Monthly Archive for April, 2008

When It Takes Effort to Experience Effortlessness

Published
by
Melissa
on April 30, 2008
in expectations, illness, intentions versus goals, letting go, respecting your body, surrender and you can't control everything
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“I made that,” I marveled, not for the first time, as I watched Jake at school this morning. He was banging two farm animal puzzle pieces together, making a loud clacking noise appreciated by no one but himself. His eyes were clear and as blue as his shirt, which hung over the top of his baggy little jeans, which collapsed on top of his miniature cool shoes. His smile was as big and pure as only a toddler’s smile can be. I was stunned by his beauty, unable to stand up and get on with my day.

Part of the reason Jake seems like a bit of a miracle to me is that he came so easily after so much anguish. I spent over a year having early miscarriages and being told by a well-regarded “specialist” that it was nothing more than a symptom of my age. Turns out when you trust your own sense of your body and see a doctor who actually — get this — listens to you you might be lucky enough to be diagnosed with a mild case of an easily treatable condition. One hysteroscopy later, I got pregnant. It was almost enough to forget how having difficulty conceiving infuses your entire life for the year, two years, five years you work at it.

Now I’m having the symptoms again, and even though I know I can be treated and I already have this crazy beautiful boy and one day we will have a crazy beautiful daughter from China, I can’t help wishing that having a child could, just once, be effortless.

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Being Patient with Your Practice

Published
by
Melissa
on April 29, 2008
in balance, being in the moment, breathing, chattering mind, inner peace, practice and too much to do
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Yesterday, I wrote about how I had managed to stop moving for an afternoon and how being still showed me there was a lot more time than I thought.

When I finished, I gave a deep, happy sigh. It was just after noon. A whole afternoon stretched ahead of me, free of urgency or panic and full of time to run to Target for some greatly needed toilet paper so I would no longer have to resort to the box of tissues I keep in the bathroom to clean the hairs off the sink.

Enjoying my freedom from having too much to do in too little time, I sauntered downstairs and ate the piece of flourless chocolate cake I bought for Mike on Friday. We are, I reasoned, scheduled to have our insurance physicals in a week, and my cholesterol levels can much better handle the butter holding the chocolate and sugar together than his can. Then I called him to see if there was anything he needed from Target.

“There’s a trimmer I want at Lowe’s,” he said. “But I don’t want you to go out of your way.”

“No problem,” I assured him as I licked chocolate off the fork. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

And then I was in the car and it was after 1:00 and my heart began beating a little bit faster, as if at the start of a race against the dashboard clock. My hand cramped up as I turned the key in the ignition, seemingly wanting to prevent me from leaving the house when there was still work I could be doing there. What had happened to all the free time? And how quickly could I make it to Lowe’s and Target and back home again to do some of it before picking Jake up from school?

So much for the lesson I had just written about learning.

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How I’m Learning to Take More Naps

Published
by
Melissa
on April 28, 2008
in Mommy time, breathing, centering, chattering mind, inner peace, letting go, practice, sleep, stillness, too much to do and yoga class
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I took a nap with Jake yesterday.

It was an overcast day, and a cool breeze with the smell of rain puffed through the open window. Jake and I were wrapped up together in my duvet. I’d had a lovely, strong home yoga practice that morning while Jake had pedaled about the park with his dad on his Radio Flyer tricycle, his knees knocking against the handlebars and impeding his progress. We were horizontal and warm, and I had squishy baby cheeks to kiss. Many people would find a nap a perfectly natural occurrence under these circumstances.

I would not be one of those people.

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How Losing a Little Bit of What’s Central to You Can Be Kind of Centering

Published
by
Melissa
on April 26, 2008
in aging, centering, change, expectations, inner peace, nonharming, respecting your body, sense of self, surrender and yoga class
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It hit me somewhere around the time I was half-heartedly kicking my right foot up toward a handstand in the middle of the room. Something had radically changed in my life.

Part of it was that I wasn’t trying very hard. I had resigned myself to never, ever having the courage to attempt a handstand without a wall very close by. And while many years of thinking I might one day have such courage had not brought me much closer to it, I had at least at one point in my life been willing to challenge myself.

My response to challenging asanas these days is far more subdued than it was before, say, Jake was born. In the pre-Jake era, yoga class was a time of supreme focus, a serious matter even when I was laughing, a place to challenge my mind as much as my body. The days I felt “off” were few enough that I could let them be lessons; on those rare occasions when I had to admit that I really, truly did not have the strength to make it into headstand at the end of class I serenely told myself to honor my limitations.

Now it’s the rare yoga class when I don’t guiltily give a mental shrug and tell myself that, gee, I have to honor those pesky limitations. Even if what’s really limiting me not having the energy to try.

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Respecting Your Body (and, of course, your child’s) in a World That Doesn’t

Published
by
Melissa
on April 24, 2008
in awareness, balance, feeding my child, illness, letting go, motion, nonharming, practice, respecting your body and you can't control everything
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Boy, you think you’re a careful, concerned parent doing everything anyone could to ensure that your child will never contract autism or cancer or any of the other scary diseases that seem to lurk everywhere in our toxic world, and along come abundant assurances that you could be doing so very much more. It’s enough to make a tired mom collapse in a puddle of tears and resignation.

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Surrendering When You Can’t Decide How to Put Your Child to Sleep (or How to Make Some Other Important Parenting Decision)

Published
by
Melissa
on April 23, 2008
in Mama instinct, bed time, change, chattering mind, expectations, illness, letting go, sleep, structure, surrender, toddler tantrums, trust and you can't control everything
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The worst part of lying awake in bed at 4:30 this morning listening to Mike’s deep sleep breaths was not knowing if I’d done the right thing.

I’ll bet we all have that one area of parenting that refuses to yield a clear course of action. No matter what we decide, we find ourselves wondering if we should have decided differently.

For me — and this is not going to be a surprise to anyone who’s read much about my parenting neuroses — it’s whether and how to sleep train. In particular, at 4:30 a.m. today it was whether I had made the right decision at 4:00 a.m. to practice a little Ferberizing.

Four o’clock in the morning is not the optimal time to be making decisions. It is, however, an excellent time to engage me in a battle of wills. If you want to lose. Not that Jake was the loser, of course. He is developing the important skill of being able to sleep alone. Even if he is also developing, the irrational part of me cries, a crushed sense of self.

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Sometimes It’s in Your Nature to Take Your Toddler to Play at the Mall

Published
by
Melissa
on April 22, 2008
in Mommy time, awareness, balance, chattering mind, expectations, following your heart, friendship, sense of self, stuck at home with a child, surrender and work
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A good friend told me yesterday how difficult she finds it to spend a whole day entertaining her twenty-month-old alone. That, she realized, is what those weekly Target outings are about.

“Target?” I thought to myself. “Target? Honey, you haven’t sunk to the depths of toddler entertainment desperation until you become a regular at the play area in the food court of the Asheville Mall.”

Since I had visited the Asheville Mall food court that very morning, I found her confession most reassuring. Not because I blame myself for my inability to single-handedly entertain a toddler without the aid of TiVo or Entertainment Weekly. But because there’s comfort in knowing that I’m not alone.

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Taking Some Time on Sunday Morning to Honor My Heart

Published
by
Melissa
on April 20, 2008
in being connected to everything, breathing, change, following your heart, gratitude, inner beauty, inner peace, partners, practice, respecting your body and sleep
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I woke up in a cranky mood this morning.

“Great,” Mike said when I informed him of this fact, and I don’t blame him, even though I sort of did at the time. One of the hardest things about being cranky for me is knowing that I am taking it out on him. (I was going to say “taking it out on others,” but the truth of the matter is I can pretty much hide it from anyone else. Mike, I don’t try so hard. That’s part of the satisfaction of being cranky, isn’t it? Making the person who chose to spend his life with you maybe regret it a little bit?

The way I chose to display my crankiness this morning was with a simple act of selfishness. I didn’t take Jake downstairs when he woke up and began yelling. Mike did as much for me yesterday for a blessed hour of extra sleep. But I just couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for getting out of bed and fixing the yogurt and organic imitation Cheerios that Jake loves to eat for breakfast.

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What Not Being a Real Buddhist Has Taught Me About Motherhood

Published
by
Melissa
on April 19, 2008
in Mama instinct, compassion, expectations, following your heart, gratitude, inner peace and trust
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Last night as I was washing the day’s sippy cups I listened to a podcast of Fresh Air featuring Pico Iyer, who has known the Dalai Lama for 33 years and recently wrote a book about him.

The only one awake in the still house on a soft spring night, fresh from dinner out at Marco’s, a family friendly pizza place where Jake joyfully played peek-a-boo with the two-year-old at the table across from us, I felt peaceful listening to stories of this man I so admire. But at the same time I felt a small rasp of unease, like an emery board being softly drawn across my Buddhist convictions.

I was, I think, confronting the fact that nearly everything I know about Buddhism comes from places like Fresh Air interviews — easily packaged bits of information for Type-A westerners like myself who clothe their humanism in a shallow understanding of some basic, and attractive, Buddhist precepts: show compassion for all living things; god exists in all of us; suffering can be alleviated by giving in to our hearts.

Okay, sure, good points all, but how much of my life do I really devote to these ideas I find so important? And do I live by them when it’s not easy, like when I find a sluggish wasp in my child’s bedroom and think it’s pretty big of me to apologize before I crush it with a rolled up issue of the New Yorker?

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Why I Can’t Take a Compliment (Even of My Kid)

Published
by
Melissa
on April 18, 2008
in Mommy time, compassion, expectations, gratitude, inner beauty, inner peace, nonharming, school and trust
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When I picked Jake up from school yesterday, one of his caregivers told me he’d been “doing much better lately.”

Since I thought he’d been doing just fine for some time now, I found this cheery message about as welcome as one of Jake’s epic morning poops.

“Better?” I asked, carefully modulating my voice to sound like someone merely expressing mild interest in a discussion of, say, the melting polar icecap. Involved, yes, impacted by the news, okay, but not in any way that directly affected me.

“Yeah,” she answered, warming to the subject. “He’s playing with his friends a lot more. And he’s not having tantrums like he used to.”

This was all new to me. I tried to recalibrate my picture of Jake at school from the, of course, sweetest kid in the group — uncomplaining, friendly, laughing — to this strange child being described to me. Could I have given birth to a tantrum-throwing, belligerent, antisocial being? I just couldn’t make the switch.

“He’s doing really well,” the caregiver concluded with a friendly smile.

This repeated phrase was of little comfort to me. Maybe, I thought weakly, she has Jake confused with someone else.

I tried to let it go, but I was mildly devastated. My child throwing tantrums? Sure, he throws them regularly at home these days, but the good kind that signal developmental progress. Not the kind the other kids throw at school, which are merely symptoms of future delinquency.

And antisocial? The whole reason we sent Jake to school was because of his intense interest in other kids. I had witnessed him and his girlfriend clucking quietly to each other. I’d warmed at the sight of him turning to his friends with a huge smile as they looked out the window at a squirrel attacking a bird feeder.

Was the caregiver suggesting that the minute I disappeared he hid between the sink and the changing table rejecting offerings of friendships from his classmates? Or, worse, had he become one of those kids who pushes other kids and steals their toys, even though he doesn’t have a big brother to blame for this sorry behavior?

I felt a little bit ashamed as I repeated the story to Mike that night. Because I knew — and I acknowledged as much — that I was missing the point. The caregiver was trying to give Jake a compliment of the sort designed to placate nervous mothers like me. But all I heard was its underbelly.

And this troubled me greatly. It’s one thing if I can’t take a compliment myself. It’s something else when I can’t even take one intended for my son.

Continue reading ‘Why I Can’t Take a Compliment (Even of My Kid)’

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