tiny dusty windows. I saw a couple planes. She told me, “He’s always working on those.”

I picked up some socks and a few old-fashioned games for my siblings. I saw marbles for one and a half cents each. I counted out an odd amount, then went up to the counter.

“Did you get an odd number of marbles? Good.”

Curious, I paid in pennies for the marbles. He took an extra penny, cut it in two, and gave me half back.

I would visit again on later visits. He had a small mobile home park in the back. He had both paid tenants and those who stayed on trades. I stayed there for a few days once, over a Thursday so I could attend the music jam. I’d also just bought a silk shirt in need of cufflinks. I don’t know if any of you know how difficult it is to find women’s cufflinks, but it is. I knew if anyone had some, O’Hurley would. Sure enough – he had just one pair (rather, one of his apprentices did).

I never saw him again after I bought those cufflinks.

Just a few months ago I heard that Jay O’Hurley died. A sick dread filled me. Yes, he was a wonderful man – but what would happen to his store and his music jam? I sent a message to one of the women I knew in the town. And this is what she said:

We are all so sad that he has passed, but he was well taken care of in his last few weeks. I was there often to bring him meals and make sure he was comfortable. There was a parade scheduled in town the day after he died, and so they decided it would be in his honor and a speech was given – I didn’t know that it would bring tears to my eyes, or that it could, because I’d thought I had come to be resigned to his death! The store has been given to his three apprentices who have worked with him for the last fifteen to twenty years.

I was comforted in knowing that the good he’d accomplished was not undone by his death.

Where once I dreamt of being irreplaceable, now I hope to become a better woman. I look to host and to be hosted, to give and receive, to multiply and to decrease. I want the torch I possess to pass through my hands into the hands of others, not for its flames to be extinguished in my clenched fingers.

The drive to have a vision remains, but the memory of how to make it transcend ourselves has been corrupted somewhere along the line. On an individual level, we can each take note and humbly remember that we are each bearers of God’s light. If we have a dream, it is not ours to hide under a basket. If we have something worth sharing it ought to spread. It is good to create. It is wonderful to be unique. But it will never be enough until we can share what we have with mentees and apprentices. Only then can our loves outlast the individual self. Only then will our community continue to dance and host picnics well after we are gone.