Joy

So, it's really easy to get apocalyptic when considering the current state of our society and our world. There is so much wrong that it's totally overwhelming to even begin to think about, let alone to attempt action in redress. My midwife said, in one conversation just after Hazel's birth, that she worries that our children's generations will be burdened with unbearable guilt about the state of the environment. And I can see how that could happen easily; there are significant numbers of us now who are in such a case.

My thought for the day, then, is this: even if the aforementioned vision is true, even if the world is about to go down in flames, that does not mean that we do not deserve or should not cultivate health, well-being, and joy in our lives. No matter the consequences of our (humanity's) cumulative actions, I believe that life is value-positive, and should be celebrated. Perhaps this is more important than ever, now, in these days.

I chose to have a child so I could bring her up with love. It's really that simple. To allow guilt and fear to swallow up my life seemed like an unloving and spiritually pathetic thing to do. Having a child was a manifestation of my commitment to faith, hope, and joy.

And I am not fiddling while Rome burns. I am not closing my eyes to the vast darknesses that abide in our world, the tragedies and outrages that occur daily. They are there, enough to bring a person to her knees any moment of any day. However, if we do not give voice to the positive, no matter its sometimes minuscule percentage of the data, we are not being truthful in either spirit or presentation.

So, apart from whatever circumstance pertains in any given moment, life is good, love is oxygen, and joy effervesces through the universe, to be found in places large and small. Gratitude can be a balm for a troubled heart, and I plan to make it part of my daily spiritual practice as long as I am alive to do so.

Today, I am grateful, among other things, for long friendships, good movies, and a partner with whom I am honored to parent our wonderful, beautiful daughter.

In the broom closet

You know that feeling, the one where you think, "Now just how did I wind up here/doing this?" Last weekend I found myself sitting on a bench with my back to the door, with brooms to my immediate left, appliances surrounding me, industrial strength cleaners to my right, and my breast pump perched a tad precariously on the edges of a cardboard box just in front of me.

Now, I was not, as you could very reasonably suppose, in a gas station bathroom on the road somewhere. I was at the spa. A very very nice spa, a place I've gone many times before and at which I've spent a good deal of money, a place of luxury and sophistication, a place whose purpose is to pamper its customers (for a substantial price).

This was the most time I've spent away from Hazel since her birth. I've been looking forward to going to the spa for over a year, and I was there with my mom, aunt, and sister. My breasts tend to leak milk if I haven't fed the baby for over 3 hours, so I brought my pump with me so I could avoid that happening mid-massage or other spa activity. Also, one's milk supply needs to be kept up by pumping when away from the baby, and having milk around with which other people can feed Hazel is important. All around, this was an important thing for me to be able to do.

I had a hard time leaving Hazel, but once I got to the spa I started to relax and enjoy myself. I had a great massage, and a really wonderful lunch. Then I decided to pump, and somehow, after hearing "it's private, with a door", and "we'll bring a bench in so you don't have to stand up", I wound up trying to balance my pump on the edge of a cardboard box amongst the chemicals.

I wasn't upset, didn't spend the time angry. I was amused, and got to read the lists of "Always" and "Never" things that the staff ("cast members") are supposed to always/never do, among them never saying no to a customer. However, I was uncomfortable. Pumping takes a while. I had to put the pump and bottles on surfaces that are probably not particularly clean. I was hidden away IN A CLOSET, because they didn't have anything better to offer me (they thought). Downstairs there's a very nice lounge with outlets, comfy chairs, a fireplace, and water to drink. But were I to sit there, other people could see me, and that seems to be the main thing that was to be avoided. I can totally understand the staff wanting to offer me privacy. However, I would frankly rather sit in comfort with a cloth draped over my front than in a broom closet so no one has to know that I'm doing something so gauche as pumping milk for my baby.

I never protested. I'm so used to going along, making do, etc, that it didn't occur to me until later that I should have said something, requested a different solution. It's sort of mind-boggling that they'd consider this a reasonable thing to do, really, but hey, I didn't stick up for myself. I will next time. I want to help our society move to seeing women nursing and pumping as a matter of course, a normal daily activity to be accepted as such and neither hide it away or create drama over it.

Now, the day before I did in fact manage to stick up for myself. I had gone out to eat with my family, and the host wanted me to take Hazel's car seat out of her (small) stroller, put it on an upside-down child's high chair, allow him to take my diaper bag, breast-feeding pillow, and stroller away, and position the baby on the inner corner of the table where other customers wouldn't have been able to get by rather than the outer, where he might have to move his path into the table area by perhaps one inch. hmmmm. I immediately didn't want to, and the more insistent he got the more resistant I got.

The bottom line is that the car seat in the stroller was no wider than the car seat on top of the upside-down high chair, and so his insistence was totally unwarranted. The fact that he was patronizing and disrespectful was an additional irritant. So, I just kept politely saying no, and eventually won my point with the help of our wait-person, who quite deftly edged him out of the way. Then, for the rest of the evening, he refused to bring water to our table, and wouldn't look at us. Amazing.

I am beginning to find that one of my new goals is to combat the discrimination, criminalization, and just plain rudeness that seem to be the responses of some individuals and our society toward the regular processes of motherhood by normalizing them.

Life narrative

TIME: When we're children, time seems to stretch out forever, as does childhood. Many children yearn forward, hoping to get older, to get bigger, to become adults. Life can feel like walking through water, struggling against that powerful resistance. I remember having the feeling often as a child that a given day would never end, that the evening seemed to get wider in perspective as it spread out in front of me like a slow-moving river. I think this is enhanced by the funny things memory does: since we don't remember our beginnings, the first months and years of our lives, even when we're very young children, they seem lost in the mists of time and therefore very far away. The time before we were alive was really the time before the universe began. As a little kid, of course, I knew that life and people existed before I did, but I had a hard time crediting it. And as the possessors of knowledge of the time-before-me, one's parents seem sort of godlike (or irrelevant, depending on a kid's current age/stage). Parents hold the keys to the details of the genesis of one's life. They tell the narrative, remember the events, set the mood in one's infancy and young childhood. Part of growing up and gaining independance, I think, is developing a body of knowledge of oneself and one's world that can only be achieved by acquiring memories that allow for a sense of narrative of one's life. One can tell one's own story, with feet in the past (remember when?), present (I feel this way now now), and future (I want to do that).

MEMORY: Memory is powerful. It's a necessary condition for intimacy and self-knowledge. Memory is also weirdly fluid and very susceptible to various internal and external influences. In memory as it employed along the path to self-knowledge, truthfulness is of extraordinary importance. And truthfulness is about more than just an accurate recollection of facts, though that is one part of it. More importantly, perhaps, it also has to do with a willingness to recall and narrate the stories of one's life and others with as little spin as possible. Truthfulness is about presentation as well as content. So, what does it mean to be the custodian's of a child's memory and life narrative? I believe that it's a truly awesome responsibility, one of the biggest that a parent faces.

STORIES: In families, certain stories get told over and over, and certain "facts" about family members are also repeated across years. These stories and facts start to develop both the mistiness of myth and legend, and the weight of sanctified dogma. They shape our perceptions of the world and of ourselves. In my family, it became "fact" that "Mary views life through rosy-colored glasses". Did I, or did it just seem that way in contrast to those around me? Often, part of the work that we do as adults is involved with freeing ourselves from that externally imposed and internally affirmed narrative about who we are. One friend of mine was "the athlete" in his family. This view of him was both affirmative and limiting. He was a really good soccer player, and was encouraged in the development of his skill, to the betterment of his physical health in the long-term. However, his interests in artistic endeavors was not only not supported, but were laughed at, because they didn't fit the mould of who he was supposed to be and were therefore somehow unconceivable or ridiculous. And his intense involvement with his sport was rewarded, because of his mother's emotional investment in it as it supported what she wanted to see in her life story and in his. Because of this, his ability to acquire self-knowledge (what do I value?, what do I like?) as a child was limited, and he didn't fully figure out until well until adulthood how much such pursuits might mean to him. He also suffered loneliness, spending most of his time around guys with whom he had little in common other than their chosen activity.

BIRTH STORIES: Parents tell their children the stories of their early lives. I will be telling my daughter about her beginnings ("We decided we wanted to have a child, and I got pregnant in June. You were born in the springtime in Seattle. When we came home from the hospital the cherry trees and daffodils were blooming. I remember standing outside the hospital waiting for your dad to bring the car around, thinking that this was the first time you'd seen the outside." etc.) What I remember, what I tell her, and how I tell her will become the foundation of her own perception of her life narrative. So, I have to balance the need for clarity and lack of spin with the realities of the subjectivity of my memory and my desire to give her a sense of how much this story means to me, how much she was wanted. I don't want to tell her a bland story devoid of color and love in an effort to avoid the aforesaid spin. But not all of the story is hers, either; it's part of my narrative and that of my husband's, and so I won't tell her the "whole thing". Some of it is private, some of it I don't know or don't remember, and some of it I'll tell her later as her ownership of her own life narrative gets strong enough to handle more powerful input from mine without losing its own coherence and shape.

INTIMACY: So all of this is partly to say that I find it amazing that we can achieve intimacy with other people, and especially with our children/parents, given that we're all traveling through life at different speeds. Hazel and I are in the same river, but somehow the current is both very slow and very fast around our boat, because this time is both the immense beginning of her universe and also the full, action-packed, zooming middle of my life.

RESPONSIBILITY: In my commitment to truthfulness and clarity, knowing that I am one of the primary architechs of the landscape of her personal life narrative, there is a poem which has been and continues to be a mantra for me. And that is "On Children" by Kahlil Gibran.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

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LOVE: I will try to give Hazel the stories and emotional/energetic ingredients from the beginnings of her life as truthfully and lovingly as I can so that she can become her own architect as she grows. I will endeavor to find out who she is as I also attempt to give her guidance and show her pathways. I want to give her the joy of her own beginnings so that as she goes on she can captain her own boat with confidence, clarity, and openness to what life has to offer.

Toys, Sunshine, Puppies, Tears, and Gratitude

It has been really gorgeous here in the Pacific Northwest of late. The other day I was out on a walk with Hazel, and I found myself on a street in our neighborhood I haven't seen before. It was late afternoon, that time of magic brilliant light. As I looked at the beautiful gardens across the street beneath a blue sky and warm sun, I imagined how I would be feeling if I were seeing them in a different place on vacation. I'd be strolling along, in that imagined case, feeling carefree and open to all the beauty around me, looking for pleasure. I decided I wanted to pretend to be on vacation, to see if I could cultivate something of that feeling right then and there, inspired by my surroundings. It worked; I enjoyed that time even more than I would have. And then that evening we went over to a friend's house and watched "Back to the Future", and the day was complete. :-)



Another thing we did that evening was make a welcome home sign. Originally, we'd thought we'd dip Hazel's feet in finger paint and add her footprints to the sign. That turned out to be more work than we wanted to do, however, and we didn't. But after that walk I took we had gone to a great local toy store, Top Ten Toys, to buy supplies to make the sign. It was still absolutely gorgeous out, and I was floating along in my imagined-vacation bliss. Getting Hazel out of the car and into her stroller to go into the store I was carried away on an ocean wave of happiness and deep gratitude. The wave was one of those slow, soft, powerful rollers that you easily jump to let yourself be gently carried by the water up, up, over, and back down to your feet on the sand and a smile on your face. It's not that often that you get to see so clearly the incredible bounty of your life, and both Ted and I are astounded by how lucky we feel. It was so close; I almost didn't get to have this, because I had absolutely no idea how amazing it would be and therefore almost didn't choose it. We were in that store laughing and looking forward to all the fun hours we'll have (and already do have) playing with Hazel. We both have retained a strong appreciation for childhood joys, and we look forward to so much: blowing bubbles, fingerpainting, making candles, doing puzzles, playing games, making up stories, playing with trains, etc. Oh, how I love her!

This evening we were returning from a rehearsal of mine. My friend had brought her new puppy along for Ted to meet, and a bunch of us were standing around enjoying the dogs, baby and evening. Hazel got a bit scared at the loud barks and cried, but we jollied her back into smiles and all was good. That is, until we were driving home, me in the back with Hazel and Ted at the wheel. Hazel started whimpering and then crying, and then sobbing. This went on for the entire 20 minute trip home, and she was looking straight at me the whole time, so sad and confused. She couldn't understand why I wasn't feeding her; I always do when she's hungry if I'm there, and this might have been the first time I just sat there as she cried. Of course, she is way too little to know about cars and carseats and how I can't take her out of her carseat while we're moving. I talked to her, I sang to her, I shhhhhhhhed and patted her, all to no avail. It was awful. Usually I'm driving and Ted's in the back, and if she cries we both shhhhh, and she eventually falls asleep. Not this time. When we got home I got her out of her carseat and held her, and she started to get calmer, and then as soon as we were in the house I got her on my breast. It took a bit, but she was comforted and ate for a while. Once she had fallen asleep we then discovered that she needed to be changed, and in fact, once Ted got her on the changing table, he found her diaper more full than he'd ever seen it. No wonder she'd hated being strapped down into the carseat.

Tonight in bed we talked about it, and realized that we'd gotten into a yank (we *have* to get home) and totally forgotten that we could have pulled over anywhere and either changed her or fed her or both, and we would all have been happier. Lesson: Hazel doesn't generally cry for no reason, and there are almost always more options than are immediately evident, and when stressed it's helpful to take a step back to figure out what those might be. Of course, when stressed, it's easy to forget to do so.... One step at a time. I'm so glad that Ted and I can talk about these things and problem solve together.

Via my i-Tunes library, Joni Mitchell is singing "You don't always know what you've got till it's gone". Well, right now, we do know what we have, and that's our mantra in life, to see what we have when it's here, and to live every moment as presently as we can. We aren't taking any of this for granted. Maybe that's one of the gifts of having a baby at this advanced age.... :-)