Month: April 2011

Messages from the universe

I often find words – lyrics, snatches of poems, quotes – rising to my thoughts, unbidden.  There’s also an external component – songs that come on the radio seemingly all the time, a book I keep reading about, etc.  In both cases, I think that these messages are real, from our subconcious or the universe or both.  I believe they are not at all a coincidence.

In the last several weeks, I’ve encountered Naomi Shihab Nye’s beautiful poem, Kindness over and over again.  I read it in Oprah’s magazine and wrote about it, I saw it somewhere else, it appeared today in my Google Reader.  The twinning of kindness and sadness, and the assertion that the latter is critical to fully appreciate and comprehend the former, very much resonates with me.

This past summer, every single time I turned on the radio it seemed like the Beatles were singing Let It Be.  Okay, I murmured to myself, okay, I hear it: I will try to let go.  I will try to trust.  Last summer – radiant, full of joy and wonder – was a time of major transition for me, and I definitely needed every reminder to let it be.

When I was pregnant with Grace, a pregnancy which surprised me and which began the unravelling and change that brought me here, I found pennies on the ground all the time.  Literally, probably six out of seven days a week.  For weeks and weeks.  I picked them all up – of course, to get the luck – and I wish I’d collected them.  For a while, in fact, my dear friend Courtney referred to Grace as my “lucky penny baby.”

And right now, everywhere I turn, I see hearts.  I see them in the pavement, in leaves, on signs.  I’ve photographed some but not all of the hearts that have stopped me in my tracks recently.  What’s interesting is that some of these are not newly in my path.  For example, the heart traced into the pavement is right outside the post office I’ve been going to for years.  And obviously it is not new, since it was drawn in the wet concrete.  And yet it’s only now that I’m noticing it.  Coincidence?  I don’t believe so.  What are these hearts telling me?  Be aware of my heart, be careful of my heart, surrender when it swells to the point of discomfort?  Love is all around.

What message is the universe sending you these days?

Not having enough

When I ran cross-country, in high school, I’d invariably have so much energy at the end that I’d sprint the last half mile.  Or do a cartwheel or two towards the finish line.  My coach, understandably, was not enormously fond of this behavior, and urged me to run faster earlier on because I obviously could.  I never did.  I was scared that I would be too tired at the end.

In yoga, I often drop out of poses a few breaths before the teacher says to.  I’m usually hurting by then, my body giving up the “alert! alert! alert!” flare, but I’m never at the point of actual failure.  For example, I’ve never held a back bend for a full ten breaths.  I have never not rested during some extra-long downward dogs.  I have never stayed in warrior two for a long hold, totally still.  It’s not exactly that I give up when things get hard.  It’s a little more nuanced, and less impressive than that: I give up before they are really hard, in anticipation of not being able to do it.

The personality trait evinced by these examples has been on my mind lately.  And it’s not a good one.  It’s as though I’m preemptively worried about not having enough – energy, strength, speed.  Even when the data suggests otherwise, I’m too afraid.  What, though, am I actually afraid of?  Am I scared of “success,” of running fast, of holding a pose longer than I thought I could?  What would happen if I did?

And, I worry, in how many non-physical ways does this tendency manifest?  I’m certain there are dozens of places – emotional, spiritual, intellectual – where I am similarly afraid to really go there.  How to break through this mild, sometimes invisible withholding?  What is it about?

I don’t have answers, but I have lots of questions, today centering around this aspect of myself that I am not proud of.  I should just try holding the damned backbend for ten breaths.  But for some reason that fills me with fear.  Why?

You become

I’ve written before of how I love this passage from the Velveteen Rabbit.  Of how it makes me cry.  It is true, isn’t it: it takes a long time to become who we are, to grow into ourselves, to learn to inhabit every inch of our spirits, to become Real.

This has obviously been on my mind lately: just last month I wrote about how “most of life happens in the current of dailiness, whose slight and invisible variations are nevertheless enough to carve enormous swooping oxbows into the terrain of our souls.”  About the ways that many of life’s critical roles are made up of small, daily occurrences.

What I’m thinking about today is how true this is of becoming a mother.  You have a child, and you also become a mother.  The thing is, for me at least, those things didn’t really happen simultaneously.  Well, obviously I was a mother, technically, the moment I delivered Grace myself and pulled her onto my chest.  But the meaningful, emotional inhabitation of “mother” took a lot longer.  I wish I had known that at the time.  I think knowing that would have made me much gentler and kinder to myself about the rocky traverse from one sense of self to the other, which I expected to be immediate and instinctive but which was instead slow and soaked in tears.

May I have patience as I continue to become, and trust about what I am becoming.

Words on the wall

This is the wall behind my desk.  My office is a tiny garret room on our third floor, and I adore it.  The desk, which takes up half the room, is a big slab of wood, an old kitchen table that came from Matt’s family’s house years ago.  I look at a bulletin board with pictures of my family, my best friends, my godchildren, and Mr. Valhouli.  There are also a few pieces of paper with words on them: a Wendell Berry poem up there, two Yeats quotes (one hand-written for me on my 16th birthday by Jessica), a piece by Jen Lemen, my sister’s wedding announcement, and notes from both of my parents.

A couple of years ago I took down all of the diplomas and awards, both mine’s and Matt’s, that filled the wall behind my desk.  In their place I hung these three prints.  A cowboy hat of Grace’s, from years ago, hangs on the hooks above the prints.

I often turn around in my chair and study them, feeling my chest rise and fall with my breath, reading the words I know by heart.  I suppose this is a way of meditating, of coming back to right here, of beginning again.

we are all made of stars – peace be still – you are so loved

Perfect

One day last week I changed the school drop off routine a little.  Whit walked halfway across campus with us and then waited, sitting on the bottom step of a building in the middle, while I took Grace the rest of the way.  She whined a little about this change (Whit didn’t join us at all in the past), insisting that her brother would intrude on our “special time.”  She glared at me as we pushed our way through the double doors to the playground.  I wanted badly to snap at her that she was being a brat, but I bit my tongue.  Moments later, they were walking ahead of me, heads bent together, murmuring about something I couldn’t hear.

It was perfect.

Saturday morning broke clear and cold, cold, cold.  I watched Grace’s soccer game hunched over, with my hands jammed into the pockets of my down coat.  It was so cold my eyes teared behind my sunglasses.  I had a lovely conversation with another Soccer Mom (gah!) and was taken aback when, mid-chat, Grace came running over, face flooded with tears.  “Mummy!  I just scored and you missed it because you were talking to Sophia’s mom!”  She crossed her arms across her chest and stamped her foot, the very picture of righteous indignation.  I hugged her instead of blowing up, guilt and irritation swamping me at once.  With her face pressed against my coat she couldn’t see the emotions at war on my face. How can I possibly live up to this standard? rang in one ear and Oh my God I misssed seeing her score a goal shouted in the other.

“I won’t score again today and you missed it,” she wailed against my parka.

She did score again, and I saw it.  I also observed her cheering on a teammate who tore down the field and scored her own goal, which made me far prouder than anything else (and I told her that).  I kept remembering: it won’t be long until she doesn’t want me to watch her anymore.

It was perfect.

After soccer, I took Whit to make good on a promise from his birthday.  He received several duplicate Legos so I told him I’d take him to the Lego store and he could choose anything he wanted (within reason).  He was overwhelmed by the Lego store, and spent long minutes walking its perimeter, eyes wide, finger trailing across the various boxes.  He could not make up his mind.  I urged him to pick something already, fretting to myself that if we didn’t get to Johnny Rocket’s before noon we’d have to wait for a table.  I chewed a fingernail, impatience swelling inside me, and told him again that it was time to choose.  Let’s be honest: I rushed him.

He decided on a Lego, we went to lunch, there was no wait, and he was utterly charmed by the faux-retro-diner details.  Then, at J Crew he picked out a pirate sweatshirt and was given this enormous, Willy Wonka-esque lollipop.

It was perfect.

I need to trust that as surely as my frustrations and irritations, my guilt and paralyzing panic about missing it rise up, they will ebb away.   These emotions are clouds sliding across the sky of my life, that is all.  This is what I am realizing: it is up to me whether I let these feelings, these moments when I am not the mother I want to be, mar the perfection of this life.  And I won’t let them.  I can’t change, I don’t think, the spikes of agitation and restlessness that sometimes overtake me so fast my head spins.  But I can change how I let them impact my overall sense of my days, of my life.

Thank you, Katrina, for the exact words I needed at the precise time I needed them.  As usual.

This life, this moment: it’s all so perfect it breaks my heart.  Every day.