Struggling through with joy... |
kind of.
Struggling through with joy... |
Last night when I took my elderly chihuahua out for her final bathroom break, I looked up at the moon, a veil of clouds passing over and ringing it with a soft pastel aura. My heart swelled at the beauty and I felt grateful for the obligation that brought me into the backyard on a Monday night. I felt grateful for the beauty that exists in our world and the eyes to see it.
One day earlier I was mired in a foul mood so deep I flipped two dogs off as I jogged by. They barked and raced against their fences, as they always do, aching to get out and chase me, I suppose, but I couldn’t take it. I was sick of their a-hole behavior. I was sick of being a little bit afraid of them. There is no wisdom in this. I just offer it up to others like me, who swing from mood to mood in spite of all efforts to regulate. Some days are just hard. Some are beautiful. Most are both. The best thing I can do is learn to accept it. I am astounded by the number of things I have yet to learn in this life. It’s exciting, honestly, to anticipate all we can learn right up until our death: new discoveries about the universe, how to make a good pie crust, the inner workings of bee society. Although there is also a lot in life we’d rather not learn, especially through experience. For example, I am solidly in middle age and have lived with cats most of my life, and yet I only learned of their silent flatulence within the last few years.
I was reminded of cat flatulence this morning as I practiced lovingkindness meditation with my toothless, six-toed torty purring on my lap. About three years ago I started meditating seriously in an effort to improve my mental health and deepen my spiritual life. Lofty goals for a regular person. Lola kitty assigned herself as my meditation partner, and while I’m sure it isn’t best practice to allow pets to sit in your lap while meditating, I love her slight weight warming my lap. I relax, she relaxes, we float on a cloud of peace. Then she toots. I never realized cats fart. My life was too crowded with other, louder flatulent creatures. Dogs, for one, as well as older brothers, fathers, husbands and my daughter, who thinks farts are fodder for top-shelf humor. Meanwhile my cats were farting away silently in their kitty condos, and I’d never considered the cat fart. Lola, with her quiet tooting presence, keeps me humble. I may be seeking greater peace and spiritual depth, but she reminds me not to take myself too seriously. We are all just messy creatures trying to get through life the best we know how. Farts and all. Last week the father of a student said, “Keep your thumb on that penny long enough, it’ll shine.” While I don’t subscribe completely with this parenting philosophy (I’m more of a “Love the penny relentlessly but provide good structure and boundaries, but don’t be so controlling that the penny feels stifled and unable to be itself, unless the penny is being a jerk, then definitely keep a thumb on the penny. But still accept the penny as it is. Make sure the penny eats well and gets plenty of sleep so that it can manage its emotions, and provide a good blend of free time and lessons and sports for the penny, even if it means sacrificing your own hobbies…) it is effective in the case of this child
My own father did not appear to have a parenting philosophy. It wasn’t a thing men of his generation thought about, for one thing, and he didn’t have a good example of fatherhood from his own childhood. He felt his main job was to provide us with a nice house and make sure we were always clothed, fed, and had a warm bed to sleep in, and he did this well. He was always present in our lives, which isn’t something he could depend on from his own father. He loved us deeply but struggled with the harder aspects of parenting, like setting boundaries and meting out discipline that didn’t just involve yelling. He was more of a fun- time dad with me when I was little. We played together a lot, and he indulged my requests to fix his hair and paint his nails. He taught me all his superstitious ways. We avoided walking under ladders and made wishes on eyelashes and dandelions. When we visited the cemetery, we always stepped over graves, not on them. We never failed to pick up heads-up pennies and tucked them in our shoes. Yesterday I squeezed in a walk while my daughter was in ballet class and found a heads-up penny on the ground. It felt like a visit from my dad, who has been gone almost fourteen years. A part of my rational brain knows pennies on the sidewalk and the floating seed of a dandelion are not visits from the beyond, but they keep me tethered to the tremendous love of my father. They remind me I don’t always have to know what I’m doing as a parent. With love, the penny will still shine. Like many people, I mark the transition from work to home by changing clothes. I take off my work clothes and pull on my clearance rack pink tye dye sweatpants, ready to settle in for the evening. They are a physical reminder that my work day is done and I can let loose a little. They say, “She’s not going anywhere. It’s time to pour the wine and put the sad bastard music on Pandora while we cook dinner. We’re gonna fall asleep on the couch at 9 because we know how to party..”
I try not to go anywhere but our yard in my sweatpants, and because I flout convention when at home, I’ll often slip on whatever shoes are near the door to take out the trash or refill the birdfeeder. Recently, I looked down and discovered I’d slipped on my pink Birkenstocks over striped socks, and I realized I’ve become my mother. When I was 14 my mother had an entirely pink sweatsuit, only to be worn at home. Or when she was picking my friends and I up at the first football game of our high school career. She showed up promptly after the game and pulled up to the gates, where she rolled down the window and called for us. Embarrassed, we skittered into the car and hoped she would pull away quickly. We were in high school now, and the acknowledgement of parental existence was mortifying. She pulled away slowly, eyeing two girls sitting alone near the gates. “Do you know those girls, honey?” she asked. Their long bangs had been teased and sprayed so their crested over their foreheads and curtained one eye. They wore dark eyeliner and dark clothes, black boots over fishnet tights. I didn’t know the girls, not really. I’d seen them around school and been fascinated. They intimidated me. They possessed a cool I barely understood. I groaned. “No, mom. Let’s just go. Please.” Her mouth tightened into a determined line and she glanced again in the rearview mirror. “I’ll just wait a bit to make sure someone picks them up. It’s not safe for them to be at the park alone this late.” I glanced at the girls. They had scotch tape and were using it to tape their noses up to look like pigs. They giggled and fell into each other. We sat in the car for nearly one hundred years while my mom hummed and tried to ask us about the game. I was mostly silent but my polite friend indulged her questions. Finally, my mom got out of the car, pink from head to toe except for her feet, where she was wearing her trusty Birkies, as she called them, and a pair of my father’s navy dress socks. Why, I wondered, did she hate me so. When it became clear no one was coming to get the girls, she bullied them into the car in that nice, no-nonsense way elementary teachers have, and we drove hither and yon to deliver them home. It was a long, humiliating night with my kind and determined mother chatting away to four silent teenagers. In her horrifying sweatpants and men’s dress socks.. And now I am her. Sometimes when I am in my front yard in my tye-dye sweatpants I yell at kids who ride their bikes in the middle of our busy street, “Get on the sidewalk! I don’t want you to get hit by a car!” And they laugh and wave, because they know me from school. They also usually ignore me. My son is mortified by this behavior. I became friends with those girls. They showed me the ropes of teenage rebellion. They made fun of my mom. When we were adults, one of them teased her at my wedding, and she laughed and hugged her. When you have a good mother, there are worse things to become than her. I have worked hard to differentiate myself from her, to be my own person, and she has encouraged it. But some behaviors are ingrained. At least I’m giving my kids an interesting story to share when they’re adults. Yesterday when I was struggling through my intermediate power yoga video in our sun room, my daughter barfed all over the dining area of our home. I heard odd coughing noises coming from the living room and hopped out of my downward dog, yelling, “Ruby, are you ok?”
“Mommy, I think I’m going to…” and then, well. She did. My husband remarked later that I handled the whole thing better than usual, which is to say I didn’t handle it well, but I was less hysterical than usual. Instead of screaming and running away from her, I screamed for my husband, briefly hid in the sun room, then reassured her across her lake of puke before her daddy carried her off to the shower. I set to work cleaning it up with shaky hands. I might have peed my pants a little from anxiety, but I managed. I knew this difficult time was headed our way. Everything had been going too well: I’m less stressed than usual because my student teacher is taking over; I’ve had time to grade papers and plan small groups well; time to think about big ideas, time to read, and time to bake cookies. I’m doing better reaching my personal and professional goals. The whole house was moderately clean and we all had clean socks and underwear in our dresser drawers. The kids are doing well in school and had been mostly illness free for one whole month. Then, yesterday my son woke up with a fever, stomachache and headache and here we are. All good things come to end, a bad end. My father (probably accidentally) drummed this idea into my head from a young age. Nothing good can last. When I was a kid we’d just returned from a great vacation fishing and exploring in the mountains to discover my grandpa had suffered a devastating heart attack, and my dad said, “That’s the way it is. Things were too good to last.” Whenever my life is even the slightest bit good, which it usually is, I am crouched and ready for the next bad thing to attack. In addition to believing doom is always around the bend, I also hold fast to the belief that maybe I don’t deserve all these good things in my life. Why do I get the warm and sometimes clean home and good husband and job I love? Why do I get such extraordinary if sometimes frustrating and invasive children? Why do I get the comfort of financial security and a supportive extended family? I love my in-laws, for God’s sake. My mom and I are incredibly close and enjoy just being together. My stinky old chihuahua is one of the nice ones who doesn’t bite, she only nips, and only occasionally. I don’t deserve these things any more than the next person. The last Thanksgiving my father was alive we all got rotavirus. It was violent and horrible and does not need to be detailed. It sucked. But I remember so many good things from that last Thanksgiving. I remember how relieved I was to be with my family when I was sick because I lived alone at the time. I remember my older brother checking on me through the night, his big hand patting my head as if I was a kid instead of his adult sister. I remember learning my sister-in-law shared my phobia of vomit, finding it comforting that I’m not the only one in the family with that brand of crazy. I remember how beautiful my nephew was, the first baby in our family, his huge blue eyes and his giggle when my mom and I bathed him. I remember my dad hiding his sickness so he could taste the homemade stuffing my brother made for Thanksgiving, which was weird and gross on my father’s part but also how he expressed his love, through the sharing and appreciation of food. Even when said food was going to be immediately and secretly expelled. Years of meditation and prayer have deepened my understanding of good things coming to an end. Of course they will, because they do. The bad times come to an end too. Right now, my kids seem a little bit better. They have eaten a little bread and water here in mom’s illness prison and it’s staying in their tummies for now. They’ve read some books and are playing video games while it snows outside. They're clamoring to listen to KidzBop. I feel like today might be one of the crappier days, but it will end. It probably won’t be entirely crappy, either, just as that last Thanksgiving with my dad wasn’t entirely horrible in spite of our illness. My dad was right, but he was wrong too. I’m working on prying the habit of doom thinking out of my thought patterns. Everything good will end, but the bad will end too. I don’t deserve this good life more than anyone else, but I can soak up the tremendous love and good fortune that surrounds me and share it in the small ways I know how. Which, for today, means a lot of time on the couch with my healing kids, allowing extra tv time and reading books and coloring, learning how to be a better mother when my kids have stomach bugs. This bad time will end, too, and good times are just around the corner. I want to write about the shooting in Boulder. I’m confused and angry and heartbroken and I think writing about it will help me sort out how I feel.
I lived in Boulder for 12 years, through college and most of my young adulthood. The town itself, it’s personality and values, shaped who I am today. But it’s too raw. I feel powerless, I cannot hear more about thoughts and prayers and personal freedom. I am stunned that so many people believe they have the right, the need, to own a gun so powerful it can mow down innocent citizens stopping in a grocery store for a few things. I can’t focus on anything for long. I sit outside while my children dig in the dirt, reading my book and only half-understanding. I start making them lunch three times. It takes me 30 minutes to get a load of laundry in the washer. My mind pings around and wanders. I think about hands, the way our veins make a map on the front and back of our hands, the way it feels to hold different kinds of hands: small damp hands that are always warm, strong hands used to working, old gnarled hands that foretell the future of my own fingers. I think about the tenderness of our frail human bodies. When I find I am forgetting the humanity of others, this is what I think about. Hands. Eyes. That which makes us unique. I want to recognize the humanity in others, even those whom I find reprehensible. I want to let go of my judgement and hold their hands, to look into their eyes, to find some way to understand. I want to listen, even when it is hard. I think about the people who were killed. I hope they have tremendous peace now. I ache for the grief 10 families have been plunged into. Their peace will be long in coming, if it ever returns. I wonder how it is we’ve become so hateful that we can live with this kind of depravity. I discover I am still not afraid to go to the grocery store. I still want to raise my children to be independent. I still want to trust other people. I want to believe in the goodness of most people. I don’t know how so many opposing ideas can exist in my mind. I’m exhausted by it. I pray, and I meditate, and I read to my children. I will write about Boulder, really write about it, but not yet. Not now. For now, I will sit with disorientation, sorrow, anger. I will not continue to be a person who accepts that this ugliness is who we are in America, even when I see it very clearly is who we are. I will let my rage simmer into action, empathy, some small hope that something can change. When my son was a toddler one of his favorite stories had the recurring line The zoo is loud today! When we read it to him he would make the sounds of the animals in the picture.
That’s how I think of my mind when I meditate. I’ve been meditating almost daily for two years now. The zoo of my mind is still loud. I return to my breath over and over, as the gentle voice on my meditation app guides me to, and over and over the cacophony of my thoughts leap and fly around my mind. What should I wear today? What if one of the kids wakes up sick? Did I remember to email that parent? I better not forget foil at the store. The zoo is loud today, I think, and return to my breath. I would give up this fifteen minutes of silence every morning, but the magic of how it’s transformed my inner life is profound. I’m still neurotic but I’m making wary friends with my neurotic thoughts. They aren’t me. They’re just things that ping around my mind. I am not an anxious person. I just experience anxious thoughts, then let them go. Some days, I let them go millions of times in one day. Some days, they nearly drown me. I’ve learned there is a beginning and an end to every feeling. Everything changes, all the time. I’ve learned to accept this. Which has led to so much more acceptance: of aging, of the subtle details of my life, of difficulties and joys. Which has led to so much more recognition: of my blessings, my privilege, the love affair between two doves who live in our backyard tree. I see the tender way they groom each other while I wash dishes. I notice what I never saw before. I am dependent on the time, every morning, when I sit down with the zoo that is my mind. The monkey thoughts careen around, then slow, as I breathe, and breathe, and breathe. Last night I found myself falling into an old habit, and I’m wondering what it means. It isn’t really a bad or good habit, but indulging it can have long-term repercussions.
I was finishing up some computer work for school and I thought, “I’ll just see what animals are up for adoption at the local humane society.” My elderly chihuahua snuggled into my leg and mumbled. My husband snored with the cat on the couch. No one needed to know what I was up to. Before I met my husband, I was an animal shopper. I checked the humane society adoption pages the way other people use Tinder. As I got older and the prospect of marrying and having children dimmed, I indulged my deep love of animals in my classroom and my home. I had a rabbit & a snake (never in the same cage), a tiny hedgehog, a sweet bearded dragon named Fred; a mean cat only loved by me, a dear old hunting dog afraid of loud noises, and my sweet and trembly chihuahua. I am a person both selfish and nurturing, and taking care of pets satisfy urges in both areas. Dogs, especially, fill that spot in some of us that needs a little extra attention and love. Their devotion, their excitement at seeing us every damn time, briefly convinces us we’re just a little more special than the rest of humanity, even when our dog shows the same excitement over a dead squirrel. By the time my husband came into my life I had two dogs and space in my heart for a cat because my old meanie cat passed away. N, however, is not an animal person. He would never have a pet on his own. He is a man of activity and intellect. He’d rather be out hiking and exploring or reading and writing than sitting with a dog on his lap and a book in hand. Dogs make him sneeze and he finds pet fur annoying. He is also a man of acceptance, and he knew my pets were part of the package. When I came home from work one day and saw him walking my dogs, I knew it was meant to be. He got me a cat for Valentine’s Day one year. She has six-toes on each foot and no teeth, and she’s perfect. He takes our old chihuahua on short walks ‘to keep her joints loose.’ I don’t know what’s making me pet shop now. I have zero intention of getting us a pet. OK, I’ve considered a house rabbit or a parakeet, but we’re too busy to care for more pets and it would be very upsetting to the two old girls we have. My kids keep talking about wanting a puppy or a kitten one day, and I promise them we will get one when our pets go to the great pet beyond, while my husband sighs and silently agrees. I think. I am remembering when it was only the dogs, cat and I. My life was a little lonely and much simpler. I had a lot of friends but no one to really take care of. The dogs and I would walk for hours on the weekend, and one or two times a day every weekday. They liked to nap and cuddle, to eat horrifying things and vomit them up, but they didn’t put demands on my time like the ones I have now, precious young demands who hate napping and enjoy cuddling and terrify me when they vomit. I also want to share the experience of getting a new pet with my kids. I want them to feel how it is similar to falling in love, but without the horrible rejection and breakups that so often come with love. I want them to experience the way you can’t wait to get home to see your new pet, to learn what each head cock and ear flick means, to sit together and watch the world go by or explore new trails. I want them to learn the way you think about them even when you’re away from them. There is no exploring with my dog now. She is so arthritic she can barely make it to the end of the block, and we often end up carrying her more than she walks. The cat is still spry but she’s no kitten. And yet, these are my girls. They’ve been with us, with me, through huge life changes, and they’re still here, purring on my head at night, snuggling into my leg when I grade papers, watching my children play in the backyard. I'm in no hurry to see them go. I’ll continue to pet shop the same way I look at houses from time to time. It fuels a hopeful fantasy of a life yet to come. Then, I’ll close my computer and pet my dog’s balding white head before I mix the cat her nightly canned food soup, glad for the companions who have accompanied me into this next phase of my life. I have a little secret I don’t share with many people. I kind of like Mondays. Not on the same level I like Fridays, of course, especially Fridays-before-a-break-when-I-have-two-hours-of-plan-time-and-my-husband-is-picking-up-the-kids-after-work-so-I-get-some-me-time Fridays.
I like Mondays for the opposite reason I like Fridays. On Mondays, it is a little easier to be the better version of me. To abstain from lunch dessert, for instance, and only have one little dish of jelly beans after dinner instead of two, or five, or seven. I usually wear a better outfit on Mondays, and I’m WAY more likely to exercise. I’m often still smiley by 5 p.m. on Mondays, more likely to handle discipline problems with kindness and humor. I’m able to focus after work instead of slumping in my chair and thumbing absently through the piles on my desk while I shovel apple slices in my mouth because I’m dehydrated and starving. I’m fresh on Mondays. Mondays mark the end of weekend debauchery, which in middle age includes activities like staying up until 11, maybe having 1 ½ glasses of wine, or extra dessert. I often eat red meat and cheese on the weekend, sometimes even French fries. I watch too much t.v. with my husband, and we make fun of our local newscasters because they look about twelve years old. It’s not nice, but it’s the weekend and we like to let our hair down a little before we fall asleep on the couch. Then Monday comes, with its fresh hopes, and although a pandemic year has meant a lot of Mondays that leave me saying the phrase that starts with W, T & F, (nothing starts a week off wrong like quarantining) they’ve mostly been fairly good. Sure, I’ve had some rough-reentry Mondays, where we crash into the week with our tails on fire and wonder what the heck just happened. Even so, I’m often rested enough from the weekend to shake off the effects of a crash landing and march through the rest of the week. While we all like to toast glamorous Fridays, I’d like to raise a can of cucumber-mint seltzer to all the good and ordinary Mondays in the world. They keep us on track, and I’m thankful for it. Here’s to you, Mondays. |
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