metaphorical waves...

After our easy and flowy day of reading, drawing, watching animated Shakespeare, learning some lines, and making waves together, I was feeling so good.  It was that perfect balance of productivity and spontaneity, where I had some loose ideas of what we could do with the day - Wednesday is the day after a long homeschool coop day, and we often need it to be open for recooperation - but I didn't feel attached to the outcome.  Of course, when it did turn out so well, I felt boosted, affirmed, accomplished, capable...So you can imagine how yesterday went, right? By 5:00, when I met with my friend Jen (for a massage - the very best part of my day for sure!) she took one look at me and said, "Ohhhh, you're paying for your good day, aren't you?!!"  I was.  I do this on a regular basis: ride the high, feeling very attached to what I see as the successes of the day, only to begin the next day with even higher expectations, so when we have a normal day - that is, with its own ups and downs and unpredictability - I fall hard.  It wasn't even that it was such a horrible day, but without the magical flow, I felt defeated and exhausted by its end.

Here comes the wave part.  One of the things I grocked the other day looking at waves was how it is energy moving through matter that is the wave - not matter being moved along.  Does that make sense? The image that did it for me was of a boat floating on the water. A wave comes along and obviously the boat moves, but it moves up and down, ending up in pretty much the same spot, while the wave moves on towards the beach.  The visual I saw showed the boat making little circles up, around, and down, while the big waves moved on past.

Do you see where this is going? I would like to be more like the boat, or a particle experiencing the wave, but not to be caught in the wave.  I would like to feel grounded enough so that my experience of the days does not push me greatly in one or another direction but merely moves through me.  What this mostly means is not getting so attached to the great days because it makes the less-than-great days seems so much worse than they really are.  

I lay there during my massage, thinking through my day and listing all of the great things that had actually happened.  I think of myself as a fairly positive person, but man, can I wallow in the bad moments. Listing the good stuff in my mind - sitting with Ani as we worked really slowly through our map drawings of Greece; holding my tongue when what I was going to offer after piano lesson was unhelpful criticism, not support; snuggling on the couch after dinner to watch one more wave video (Bill Nye, dontcha know); having a little energy left at bedtime to sit with each girl for a while as they each recounted the current happenings in their bedtime readings - put the day in perspective.

We have also been reading about Buddhism, and unattachment, which I've never really understood, but with the pinging about of ideas and connections (which is the juiciest way for the days to unfold) - from waves to parenting to learning to Buddhism and back again - I am getting a little closer.

baby steps

I am wanting to write a post about what we're doing, learning-wise, with resources and such, but it is feeling daunting, and so is just not going to happen today.  I am feeling the early darkness and my shifting hormones and it has me out of sorts.

I've had a phrase spinning in my head for the last couple of days, that I heard during a talk on stress at the herbal conference.  I didn't remember it exactly, and I'm laughing because when I googled it I got a bazillion different variations, but the gist of it is Take one step towards God and God will take ten steps towards you. You can imagine what came up in my search: it was two steps, ten thousand steps, even ninety-nine steps.  Whatever. The idea is that when you make a commitment to open to the divine, through connection to and care of yourself, the earth, and the people around you, the response is strong.  

The teacher leading the class emphasized baby steps towards unwinding stress.  Most are obvious: get more sleep, get quality sleep, get some exercise, learn to say no.  Pay attention to your nutrition: eat nutrient-rich foods, eat organic, non-GMO foods, learn to manage your blood-sugar levels.  Find your de-stressors: meditation, yoga, emotional support from the people around you.  Actually, looking at the list makes me feel a little anxious about managing my stress, so let's move on.

I woke up ridiculously early this morning, feeling worry filling my belly, tingling in my chest, making my eyes tear.  This happens, and I'm assured that it's normal to wake up in the night, that it's my age, that it's a part of menopause, but it never feels normal or ok.  There are always thoughts accompanying the feelings, though they aren't always clear or quick to surface.  This morning it was about, oh, something small - like my children's education.  My mind wandered through the bubbles of doubt and worry - do I have enough perspective to know how my kids are doing? Will I know when they need more? Should I be pushing them in some direction?  Are they happy and learning with joy? None of my deep beliefs about how kids learn seemed to matter in this moment, it was all Worry.  And then we entered dangerous territory: comparison.  I found myself recalling conversations with my beautiful niece, who is such a brilliant sparkle and loves loves loves her school.  She is really fortunate to attend an unusual school that gets it about as right as any school can, and she will be able to stay there through eighth grade, which is amazing.  Ah, now I'm seeing a bit of what might have been happening for me.  Eliza, as you might know, has been attending one class a day at the local middle school.  For nine weeks it was art, and she loved it.  She loved the teacher, she loved the room, she enjoyed the projects.  She was not crazy about her table-mates, but she made the best of it.  At the midterm, art ended and health class started.  She makes her health teacher sound Lucille-Ball-funny, but last week she told me she hates it.  I assumed it was because it is boring to her - they've spent three weeks on bullying and naming feelings (which I was impressed by!), and now they're studying nutrition, reading labels. She said it wasn't so much that.  It's the feeling of the building.  The attitude that she feels in the halls.  A meanness.  And - it's the blasted lights! The horrible florescents! Art class is in the nicest room in the building, with huge skylights and high ceilings.  Health class is back to reality.

So my mind wandered to having better options for my girl.  I don't think school, this school, is a great place for her, but I want her to feel supported and have options.  I want her to feel challenged and engaged and have as many friends as she needs to feel a part of the world.  So I put that all on me - I lay there trying to figure out how the hell I could be Lucy's private school with its well-read, creative teachers, beautiful rooms and scads of dear friends for my girl.  You can guess where this got me.

Inhale, exhale.

There is a thriving co-counseling community here and I've been learning a little about it since summer.  Saturday I gathered with women who have trained in this method of peer-counseling, and at the end of our time the woman who was leading for the day said something that did not resonate with me at the time but rose to the surface this morning as I lay there in bed:  You are good.  You. Are. Good. 

It felt like an honoring of the struggling times and the fact that even when things aren't looking so pretty or I even fall flat on my face again, I am worthy of love and kindness.  Even from myself. Yow.

When I got out of bed I could feel that thought lingering with me.  I decided to put aside the worries about school and take inventory on the baby steps I've been taking towards meeting the divine.  They are small - sleeping when I need to, really listening to my body to know I'm eating food that is good for me,  listening to music that takes me to that zone, singing, reading, holding stones, getting out in the cold, meeting with friends and co-counseling - but I wonder if collectively they can start to shift things.  

Still writing a post every day. Still November. Thank you for reading. I'd like to say all of the posts are well-thought-out, but sometimes it's a bit of a wander...

living like it's sunday

a ball of Trixie

Oh, Sunday. I love you so. My kids overheard me saying that I'm working on time-bending, (they love the allusion to their favorite show, Avatar) and they thought that was so funny, but really - Sundays do just that.  The time stretches like silly-putty, around the naps, the lazy meals, the game after game after game, the pajamas in the afternoon, the endless crafting...And there is so much learning I hear going on.  Listening to d'Aulaires' Greek Myths as they carefully color intricately drawn animals, Ani and a neighbor friend discuss the stories that are familiar, and wonder together what the sirens really were, and is the Black Sea a real place?  "Did they just say GIANT HORSE? I love this story, I've heard it before!"

condensation...it's getting cold!

Playing cards with Eliza and Dan, we look at the paintings on each card (an awesome deck of "Art Cards" from my sister) and talk about pointillism; Boucher's Diana leads to talking about the Roman myth, which Eliza quickly recognizes as the Greek myth of Artemis.  Eliza sees The Little Gleaner by Renoir and remembers a painting hanging in the music library on campus, of the girls playing the piano, also by Renoir. To make it even more fun, we play our game using whatever French words we can come up with and heck, if you can't remember the word, just say it with your best French accent...

After Bananagrams, where Eliza's first word was cataract, we talked about what cataracts are and looked at lode versus load.  Dan spent three-plus hours reading the seventh Harry Potter to Eliza, snuggled up in a swath of sunlight reaching our bed, as it's just gotten cold enough where the air in her northside bedroom produced great puffs of steam as he made his way through the dialogue. 

Ani and her friend continued to make art and listen to myths, figuring out how to work together on clothespin people and their vehicles,  pausing to mimic Kathleen Turner's wonderfully smoky voice reading the story of Achilles, and share an "aha" moment about the achilles tendon.

Are you with me? I'm roasting an eggplant for baba ganoush and thinking about cleaning up the garden, putting plastic on the windows, going for a walk...or maybe I'll do some self-care and take a long nap before putting on a pot of soup for supper. 

This is a rich day of life, and it is what I really want for every day - needs all getting met without the stress and struggle we tend to feel during the rest of the week.  

Yes, some of it is having Dan here, the girls soaking up his attention, and me enjoying his companionship and the little break it gives me from being The Person, but maybe the essence of a Sunday is something I can foster through the week for all of us, not buying into the must-be-busy-to-be-productive illusion that nips at my heels.  We overdid it last week, and when that happens I feel it deeply in my gut.  That feeling is my disappointment that I didn't listen to the little voice that warns me that I'm starting to run on empty.  Some of it is just being depleted and feeling stretched too thin, with no bounce left me.  

The Professor making off with his kid's bike

Approaching this non-schooling life the way we do, it doesn't work for me to be empty. I'm unavailable to the moment, and being available to connect is at the core of what we are doing.

So, we had a Sunday. We created and played and cooked.  We took a walk to pick hot peppers at a friend's garden and I played my old tapes of Billy Joel (instead of that nap, today's self-care was singing along with abandon) while putting plastic on Eliza's bedroom windows.  

look! a mushroom!

Consider us recalibrated, happy (I heard so many "I love you"s today!), and content and sooo ready for bed.  I know tomorrow can't be another Sunday, but today was a reminder of how good it can be...