a new note

In the spirit of taking note… I am feeling happier than I can remember in a long time. I think ok-ness has been my own baseline/status quo for forever, all that I can remember. Whether it is due to worry over the world or worry over my children, I have hovered for so long in a persistent state of good enough is good enough and so long as the steady thrum of anxiety doesn’t tip into full panic, then I am winning. Of course! I mean that is a win, right? But these past couple of weeks I have eased my way into something different but familiar, like a well-worn and beloved pair of pants that finally emerged from the pile of cast-offs they were buried under for so long. A refreshing find. Bright and in good repair and made just right for me. It is hard to let myself say that I have felt something close to happy these past few weeks, it feels tone deaf to the very real shit storm blasting the larger national and global reality right now, and yet… I think I am. 

It is a huge relief to have a plan for each of the kids this coming year that feels solid and right. The enormity of the burden of trying to sort that out these past few years has been so much to bear. And yeah this next version of us will have its hiccups or not wind up being the right fit but for the moment we are right and good with what is coming. What a relief. Also, a plan for them opens up the possibility of a plan for me too and I am enjoying the growing idea of my own time and space opening up and unfolding into something this fall. I like making a plan to do more of my own work in some larger, uninterrupted, and focused stretches. I am setting a few things in motion for teaching and mentoring and my own study that is exciting as well as measured and reasonable and all of that is something I look forward to. 

It is also an immense relief to be on Islesford this summer and in full enjoyment of everything that it is to get to spend time here. Days are full of deck hangs with either a book or knitting or bubbles in hand, blueberry picking and bike rides, chats with friends in the middle of the road and on the beach, looking for lucky rocks and rowing out to the Sea Sauna with friends, delicious naps and afternoon yoga on the deck. Plus, I am so thrilled to be teaching yoga on the island again this summer for the first time in 4 years. It feels like such a reunion: with all these folks who have taken classes with me for years as well as me to teaching here and in general. The same and yet also older and wiser in this really excellent way. I have been teaching gentler/softer more than I ever have in my life and it really feels like the just right offering for people right now- at least the ones that I am finding in front of me. We are all worked, for obvious reasons, and seem to each be ready for the reminder to lean in the direction of greater ease and compassion. I have always had an identity around being a difficult yoga teacher and it feels good to shake that off a bit and teach to what is. Not to say I do not have it in me for challenging practice and helping people grow their yoga in that way too- I just think that maybe I am becoming more adept at not superimposing my agenda over anyone else’s. 

Another excellent lived reality of the Islesford summer experience this year is having an almost three-year-old with me. Last summer’s adventures were difficult with a fresh two-year-old. Managing the sleep changes he was going through was difficult away from home and he wasn’t quite so ready for adventure last summer in the way that he is this one. I have been remembering all of the play and adventure we had with Maple and Eider on the island before they were old enough to explore independently. Bike rides and picnics and tide pools and beach afternoons and games and all the rest. Somewhere between 5 and 8, they start taking off on their own and in a place like Islesford, you often don’t see them again til meal time or when someone needs to go poo. So getting to play here with a little one who is discovering all of the magic of this place with his big beautiful fresh eyes and heart I think may be what this place is actually all about. It is the mood of everything here. The adults who live here for all or part of the summers are all crafting activities and projects and days to touch again and enjoy the wonder that is being a child on an island off the coast of Maine during the summertime. It is the central tone of everything we do here. Children and adults alike. I love that so much and I really love being back in the very center of the magic of this place with my own little one and with a deeper and more embodied understanding of the what and the why of it. 

Anyhow, that’s it. I’m feeling good and also feeling good about feeling good. That’s all. That’s enough.

always more blood



Order of operations. Things land in a particular sequence. Then they process. Then they integrate. And then maybe they even process some more. The first sort of circling stage is around my own particular nihilism about what the point of another personal telling could possibly be. But because I have staked so much of my meaning making in the dirt and muck of belief that the personal is what makes the universal, I know that to undervalue the purpose of my story too much is to undervalue it all. 

So there have been waves. Clear waves, murky waves, roiling waves, and so much endless churning as the SCOTUS override of Roe V Wade lands more deeply inside my body and my mind. And honestly, I don’t want to write about any of it. I have spilled so many words about abortion and miscarriage and bodies and blood and I am so tired. And the nihilist in me, which seems to be growing bigger and more keen every day, wonders what the point of any of that writing, spilling, rehashing, sharing, imploring, would serve anyway. 

Here is the wave sequence. I will do my best to keep it all as personal as possible. Why wouldn’t I? First, shock and numbness, obviously. And then the near simultaneous recognition by both my husband and my daughter that I too would be a dead mother had I not been able to receive emergency medical care in the form of the abortion procedure referred to as D&C, Dilation and Curettage, when I hemorrhaged from an incomplete miscarriage. That was the first real pain thought. Of which there have been many more and within which that particular one remains a constant. I would have died. 

And then I reflected on the D&C that I received the summer before my miscarriage and how if I hadn’t been able to get that care and had instead had a child, now a seven year old, I would most likely be more or less fine; I would in all likelihood be alive. However, my family as it exists today very well may not have made it. My marriage might well have buckled were we left with no choice to have another kid back then, my children would have lived different childhoods because of it, and on and on. A different world would certainly exist for us and I cannot really say if it would be better or worse than the one that we live in now with one another. But I would be alive.

Without the second D&C, I would not. And that is when my mind sprints in the direction of all of the bodies of people who will lose their lives, one way or another, without essential medical care. 

I consider (constantly) my homosexual daughter and her life. I consider all of my queer family and friends and their lives and families. And then all queer people. And then all people who have in any way had to fight for their rights one day or today and still. And basically then I remember that I do not want to write any of this or think any of this because the central unifying truth is that there is not one human being living in America who will not be adversely affected by this new dystopia. Beginning with the poorest of brown and black people and then spreading out and up from there like a contagion. And we know contagion now, don’t we?

This is a moment in time where the constant is this small and infinite truth: we will all lose. And well before our time. 

Yesterday morning as Maple and Wilfred and I rode the Mailboat from Islesford to Northeast for one last attempt to load my kid up with as many groceries as possible before leaving her on her own for a few weeks, we found ourselves on a boat surrounded by women. All different ages and from varying backgrounds and geographies. Within only a few minutes of being gathered up in this haphazard, random, and ever awkward way; talk turned to the shock, the pain, the grief, of a right now stripped that many of these women remembered securing in the first place. They were aghast. Stunned angry. Full of sorrow for all of the bodies set to lose this new Post Roe America. 

They all said the same thing: what can we do? Vote. Yes vote. Help other people vote. Yes that too. Please. And yet in a country where the clear majority is pro-choice, pro-womens health, pro-marriage equality, and all of the rest of what sanity, empathy, positive regard, concern and compassion, should make us pro for, it is clear that that is not the whole picture. It is the few that have the power, not the majority, and we need to wake up to it with a ferocity we haven’t quite yet fully embodied. Now is the time for the rage that drives the action. Our dissent must go all the way down to the very origin of us and not let up until we have secured the rights and freedoms that we have all, always, been worthy of.

So yes, vote. Yes, donate. Yes, call your reps. Yes, be as verbal within your spheres of influence as is right and appropriate to your wellbeing for you to be. It is all of this and something more. 

One last thing for now: I never want to in any way diminish the complexity of an issue such as Choice. I know that even with clarity and conviction, much often remains almost too difficult to bear at times. Choosing to have an abortion sucked for me. Needing to have one also sucked. A lot. But being able to get them and receive love and care and compassion within a structure of support, that is something I want for every single one of us. Now and always. 


chick a little

Everyone in the household is at varying degrees of under the weather, including myself. It makes sense I suppose as a natural response to the school year suddenly slamming to a halt. I mean it wasn’t a surprise and yet we certainly weren’t prepared for it, ya know? All three kids are upstairs sleeping right now. So strange. I got up after falling asleep with Wilfred for a bit, and took a rapid test, and made a cup of tea. Then feeling at a total loss for what to do with myself if I am not to be driving them around to their typical afternoon activities, did what I do best when I am either flailing or avoiding and got on my mat. I remember yeeeeeears ago Christina saying something along the lines of a little movement and breath when you are under the weather seems like maybe more use than just laying still. I stick to that mostly. And maybe it is just that sitting still continues to be the most difficult posture of all. 

Unless it is sitting and staring at the baby chicks, of course, which I have been doing ohhhh so much this week. I keep reflecting on why I am so very enamored with these little home hatches, more so than our mail order freshies. I mean, I always love them all. This is just a bit different somehow. I keep looking out into the hen yard and wondering if any of those hens know that they are mommies? I mean, do they? It seems both ridiculous and somehow important. 

The chicks themselves are so hardy and hale. Like the degree to which they are from this little stamp of land stretches so far past their hatch and their 21 day incubation and into the two years that their mama hens and papa rooster have scratched and foraged across it.

These little chicklets are clarifying for me what it is I will and will not do with chicks in the future: I won’t order and rather do these hatches for fun and then fill in with breed specific pullets as needed. That is somehow a very relaxing clarification for me. And I think I am learning from this distinction in a few other ways as well. I tend toward such all or nothing thinking and then behaviors especially when it comes to homesteading and home-educating and home life in general that these specifications and differentiations, however slight, feel deeply liberating. Like some > none (or all, maybe even especially some > all) really does apply to most things for me. 

Anyhow, Wilfred is up now and practice is over and as ever I am uncertain whether I made the most of my time to myself or not. I don’t feel very well after all and maybe I just got my period to boot. So we will eat popsicles on the porch and play with race cars for a bit and I will try to ease my mind and my body toward the next thing without too much worry or overcomplication. At least I will attempt that. It is imperfect which feels like the on-going reckoning of me with myself.

watching

Last night Wilfred didn’t want any stories read to him. He wanted to nurse briefly, then drink a little more milk with Chris, snuggle and get into his bed. I wasn’t surprised. It had been a difficult day for him and I am learning so much about the particular ways in which he processes difficulty. I also wasn’t at all surprised when he woke up at one am asking for “Dada to please rock him for a bit”.

Yesterday had been the last day of the Robin’s Nest playgroup at the North Branch Nature Center. We have been trying to be regular there to prepare Wilfred for 2 days of Forest Preschool this coming fall. He loves it. The mud kitchen, the chalk rocks, the stacking stumps, pebble beach and the bridge over the river; and especially the wheelbarrows. As far as he is concerned, the two that live in the playscape belong to Freddy.

And yet, of course, they do not. They live at the playscape for all of the children to use. And sometimes the kids will tolerate Wilfred taking a wheelbarrow out of their hands, especially when someone near points out that the second one is available. This was not however the case when he took it out of a little one’s hands yesterday. This child was all the way upset, yelling and sobbing and all the rest. Freddy meanwhile pretending that he could not hear or see any of it as he slowly attempts to disappear with his prize into some nearby tree cover. The little boy, after a time seemingly somewhat calmer, wandered over and wrapped his arms around Freddy’s whole body. It seemed like a hug. They got very still and it was not until a few moments passed that we understood that the little boy had sunk his teeth deep into Freddy’s cheek.

Wilfie howled. Not initially but he got there. And I swooped in and other mom swooped in and did all of the things that the mother of the kid from my last post did not: looked me in the eyes and apologized, comforted her kid who was obviously super upset and she also neither condoned his behavior or forced an arbitrary and irrelevant apology out of him. All in all, to her response, I say good job mom. She modeled all of the behavior that it is so important for our little ones to learn.

In a lot of ways, the “incident”, is less where my attention is in this instance. it is Rather it is on witnessing and understanding Wilfred’s response, what it may indicate or mean about his internal processing and what lessons he may be wiring for himself around trauma and embodiment. I am watching my son. And here is what I am noticing: in both of these events, Wilfred gets very still, he almost freezes, and then he takes it. He does eventually begin to cry, but not immediately, and he at no point ever tries to fight back or get away. He stays in place and absorbs what is happening. Y’all, it is intense to witness. Like time has slowed down and everything gets first very obscure, followed shortly by extra hi-def. And I do wonder if he is learning to leave his body, or if he is able to stay. It is hard to tell.

This time, even though he was clearly in a lot of pain, he stopped crying relatively quickly. I held him and hugged him and cooed in his ear for as long as he would let me. But he became extra remote and withdrawn, like he was burrowing deeper inside of himself somewhere, or perhaps leaving. He still held on to the stolen wheelbarrow, and we still walked down to the river, but he couldn’t quite meet it and I did end up carrying him the whole long way back to our parked car.

Eider had gone down with us so we could check out yet another school option for the next year, so he helped me manage all of the things and did his very best to help me cheer his little bro up. We stopped and took a dip in the swimming hole for the first time this year (success!), we stopped for ice cream (not so successful). And then it was a long nap and an afternoon of snuggles and now the subsequent tenderness that has followed. He is doing great, and still not entirely himself yet. I am trying to learn from this as best I can and connect some dots across time and space into and from my understanding of my two older children and all of the ways that they process and hold and dissociate and come back and release.

Which makes this perhaps the perfect moment to switch this telling from Wilfred to Eider, who in current time is the child that I lie in bed thinking about last thing at night, and wake up worried over again in the morning. He, right now, is the riddle for whom I continue to find no viable solution. I am constantly looking for the path forward and coming up empty handed time and time again. You may recall that a few months ago we were all getting very jazzed about the prospect of sending Eider to “yurt school” for eighth grade in the coming year. It is a local independent place-based school with a big ‘ol emphasis on child-led learning and time outside. I think it is an ideal fit for him at this particular stage in his education. It is not nearly so big as a “regular” school but with enough other kids to form relationships without getting cliquey, and it is not dependent on me to motivate and drive his learning on my own; a task that has become incredibly grueling over the past couple of years. Anyhow, I had been under the impression that yurt school takes the tuition voucher from our town which is what would make it a viable option for us. They do not.

It is a lengthy process to become an approved independent school (versus a registered one) in the state of Vermont. There are far more hoops to jump through and information to provide and prove and it has to be done every 5 years to maintain status. It’s a lot. And yet, as far as I can tell this area desperately needs an alternative 7-12 grade option. Especially with a local town that has no public option after sixth grade. And to be able to receive tax money for tuition opens up so much more opportunity for kids who want an alternate schooling option and/or are really not going to be well served in the public school setting, regardless of family income.

To be clear, I think that Eid would be ok in public school. Ok, not great. He would certainly need the support of an IEP or a 504 plan or both. And he would need constant advocacy so that he doesn’t either shut down from the difficulty or fall through the obvious and plentiful cracks. The reason Maple is thriving as a neurodivergent learner in a public school setting is because she a special type of unicorn that refuses to take any shit from her peers or her teachers. She is constantly advocating for herself and her particular learning style. She fights for her education every day. Not everyone is like that! Eid certainly isn’t. He is a peacekeeper not a justice seeker. Both are great. One has significantly better odds of making it in a mainstream system than the other. And like I said, maybe he’d be ok. But in my heart it feels like gambling on that is a near neighbor to sacrificing my kid. Which it feels like most of us are doing enough of one way or another every god damn day already.

As caregivers we are always the watcher of our kids, the collector of clues, a decoder of what they are saying as it relates to what they are longing for. I am studying them now. Trying to find the appropriate pathways in for each of them. It is tense. And it is far from easy. And as much as I wish I were better at putting it down it is my preoccupation as well as my occupation. I have built a life around equipping them with the tools they need to find as much connection and fulfillment as they are capable of. I want them to hold the maps to their own wellbeing and know all the ways in which to orient them.

So I study the ways in which they shut down, shut out, lash out, disengage, alienate, and isolate. It is fucking heartbreaking and it is incredibly real. All while keeping the small hand of little meg in my heart’s hand so that I can continue to provide her with the compassion she needs from her own childhood trauma while at the same time not mistaking mine for my kid’s.

This weekend, I posted briefly on the socials about the image versus the reality, the picture I paint as opposed to how we perhaps more truly are, how we feel instead of how we appear. I try to be as transparent as I can with all of that. While at the same time constantly reorienting myself toward joy and gratitude and abundance that is neither toxic and false, or delusional and irrelevant. I want to keep pointing myself in the direction of whole-heartedness, and my family too. So I seek out images and feelings that reflect that. But I want to be sure I also relay the truth of what an asshole my kid is being lately, or how fucking scared I am for them in every other breath. It’s real y’all. And it is messy. As all get out. But it is also so fucking beautiful that it almost breaks me, I mean, maybe I am actually all the way broken already. So, I cannot sacrifice them. Or myself. Or any of us really. There need to be better options, for my kids but really for all of our kids. Cuz that is what they really are, ya know? All of our beautiful, perfect, horrible, cruel, transcendent, wise, innocent, children. All of ours.

this week some.

The Hermit Thrushes are out en force on our hillside these days. They have come to embody the fullness of the Green Season in Vermont as well as in Maine. I love their etheric song. If home were a sound to me, it might be that. I am listening to them right now, in the woods that surround the clearing that our house sits on, and looking out at the pink-blue-purple-orange of another gorgeous late spring sunset. I can also see from this spot the new big cedar fence posts that Chris put in today framing out the new, much larger, and thankfully contained from the chickens, garden plot. It is something that we have been talking about for awhile but for me it has felt so theoretical that it wasn’t really until today, with the posts in and four yards of compost delivered, that I am beginning to feel some confidence that a space for me to plant and putz and dream and grow is actually about to emerge. It has me a bit giddy at the prospect. Like a door in my heart that I wasn’t quite sure could unstick itself open again is beginning to relax and release and finally, finally! letting a little light in.

Earlier in the week Wilfred had his six month evaluation with his speech and language providers through our school district. It was great in many regards: he is making headway. And yet what I have been digesting all week are terms and phrases such as 25%+ delay, and IEP, and disability. I do not experience him through the lens of terms and diagnostic verbage at all, and yet I understand it’s function and purpose and I do support it. But I am also concerned and pausing a little bit in my consideration of what it means for him within the wider scope of his life. I worry a bit, ya know?

He is so excellent, really. He just recently got his balance bike and is an absolute wiz on it just like Maple and Eider both were. Bold and little reckless and extra enthusiastic. Chris has been taking him some nights to the pump track out in Hyde Park and Freddy rides around and around and around for miles. It is incredible and he is beyond exhausted while at the same time never ready to quit. He was extra tired like that yesterday morning when I brought him to the weekly playgroup out in Johnson. He loves it there, and anywhere really where there are kids to play with and things to climb on. That seems to be a pretty reliable formula for Freddy Joy.

Yesterday there was a little bit of an older kid that we haven’t met before at the group. Maybe six or so years old. And right away he honed in on Freddy, grabbing things out of his hands, blocking him, pushing him. I just kept my eye on it. Wilfred is so cheerful and bright that he did a sweet job of shaking it off for the most part. Until of course he couldn’t. As I was beginning to gather our things up to head out I looked over and saw about 4 or 5 kids sardined into this little wooden train car and this kid just wailing on him. Punching and punching his chest while Freddy sat there, receiving each blow and crying. I ran over, called for the adults: Hey, its getting a little punchy over here! And his mom came over and grabbed him- I am holding wilfs at this point who is still sobbing, he sobbed the whole half hour drive home. And instead of looking at my kid, checking in with him and me to see if he is ok, apologizing for her kids behavior she instead tries to extract an apology from her son to Wilfred, which in my opinion is the exact fucking wrong thing to do. Totally useless and reinforces his shit behavior. And is such a perfect example of our aversion to connecting to one another’s humanity or taking any ownership of action. It is of far greater effect for her to reach out with actual empathy and concern for my kid, and in doing so model to her own what behavior is appropriate and necessary. She never even made eye contact with me. And her kid never really got to experience what it is to have genuine regard for someone else’s feelings and wellbeing.

It pissed me off. And I was already tender and part numb, as I am sure most of us are this week. Probably, maybe, this other mother too. Freddy cried the whole way home and I did too, for my own kid who maybe was picked on because he is such a cutie bright light or maybe because he can’t really talk in a way that other kids can understand. But I also cried, and keep on crying for all of my kids and all of the kids and all of us really who are on our own in a world that doesn’t give a fuck about our health or our wellbeing or our safety.

I know it is about guns this week. Just like every other week. I think that I am finally really beginning to understand the degree to which it is all the same thing: all of these problems, regular ‘ol atrocities that we co-exist with on the daily, are the same. At least the root cause is. Power over versus power with or power of or power for. Anti-abortion legislation, corrupt gun laws riddled with loopholes, pervasive cultural misogyny, racism, anti-trans bills, growing anti-asian and anti-semitic sentiment. The patriarchy depends on the clear and concise delineation of this versus that. They need the binary: of gender, of race, of class. It is an implicit necessity for the power over dynamic to function. It is not about regard or concern for anything other than that which lines their pockets and ensures the perpetuation of the machine that is Modern America. We have a standard to uphold, after all.

I am gutted this week. I think we all are. Jesus I fucking hope we all are.

Every time Maple hopped in the car this week, she’d flip the radio off first thing. Insulating herself from it a little bit I guess… It is so regular, you know? Just what happens in America. And we are so accustomed that even our trauma response is recognizable. We feel hopeless and overwhelmed, we feel pissed and ambitious, we feel numb. Rinse and repeat indefinitely with each passing news cycle. We know what we have to bear. She said that none of her teachers really even mentioned the shooting in Uvalde this week. I guess I understand that. How do you talk to kids about something that you cannot protect them from? They know better. No one has their backs after all. They were never promised to be kept safe in this system, only taught how to hide in classrooms and construct barricades with school supplies. So I get why this one wasn’t processed and instead is left to fester and corrode any of their hope that may, by some impossible grace, remain.

It seems that the only real space to occupy in this landscape is one of post-hope. As though that were a mood that applied to a different world entirely, one made up of summer gardens and easy afternoons on the lake, or, at other times of year, perhaps a casual winter ski. But hope is not something that can be left to apply to having a home, having a body, having a life that is ever ours to simply live. As though that might in and of itself be enough. Amid the grief of this post-hope apocalypse I am endeavoring to work a bit with following my feelings down into their dark origins and balancing that with some clear action items. Here is some of what I have so far:

Donate to Mom’s Demand Action and text ACT to 64433 to get set up with your local chapter.

Donate to the City of Uvalde’s fund for the victim’s families.

Contact your legislators to demand common sense gun reform.

Talk openly with your friends and family: if they or you have firearms at home, are they securely kept in locked and restricted access safes?

Attend your local school board meetings and make your voice heard regarding every single issue that effects the safety and wellbeing of all of our children.

Self-care in not selfish and everyone needs an ally. Motherwort tincture is an excellent plant friend for attending the particular anxiety that lives inside of grief. I find these strategies immensely important when the overwhelm and hopelessness creeps in. (and yes 100% cbd+thc and R E S T)



Do not shy away from your pain my dears. Let it stir the action that lives inside of your rage and heartbreak.

So, in an effort to not let the cultural numbing agents drip their soporific forgetfulness into my heart and soul, I am working to stay up close to our collective pain. The art and poetry coming out of this time are helpful to me in that effort. One of my best poetry buds shared the following poem this week. It hits hard and right and true.

By Katie Bogue
”It's going to be within, like 40 minutes or something, (within) an hour"

Go to the hospital when contractions are 5 minutes apart

labor for 390 minutes

push for 120 minutes

the nurses say the baby will want to feed every 60 minutes
(it feels like he’s feeding every 11 minutes)

you sleep for about 240 minutes every night, never in a row

the pediatrician tells you screen time is 20 minutes, max—but you maybe push it to 30 (or 50)

if their morning snack gets pushed back by 23 minutes they won’t take their nap (you need them to take their nap) and it throws off their whole day

it takes them 17 minutes to tie their shoes, 9 minutes to ask a question, 13 minutes to drive with you to school, 4 seconds to say “I love you.”

So, officer are you saying they were in terror for 40 minutes or 1 hour?

were they huddled together in classrooms for 47 minutes or 56?

were they bleeding their precious lives on to the sticky floor for 35 minutes or was it 37?

how do you leave a single minute vaguely addressed when we’ve accounted for every second of their lives

unicorn treat

A couple times in recent weeks Chris has said something to me along the lines of “remember earlier in the pandemic when you would spend a couple hours a day on your mat?” And well, yes and no. There was a stretch there where everything was in a freeze frame and the resolution on a couple of things was extra high. Like kids had NOTHING happening. Like Wilfred took two naps a day. Like there was really nowhere to comfortably go, not indoors, anywhere. And also, there was a sudden influx of access. 

That seems like a bygone era in many regards, even though much stays the same today. Now, of course, the kids are doing more stuff, but the thrill of it is muted since I am relegated to the car and prohibited access to my former specatatorship. And I don’t like bringing Wilfred into many places. Not really. 

So I do a lot of shuttling and and a lot of squeezing tasks, activities, lessons, study, and practices into skinny envelopes of time. Between the hours of 1:30 and 4pm tend to be extra freaking dicey as wilfs is napping (generally) and maple needs to be picked up and eider sometimes as well, either that or delivered somewhere and Chris is in his office working and well the balance of all of the things is extra precarious and variable and yet not so much flexible really. At all. 

Today was one of those days where I wanted to slide into a class with Christina at 3 but needed to pick up Maple at 2:45 and Chris was going to leave with her again for swim team just before 4 and Eider was game to help but wilfs awoke as I was walking out the door and wouldn’t settle for anything other than coming with me for pick up so of course we were late and then wanted to nurse once we were back home again and well I slid in to class about 30 minutes after its start. Which is wildly tacky and yet perfectly natural in the land of zoom yoga and it just got me feeling very grateful for all of the options that do exist, especially in combo with everyone’s actual flexibility and generosity. 

So while weekdays I land on my mat for something in the window of 20-60 minutes- and that is a unicorn treat- I can indeed remember earlier in the pandemic when I could practice for several hours a day multiple times a week. I don’t think that was really an ideal scenario for anyone. Those were pretty sad times. I mean these are still sad times but maybe not quite so sad. So less is more, in other words. Right. And like I have said 1000x, I am in the practice of taking what I can get when it comes to something for meeeeeee.


I am a jungle gym

Before having kids, I gave little to no thought at all to the type of parent I would be. I didn’t have any plan regarding how I would do anything. All I knew is that I wanted to have them at home if possible, and the rest I would figure out as I went. I had no plan around co-sleeping (or bed-sharing as we call it now), or extended nursing, or delayed vaccination, or how I would approach feeding them, or what screen time even was, or really and truly any of the rest of it. I definitely could not have predicted a lifetime of choosing to be home with them. It might be safest to say, that how I (we) parent chose me (us) versus the other way around. Nary a plan, save wanting babies.

But along the way, discoveries and their subsequent choices were made, philosophies and approaches embraced and then let go and then there was some sort of evolution that grew us into our particular style. For better or worse. (Mostly better, I hope. Fingers crossed.) And at some point I got clear around the value of doing the things I love, that bring me joy and fill me up, around our kiddos instead of waiting for them to be bigger or otherwise tended for me to get back to it. And yeah, compromises have to be made by everyone: maybe it is not my perfect practice environment, and maybe my kid has to wait or settle for my partial attention; holding space and getting the care I crave for myself while at the same time supporting a space in which they witness their parent prioritizing their own needs in healthy, honest, and loving ways.

It is a moving, and imperfect target to be sure. I have considered this regularly throughout the years and shared a great deal about in this space. Beginning all the way back here. It is maybe helpful to check out, especially during one of the cycles of feeling like the tending of them when they are small is prohibitive of the other things you rather be doing. That can be a miserable feeling, I know, to long for our kids to be bigger and more independent than they are so that we can get back to the parts of us that feel difficult to access when they are so very much on us and at us much of the day.

I get it. I really do. And while I 100% think parental sanity also depends on a predictable and reliable (as anything with children can possibly be) time away and on our own, what I am referencing here is the way in which we can condition ourselves and our families to hold space for each other’s interests and passions from early on. That training will go a long way to contextualize all of the sacrifices parents make for growing kids and their own curiosities and discoveries and whole-hearted interests. It becomes, in this way, something we hold space for together instead of a burden or imposition.

So, like that. A reminder to you and to me to do the things we love, the things that are calling out to us. However imperfectly the stars may be aligned in the present moment. And be easy with yourself. I will too. Their need will shift and lessen and fade as the years go, and when that happens, maybe you too, in all of your rediscovered autonomy, will long for the days of your small and funny children crawling all over your business,

interminable

Do you remember way back in the beginning of the pandemic how it was difficult to find a show to watch that even came close to matching the sudden absurdity of the world that we were living in? People were standing too close. People were unmasked. People were acting like their lives and the world was humming along perfectly fine and not about to implode at any moment. It was hard to watch that. And then The Tiger King craze began and it totally made sense. It was bizarre enough to be relatable. Now it seems that there are a whole slew of shows that are reflective of the world we live in. End of days shows. Climate crisis shows. Pandemic shows. We are watching one such show right now and honestly when it first began the chaos and peril of it felt like a relief. Like the day-to-day experience of living was normalized and reflective in the tv narrative. I mean, it is much of what we want in our entertainment, is it not? To see ourselves reflected in characters in such a way that helps us understand who we are in some strange and small way. The show that I am really into right now is Station Eleven. Check it out. I like it. So much of the far-fetched shit of these contagion narratives seem so much more plausible, and dare I say regular, than it did in the pre-covid world.

Which, by the way, truly feels like an unending and ever-deteriorating reality. This winter, as far as I can tell so far, is utter shit with promises of more to come. And I am so tired. Aren’t you? I am scraping the bottom of a barrel of optimism that feels like it emptied itself months ago. I know that at this moment in particular, as we turn the calendar page and set our course for the horizon of a Whole New Year, the outlook should be brighter and the shimmer and shine of the HOPE for a brighter future should be upon us. But it is not. I just want to survive at this point. And I want my kids to survive without too heavy a burden to bear from the ragged scar tissue of the past 22 months of their young lives. A hefty percentage at this point.

I am suffering that. As I am we so many of you are. When I think about what has become of my children’s childhood most days I want to crawl back into the nest of my bedding, close my eyes, with the blinds drawn and the sound machine on and just shut it out. For as long as I am able. They are resilient, sure. But they are suffering at a level that feels so woefully unfair for children to ever suffer. And I am mostly aware of this is my children mind you. Who are held in privelege and opportunity even in dark times. When I consider children less fortunate I am quick to gag on the bile of my own macrocosmic heartache and grief. And then make a donation. It is all I can think to do, and I must do something.

There is a lot to say at this point, some of which I am still really chewing on especially in regard to the events of the very end of the semester. So I will sit with it for a while longer and in this moment simply speak to how this looks in my own home, and mostly in regard to Wilfred whose life is still interwoven enough with mine to speak about publicly. For Maple, suffice it to say that the ongoing stress of an entire highschool experience in which the pandemic is both the context and the content is exhausting and isolating and riddled with an on-going and ever-increasing anxiety. And for Eider, who you may recall opted for a hybrid version of homeschool and public school this fall has decided to stay home for the spring term. For so many reasons including some scheduling difficulty but also in big part because navigating the stress of his classmates that manifests in meanness and antagonization is too much to bear for a 12-year-old. He would rather be home with me and Wilfred and try his luck with the kids his age that are still opting for something similar. I guess I do have some hope that this shift will be positive and enriching and even provide some hard-to-come-by joy for him. But I am tentative nonetheless. My hope is well in check at this point.

For Wilfred, in many ways, the interminable pandemic life which is all he knows has been just that: all he knows. And he is happy and healthy and funny and smart and such a joy and godsend to know and love. I mean, truly I cannot begin to fathom the last 2 years of life without the daily delight that he brings to all of us. What a massive blessing to be sure. And yet, he has his own suffering embedded in the circumstance. We just wrapped up a month of having him assessed by the county to see if he qualifies for services because of his speech delay. They are lovely and supportive and we are so lucky to have the resource available to us. Because he is indeed delayed. Despite being almost 29 months his communication development is hovering somewhere around that of a 14-18-month-old, and while he is a mostly jolly person, it is clear that this difficulty occasionally frustrates him and we certainly all would love to know what funny or clever or kind or in any way informative tidbit he would like to say to us is. Maybe it is because of the masks, maybe it is because of the isolation, maybe it is due to any number of the things that have become normal practices in our day to day. Any. All.

I know that I am certainly lonely. I want to get to know the folks that live where I have been living these past two and a half years. I fear they may think I am antisocial or a hermit or simply like to keep to myself until I remember that that is simply the way of it these days. I want to have playdates and craft circles and dinner parties. I want the door of our home to be open to the wild sweep of kids and teens wandering through for a snack or tea or a chat or to hash out some grand project or plan. And sure I could do these things still, but not really. Not in good conscience. Not with omicron raging across the region and every test, kit or appointment, sold out or booked through the New Year throughout the state. I can't. And so I continue to wait it out. And grieve the day and the season and the year through which my kids’ childhoods crumpled in on themselves and became something simply good enough and not even a shadow of the magical realm of possibility and play I had been dreaming for them these past 16 years.

But a new year is coming. And I will bring hope. I am getting my shit together even in this very moment and I will bring it. I really will. We have some adventures ahead yet. And while it seems that Trip Protection is a solid plan no matter what going forward, I am cautiously optimistic that the time on the beaches and mountains and in the sunshine that awaits us in 2022 will provide some of the healing and inspiration connection we are each so starved for. I am holding out hope for that for my small family. And for you too. And for everyone. I really am.