compassion

“Read My Lips . . .” Oh, Wait, You’re Still Learning to Talk

October 28, 2008

There are few things worse than having “The Heart of Rock and Roll” stuck in your head at two o’clock in the morning. Except possibly having this catchy ’80′s ditty replay itself over and over as your child reaches out across the pillow you have erected as a barrier between your bodies because you refuse [...]

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Maternity Pants, Fatigue, and Never Look at Your Butt in Your Sister-in-Law’s Guest Room Mirror

October 27, 2008

Fatigue. I’m not talking tired or exhausted or however I generally feel after carrying Jake up the stairs for the fifteenth time at the end of the day.  I am talking about bone-crushing, crying-because-I’m-so-tired, unable-to-think fatigue.  Have-your-thyroid-level-checked fatigue. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that it hit me after an afternoon spent at a three-year-old’s birthday [...]

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Let the Comparisons Begin, or How Much Control Do I Really Have?

October 6, 2008

We had our anatomy-screen ultrasound last week, and, inevitably, the comparisons began. “This is an active one,” the technician commented, as she tried, unsuccessfully, to snap a picture of the wiggling baby’s heart before it shifted out of view again. I told her about the time Jake wouldn’t wake up for his ultrasound.  And about [...]

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Shouldn’t My Sick Child Be Crying for His Mommy?

September 21, 2008

Mike and I had one of those glorious Asheville Saturdays yesterday.  We took Jake to Plow Day at Warren Wilson College, a small school just outside of town with — as the Plow Day moniker would suggest — a working farm. Yes, one year of living here, and I consider Plow Day at Warren Wilson [...]

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Could Yoga Really Have Led Me to the Americans with Disabilities Act?

September 18, 2008

Yoga, I have always thought, saved me from the law. I became a lawyer, in the narrative I have set up of my life, because I was blind to my heart.  It was the path my mind led me down, the safe, manageable world of knowledge and surface communication and clear organizing principles. Sure, I [...]

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Twice Bitten: More of the Wisdom of Toddlers

September 4, 2008

Not long ago, I arrived to pick Jake up from school to find not one but two incident reports awaiting me. “He got bitten,” one of Jake’s teachers said apologetically.  “Twice.” From the deliberately pared-down details they provided — perpetrators’ names and identifying characteristics are omitted from incident reports to protect those too young to [...]

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A New Olympic Event — Caring for a Toddler While You Have the Stomach Flu

August 22, 2008

How about that Michael Phelps, huh? Single-minded determination, laser-like focus, conquering his body’s limitations. The ultimate competitor. I’d like to see him take care of a toddler while suffering from a good bout of stomach flu. (Dara Torres has probably done it, but then she’s a goddess, being over 40 and an Olympic athlete and [...]

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Careful What You Google For

August 14, 2008

About a week ago I googled an old boyfriend. The one I thought I’d marry but didn’t. It wasn’t a stalker sort of thing. It wasn’t, amazingly, a raging case of misplaced nostalgia brought about by panic over finding myself a work-at-home mom living on a neighborly street in Asheville, North Carolina. I wasn’t feeling [...]

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The Friendship That Doesn’t Change When You Do

August 12, 2008

I took my dearest friend — Kali I’ll call her and she knows why — to the airport this morning. And I started crying — again. Not just because “Carolina in My Mind” was playing on the radio. (That song makes me cry every time, dammit, and not because I live in North Carolina.) I [...]

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Forget My Mind — I Lost My Cell Phone

July 24, 2008

Actually, “lost” is mother-of-a-toddler code for, “I left my cell phone in the pocket of the shorts I wore to the pool with Jake and ran it through the washing machine.” Raz-r phones, I probably don’t have to tell you, do not like being run through the washing machine. When Mike first announced that he [...]

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MIA Part Two: Learning Who You Are

July 9, 2008

So another reason I was missing in action for two weeks (even though, I say again to the empty echo-chamber of a deserted readership, I don’t think anyone really noticed): a visit to Louisville for my grandfather’s funeral. Sad as this sounds — and much as the past couple of posts might, um, bring the [...]

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Mothers, Daughters, and “The Eye of the Tiger”: How a Bad Song from 1982 Moved Me Closer to Stillness

June 16, 2008

On Father’s Day morning, when I started the car in the parking lot of EarthFare (Asheville’s local Whole Foods-ish place I love to shop for groceries even though we really can’t afford it), I had one of those delicious moments that happens when I hear “Eye of the Tiger” on the radio. Immediately, it was [...]

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What Not Being a Real Buddhist Has Taught Me About Motherhood

April 19, 2008

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 [...]

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

April 18, 2008

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 [...]

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A Temper Tatrum Teaches Me to Be in the Moment

April 17, 2008

I am feeling deep gratitude for Jake’s* latest temper tantrum. [*Upon a well reasoned request, I am adopting pseudonyms for those discussed in my stories. Because you never know when I will become a celebrity YogaMamaMe, and we have all read about the need to protect the privacy of celebrities' family members.] I can’t say [...]

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Learning to Let Go of Frustration While Walking Through the Mall with Jake

April 15, 2008

It’s amazing how our children can teach us things even in a place so little conducive to spiritual enlightenment as the Asheville Mall. The lesson that needed learning began yesterday morning, when Mike more or less demanded I see a doctor. I didn’t put up much of a fight, probably because I was too busy [...]

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What the Friday Morning Bothered Blues Can Teach You About Time

April 11, 2008

“Is this the kind of day I’m going to have?” I whined as I pinched my fingers in the buckle of Jake’s stroller while rushing to get him to school. YES! boomed something much bigger than me a few minutes later, when Jake dropped the windshield scraper he so loves to carry to school on [...]

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Grandma Versus Jack’s School, or Trusting Myself as a Mother

April 10, 2008

I didn’t apologize to Jake’s grandmother for taking him to school today. This is a sign, I believe, of progress. An awful lot of what I’ve done as a mother is apologize — for decisions I’ve made as a mother (sure, everyone tells you you’re right because you’re the mom, but do you ever really [...]

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When Family Visits Cross Paths with Our Personal Journeys

April 8, 2008

Any moment now, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and niece are going to arrive at my house. I am, I report with pleasure and a little bit of pride, not in complete meltdown mode, despite just now sitting down to write when there’s really no time left to do so. While this was my priority when I [...]

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Judge the Man in the Red Yoga Shorts only if You Are Ready for Him to Judge You

April 5, 2008

The man in the red yoga shorts was in class again on Thursday. I wasn’t the only one looking. None of us, I assure you, were staring with pleasure. He was wearing the traditional yoga shorts that no doubt were the inspiration for European bathing trunks, the kind regretfully worn only by old German men [...]

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