unsubscribe

For years, I would start my day by deleting 20-30 items of junk mail from my inbox. when I would randomly check my email, I would delete a bunch more. saturday nights (after 24 hrs electricity-free) there would usually be 50-75 items to delete.

somehow this seemed like a normal way to handle things; i felt kind of important getting all that mail, even if it was an assortment of everything from sales on children's shoes to petitions to save the puppies.

delete, delete, delete.

i felt powerful, and like i was accomplishing something, judging between worthy and unworthy, sending the poor losers to eternal damnation in my spam folder.

and then one day a few weeks ago, i decided to try something different. instead of hitting delete, i would take an extra 3-5 seconds per email, and go through the unsubscribe process. i have to say it took some discipline, as i'm not your world's most committed person as far as sticking with a process, but i did it.

as the days went on, i felt this miraculous lightening. i would wake up to only 5-6 emails, most of which i was actually interested in reading. there was a delicious silence on the other end of the line. my inbox was my own, and i realized how freeing this was: no more incessant noise being thrown at me, no more needing to fend off words and images and ideas that i chose not to entertain.

i've felt a parallel happening in certain areas of my social life. apparently (and i realize that 35 is pretty late to come to this realization) you can choose the kinds of energy you let people bring into your life. you can choose who you allow to affect your day. mind-bogglingly obvious perhaps, but there you have it.

it's totally a work in progress. because at this point i'm mainly just not reaching out to people and interactions that keep me functioning on a small scale. but its never so simple, because friendships have history and weight and multi-faceted appeal.

so it's a constant sifting and sorting and mainly just owning the fact that my time and energy is my own. and life is too darn short to get bogged down in pettiness and small-mindedness. and i'm just savoring the lack of it, tasting the silence, playing around with what to do with all this freed up energy.

unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. it's just a happier place to be.

field trip wreckage

so i had an irrational burst of energy this afternoon, and noticed that there was a special homeschool day at the history center (thanksgiving themed) going on right at that moment. despite the baby being tired and the kids sort of hungry and not all that interested (they voted 2-1 to go, but the 1 was extremely vocal in her anti-sentiment) i cheerfully packed em all into the car and headed off.

the first rude awakening was that despite us being members, there was a charge for entry to homeschool day events. darn it. ok, so after plunking down the discover card, i had that much more motivation to get something educational/enriching out of the afternoon.

having an agenda is generally a poor idea when bringing 4 kids ages 1-8 to any public event, but i was still feeling bold. we wandered through the exhibits, trying to find the "turkey trivia" or "harvest festival" areas. my 3 yr old ran ahead madly dashing into the pioneer cabins, entirely missing the point of just about everything. and stressing me out massively as i imagined losing the little guy entirely in the throng. my 8 and 5 yr olds wandered in & out a bit, enjoying seeing the other homeschool kids more than anything else. ok, so far, not getting much out of it.

but i pressed on optimistically:
"hey, how about the arts & crafts section? who wants to make a thanksgiving placemat or table centerpiece?!" grumbles from the older kids. 3 yr old screams his approval enthusiastically and runs ahead.

when we reach the art table, the 3 yr old climbs onto the stroller with the baby, who shrieks in protest. he refuses to budge, claiming to be tired and starving. the 5 yr old also realizes that his hunger is all-consuming and can no longer be overlooked. hunger and low blood sugar turn this generally sweet and cooperative child into a fuming ball of misery. the art table is nothing to him. sigh.

fine, at this point, im just hoping the 8 yr old will make a stinking placemat so we can get out of here.  i let her join the throng of kids clustering around the table. as i tend to the younger kids needs with the only lousy piece of string cheese i had stuffed into my bag, i look over to see what she is doing: she runs excitedly over, holding three pieces of yarn. "look! this yarn is perfect for my viking finger-weaving!!!"

at this point, i resign myself entirely to the fact that no one here is actually going to gain anything terribly much from this program, and its time to think about leaving before we actually lose anything much, in sanity particularly. so i smile, and carefully stash the precious yarn away. after all, isn't it all about being thankful for what we have?

im thinking organized programming is not going to be something i pursue again for a while. at least until my next irrational burst of energy strikes, and that tour-the-state-capital field trip (aka what-exactly-were-you-thinking-you-poor-misguided-woman?) beckons maddeningly at me from afar.

everybody dance now

my 8 yr old had a final performance for her modern dance class the other night. i was really psyched to go, since i love modern dance, and i know she has a great connection with this teacher; one of few adults that really "get" her, in all her glorious intensity.

so when she begged my 5 yr old not to come because she was embarrassed, i got an uncomfortable, pit-of-my-stomach familiar feeling. because this self-consciousness is so me, such a ginormously gaping cavern of anxious discomfort whenever i imagine performance of any sort, it was really hard to figure out where to put this feeling of hers in my head.

in a basic way, i was fine to respect her wish and be the only family member to attend. but it made me wonder: is it silly to have her in a dance class when she hates performing, being watched? is there any point? what am i building towards?

when i was eleven, my parents put my sister and me into an arts camp. it was pretty serious stuff, as we had to choose a major (3 hours) and a minor (2 hours). i chose ceramics as my major, pretty randomly, and ballet as my minor, also fairly randomly.

not entirely randomly: i had harbored fantasies of being a ballerina, even begging my mom to buy me leg warmers (not sure why i figured that was the one necessary key to success) and standing in my bathroom for hours over various slow summer days, pointing my toes and stretching in front of the mirror, in a random and pretty undisciplined way. but that was as far as it had ever gotten. my parents were hard-working immigrants that didn't really have the resources (i'm kind of guessing here) to put in to extracurricular activities, or camps, which is what made this summer at the arts camp stand out so much.

the few memories i have about that summer involve either being covered in clay and creating atrociously ugly bowls and deformed vases, or being asked to demonstrate ballet positions and movements for the class every day. apparently i was ridiculously flexible and had some sort of untapped aptitude for the stuff. i remember very little else except that on the final day, the teacher told my parents that i needed to continue doing this.

we moved at the end of that summer. i never took another dance class again, and i'm not sure to this day if that was a financial or practical decision. i guess on some level i kind of resent that, adding it to my list of what-ifs in life, although i know that that is a pointless line of thought. its too much of a played out sob story: the could've-been-washed-up-mother-figure, trying to live her dreams through her daughter. honestly thats not where i am in my head with this.

fast forward to my daughter's dance performance. the girls dance with feeling, expression, joy. they are light and free and the teacher, a lesbian buddhist mother of two who's been teaching and dancing for thirty years, revels in their energy. when they act up or get out of hand, she channels their energy instead of working against it. except for a few flashes of discomfort early on, my daughter is right in there, throwing herself wholeheartedly into the movements, often standing out with her extreme full body participation.

i stay after class to chat with the teacher. she tells me about her daughter who is 19 and currently obsessed with judaism. she reflects that the jewish children she sees all seem so into their religion, and so non-materialistic. i find this a little funny and not terribly true across the board; i feel like judaism as a cultural phenomenon is a pretty mixed bag, like any diverse movement. don't get me wrong, i love it, but i definitely don't have any blinders on.

my daughter asks her for her email address, "so that we can stay pals." the teacher responds by saying, "we'll always be pals. i've loved you since i first met you two years ago - i  know there is something deep and special in you." my daughter smiled and took the compliment perfectly in stride.

and thereby answered my question: of course it is worth doing, performance anxiety or not. all the world's a stage, and we are always playing, in every single interaction we have with one another: its all about the love and light and joy, and yes, about the twists and bends and wild whirling dervish swirls as well.

moments

My one year old walked a few steps for the first time this evening. I happened to be sitting on the floor with her at the time, and she stood up holding on to me, and let go, water bottle clutched for security in one hand. she took a few wobbly frankenstein-steps forward, beaming for all the world to see. i gasped & cheered and she collapsed and giggled.

I pulled out my phone, hoping she might do it again. i spent the next fifteen minutes or so futilely trying to capture the tiny miracle for posterity, but she vastly preferred coming right up in my face so there was no way i could get an angle in. oh, well.

so much for being in the moment. i sometimes wonder what our kids will think as they watch us fussing with technology rather than just being present. i think there's a feeling ( at least for me) of inherent distrust in my ability to remember, and if i dont remember, then what happens to all of these moments?! where do they go? what makes them matter? kind of a frantic, frenzied grasping at things, trying to make them just stay, darn it.

my 8 yr old's painting teacher had invited us to hang out in her backyard this morning and she described how she had laboriously and lovingly built up the garden piece by piece over many years. and that now she sits on a moonlit night and just is.

i had sent an email to my friend this afternoon describing my morning of, rather than being in the moment and connecting to my children, having: 

1. yelled at my 8 yr old for not remembering that the vav (hebrew) suffix means "his" 

2. yanked my 3 yr old bodily out of a sandbox with a threat to not let him play if he throws sand again (not going anywhere near the reason I knew he was doing it - the 5 yr old had beat him to a task: retrieving a toy from the bushes, that he had been dying to do, and a general sense of utter injustice that he is ALWAYS smaller.) 

3. refused to accompany the 3 yr old to the bathroom bc he was scared of monsters, bc it wasn't a "legitimate" request. but more bc i hadn't had coffee yet. 

4. ignored the 5 yr old in a weeping heap on the couch bc there was no food he wanted in the house. 

she replied that today she felt overwhelmed trying to balance her home/work energy ratio, coming up short and feeling guilty. i don't actually have a truly separate work piece in my equation (unless you count the homeschooling, which i think is deeply intertwined.) 

i wanted to send her a beam of zen, to somehow make her just be, wherever she is, and feel that it is enough. and have it reflected right back at me, and feel all warm and bathed in light. instead i sent her a virtual hug and just moved on, accepting that this is just how it feels sometimes. 

that even when we try in vain to muck up the breathtaking moments that life throws unexpectedly at us with a cellphone camera, they keep on coming. maybe i should take a lesson from my family up north who have been without power for nearly two weeks, and put the darned electronica away. give in to the utter impossibility of holding on to it all & just relax into it a little bit. maybe a goal to work on hopefully over my next decade. anyway, here's to moonlit nights and teetering exhilarating first steps. 

the f-word

I was trying to describe a woman in our neighborhood to my 8 yr old daughter.

"she is somewhat older than me, light colored hair, and somewhat fat" I said.
"fat?!" she responded, "you said the f-word!"

I explained that fat is not exactly a bad word, it is just an adjective, although it is loaded with negative associations in american culture. I wasn't really sure how to convey the complexity of feelings that arise in many women when they hear the word, but I simply could not think of any other way to describe this woman to my 8 yr old that she would recognize. so I let the topic go, and moved on.

today, as we walked together in the sunshine, she broached the subject again. "ima, what is the f-word?" I was a little taken aback, as my 5 yr old was walking with us.  ive generally always had the policy to answer any question the kids ask me honestly and simply, and aim to give them exactly as much information as they were asking for. the idea being that when they're ready to tackle another aspect of the issue, they come to me with a further question. (this is the way, in bits and pieces, my 15 yr old acquired much of her information early in life.) the complication here was that my 5yr old did NOT ask me what the f-word is, and therefore likely did not have a brain compartment for that info quite yet.

so i said to her, hang on, i will answer your question in a few minutes. she and my 5 yr old drew their heads together as they walked, and took turns guessing what f-word could possibly be considered so extremely rude... they could not seem to think of anything adequately angry. "is it feminism?" my 8 yr old wondered.

i waited till my 15 yr old, who was walking ahead, took the 5 yr old's hand and walked ahead with him, and then i leaned down & whispered in my 8 yr old's ear that this word is considered extremely impolite. i proceeded to tell her the word, and then spell it for her upon request. she said, ima, im just warning you, sometime when im really angry at you, i MIGHT say that word to you. i said its really not a word that kids use in general, but there are a lot of angry words that kids do use.

the fact that "fat" and "feminism" were her first two running guesses was kind of wild to me. it is so fucking hard to grow up as a girl in this culture, that an 8 yr old (and a fairly sheltered, homeschooled one at that) guessed these two words might be the pinnacle of inappropriate. is being fat so uncomfortable in our society that we can't treat the word as a simple adjective ever? granted that she's observed her 15 yr old, feminist-identifying sister take some flak for her stances, so i can see why she might wonder if feminism is always an anger inducing concept.

maybe (probably) im reading too much into my daughter's random guesses. im just hoping (praying) that i haven't created an 8 yr old monster who will surprise the crunchy homeschool mamas & papas at our next gathering.  24 hours in, no sign of it yet. but i'll keep you posted on that one. sometimes following through on an educational theory is scary stuff. maybe not feminism-scary, but you know, really, fucking scary.