i came upon a blackberry bush on a walk in the woods. it was just sleeping selah and i, as jeremiah was in school…nap time has been creating a space in my days that i am not used to having…time that is uninterrupted and the only demands on me are the ones i put on myself (to be as efficient and “productive” with that time as is humanly possible)…
i was struck with how very quiet this walk in the woods was…i then noticed 10 beautiful blackberries along the side of the path. i stopped, checking to make sure the lack of motion would not awaken selah, and then proceeded to enjoy a few of the perfectly sun-warmed, ripened berries…
i then noticed my hesitation as i reached for the others…is there a way i could transport and save these little treasures to share with selah when she awakes and offer jeremiah a glimpse of the wood’s offerings when he returned home from school?…then noticing how they were satisfying a bit of thirst that i had worked up on this sunny afternoon… and reflecting on what a natural first inclination it is for me as a mama to often think of my babies needs or desires before my own…
i was then struck with this tension that i have been sitting in the midst of … having recently sent jeremiah off to his first year of school…with all of our wrestlings and reservations…having weighed each considered variable…knowing that at this time we are not able to execute our most ideal school plan for him…noticing the tension in this dilemma: the surfacing subconscious belief that i have more control in the universe than i ultimately do…
it is true that parents have such a hugely important role in nurturing these beings that have been gifted into our lives…and that to an extent we co-create our (and our children’s) realities…and that we very often have choices in how we perceive our circumstances….
but these question arose in me after having picked the berries, loosely carrying them in my hand and continuing on my way…
do i trust that the universe (including the other people in it) will provide good things for my children (even if i am not orchestrating it or even conscious of it)? will they miss out on the gifts that are so abundant in this beautiful, complex world if i do not point them out or give them to them?
we all indeed have our own stories, colored with various textures and elements…and as a mama, my hope is to encourage jeremiah and selah to have confidence and faith in their own…to trust that the universe is gracious…that joy and healing are abundant even if also are the injustice and tears…
and i know too that as i continue to allow myself to listen to and nurture my own needs, i am better able to be present to theirs…in a ways that allows for growth… leaving them room to experience the gifts and grace that are available in all contexts…
…and with that i arrived home with empty hands (though streaked with purple berry stains)…
Filed under: adventuring, getting outside, mama being, why not give it a try
jeremiah has been wondering when he would be able to have a “real pretend gun”, since he knew of there existence, which has been for awhile…the truth is up until a couple of weekends ago i didn’t know if i would ever feel comfortable with it. we have wrestled through this issue and run the gamete…from no pretending with guns at all, to only for hunting (with “handmade weapons”), to justin discovering his old red rider bee-bee gun in his parent’s attic and after some discussion and additional r&d his gifting it to jeremiah…
oh what a day that was! and of coarse, it is a highly supervised activity, and kept out of reach when an adult cannot accompany his play for now…but he could not be happier…
this in many ways is counter-intuitive for me…and i continue to wrestle with how to best parent this young boy navigating his “natural” impulses and his way in the world.
i found this podcast entitled “Play, Spirit, and Character” on speaking of faith to be a really profound commentary on play and also helpful in my continued tensions with my son wanting to “bear arms”…
“Stuart Brown, a physician and director of the National Institute for Play, says that pleasurable, purposeless activity prevents violence and promotes trust, empathy, and adaptability to life’s complication. He promotes cutting-edge science on human play, and draws on a rich universe of study of intelligent social animals”. he also addresses the often perceived “violent” or “aggressive” play of boys as being a necessary tool for them to work out their way in the world and in no way does research indicate that this kind of play results in increased violence perpetrated by adult men, actually there are indications for the opposite being true…though not conclusive, some food for thought for sure.
i have felt more comfortable these days encouraging the warrior in jeremiah (though we continue to emphasize the importance of not hurting others…the focus being more on tapping into his ability and power to “save the world” or at least make it a better and safer place)…something i think we all need to be encouraged in.
but i arrived in full on active labor…the laboring woman was AMAZING…i was truely in awe.
two and half hours after I arrived she was pushing and the baby was not liking it one bit…same pattern as her first that resulted in c-section…and before we all knew it she was rushed away to have surgery…
literally as soon as she was wheeled away i heard my phone indicate i had a voice mail…it was justin saying that our wee one was in trouble…he was thinking about bringing her to the emergency room….panic.
so regretfully i had to get in the car and head home, without seeing, loving, and affirming amazing mama and welcoming baby…it didn’t at all feel right to leave…
i entered in so deeply into her labor and then took off to the next emergency…(which indeed was also a bit unnerving)
so….apparently one of my break lights is out…and on my way home from the hospital i was pulled over.. and apparently my registration is 150 days past due (bad assumption that it is due the same month as inspection:()…so i was summonsed to court. (are you laughing yet)…
(when i briefly explained the situation to the nice officer he said…”while i go do some paperwork, why don’t you get on your phone and call your husband and tell him about 911…not nice…
the good news is selah seemed to fair very well that the evening upon my return (there are many variables to her pain that i will not get into now…) but she was up from 2:30-5:30 very much uncomfortable…we got in the tub together, rocked, and took lots of walks with her in the sling (i am eternally grateful to a skunk who we got 5 feet from, who did not spray us…that may have been the straw).
we brought her to the dr.’s the next morning and she is ok….nothing life threatening….and i too am okay…(after a brief breakdown upon my arrival to my office on monday afternoon) and some good processing in the meantime.
…if i didn’t know better i would think the universe was trying to tell me something…
(to which jess inquired…”what do you think the universe may be trying to tell you?”)
hmmmm….i think the bottom line of the universe’s message goes something like this…
“even when you are rooted in and living out from the most powerful, embodied, at peace with your self and your place in the world space (as seems imaginable)…(as that’s how i was feeling at the end of the retreat)…
it is not humanly (or otherwise) possible to please and/or meet the needs of everyone/everything at any given time…
a good thing to be reminded of…as that seems to be an ongoing trap for me.
we made it up for a bit of the common ground fair, the highlight of which was the face painting and jumping in the hay (over and over again)…
as we were standing in line for the face painting i asked jeremiah if he had decided what he may like as a design… as the completed cheeks, colored with butterflies, spider webs, and flowers walked out of the tent…jeremiah said he was thinking about it…
when he sat down, he did not hesitate with his request for a design: “i want a black stripe on my cheeks, a yellow dot on my chin, some dots on my forehead and a black ladder on my neck” fair enough…
on our way home in the car i asked what inspired his design.
his reply: “i was thinking about how my bones looked…i closed my eyes and turned them in the other way so i could see my bones and that was the design i saw”…perfect.
the bean stayed very entertained with all the good energy and enjoyed a bit of hay play herself.
we also briefly connected with our beautiful long time friends (caren has a beautifully inspiring blog here) who were on their way back to nh after a full weekend.
a beautiful fall day.
thankful for waking up to art work like this…
on the mornings that jeremiah gets right to work with his creating…
like this morning when he arrived at our bedside and said “mom look what i made”!
Filed under: adventuring, getting outside, mama being, thirty days of thanksgiving
thankful for the alien fairy bean…
this is our little selah bean…such a joy and a gift and always up for a good adventure…
jeremiah led the way as an alien (dressed in a green dragon costume), selah was an alien fairy (quite content to watch her big brother navigate us though space), and i wore the greenest outfit i could muster up.
we went up in a rocket ship (our tree house) and landed on and visited earth…we found some cool earth artifacts to bring back to our planet…some mushrooms, rocks, and various leaves…quite an adventure indeed…
we are off for more adventuring for the weekend to nyc to visit my amazing mover and shaker sister molly and to check out one of our favorite designer’s exhibits at the whitney museum: buckminster fuller, who is said to be “One of the great American visionaries of the twentieth century, R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) endeavored to see what he, a single individual, might do to benefit the largest segment of humanity while consuming the minimum of the earth’s resources. Doing “more with less” was Fuller’s credo. He described himself as a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist,” setting forth to solve the escalating challenges that faced humanity before they became insurmountable.”
have a beautiful weekend…i will resume my thirty days upon my return on monday…
thankful for remembering to be gentle on myself…
i have recently heard it said that in order to truly delight in others one must be gentle on oneself.
i find this so very true…that i am able to take delight in others when i am able to be gentle on myself.
i was not gentle on myself yesterday…feeling so impatient with jeremiah and seeing his desperate means to gain my constant attention/affection as personal assaults (sucking me dry). this tension loaded with the fact that if i don’t give him “enough” attention or empathy (ect.)…i am slacking on my mama-ing and i am bound to damage him…
so i shift to remembering to be gentle on myself…acknowledging that i can only do the best i can with what i’ve got at any given moment…on this journey of hoping that i may still be “a parent that nurtures and supports his having the courage to live alternatively…continuing to create beautiful things in this world while discovering his masculine gifts as a whole, creative, unique being”…even when the world doesn’t feel beautiful or welcoming (even when he feels i am “his world” and i am not feeling beautiful or welcoming in all of my ups and downs and in prioritzing my own needs).
i felt tired yesterday and for reason (as selah is teething and sleep has been much interupted)…realizing i was not offering myself much gentleness-as it takes intentional remembering for me, my more natural tendency being to be very stern (with myself, not so much with jeremiah)…;)
but yet i continue to be amazingly graced by the continued welcome of jeremiah (which i know may not always be the case) but i will receive it as grace in these moments…
selah too is a source of constant grace and welcome…she continues to be so gentle on me (even with much interupted sleep)…
this is where she has spent much of each day, offering me many gracious smiles and her peaceful pressence…
thankful for boys…
i have felt more of an urgency more recently to be more intentional about learning how to mindfully parent my boy….
i am reading Real Boys written by william pollack. this is a bit of the review offered on Amazon…”Pollack dismantles what he terms “the Boy Code”, society’s image of boys as tough, cool, rambunctious and obsessed with sports, cars and sex. These stereotypes, he argues, thwart creativity and originality in boys. Linking clinical insights to practical suggestions, Pollack advises caregivers how to help boys repair their fragile self-esteem, develop empathy and explore their sensitive sides…”
“Pollack has seen behind the stoic masks of troubled, modern boys as they struggle to cope with the mixed messages, conflicting expectations, and increasingly complex demands they receive from our evolving society. “New research shows that boys are faring less well … that many boys have remarkably fragile self-esteem, and that the rates of both depression and suicide in boys are frighteningly on the rise.”"
so the wild thing is i have witnessed glimpses of this ”boy code” that pervades our society’s expectations of boys already informing and affecting jeremiah…and how i so long to be a parent that nurtures and supports his having the courage to live alternatively…continuing to create beautiful things in this world while discovering his masculine gifts as a whole, creative, unique being.
thankful for beautiful days of adventuring
the map to “the moon”
arriving at “the moon”
and searching for ”moon rocks”
preparing for lift off
chasing rockets…
thankful for thinking outside of the “bag”
jeremiah’s birthday party is on sunday…a rocket/moon/space theme of coarse…
so…we had a home day on friday and had lots of creating and preparation time…i had “spaced” the goodie bag detail…being that we did not have the option to go out (as the car is in the shop…) we had to get creative with what we had on hand (which by the way is generally how i most like to create…as is true with my card making..reusing grocery bags/pictures/papers/pieces of cards received)…
so jeremiah picked out the most “moonish” fabric in my box of fabrics and i sewed simple bags to be used and filled…
we wrapped up some “alien popcorn” (aka: pirate booty) and jeremiah choose two different astronauts for each friend out of a space kit he was given that had a very generous number of plastic space explorers included.
we also made no bake cookies (jeremiah’s favorite) and wrapped them individually and labeled them “crater cookie”:
| NO BAKE CHOCOLATE OATMEAL COOKIES | |
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1 stick butter
1/4 c. cocoa 1/2 c. rice milk 1 1/4 c. sugar 1 tbsp. vanilla 1/2 c. almond butter 3 c. oats
Boil butter, cocoa, milk, sugar, vanilla and almond butter for 1 minute. Add oats and mix well. Spoon out onto wax paper.
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lastly we painted moon rocks…which we have talked about hiding and creating a treasure hunt (on the moon) for his friends across the street at the sand pit, where we will launch a few (really cool) rockets on the big day.
