How we met...

I have had writer's block. Much I want to say but not knowing how to start. So, I do what I do when this occurs. Try to just write whatever comes. When that does not work. I try it again. Text you for a writing exercise and try to meditate. Tonight, I finally turned to finding a good book to read and I discovered Dear Exile, the book you lent me that I forgot I had, sorry. I read it with fervor. Gratefully it got my mind going and the impulse to write soared back into me. And while you are not in Kenya nor I in NYC, we are split into two different worlds with different but similar realities and a deep abiding love for one another. For this I feel blessed.

It also got me thinking about how meeting you even came to be, such a long and winding road. I left the safety of St. Paul for the adventure of rediscovering Boston as a young married person with two kids and days after landing there found I was pregnant with our third child. Peter and I landed in Annisquam, a quaint portion of Gloucester where the fishing industry and many people who thrive on it are depressed, but Annisquam holds it charm. There we birthed our third son, on the coast of the Atlantic during a harsh, gray February, with snow drifts waist high. There we also lived over a year without many of our personal belongings, all of what we owned minus 10 boxes was stashed in storage. We watched the housing market tank and the prices from the west coast drop finally beginning to dip in Boston and it's surrounding towns. If it was not for that tenuous stay there and another invitation to move west I might still be there and never know the beauty nor the arid dryness of Santa Fe. If we hadn't taken the leap to be there, I never would have met you that sunny winter day when I loaded my three boys in the car to go to Fort Marcy. At my wits end that morning with them bugging one another I demanded that they get their coats on. My boys still in their pajama feet with boots over them, protested into the car until I placed them on the swings at the park. You strolled up pregnant with M. and encouraging P. to climb and slide. Us the only two insane mothers out in the brisk winter morning.

I remember getting off my cell as you approached and thinking I could be friends with her. I also remember for a brief moment that morning my boys each in a swing next to one another were harmoniously swinging in unison. It was like an answer to my unspoken longing of finding a friend that day at the park. A friend I could relate to and who would lovingly encourage and challenge me into feeling human again after my third child and two major moves in two short years. All the things we stored for over a year began to find their home and having a dear friend in you brought me home again when I felt in such foreign territory. So on Valentine's Day I write to say thank you for braving the cold winter winds of Santa Fe and being at Fort Marcy on that winter morning, much love my dear friend.

A Purple Heart

I’ve heard people say having kids is like wearing your heart on your sleeve. And today for me, that was the case. I was doing pretty well with P. out of town and the days before me of solo parenting stretching out. In fact I have gotten it down to a system. I work babysitter breaks in for myself and try and make sure I get some writing time in and yoga and pray for some time with a good girlfriend or two—the last not always working out because of the family demands we all seem to be under with the littles.

I was doing well until I picked my oldest, F., up at kindergarten. He got in the car not his cheerful self, and asked when he was going to have a playdate. (Playdates—what a construction of safety parenting! I balk a bit at them because when I grew up we played with the neighborhood kids and occasionally had a friend from school over, now it is all about the playdates; parents orchestrating friendships. And the reason I balk? Well, I have seen the long term outcome when I worked at a few universities in my previous life. I witnessed kids not being able to work out their problems with their roommates without a parent intervening or another adult they were so use to this friendship management that they lacked the confidence, tools and resolve to do it themselves.) Needless to say, I participate in these social norms of today, and F. has not had a playdate in a few weeks, which feels like forever to him. I told him maybe Friday as a mother had inquired about having F. over to play with her Boy x. F. perked up at this.

We arrived home and F.’s cheeriness dissolved again when we walked in the door and our golden retrievers greeted him and accidentally knocked papers out of his pack. Immediate tears sprung. I chided him a bit, “F. this is not something to throw a tantrum about,” as he cried and yelled at the dogs: “No one is being nice to me!” He took off his coat and ran up the stairs to his bed. I followed him and he broke down in wholehearted sobs. I held him. He finally confessed, “Boy x is not nice to me at school. I tried talking to him a few times at school today and he kept a serious face and did not respond except for once.”

Now, Boy x F. has regular playdates with… and has had some problems with him in the past at school. It seems Boy x is one way in the solo company of my son, and another at school. Mama bear in me comes out when I think about it. We’ve talked about friends and how a true blue friend is consistent not one way in one situation and another way in a different place. Put in kindergarten terms not hot and cold…and then discussed who is hot and cold and who is consistently nice to him—and he to them. We also have talked about how a person makes you feel when you are around them, that friends bring out the best in one another optimally; a fine balance. F. named some kids who do this for him and Boy x was not on that list, Boy x he said, “He used to be nice to me. He even said ‘Sorry,’ to me, but sorry means you won’t do it again and he has.”

By now my heart is fully patched outside of myself as F.’s tears resolve, and he changes into play clothes. After a phone call to his teacher to better understand what the school dynamic is that is occurring between the two, I agree to let him go to Boy x’s on Friday because he really wants to under one condition: we talk about some strategy beforehand and he agrees to discuss how it went afterward. With that pact in place, we walked downstairs to make Valentine’s Day cards for school. I watch as he moves so gracefully from protecting his heart for the day to giving of it again as he crafts his cards for his classmates. I know that some of those feelings he feels now I had as a child and while I want to protect him from the yo-yo friendships, I know I can’t so much protect him as prepare him for how to handle them. It took me nearly 36 years to come to the conclusion that I don’t have to be friends nor remain friends with people who are not consistent, or kind, or who drain my energy. I spent a lot of wasted energy trying to nurture relationships that I should have let go of gracefully. No one said to me as a child that I didn’t have to like everyone and that if everyone didn’t like me it didn’t mean that it was because of me per se. Since I have learned this, I feel much freer and more like I have the energy for the people I cherish. And I want to help F. set a healthy boundary that he does not have to try so hard with Boy x, because I will not let Boy x erode his confident self by his inconsistent actions toward my son. 

One of F.'s Valentine's.

So tonight my heart is raw and outside of my body a bit as I contemplate how letting my little boy move into the world where I can’t help orchestrate his friendships moment by moment takes courage. I know he will be better for navigating some of these seas himself, but it is not easy to watch and know when to intervene and when to let him test the waters. F.’s teacher is going to begin a lesson on friendship and caring for our hearts and others hearts. Her hope is that the kids understand that when we are mean with our words, our facial expressions, our body language that it creates a wrinkle in another person’s heart. And ultimately for them to learn at a deeper level, that hearts are soft and tender and we need to be careful with our hearts and others. Whew, you can say that again! My heart is wrinkled tonight and try as I might the iron is not hot enough to press them out. Perhaps, this is part of how we earn our purple heart as parents--that as our kids' hearts get wounded in action, our hearts ache too. And even though we'd do anything to take away their pain they are better served if we do our best to help them heal.

So what do you do when your heart is outside yourself as you navigate parenthood? How do you find the delicate balance of helping your youngins learn the social intricacy of school? And what do you do for yourself when your partner is out of town and you are with your littles to keep sane?

Give a Little Love

I always know when I’m just about to come out of period of hibernation: I buy a lot of books and start working out harder. It must be part of some deep, subliminal urge to push my mental and physical edge and bust out, literally, of a rut. This week, as I begin to claw my way out of the fog of having a new baby and losing a father, I started a new book, Quantum Wellness. In the first chapter, author Kathy Freston outlines the “eight pillars of wellness.” You will not be shocked to learn that exercise and meditation make the list, but she puts a refreshing spin on the other usual suspects. Instead of commanding readers to diet or eat well, she urges you to “eat consciously.” This means paying attention to not only where the food was produced, but how—with peace and healthful intentions. (Skip the veal and factory-farmed pork, please.) She’s also a big proponent of visualization and having fun. What’s not to love about that?

Most of the eight are already on my personal Sanity List, with one big exception: service. Plenty of studies have shown that giving to others boosts our immune systems and triggers the release of the feel-good hormone serotonin. In other words, when you help others, you help yourself. This isn’t a new concept, but it’s new to me: For the past year, I’ve been plagued by a nagging desire to make a difference beyond my own front door, but I haven’t yet figured out how to carve out the time or where to put my energy. There are too many worthy causes!

But recently I heard from an old friend, Amanda, founder of an organization called Shine that empowers women and girls around the world through service, art, yoga, and travel. Amanda went to Uganda last year with Off the Mat, Into the World, a non-profit that uses yoga to inspire grass-roots activism, to help build a solar-powered birthing center in Nsaasi Village. When I read that the first baby was born at the Shanti Birth House and Learning Centre, in late January, a little spark went off in my brain, connecting all the stories I’ve been reading about sub-par birthing conditions in developing countries with my love for Africa and my own two births. After hatching two tiny squirrelly newborns, I’ve come to understand that birthing is probably the most powerful and unifying of all human experience. It should also be the most hopeful: There’s no good reason why half a million women should die in childbirth each year.

under african skies, 2006

Amanda’s going back to Uganda this spring, and I’m itching to go. I’m not sure it’s in the cards for me this year, but I do know that this year is going to be the year in which I finally figure out how I can best help others. It may be women’s health or it might be the environment—don’t even get me started on the ways in which we’re completely trashing the climate for our children (reading about Mark Hertsgaard’s new book Hot scared the pants off me). Either way, I’m going to follow my inspiration and trust what emerges—shadowy and, with any luck, promising—out of the fog. Wellness for all, I hope.

What's Your Number?

On Sunday, during a sunny afternoon hike up Atalaya with my friends Carol and Mary, we got to talking about the ways in which we take care of ourselves. For a person who deals in words, I like numbers a lot. Numbers get right to the point: As in, on a scale of 1 to 10, how well are you taking care of yourself right now? I think about this often in an abstract way, but I’ve never stopped to quantify it, or take inventory. So while I was surprised when Carol asked the question, I was even more surprised when I heard my answer. “Eight,” I said, right off the bat. The number sounded high as soon as it left my lips, but it was easy to rattle off the things I need to find optimal balance, to hit the sweet spot of being both grounded and energized, present in my life and continuing to grow:

1. Fresh air and exercise on the trails at least 6 times a week

            2. Writing

3. Time with friends; often most efficiently combined with #1.

These are the three essentials I can’t live without, the non-negotiables in my daily and weekly schedule that help me stay sane and feel like myself. But I also need:

4. Quiet, alone time—that's why I'm trying to learn to meditate

5. 8 hours of sleep

6. Adventures & travel

7. Yoga once a week

8. Good books to read

9. More whole foods, less sugar

As we talked, though, I began to have second thoughts. Maybe it’s more like 7.5? I wondered aloud, thinking of all the things I wish I could do more, or do better: like jet off on assignment to remote places, alone, like I used to do before I had two small daughters. Or really push myself physically, remembering wistfully those four-hour bike rides and high-mountain endurance runs from my old life. I wish I had time to run and ride and hike the trails AND go to a strength training class. (Especially since I read that lifting weights supposedly makes you smarter.) I wish I could do yoga more than once a week. I wish I could go to New Zealand or Norway, plan a climbing expedition, and have more adventure in my everyday life.

But then I realized that although the results aren’t always what I hope, most of the necessary pieces are in place. I know what I need, and for the most part, I do an OK job carving out time to take good care of myself so that I can take better care of my family. I know that when I wake up feeling blue from my missing my dad or listless about trying to drum up writing assignments, there are specific things I can do to feel better right away. I have strategies and a system, a tick-list of to-dos (and, thankfully, a very patient husband). And I almost always come home reenergized, sunnier, and much nicer to have around.

Carol’s question was a good exercise. I realized that even when my life feels nuts and out of whack, I’m happier than I think. And that makes me happy.

Everybody has their own sanity list. What’s on yours? (My dad liked to lie on the carpet and daydream for half an hour every day to recharge his brain.) On a scale of 1 to 10, how well are you taking care of yourself right now? What’s your number?

From the Crow's Nest

Last Tuesday, I was driving F & L to their swim lesson and from I-94 east I saw the sign, “Crow’s Nest” nestled in the strip mall. Immediately, I was five or six years younger, back in Santa Cruz. P. and I took the drive down the coast on our "get-away-Thursdays" from the heat and beat of Silicon Valley to the Crow's Nest. The memory was visceral: I could taste the salt air and feel the sun on my face. The baby in my belly kicked, bringing me back to the gray slushy highway as we approached our exit for swimming. Amazed at where P. & I are, given where we've been, I pulled into the parking lot.

P., myself, and baby F. at the original Crow's Nest, Santa Cruz, CA

This morning, I found it hard to rise in our current nest and take flight. I’d been up with L., our newly minted four year old, from 3 am to 6:30 am. That’s why when P came in to wake me with a command, “F. needs to get to school it’s two minutes to 8,” I bolted, “What?!” Threw back the covers and my grogginess, half grateful for the extra sleep, half resentful for the rushed wakening.

I was extra tired from this weekend when I was in a bad way—irked by the clutter piling up in our home like the winter snow banks that line the city streets, layer after layer, no time to melt. Katie, your feng shui help in our bedroom set off a domino affect. The simple act of no cell phones or computers on at night near our beds does permit for better sleep! It is like I I'm no longer on! Nothing pinging me. These small, cleansing acts set me on course, craving clean lines, no clutter, and clean counters.

So last night, I was first roused at 3 am, not initially to L., but to a blood curdling shriek and the clamoring of the trap that we set in the eaves of our attic this weekend. Hoping beyond hope that our hunch of things living in there was wrong; the clamor, the sound of something wild dying, jostled me from the deepest of sleep into a vague wakefulness: Was it the boys? No they were still asleep. And the image of a mama squirrel witnessing her young die before her eyes infiltrated my dream. A cruel trick we played, that eave serving as a safe haven form the brutal winter winds now no longer safe. What had I done? Perhaps I dreamed it I thought.

I drifted back to sleep with dying squirrels, and no sooner did L. cried out, “Mom! There is a bug in my bed!” Box elders reemerged in our home, after a brief winter hibernation. Could it be them? Was he awoken like me, from the dying animal? I am not squeamish about Box Elders like I was when we had mice four years ago. My fear of mice consumed me. At the time, I was nine months pregnant with L.. I called P. home from work crying wolf, “Labor!” because of our brazen mouse that emerged in daylight hours and our bemused dogs that laid there and watched him. I stayed frozen standing on top of our couch, white knuckling the phone, until P. returned. 

Nor the time period two years ago, when I feared deer ticks. I was pregnant with K., we lived in Gloucester where ticks defied winter temperatures. Ticks tormented me (and my family because of me) into de-clothing after each hike/swim. We would undress on our deck that overlooked the Atlantic. Clothes peeled off, turned inside out to check seams, tick highways. This ritual guaranteed me utter assurance that these tiny, worrisome bugs stayed outside. Untethered to me, to the napes of my babes necks. (The one time one lodged he chose to nest on my oldest boy, in that tender crevice of the neck. Scarred by the experience of unsuccessfully de-ticking him, the tick's body broke off while the head remained.)

It was not until we moved to Santa Fe where ticks were less of a threat and mice were more apt to build nest in cars than homes that I shed these fears. So a Box Elder bug, while annoying, does not instill fear. I pulled my weighted, pregnant body, out of bed to check L.’s cry of a bug in his bed. No bug. No need for the wipe I held in my hand ready for the collection. Settling L. back into bed, I climbed down his bunk ladder to return to sleep. Only I don’t fall asleep like P. does, readily and greedily, I take time and for the rest of the night it was a dance with L. I’d finally sleep, he’d wake, he’d sleep, I’d lie awake, and so on. I should have taken this as a foreshadowing to this morning's events.

View of the Atlantic sunset from our deck as we de-tick!

The rushed drop off of F. at school, and a pick up of a Spanish decaf latte, I came home to L. screaming again, only this time, “Mom, I threw up!”

And boy did he!  In the bedroom, that houses our version of Lego Land, trailing through the hallway, with the grand finale in our bathroom! Yes, Monday morning was off to a happening start-but after the weekend of the doldrums over my hair loss, (but that is another post for another day), I welcomed the fact to not be obsessed by dark thoughts and thrown into immediate action. As P. rushed in with paper towels and disinfectant. (I was utterly grateful for him in this moment.) I ran downstairs only to return to a cleaned up L. But an undressed K. no diaper even, but poop all over the bathroom. His unsuccessful attempt to use the potty independently.

Well we won a ticket to stay home and decompress. No music class, no outings, just the invitation of winter sunlight streaming in through the open windows, and nothingness before us. And I realized all too soon my school mornings will be solo mornings. In five short years, they’ll all be at school and I’ll be without the “Hold mes!,” their demands, the "reeeaaad to me" requests, their morning companionship. The thought besieged me, slowed me down to enjoy my present—all of it, the throw up, the poop clean up, the littles near me. I don’t mean this in a Polly Anna-ish sort of way. It was just a visceral realization like that moment last Tuesday on I-94 when I was thrown back into Santa Cruz. Suddenly, I was looking at my boys from my own second story crow’s nest. And gracefully circling over the chaos of the morning, I found gratitude. Even joy, to begin to tackle the clutter of our second story. I hung the Batman and Spider Man decals I bought for the boys room in November, unpacked the pictures from our fall move from New Mexico, and dusted them off, wiping away the red earthen dust I grew to love, that still coated their glass. (A bittersweet moment realizing that the dust that collects on them now will be white, the filaments that readily float in winter sunlight.) I even rearranged our bedroom furniture. The boys played Legos and cars beneath my feet, and settled into my bed  for sick-induced TV time. 

The weight from this weekend lifted, clean lines emerged and a red lamp that we purchased in San Jose, CA no longer fit this space. For a moment, as things cleared away I could observe it all unobstructed-revealing panoramic views of the Atlantic to the Pacific, to the Christo de Sangre mountain tops, finally resting my gaze on the ravines of the mighty Mississippi.

Our sweet dog on a hike collecting the red earthen dirt I love, on her paws.

(* By the way the wild animal killed in our attic eaves, a flying squirrel—light in color, part squirrel, part bat. Sad.)

 

Writing Practice: Where were you when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded?

Where was I when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded? Eighth-grade geometry class—or was it 9^th-grade algebra?—at Summit Jr. High. This was a gothic brick building, major curb appeal, tall and steepled-looking, and inside it did not disappoint. Classic U-shaped—or was it H?—with endless hallways running at right angles to each other, no nonsense, the way schools used to be. One half block from the Summit train station, where commuter trains left every hour for New York City. The halls were lined with lockers that clanged when you opened and closed them, and except for Mme Delby’s 7^th grade French class and Mr. O’Neill’s 8^th-grade drama class, all of junior high was a blur. As it should have been. That horrifically awkward period when your hair was either too short or too long, all the familiar landmarks of youth had fallen away, replaced by corridors of lockers, gym teachers with nylon pants and expectations, and a phone booth out front where so-and-so, the class bully, with boobs and facial hair at 13, tried to beat you up one day after school. She asked: What are you looking at? You: Nothing much. Yes, with sass. Then-best-friend Blake snorted with accidental laughter, then read the look in the bully’s eyes and yanked your sweater (monogrammed no doubt): Come ON. The day the  space shuttle exploded, you were one of a million kids watching the very same TV broadcast on a wide brown TV wheeled in on an A.V. cart for the occasion. The blinds were down, the room dark, exciting, and movie-like. Elbows propped on desks, chins propped on wrists as history was made, much better than the usual filmstrip or chalky equation on the board. It was shortly after 1, or just before 11, and the puff of smoke looked so right at first. Of course it would be that way: engine thrusts sending the rocket ship into space, sort of like exhaust from a muffler when the car starts cold. What gave it away, then? Surely not our shocked classroom; we were in awe, detached as adolescents will be. It must have been the announcer, the shrieking TV crowd—did the math teacher turn off the TV, or did we want the capsule fall, looping and spinning?

Highs and Lows

Sorry for the radio silence. It’s been a topsy-turvy week, starting with an epic sleep-training session on Sunday night. (The baby jinx is real, by the way, so henceforth I am entering the cone of silence about M’s sleeping.) I made the most of my marathon, middle-of-the-night shift by inhaling the first 80 pages of Poser: My Life in 23 Yoga Poses, the clever new memoir by Claire Dederer, a book critic and mother of two (who also happens to be married to my former Outside colleague, Bruce Barcott). The book perfectly captures that misguided drive toward perfection that so many of us (i.e. me) seem to have when it comes to parenthood, writing, and well, all of life. Claire manages to avoid annoying yoga-speak and dishes instead about her zany, you-think-your-family-was-weird childhood in Seattle and her two very tormented births. It was so unexpectedly gripping that I almost didn’t want M. to fall asleep. Almost.

We awoke on Tuesday to an out-of-the-blue powder day: 19 inches of new snow at the Santa Fe Ski Basin, so Steve and I hustled P to nursery school and drove M up the mountain with us, where we did the baby hand-off in the lodge. I plowed through waist-deep powder pillows with a ridiculous grin plastered all over my face for an hour or so while M napped in her nifty canvas baby cocoon on the floor of the cafeteria. Later, while Steve skied, it seemed like half of Santa Fe was taking a powder day, catching up on emails in the lodge—the modern, mobile office. Love that. Looking out of the window at the snow still falling, fine as ash, with M making eyes at a bunch of 60-something badass retirees, I felt giddy with good fortune—especially when Steve let me ski the bonus round before it was time to go home.

Is it any wonder, then, the letdown that followed? Wednesday ushered in a mini Ice Age; my car thermometer topped out at two. We hunkered down en masse, a grouchy case of cabin fever setting in by noon. Some days trying to find balance between motherhood and writing feels like riding the seesaw with the mean kid who decides to get off when you’re at the top. Crash.

It’s partly logistics: The nanny’s out of town; the toddler refuses to nap/swats baby like a fly; and you can’t for the life of you locate five minutes of peace and quiet in your own home. Yesterday I was convinced the world was ending, or at least my writing career. Payments were late coming in and going out, I hadn’t pitched a story since before my father got sick, my bank account was in crisis mode, etc, etc. In my former life as a childless freelance writer, I used to be able to put in a solid seven hours at my desk on a good day. Now, I feel heroic if I can sneak in three; 90 minutes is more like it. How can you possibly make a living like that? Guess it’s time to dust off The Four Hour Work Week.

But it’s also perspective, and I know of no better cure for a bad attitude than going straight up a mountain, even when it’s zero degrees outside—maybe especially when it’s zero degrees outside. So I rousted myself for a frostbite hike with Steph, who listened to me rant, my self-pity sending little cloudbursts of steam from my mouth like an ornery old uncle smoking a pipe. It was stupidly cold, so we chugged uphill as fast as we could, following a lone set of footprints that about-faced at the grey ledge and left us to break trail. Soon we were above the mist and into patchy blue sky, Santa Fe disappearing and reappearing below us through the clouds. The piñons were clumpy with new snow, and the sun glittered off the pine needles. I knew then that this would be a day we would remember all year, maybe longer—not because it was so bad, but because it turned out to be so good. By the time we reached the top, I’d forgotten what I’d been bitching about, my nose was tingly, and Steph’s hands had gone numb like they always do, but life felt just about right again.


Just to make sure, I drove down Canyon Road, snow-packed and empty, and pulled into Downtown Subscription for a cup of tea before I had to go home. I only had one ratty dollar in my pocket, but the place was nearly deserted so I sat down with my notebook and wrote for 15 minutes on whatever came to mind. And you know what? I felt all brand new again. Next time you're feeling stuck or whiney, try it. A good walk with a good friend and 15 minutes of writing is all it takes, I swear.