Terrible/Perfect

Himmel im Winter

Breathtaking winter skies these days, morning and night. Beautiful, beautiful.

Overflow

 

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

-Camus

Nutcrackering

Chirp

Homebound

I've been doing a very great deal of knitting lately.

I became incredibly ill with the flu a few weeks back (not hospital ill, but bedridden, I-can-see-how-this-kills-people ill) and it's not an exaggeration to say that the experience altered me. Most of us don't often lie in bed for days with nothing to occupy us but our own minds (I was too ill for reading or even knitting); it was, in its way, a sort of retreat. I had time to consider a number of problems, and allow good sense to settle down into some of them, to loosen them up.

In the weeks since I've felt quite calm.

I think the great lesson of parenthood, or of personhood, actually, is fluidity: how to move along with the current of life and not fight it so much. 

You can't fight kids. You can't make them something they're not, developmentally or personally, you can't make them eat vegetables or go to sleep when you desperately want them to or stop a two year-old from making her endless rounds of destruction. You can't force change in a partner, or, say, an overly intelligent dog. 

There is some crazy Zen magic in acceptance, in rolling with it. I am convinced that it's the fundamental source of internal quiet. Having touched it, the complexes built up around the human effort to explain it and transmit it to other people seems very funny and slightly sad: peace, which I think everyone wants whether they can acknowledge it or not, is stupidly simple, it is right there, all the time...but explaining what that means, and how to get there, and how to stay, is extremely hard. I couldn't possibly do it.

But not fighting is a good start. For me, that more or less means not running away from responsibilities, actually physically staying put where I'm needed and doing what needs to be done. Where I'm needed right now is in my house. "Out" with the kids is easy. Home is hard. But I'm accepting that there's nothing out there that's going to change how I feel and how I structure my time and what I accomplish here. And in a larger sense, something is settling down in my gut that hasn't really ever settled before. That sense of searching for some kind of remedy, a fix, has eased up. It's a tremendous relief. 

But back to the knitting.

Having some handwork to sit down with in between the endless tasks of mothering is a huge help: it feels good, physically, to do it. It is something generative, productive, and calming to do in the lulls of the day. It makes home, and all that being at home entails, much more appealing. And it feels like mine. Just mine. That's important.

Square one of Mitered Crosses Blanket, in the gorgeous Cascade Yarns Eco Duo and, as per revelations and resolutions made in a state of fevered delerium, scrap yarn:

It'll take a while. There's a lot of picking up stitches and changing yarns and whatnot, so the squares are time consuming.

I'm not even going to think about all of the ends that will need winding in once all the squares are done.

Later. That's for later.

Signs of life

For some reason this year, Big Kid has been crazy about the arrival of spring. I think it has something to do with an upcoming trip to Florida, and something to do with the performance of The Magic Flute that she knows she will be able to attend "in the spring", and a whole lot to do with loving flowers and sunshine.

I can't say that I blame her. Spring continues to surprise me, every year, with its power. In spite of the fear and sadness that seems to be closing in all around, the daffodils show their faces and the sun comes back.

Life is tenacious.

Mama zen

Several days ago I was having one of those shitstorm days as a parent. It had been an unpleasant morning. Baby was weepy and whiney, Big Kid had started the day off on the cranky foot. We had gone into church early to pick up some things I had left in the kitchen on Sunday, and when the girls seemed contented in their play I finished up some dishes from a fundraiser and then tidied up the nursery. While we were still there one of Big Kid's best friends came in with her mom, who works at the church. The girls play well together, but Baby was being a typical busy (climbing) toddler and Big Kid was full of wild energy. I felt frazzled and short tempered.

Then Big Kid whipped a cloth out from under Baby's feet, who fell and smacked her head on the floor. I was angry and wanted to leave, but when I picked up Baby to soothe her I discovered that she needed her diaper changed. I told Big Kid that we would be leaving, and laid a sobbing, now screaming, Baby down to change her. Big Kid got pissed. Her friend got the doll she wanted to play with, and Big Kid was left with the one she didn't want. She went hysterical, threw the doll down on the floor and stomped on its head screaming that she didn't want it. Baby was on her back screaming, I was wiping up poop with the ancient, bone dry baby wipes at the church because I'd left my diaper bag in the car, and now Big Kid was having an Apocalyptic screaming fit in front of people I admire and respect.

I finished cleaning up Baby, and forced Big Kid to sit down. At some point we left the church, and I recall closing the car doors rather harder than they needed to be closed.

Which is where I would like us to begin today's discussion:

We have just watched our child have a crazy fit in front of several other people.

We are in the car with two angry, sad, out of control children and we can't possibly get home fast enough.

We are incredibly embarassed.

And we are furious.

If I have learned one thing in my life, it is that there are a couple of ways that we can handle our anger.

Option One is acting on it immediately and reactively. This includes actions like yelling, hitting, screaming, throwing objects and committing vehicular assault. Parenting from this place is not fun, for anyone. 

Option Two is a little tricky.

Follow me for a minute.

Let's go back to the car, and enter back into that place where our gut is prompting door slamming and yelling and making the kid realize how f-ing mad we are at their shitheadedness. So we're there, and the impulses to react are there, but we catch ourselves, just for a moment, and say:

Wait.

That's it.

Nothing needs to happen right now.

We learned the skill that we needed to catch ourselves in any number of ways. Perhaps some kind of meditative practice. Maybe we learned it in yoga, or prayer, or sitting zazen. We definitely learned it every time we thought about our actions and what led up to them. We learned how to recognize our own emotional states. We cultivated a kind of watcher, a self awareness. We have a second, cooler mind that has taken one step back from our reacting mind. So that mind tells us to wait a minute.

So we wait.

Maybe in a minute we're going to blow up at the kid. Maybe right now we think the kid deserves it. But that's not what's going on right now. That can happen later. What we do right now is wait, and breathe.

Just follow the breath in and out. That's it. The kids are still crying and screaming, we're still feeling that soup of stress chemicals bubbling in our gut, but our only job is to drive the car safely, and to breathe. We don't need to respond to them, we don't even need to talk at all.

Pretending we're Darth Vader can be helpful here.

Or if we have ever given birth, we can go to the same place we went during strong contractions.

We breathe, and we let go.

Now we draw the waiting out a bit. We allow the breath bring down those stress responses a little, and when we're ready we let that second, step-back mind do our thinking for us. And it considers:

What needs to happen right now?

And this is where all of the education we have sought out in parenting and child development can step in. We open up the door for all that knowledge we have:

They are children. They freak the hell out sometimes. It's normal. My child is not going to end up a universally despised megalomaniac because she had a fit one time at church over a doll.

I do not need to yell. That won't help. It will only hurt.

The tantrum is over. I dealt with it in the way that I was able to in that moment. We don't need to revisit it in any way. No one needs to be "punished".

And the answer to "What needs to happen right now?" is always, almost always, unless someone is in immediate, physical danger:

Nothing.

Because it's over.

What has been churning up our guts is something that ended (as we pull into our driveway and unload the kids) fifteen minutes ago.

And then there is what needs to happen soon:

The kids need food and rest. I need food and rest.

So that pause that we first took continues to get a little longer.

(We keep breathing. Always keep breathing.)

But we're still mad. So we decide we need to keep our voice low. We practically whisper.

I'm going to go put the baby down. I need you to find something quiet to do for a few minutes.

and then

Yes. I am going to fix you lunch now.

and

No. I can't read you a story just yet. I'm feeling very angry about what happened at church.

And when we're ready, after we've gotten what we need (lunch) and had enough space (a little time alone in our room, a splash of warm or cool water on our face in the bathroom, whatever works) we have tea.

We use a nice Japanese tea set, with the kind of cups that don't have handles (here we acknowledge and accept that the set is likely to be broken at some point. It is just clay.) We brew something we both like, in this case decaffeinated green tea mixed with chamomile, and sweetened with a little honey. We serve it on a nice platter, at a clean, bare table, by a window.

We serve it very hot. Too hot to drink (but not so hot it would cause burns to her skin; we are sensible). We have discussed the hotness with the child, so she knows she needs to wait. The cup has no handle, so she must wait until the sides of the cup are cool enough to touch. She will gingerly feel the cup, and blow on the tea. Gently.

She will be using her breath.

Breath in. Blow out. Slowly.

She will be waiting.

And so will we.

And we will find what we needed inside that cup.

The tea is sweet, and hot, and soothing.

(Tea always helps.)

Also inside the cup was our practice.

The practice, which we shared with our child, was patience, and a way of finding calm (that's the breath, which is all important, at all times, in all cases).

We will realize that what we have just done for ourselves is what we wish for our own child to be able to do in her fits of rage and overwhelm.

And we are all children in fits of rage and overwhelm.

And there is a way through it.

And we have just taught it.