Category Archives: Living

Living, parenting

Big T-chart in the Sky

There is so much push and pull, pro and con about everything.  

Wandering around my house last night, I thought how much easier it will be to keep the house free of kid schmagma now that two out of three will be at school everyday.  Not bad 😉

Yet, that was after the recovery from my heart-in-throat entry at the bus stop that afternoon.  Checking out at a store twenty minutes from our house took fifteen minutes (think chicken broth carton sliced by razor leaking all over pants to be purchased at bottom of cart – and that was before the coupon fiasco).  I got stuck behind another bus on the way to meeting my own children’s.  Luckily those little kindergarteners boarding the bus after their first day of school took awhile getting sussed up, which bought me four extra minutes.  Two of which I sorely needed.  I said hello to my already waiting neighbors by way of, “I hate this.  I liked when all three of them were with me all the time and I knew they were safe, I was responsible for them.”  

Which is really just another way of saying: “I can’t prioritize and hate when someone else is in control.”

Ah, but there’s the rub.

Part of me rejoices in the quiet calm that comes with sending them off to school.  Another part of me misses having that easy breezy schedule.  Part of me (specifically the migraine-sensing one) is glad to have the on-going scream and sumo matches done for the season.  Another part of me is bummed the other two aren’t around to play with their little sister.  I can save on grocery delivery fees now that I can go to the market without plucking my eyes out – as I would do bringing all three along.  I can’t keep up our weekly midday library dates.  

I realize why it’s always been so hard for me to make a decision even when I’ve filled out the pro/con t-chart my father first sketched for me so many years ago.  It’s almost always going to be a near-equal amount of items on each side.  The trick is how much each item weighs in its importance to you.  

Alas, I do not have the choice whether to send my kids to school or not (and, no, I will not homeschool for all you smart alecks thinking of suggesting it.  Their socialization with peers is much more valuable than the sailorspeak that would bring out in me).  I cannot weigh the pros and cons of a decision not mine to make.  I can only shift things around, add, subtract, and try for the ever elusive balance hovering somewhere around the center line of that t-chart in the sky.  

writedesignonline.com

writedesignonline.com

 

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Living

Fitness Fatale

So I joined a fitness group.

For some people this would be a non-issue. Simply an added tool in their box toward a fully healthy lifestyle. For others it might be a cause for congratulations. A turn in the tide of an unhealthy lifestyle. For me? It’s anathema to my usual way of life.

Don’t get me wrong. I try to maintain a healthy lifestyle. I make nutritious food choices. I try to stay active with my kids. I fit a yoga routine into my schedule when I can. But physically fit? No. Able to leap buildings in a single bound? No. Able to run farther than the end of my street without vomiting? No.

My husband’s cousin was always posting inspirational quotes on Facebook. Posts relating her physical endeavors to internal strength and fulfillment. As someone always searching for a higher state of being, I was naturally drawn to her posts. I wasn’t about to start doing PiYo, but I’d take a daily dose of encouragement and it was refreshing to see someone working so earnestly to improve her quality of life. Then I made the mistake of telling her so at a family cookout. When I joked that I was going to hire her as my life coach, she said, ‘oh, I’ll have to add you to the list for my online fitness group.’

Me and my big fat mouth.

Now, my husband’s cousin was very clear that she wasn’t out for world domination, but a renewed level of fitness after two children and a hectic lifestyle. However, her level of ‘out-of-shape’ as a former alternate on the Olympic ski team was probably equal to mine at its best.

Still, I signed on when I received her notification and read the group’s description:

“It doesn’t matter if walking is your thing or base jumping off of Mount Blanc.”

Quite a range! But walking? I could handle walking. I joined.

If nothing else, it’s made me more aware of my health. Her ‘Thirsty Thursday’ prompts made me more conscious of my water intake everyday. Seeing other women’s endeavors made me want to partake of and share my own. Admittedly, my first two days were my best, as ‘operation normal’ quickly seeped back in after that, but fitting in fitness is still at the forefront of my mind – if not my feet.

I tried to run through the soft sand as I escorted my youngest to the bathhouse at the beach. I pulled my knees to my chest as I floated in the water, trying to flex my abs. I pushed my legs through the water, tensing against the resistance.

Little steps.

And then there are the days exercise works itself into my day organically.

Yesterday, my girls and I met some friends at a local pond for a swim. The swimming area is strung off by the red and white floats of the summer camps of my youth, the ones that have ingrained in me a nervous sensation if I swim too close, as if that rope barrier keeps me safe from the depths on the other side. It was this marker that a little girl’s beach ball floated past on the wind that skimmed the waves. The little girl had been floating around our periphery, trying to engage my girls and friends in play. It was us she enlisted when as her ball swiftly moved away. Very swiftly, in fact. By the time she got our attention, it was well past the ropes. After a harried mental debate, I instructed my girls to stay put with their friends and their mom and swam toward the ropes. As I ducked under, my adrenaline surged. It wasn’t an emergency, but the way the girl was crying for her lost ball, you’d think it was. Plus, it could very well turn out to be an emergency with an unfit mother attempting a long distance swim. The evening news headlines ran through my head as I pulled strokes: Local mother drowns in area pond after suffering cardiac arrest. Witnesses report they heard her calling as slipped below the surface, ‘I thought I could do it. It didn’t look that far.’

Fortunately, that’s not how the story ended. Unfortunately, the wind carried the ball across the water faster than I could swim. I stopped halfway and looked back to the other mother I’d come with, who was waving me off, telling me to throw in the swimsuit. I took one last look at the ball as it skittered away and stretched my legs out under me, realizing I could touch bottom. I walked back the distance I’d just swam.

I went to the little girl who cried at her grandfather’s feet by the shoreline and apologized. Her grandfather thanked me and said, “We told her it’s not safe to chase balls.” Maybe he should have told me that. Still, I got in one lap at least and lived to tell the tale. It’s always a good day when fitness isn’t fatal.

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Living

Surreal Day

Marathon day of school shopping –

not the least disturbing part the leather-topped dresses in the children’s department.

Felt like a refugee by the end of the day –

traipsing through stores and tiled expanses, public restrooms and dressing rooms.

Dinner on the run after an impromptu fashion show –

neon-streaked drive home punctuated by dark.

Squares of Miami Vice tiling across the TV screen upon our overdue arrival – 

reluctant kids late to bed without a story.

Trolling online accounts in the unearthly glow –

waiting, searching for something to reach out and fulfill me.

Crawling into bed without connection –

my love already asleep though I am not.

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Living, Poetry

Out of Touch

Slip of a bra strap
Chain tugging at throat
Hair crawling on neck
Sleeves strangling

Cannot bear
for one more minute to wear
these clothes, these shoes, this jewelry, this head of hair

Lack of sleep
Swirl of chemical chimera
Environmental allergies
Sensitivity to touch

It’s just too much

Whatever the cause,
whatever the combination
it’s an assault on my senses

Damn my lack of defenses

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Children, Living, motherhood, parenting

Good and Awesome like It Is

I’m going to keep a folder of notes from my daughter, notes that are so poignant, so ‘heart-on-the-sleeve’ emotional that I see through the difficult behaviors to the core of our love, the elemental mother-daughter bond at the heart of our relationship.  For the days when she thinks she hates me and I think I hate my life.  When I forget the soft little heart beating in that proud little chest.  When I forget the absolute honor of mothering fragile little beings.

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In the eyes of my daughter, I am loved just because I am.  And simply being makes her life good and awesome like it is.  If only I could live such affirmation every moment of my waking and breathing.

 

 

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Living, Poetry

The Center

 

How self-centered we are

to be governed by our emotions

and not the looks of pain on the faces of those around us.

To expect the world to orbit around our center.

 

The way we act shows it a thoughtless given in our minds.

 

To miss the fragile little being in front of us,

the industrious, frenzied flap of hummingbird wings –

the little things that should be front and center

so as not to be crowded out by the hulking beasts oh so eager to rule.

 

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Legacy, Living

Native Species

 

The region in which I grew up is rich in Native American history. I waded in the waters at Conimicut Point. I balanced across plank bridges in the Great Swamp. Everyday, I passed places with names like Narragansett, Miantonomo, Apponaug, and Pawtuxet. Along the way, I learned the history and interaction of my colonial ancestors and the indigenous peoples, but the place names became commonplace and part of the fabric of my everyday life that blended into the background.

When my own burgeoning family outgrew our home a few neighborhoods over from the one in which I grew up, we moved deeper into the state; where native history remained vibrantly alive, resisting the squash of suburban sprawl. With signs marking the Narragansett watershed and roads transiting Shumunkanuc Hill, my desire to understand this new land meshed with a desire to better understand the native history and tradition that shaped it.

In an effort to do so, my girls and I visited Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, RI, our state’s only museum dedicated to preserving and celebrating the rich cultural heritage of its native peoples. We had a wonderful time, viewing historical exhibits, examples of artwork, basketry, and artifacts. I read the words of Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas in one glossy display detailing the meaning of and pursuit of happiness for modern native peoples. While their home culture and tradition teaches them to be in tune with nature, stewards of the earth with utmost thanks for the gift it is, upholding generational, tribal, and oral traditions, public education counters Native American values and history, forcing an incongruous duality of individuals, students, youngsters.

As I read the poetic description of the aspiration to a higher good we all possess, I couldn’t help but draw parallels to society as a whole. While not all populations in modern society deal with an environment hostile to their ways of life, we all suffer from a sort of disconnect.

We are totally disconnected from the earth, the land.

We can go to the grocery store and buy apples any day, any season of the year – not just during fall harvest. We go to the farmers’ market in spring and balk when we can’t find the main ingredient for our peach pie. We are conditioned like a spoiled child to have an endless supply of food placed before us whenever we want it, with no thought of the hand that put it there.

We are totally removed from nature’s rhythms, its cycles.

We look down the road waiting for a rush of cars when it is the rush of the wind through tree boughs.

We condition our air, we shut our windows tight. We notice not the storm clouds or fog rolling in until the weather report tells us to.

We miss the signal of the birds squawking in the trees or their sweet songs rejoicing in the spring.

We don’t find the hidden places on the back roads because we’re speeding down the highway. We don’t discover the interconnectedness of us all, regardless of background because we’re too busy to talk.

We forget how to, the benefit of, interacting with the world, the people right in front of us, because we’re so intent on interfacing with those halfway around the world through the computer screen.

The sacredness of simplicity is lost.

The elemental forces of the universe are covered over by the noise we humans have created, covering over ourselves.

But on days when we stop to hear a song, shake a rattle, smell the sweet grass, the stories become part of us and there is an elemental shift within – perhaps drawing us all closer to ourselves and each other.

tomaquag

 

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Living, parenting, Perspective

Heaven or Hell

 

This is heavenly.

 

That was the thought and feeling that flooded through every part of my body as I sat under a grove of trees a few miles from the shoreline yesterday.

 

I was with two women I didn’t know particularly well, my children playing with five other children, only two of which they knew particularly well – but so go play dates when you join a new group, I suppose. At least I could relish the gorgeous weather and spot for what it was. A quintessential coastal breeze in the shade of old growth trees. An hour of my three children not waylaying each other and my own ear drums and patience.

 

How odd, then, that conversing with these two women, watching our children twirl and loop around us, that I made the decision to love my life.

 

I’d asked them the ages of their children, which led to a clarification of grade levels just completed, and then, a conversation debating the merits of forcing kindergarten for children with birthdays on the cusp of the cut-off and/or waiting an additional year. I’ve had this conversation countless times the last few years, starting with other people’s children all the way to my own four year-old. It’s never cut and dry and the anguish is always apparent on the parent’s face – that they might somehow harm their child’s entire educational career for the sake of a start nine months too early or late.

 

But that’s not what this post is about.

 

I’ve come to terms with our family’s decision to keep our precious little pea home another year for the sake of six lousy days.

 

It’s the nature of that additional year that this conversation affected. The nature of life now.

 

There will come a day when I have to work outside the home. When I won’t be able to see my babies at 10 AM just because. When I won’t be able to sit at a park with virtual strangers/possible friends and discuss issues for the age and stage we’re all at.

 

There will always be dishes and laundry. There will always be exhaustion. There will always be the guilt of the unwritten chapter lurking somewhere behind the keyboard. It will always take more energy and effort to pack the kid(s) and all their crap up and go on an outing than it will to stay home.

 

But there won’t be the brush of feathery grass on the backs of my thighs. The rustle of wind through green leaves. Legs long and lithe, short and compact, darting and weaving. The call and answer of hide and seek. The heavy weight of a tired child solid against my side.

 

We travel through this world from start to finish regardless. It is totally within our determination to make it heaven or hell.

 

 

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image from wallpaperscraft.com

 

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Humor, Living

Cause and Effect

Wondering if you are a foodie?  Shop at Wal-Mart and see if you don’t come out frustrated.

Wondering if you should have children?  Borrow three children and take them along with you to Wal-Mart.

Wondering if you still struggle with anxiety and/or irritability?  Take your own three children along with you to Wal-Mart.

Not sure whether that neon blue frosting on your child’s cupcake is artificially flavored and colored?   Watch for pond slime diarrhea the next day.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For every aisle of frozen fish fillet, there is the gaping hole of fresh bunches of cilantro.

For every idealistic preggo or wistful grandma, there is a mother clinging just barely to this edge of sanity.

For every woman struggling for balance, there is one thrown out of whack by hooligans hanging off her shopping cart.

For every over-zealous and genetically engineered diet choice, there is a revolting bowel movement.

No shit.

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