From the monthly archives:

May 2008

A Little Grey’s Anatomy, a Little Kindness

May 30, 2008

I know how this sounds, but I’m going to say it anyway. Yesterday I paid more attention to Grey’s Anatomy than to my child. Just a little bit more. And just for a little while. And only because I really, really needed to.
It had, you see, been a rough week. [...]

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Booster Seats and Boosting Yourself

May 25, 2008

Thursday’s life lesson took place in the unlikely location of a Babies R Us in a strip mall off the exit just past the Asheville Mall, second-rate real estate where the stores squat sadly as if aware they have been banished.
I entered already full of the anxiety large, glowing box stores induce in me, determined [...]

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Letting My Child’s Inner Beauty Shine Past the Tests

May 20, 2008

At Jake’s school this morning one of his teachers showed me the developmental evaluation they had filled out for him. It was a standardized list of questions — a la “Can the child pick up a Cheerio between his thumb and forefinger?” — in such categories as Communication, Gross Motor Skills, Fine Motor Skills, [...]

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My Child Broke My Japa Mala

May 19, 2008

What does it mean when your child breaks your japa mala?
A japa mala is a set of prayer beads some people use when chanting to Hindu or Buddhist deities. I got mine during my month of is-this-me?, Indian-print-skirt-wearing, chanting-at-five-in-the-morning, living-on-an-ashram yoga teacher training. I can’t say I’ve used it a whole lot since [...]

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Breathing My Way into Feeling Good About Who I Am

May 18, 2008

We went to a party yesterday! A real, live, social, people-who-speak-adult block party.
Granted, I spent the majority of the festivities chasing an increasingly bold and energized Jake down the hill, into the yard where he found the prize of a whiffle ball half-buried in rotting leaves, in front of the band to whose rendition [...]

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A Sick Boy and a Lesson About Intentions

May 17, 2008

I really didn’t mind too much when I got the not-unanticipated Please Pick Him Up call on Wednesday from Jake’s school.
True, I had picked him up early on Monday and kept him home all day Tuesday, which I really thought ought to have scored me a few points with the teachers. And he had [...]

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Geez, I Haven’t Had the Hip Replacement Yet, or Thoughts on Age and Youth

May 14, 2008

Something occurred to me yesterday in yoga class as I observed the places where I feel just a tad tighter and achier than I did before my pregnancy.
“Maybe,” I thought with a rush of horror threaded through with an unsettling warmth of acceptance, “I’m just getting older.”
For the past couple of years I’ve had these [...]

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Trust with a Capital T: How’s That for a Mother’s Day Gift?

May 12, 2008

“Think of what you’d like to do tomorrow,” Mike said Saturday night. “I want to do something special for you for Mother’s Day.”
A perfectly reasonable request. But I am not, as it turns out, a perfectly reasonable person when it comes to being feted on Mother’s Day.
As Mike headed off for an evening [...]

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Happy Mother’s Day

May 11, 2008

I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling too comfortable with the idea of this day where I’m supposed to be suddenly special for being a mother.
I mean, it is special being a mom. As well as exhausting, rewarding, confusing, and frequently humiliating. But why am I more special than ever on [...]

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There’s Something Bigger Than Forgetting to Buy Antibiotic Ointment

May 9, 2008

It was plainly my fault. Because, I feel deeply, anything that distresses my boy is.
Bath time, these balmy spring evenings, has been a tad more fraught than usual. Mike has been arriving home right around when Jake and I sit down for his dinner. So we all head out for the deck, [...]

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Fixing Everything, Even When You Can’t, or How I Learned to Diffuse My Energy

May 7, 2008

Today my acupuncturist spent a lot of time diffusing my energy. And it got me thinking.
I was probably not thinking what you are — Acupuncture! Therapy! Yoga! This gal spends an inordinate amount of energy searching for the mindfulness in motherhood! And is maybe a little bit crazy to boot. But, [...]

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Jake and My Heart Free Me From a Scary Rat’s Maze

May 5, 2008

I had one of those moments yesterday, the kind where suddenly everything feels completely wrong.
It begins with a weird sense of displacement — in my case, sitting on the floor of my yoga room/office in the middle of my asana practice. “What am I doing here?” or something like it started the internal conversation. [...]

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When You Absolutely Have No Choice But to Let Go

May 2, 2008

I was walking under a dogwood tree on the way out of my therapist’s office this morning when I noticed the blanket of pink flowers it had dropped on the brick sidewalk. The tree, I thought, was telling me to let go.
For a moment, I considered the prospect. I was already late for [...]

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