A Community of Moms Trying to Keep From Losing Their Mindfulness
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson when I looked at my butt in a mirror at my sister-in-law’s house while four months pregnant.
You would, in fact, not be expecting too much to think after that shock I would be smart enough not to look at my butt in a changing room mirror at a Nordstrom in Charlotte when I am ten months postpartum. When I am forty-three years old. Or ever, for that matter.
Some explanation is required.
Last week, Lily was awake during my acupuncture appointment.
Her newfound alertness was one of those developments you look forward to in theory, only to realize once you get there that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sort of like when I used to stay up half the night anticipating a trip to Disneyland only to get there and find more in the way of crowds and heat than personal audiences with Mickey Mouse.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the way Lily and I now make my already favorite chore of folding laundry into a game where I wave each item of clothing in front of her rapidly darting blue eyes on its way from basket to drawer. I cherish the puckered little smile that blooms across her face when I bluster, “B-B-B-B-B,” to her. And I’m pretty proud of how I cobbled together parts from two partially functioning mobiles to make one under which she kicks and coos in wonder.
But what you gain in moments of unexpectedly woozy love when your infant approaches two months you lose in sleep time. Hers. My own is, thank goodness, increasing. Which is a good thing because I’m reduced to a pretty complete state of exhaustion at the end of a day spent trying to cram just as much dish washing and cooking and, yes, writing into the shrinking hours during which she now naps.
This cramming includes acupuncture.
The first time I brought her with me she was sound asleep in her car seat by the end of our ten-minute drive there. The most stressful part of my appointment was worrying that she’d awaken as I lay there full of needles, forcing me to tug at the ones sprouting from my wrists as the acupuncturist had advised me to do in just such an event.
This time, however, she proved her new prowess at staying awake by — quite amazingly in the context of our new world together — staying awake during the car ride there. And then sitting in her car seat in the waiting room gazing suspiciously about herself as she decided whether I was going to release her or she needed to complain. And, when we settled into the treatment room, finally letting me know it was most definitely not okay to leave her in the car seat stationed in front of what I took to be some lovely shadows.
Whether it was my anxiously fluttering pulse or his own worry that he wouldn’t be able to fit a proper treatment around a fussy infant, the acupuncturist was as nervously creative as I at suggesting things that might — one could always hope — placate her for long enough to make a difference. We moved the car seat around. I took her out of it. I swaddled her. I rocked her. I spread her blanket on the floor and assured her that we were in a very safe place. He offered another blanket to put under it as if to prove how safe and welcome she was.
Lily settled back cautiously. “Pretty comfy,” she seemed to say, still reserving judgment on the larger situation.
She looked around. “Decent shadows up there,” I could hear her say to herself as she gave a few experimental kicks.
“Okay?” I asked.
She kicked again and ignored me. “Okay,” was her answer.
And, true to her promise, she didn’t utter those first clicks of I-might-cry-ness until the acupuncturist started removing the needles.
“You are a generous spirit,” he told Lily graciously.
And thus defined her and my good fortune in a few short and honest words.
Continue reading ‘Traveling with Two: An Ode to My Generous Little Spirit’
I’ve had this day marked on my calendar for weeks. My first Mommy and Me yoga class.
It’s been just two days since Lily officially reached the Age Where I Can Take Her Into Public Places, and the prospect of the class was even more exciting to me than Monday’s foray into Target. Purchasing diapers and Z Bars I could live without for another month if I had to; the only thing keeping me from Mommy and Me yoga this past month were those pesky flu viruses still floating around Asheville on the chill winds finally chasing winter away.
What I was looking forward to wasn’t so much a practice for myself. I can manage those at home if need be — and did for all of six sun salutes and five rounds of navasana yesterday before Miss Lily intervened. What Mommy and Me yoga offered that I hadn’t before experienced was a practice for the two of us, a time to share something beyond our daily routine of eating, holding, taking the occasional walk, and greeting Jake’s boisterous evening arrival with joy (me) and cries of annoyance (Lily). And, of course, I was very much looking forward to the company of adults who speak in real sentences, even if most of them are devoted to talking about their babies.
What I found, however, was something different, a lesson I haven’t yet approached in quite the same way in all the YogaMamaMe time I’ve devoted to the relationship between me and my children and my Self. What I found — as, if I’m being honest, I so rarely find — was forgiveness.
Continue reading ‘What I Learned in My First Mommy and Me Yoga Class’
On Friday afternoon, I was lucky enough to be invited to the dedication of a lovely meditation space in downtown Asheville, the WriteMind Institute. And even more lucky to have a mother-in-law in town and an infant feeding schedule that allowed me to attend.
It felt pretty darned great to take a shower, put on real clothes, and actually pick Jake up from daycare, from which I have officially been banished until the end of flu season, still a week hence. I made an exception on Friday, feeling somehow loose and free by dint of my very ability to walk out of the house for two hours without my baby.
This is not something first-time mothers should try, by the way. I don’t think Jake was ever more than fifty feet from me until that time we were visiting Mike’s mother when he was four months old, and three adults physically pushed me out of the house to take a walk without him. He was crying when I got back, which pretty much convinced me I couldn’t leave him again for another four or five months at least.
But now I’m sane and balanced and the mother of an inevitably neglected second child (have I mentioned that I’m a second child?) so off I traipsed to the petri dish of Jake’s daycare and off he and I sped downtown for an outing that brought back guiltily pleasurable memories of what it was like to have only one child. Manageable is the word I think I’m looking for.
The meditation space was absolutely beautiful, with a peaceful pull that reminded me of how long it’s been since I’ve practiced any form of yoga. (That would be 24 days, since the day before Lily was born.) The head of the WriteMind Institute, Jonathon Flaum, gathered us around to talk about the space and how welcome we all were there. He invited us to sit in silence for five glorious minutes — during which Mike and Jake wandered the street outside, far enough away so that our silence would not be broken by a small child yelling “NOOOOO!” as is frequently Jake’s wont these days.
And then Jonathon talked about refuge. He told some beautiful stories, and what it boiled down to was this: Refuge as he defined it is a place where no one asks anything of you other than that you be yourself.
This idea traveled straight to my heart, already steeped in the easiest five minutes of meditation I’d ever experienced and the warm energy of a room full of people who shared the love and excitement of this new space. A place where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.
And in that moment, I felt as if I knew myself, in a clear and simple way that I hadn’t for a very, very long time. In one telescoped moment, I remembered how long it took me to find that self and how I had lost her in that first year of motherhood, and I experienced a pleasurable jolt of wisdom in recognizing that the birth of my second child — far from tossing me back down the rabbit hole of lost mindfulness I had expected — has brought me more strongly to that self.
A self I can be in places of refuge. Where no one asks anything of me other than that I be myself.
It is, perhaps, the most remarkable change that motherhood has wrought: I looked forward to the Purim Carnival for weeks before it was upon us.
This is remarkable because — although this was my first Purim Carnival — it was certainly not my first opportunity to attend one.
Purim — for those who have not had and/or rejected the opportunities to participate that I have — is a Jewish celebration of spring. I’m not sure exactly what the story behind it is, although I’ve picked up at Jake’s school that it has something to do with heroes. My impression is that, as Christmas is designed to perk up those cold winter months, Purim is a chance to celebrate the onset of the warm ones. Mostly by getting dressed up in hero costumes and having carnivals in synagogue parking lots.
My only previous brush with a Purim celebration occurred my sophomore year in high school. My friend Brenda and I scored some cool 60’s dresses my mother had buried in a closet (since disappeared, to my periodic chagrin) and headed out to a party for the teenagers of a congregation to which Brenda may or may not have belonged. I certainly didn’t, and I know for a fact that she is the only one of the two of us who would have heard about and expressed interest in a party at a synagogue, even one at which boys might be met. While nominally Jewish myself, my entire exposure to what this meant consisted of: 1) attending a number of Bat Mitzvah’s at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Tarzana during eighth grade; 2) having my parents tell me a whole lot how important it is to marry Jewish (that one plainly never sunk in); and 3) during the fall of my sophomore year of high school informing my mother that I would be taking Yom Kippur off from school to attend services with my friends and having her respond, “Take the day off if you want, but don’t waste your time in services!”
So, as little as I recall of that spring’s Purim party, I can say with assurance that Brenda set the whole thing up. And that it was enough to push me over the edge and away from any synagogue-sponsored activity for, well, ever, since this last carnival was sponsored by the local Jewish Community Center (not a synagogue), where Jake attends preschool. Because it’s the best program in town, not because I felt the need to enroll my child in Jewish daycare.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The reason that spring of ‘82 Purim party so turned me off to the joys of Purim remains rooted in memory, even if all the other details of the evening have faded. Brenda and I arrived just in time for a stand-up routine by some kid consisting entirely of racist jokes. I was so horrified that, to this day, I have steadfastedly ignored Purim. Plus, I generally don’t have any idea when it is, being only nominally Jewish and all.
And yet, a few weeks ago, when the announcements went up at Jake’s school, I was thrilled. Not only because I knew without a doubt that there would be no racist fourteen-year-old comedians at the JCC’s Purim Carnival. But because I truly was looking forward to taking Jake to the celebration.
Continue reading ‘My First Purim Carnival! (and Jake’s too)’
Like Kate Winslet, I, too, used to practice my Oscar acceptance speech in front of the mirror when I was eight years old.
But I don’t any longer. Instead, last night I propped my swollen ankles up on a few pillows, threw an old baby blue blanket over my wriggling belly, and polished off the organic truffles I bought at EarthFare on Thursday while watching Kate Winslet, all glamorous and beautiful, give a real, live, it’s-actually-happened Oscar acceptance speech.
And, the thing is, I don’t really wish I could trade places.
Continue reading ‘When the Glamour Is Gone: How a Pregnant Mother of a Toddler Watches the Oscars’
Jake has been wearing his beloved pink polka dot boots pretty much non-stop for over a week now.
We have engaged in successful negotiations about removing them for bed time and bath time (for which he even removed his swim diaper the other night, suggesting he is finally over the traumatic poop-in-the-tub incident). But otherwise, on they go — over his footie pajamas, to the alpaca farm where we bought our Christmas tree, pretty much with anything or to anywhere that allows a boy to proudly display his most prized possession.
He picked them out on a family trip to the new REI situated in a nearby suburban complex of shiny box stores still smelling of plastic and glue, condominiums for the type who grow faint-hearted at the prospect of walking more than a block to get a cup of coffee, and the first stadium-seating movie theater in town. (Asheville has lots to offer, just not, regrettably the ArcLight.)
Much as I shuddered as we came upon the brightly lit buildings and manicured intersections of the Biltmore Woods development, I must say I also felt a hush of calm fall over me, not unlike those times during my 1990 backpacking foray through Europe when I’d walk into a McDonalds just to use the bathroom and feel at home. I was even moved to suggest to Mike that we schedule a date night there.
“We could have dinner at P.F. Changs and then see a movie,” Mike said, half-jokingly but mostly agreeably.
Sometimes, it seems, we crave the comforts of consumerism.
Even, apparently, when we are not yet two years old.
After some time spent traipsing along the aisles and charming the very patient employees, Jake stumbled upon the boots. There they were, displayed on a wall of children’s shoes, along with some heavy duty hiking boots and, notably, the “boys” equivalent of the boots he chose.
I pointed out the navy-and-green option just to make certain he was aware of all the possibilities.
“No,” he said, hugging the pink polka dot version to his chest.
“These would match your football shirts better,” I said hopefully. Which, honestly, was my main concern. Gender roles bother me not in the least, but a well coordinated outfit is of great importance. And, yes, Jake prefers to wear a shirt with a football or baseball on it every day. I did not teach him to do so.
Mike came upon us as Jake responded by trying to put the sample pink polka dot boot on his foot.
“He won’t try the other ones on,” I said apologetically. Again, not my gender issue. But Mike’s — you know — a guy, and I wasn’t sure he’d be quite so amused by Jake’s flaunting of convention.
“You like these, buddy?” Mike asked, as Jake made it perfectly clear that it was a ridiculous question. “Should we try them on?” Then, a tad sheepishly because he really isn’t all that caught up in gender conventions either, he added, “Should we try the others too, just to see if you like them better?”
We flagged down a salesperson, a young guy, outdoorsy in the suburban-outdoorsy way of REI employees. And we practically tripped over each other to explain that Jake just preferred the pink boots. It was as if we needed to prove to this 22-year-old stranger than we knew those boots were meant for girls, it’s just that our child didn’t.
I didn’t get the sense the salesperson cared too much one way or another. He certainly didn’t make any untoward faces as he helped Jake try on various sizes in the pink, and he handled the entire transaction with the same professionalism I’m sure he would have shown had Jake chosen a more manly option.
So why, I ask myself, did I recount the story of Jake refusing to try on the navy-and-green boots to his teachers at school the next day? Why does Mike still add this detail when people comment on Jake’s boots? Why am I still recounting the story today?
It is, I think, more complicated than a gender thing. Rather, it seems to be an identity thing. Or, rather, it’s about Jake’s innocent display of how we do, to varying degrees, for better or worse, define ourselves by the things we own.
Continue reading ‘Can a Sense of Self Come with Pink Polka Dot Boots?’
Jake took a bath last night for the first time in a week.
This fact is notable for three reasons. First, he is generally quite fond of the tub, so a one-week boycott is a serious thing indeed. Second, the fact that I was able to ease him back into the tub wearing a swim diaper adorned with Winnie the Pooh suggested that he might one day overcome the Poop in the Bathtub debacle I inflicted on him, oh, last time he voluntarily took a bath. Third, of course, is that he has taught me a big lesson about giving and receiving.
Continue reading ‘Giving and Receiving Toddler Style — In the Bathtub’
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 party last Sunday.
The party, actually, was exactly what I needed. It was one of those beautiful fall days when the sun is so warm and the air so still that you turn your face to the sun and forget to wear sunblock. Jake was ecstatic chasing around his three-year-old friend, I was nearly as pleased hanging out with her parents and other adults, and Jake’s surprise rendition of “Happy Birthday to You” all the way home was — appropriately enough — the icing on the cake.
The only speck on the surface of this idyllic Sunday afternoon, the ugly undercurrent I pretended to ignore, was this: I was wearing maternity jeans.
I must interject here to point out that I put on those same jeans this morning and confirmed that they are, in fact, still so big on me that they slide down so that the ugly stretchy part at the top peeks out from under my shirt. I am unable to explain why this fact thrills me when the alternative is to cling to my old army pants that I wore twice a week to breastfeeding clinic two years ago because they were the perfect postpartum size and that now sport a couple of holes near the waistband that I pray are not a sign that my only comfortable pants will shred into pieces after another wash or two.
But I’m being honest here. And honesty dictates that, sadly, it is a point of pride with me to dig through my closet looking for the old, the too big, the stretched out clothes that still fit me so I can proudly proclaim I am not wearing maternity clothes. Just looking sloppy and thick and why was it again that I don’t want to look pregnant instead of just fat?
But last Sunday I was feeling Mature. I had experienced a few round ligament pains that literally took my breath away. They felt sort of like a big, huge rubber band snapping somewhere in the vicinity of my uterus. Which is an especially disconcerting feeling when you find yourself with a reason to think about your uterus and its location inside your body.
So I pulled a long shirt over the stretchy blue tummy thing and fancied myself camouflaged, my secret safe.
Until I met the other party guest who was just two weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy.
“It’s my first day in maternity clothes too,” she confided.
I assured her that she looked great. Not just because I wanted her to tell me the same thing (she didn’t), but because I know how nice it is to have someone say such a thing to you when you are pregnant and because it was true. In point of fact, she looked pretty much like I did.
But then we got into the fatigue thing. “I’m a lot more tired this time,” she allowed without any prompting from me. “But it’s because I’m thirty-nine.”
At this moment, I didn’t like her quite as much as I had been thinking I did.
It occurred to me, as Jake ate his lunch at Green Sage today, that having your child drop pieces of pork sausage in your lap may not be the most appropriate way to honor Yom Kippur.
Normally, I would spend this day fasting, meditating, reflecting. Not, I must explain, in any kind of religious service. I tried it once and it didn’t bring to me the same meaning that I took from the holiday — searching for ways to be a better person, to avoid repeating any mistakes I may have made over the past year, and to remind myself of the things that are important in life. Instead, I have started spending the day alone, at home, writing and thinking and just being.
But pregnancy interferes with fasting and a toddler off from preschool for the day interferes with meditation and reflection. I did, Mike reminded me this morning, have both the option and the excuse to bring Jake to the house of one of his teachers instead of watching him myself. He visited her last week when school was closed for Rosh Hashanah and had an awesome time, or so he tells me.
But somehow, today, even though I couldn’t have my usual Yom Kippur of introspection and calm, it didn’t seem right to have someone else care for Jake.
And so, uncertain of why I wasn’t taking the easy way out by sending him to someone else’s house for the day, grumpy that his nighttime cough had triumphed over my attempts to get him out of my bed and back into his last night, I resolved to find fun, meaningful things to do with my child.
Like, first on the agenda, going to the kids’ gym downtown that we have heard about but never before visited.
We arrived 15 minutes into the one-hour session for Jake’s age group, greatly delayed by my inability to find any clothes that fit my not-my-usual-size-but-not-maternity-clothes-sized body. Worse than having to wear pants that are two sizes too big (and therefore add extra room where I don’t need it), however, was choosing the shoes to match.
You’d think it would be a simple matter, pulling on a pair of shoes. But once the days of flip flops pass, I find myself stymied. Tennis shoes or clogs? Socks or bare feet? What on earth matches too-big black jeans with skinny legs?
Not, I concluded, the shoes I was wearing when Jake and I dashed into the gym at 10:15.
Happily, we had to remove our shoes when we got there, so I could concentrate instead on those first moments of utter terror Jake experienced. He clung to my arm as if molded there by plaster of paris before I could coax him to take a walk, hand in mine. Slowly, he ventured onto the trampoline sunken into the floor. And declared that he liked it very much.
This declaration consisted of saying, “Dat, dat,” until I identified this wonderful new phenomenon as, “Trampoline.”
“Trampoline,” he said approvingly before running across it again.
Forty minutes later, when the session ended, Jake was quite loathe to leave the gym, and probably my promise that he was going shoe shopping with me didn’t help much. But I was back in my hated, ill-matching shoes, and I have long harbored an interest in owning a pair of black Chuck Taylor low-tops. I never quite thought I could pull it off, but today, when I should have been reflecting on the important things in life, all I came up with were those Chuck Taylors.
Off we headed, to Discount Shoes, the only place in town I knew I could count on finding them. Miraculously — or perhaps portentously — we went directly to the correct aisle. Jake picked up a hot pink pair for me, but I told him only black would do. I searched for my size. And searched. And searched.
How could there be no size 7 1/2 black Chuck Taylor low-tops?! Was there a god somewhere trying to tell me something?
Jake and I ran (in his case) and strode (in mine) the aisles looking for a suitable substitute. But I’ve waited years for this moment. Nothing else would do.
So we returned to the Chucks. Maybe they ran big, I thought, without much hope. I tried on a pair half a size smaller than I normally wear. And — angels singing and clouds parting — they fit perfectly.
Certain that buying shoes on Yom Kippur was just the right thing to do after all, I scooped them and Jake up and ran to the check out.
Whereupon I was informed that they don’t take American Express.
Like a thwarted consumer in a bad commercial, I sadly informed the cashier that I am between Visa cards — my last one having slipped out of my pocket and onto the street last Monday, where it was picked up by a kind soul who called the bank and left a number where I could reach him. But, as much goodness as there is in the world, can you really with total security not change your account when a stranger has been holding onto your card for more than enough time to, oh, jot down the number?
Hence, I have no Visa for a few days, and no black Chuck Taylor low-tops.
Continue reading ‘Yom Kippur, Spirituality, and a Pair of Black Chuck Taylor Low-Tops’
