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Category Archives: Living
One Blessed Moment
A mail truck swinging in ahead of you as you swoop down a hill.
A child vomiting on you as you’re about to walk out the door.
Sometimes the universe conspires not against you, but for you.
Saving you from the speeding ticket that lay in wait just beyond the mail truck.
Forcing you to stay home and not only soothe your child, but cleanse yourself of the worries of the day.
When your world is spinning at an alarming rate, there is no room for error.
But certain things cannot be ignored;
Course must be altered –
if only for one blessed moment.
Unintentional Hiatus
My month-long series on maternal mental health ran up to the end on a high-note. It organically happened that I took Sundays off (which happened last year, too, I believe) and I missed one Monday. But the second to the last day of the month led into a multi-day outdoor assault – my own family’s feet on the rocky outcroppings of a letter-boxing trail and my husband and I splitting wood like the lesser versions of Paul Bunyan that we are – keeping me away from blogging for much longer than I anticipated.
Shouldn’t have been a big deal, missing that last day of the month, right? Wouldn’t have been – save my anal-retentive perfectionist tendencies and overbearing need to summarize. I couldn’t post any inane essay on my pre-series schedule before concluding the series. And life was ratcheting up, not allowing me to sit and form any cohesive set of thoughts.
My youngest’s preschool program finished for the year, also ending those blessed two and three-quarter hours of writing time twice a week. Some of it had also become crush tortilla chips while surfing the web after writing time, but it was alone time nonetheless.
image from Peggy Lampman
Perhaps the biggest challenge to my settled psyche, however, is the change in schedule itself. I can hear the words of my wise LICSW repeating in my head, telling me the beginnings and endings of school years are transitional times for everyone in the household. I still try to tell myself it’s no big deal, but apparently it is. Yes, we’ll all be liberated from hectic mornings and rigid schedules, but we’ll all have to get used to spending all day everyday with each other. None of us will have freedom from each other. No alone time. No individual activities. No uninterrupted playtime with friends – be it other children or corn chips.
Then it started raining. I half-heartedly set myself to chipping away at the piles of laundry and dishes that had accumulated whilst we frolicked with sharpened woodland tools outside. And I went and read this amazing – in its content, expression, and ability to scare the bejeezus out of me – article about motherhood that messed with my already fragile state of juju (which may, in fact, become the starting point for the summary posthumous post of my series).
So I’m here. In some state of transition. But aren’t we all. God damn walking the tightrope/balancing life again. Isn’t there just some set state of equilibrium I can have installed in my inner ear?
The Question
Who am I
but a mother
a purveyor of school lunches
and snacks and dinners
a laundry-washing, clothes-sorting, stain-sticking fiend
a tear-stopper, an instigator
laying down the law, but finding no joy in being in charge.
For being the boss should have its benefits, no?
I’m paralyzed by free time.
When I hit the kill switch on motherhood for the night,
the juice still flows.
Like cell phone minutes that carry over, my to-do runs ad infinitum and I think how I can get a jump start on tomorrow.
Then my psyche calls.
Hello, it’s me.
Who is me?
Someone who needs nurturing.
Who needs slowing down,
sleep.
Something.
Something to make her heart sing.
Something to take it all away
so she can decide what to build on.
But what?
How
do I get past this feeling of unrest that is the only thing about me that sits
Still
in my heart
my being
my soul
To whom do I report?
To whom do I direct complaints?
To whom can I go,
when I know not what I need,
know not what I ask.
But there is the question
Luke Stettner, Can’t See the Forest for the Trees, 2009.
The Zen of Shuffleboard
Hanging out in a 55+ community can teach you a lot about life.
It’s never too early for happy hour.
It’s never too early to paint a driveway.
It’s never a good idea to force the disc in a game of shuffleboard.
I’d never played shuffleboard before. I had images of straw-topped gentlemen sipping gin and tonics smoothly gliding the disc as if across a sheet of ice. Tropical printed shirts in a calmly boisterous competition. Just the lines of the court themselves, all crisp and geometric, spoke to me of an art deco paradise.
And then I picked up a cue.
While my husband attempted to reign in our three spastic shuffleboarders, akin to three ninjas on speed on their first day of weapons training, I quietly sneaked to the adjacent court. I pulled the cue behind me with the gusto of an archer and swung my arm forward toward the disc, visualizing a tremendous skim to the far end of the court. Instead, the disc flipped back onto the golden shaft of the cue before smacking the ground with a clang like a dinner plate on the kitchen floor. This scenario repeated itself, with ever more epic flips, flops, and failed forward motion. I figured the more oomph I put behind it, the better the outcome.
Until I actually paid attention to the lessons my husband was trying to impart to our tiny samurais.
“Don’t push it.”
“Hold the grip lightly with one hand.”
“Rest the guide against the disc and slide it forward.”
“Take a few steps toward the disc and move your arm in one fluid motion.”
When I worried less about sending the disc into kingdom come, it went farther. When I forced it less, I got more. When I thought of the cue, the disc, as one long extension of my arm, my effort spun itself to the far end of the court.
When I got all amped up, when I tried to muscle things to my desired outcome, it flopped. All that pent-up energy, all that roiling muscle mass did nothing. It actually hurt my efforts. When I put in what my wound-up self would consider a failed attempt – no gusto – I had more success.
On the hollowed court of the silver-haired, I learned that nothing good comes of forcing an outcome. One must work in concert with the circumstances placed on the playing field. For the force to be strong, one must focus intentionally and let go of force.
Who would’ve thought a retiring past time would hold such potent lessons?
Framing the Scene
I always thought of the shadowed lines drawn by the slats of blinds to be something out of film noir. They always brought my mind back to the darkened auditorium of college, watching Double Indemnity and looking for clues of deception and danger within the frame.
This morning they make angles askew, geometric light patterns. Faint shadows paled by bright sunlight. Dull, flat gray; luminous white back lit by soft yellow.
How ironic that time of day,
quality of light,
the way your eyes flip the image, the brain perceives soft or sinister,
can totally change the mood, your mood.
The way you’ll approach the situation, the day.
It’s really all in the lens we choose to peer through.
Image from James Woodward
Laundry List
Poetry recitals, preschool sing-a-longs,
spring picnics, slumber parties, school vacation,
First Communions, community events, social commitments.
With so much fun to be had,
how can one have any fun at all?
Just looking at the list wears me out –
and I haven’t even thought of doing the laundry yet.
Good thing the laundry looks happy – because he’s going to be there for awhile.
Battery and Rebirth
The land is repairing itself now from the spring deluge it experienced this past weekend. It is still trying to assimilate the stands of water upon its surface, soaking and sucking, trying to get back to base. Clogs of leaves and rivers of sand mark the slick black surface of tar. Mini mountains of rock crumble and crunch beneath car tires.
As I traverse curvy country roads and see nature doing its best at damage control, I realize it’s also pushing forward with its plans of renewal. It’s not just attempting to achieve stasis, it’s battling for the burgeoning growth that has been swelling beneath the surface for weeks. Carpets of moss are a brilliant green against the rust colored blankets of leaves up to their chins. In sunny snatches of land, the green points of daffodils are poking up. The air has lost its bite, but blows a breeze still fresh and new.
In this push and pull of survival and revival, I pass a farmyard with a basketball hoop. The grains of the weathered wood on the backboard peeking through the paint, it hangs sideways, the mottled metal loop of the rim vertical rather than horizontal. Of all the images I see in my travels, my mind’s eye freezes this frame.
Why does human ephemera coexisting with a totally divergent context appeal to me so much?
I ponder this as I drive on and suddenly realize why. All of us – broken backboards, bushes and trees swallowed by muck, humans sunk in quicksand – we all struggle to survive despite the forces that strive to push us down. And we do. Despite chipped paint and rusty bolts that no longer mount us firmly to our foundation, we stand. Though rivulets swell into rivers and strain our roots, we hold. Even while downward sucking motion seems inevitable to overcome, we keep our heads above the surface.
A few years ago, my mother was sorting through my grandmother’s old tool shed. An avid gardener whose advancing age had taken both her stamina and her partner, she hadn’t opened the shed in years. In the discard pile of rusty tools, I found a spadeless spade – a thick wooden handle leading to a corroded metal tip even sharper than its original piece. “Can I have this?” I asked. My mother looked at me incredulously. I wanted it as a reminder, that even in an imperfect form, items made with quality materials and craftsmanship would endure. Also, that any job is easier with the proper tools (ie of course you’ll get frustrated if you try to dig a hole with a broken shovel).
Even with the most vital part of its existence broken, this object will endure and possibly inspire others.
May you find your battered backboard or broken shovel.
Photos: Jennifer Butler Basile
Damn the Weather, Man
That’s a very precariously placed comma.
I don’t wish eternal damnation upon all meteorologists, nor do I have the authority. However, as an anxiety-sufferer who already has enough on her plate, weather reports add another element of doom and gloom.
Perhaps if I didn’t live in New England at the ever-encroaching tail-end of winter . . .
from realbodywork.com
Perhaps if the cold clime didn’t make my already shriveled trapezius muscles jerk ever upward . . .
Perhaps if I woke up in the morning, looked at the thermometer and decided on my wardrobe at that moment on current conditions . . .
Perhaps if I could notice the gentle unfolding of the season with my own eyes rather than through the lens of radar screens and predetermined dates on the calendar . . .
Maybe, then, I wouldn’t be psychologically distraught at the impending snow storm we’re about to get.
I wouldn’t be worried about the fresh shoots that I’d unearthed beneath their layer of winter leaves. I wouldn’t bemoan the loss of soft earth between my fingers that I’d felt just this weekend. I wouldn’t begrudgingly look at the lightweight fleece jacket hanging forlornly on the doorknob.
I wouldn’t feel trapped. I wouldn’t feel like I was experiencing a relapse into unforgiving ways. I wouldn’t be nervously anticipating the loss of something I’d only barely gotten a grip on.
Driving home and noticing shutters pulled tight against the windows of a historical building that I swear I’d never noticed shut before, I actually thought of banishing all weather reports from my existence. If I didn’t know I was supposed to be battening down the hatches, I might delight in the snow. At the very least, I’d adjust accordingly when I woke up that morning by pulling on my knee socks and down coat. I wouldn’t obsess. I wouldn’t worry. I might actually live in the moment.
And that, dear people, is really what this is all about, isn’t it? It never really was about weather reports. That’s my irrational psyche’s way of pulling attention away from what is really at the heart of the matter. If I can blame the weather man for my obsessive tendencies, then I don’t have to take the onus on myself. That I can’t live in the moment. That I can’t still the whirling dervish in my mind and so must look to external forces, such as a lovely spring day, to calm me. Or, in their absence, to name as the reason for my failures.
If only the sun were shining, my heart would be light.
If only spring had truly sprung, my mood would refresh.
If only I had no prior knowledge, I wouldn’t obsess and worry.
If only it were that easy.
(Though weather reports and the attendant technology do pull us out of synch with the natural rhythms of the earth and our surroundings. 😉 )
Chopping Potatoes 