Start Making Sense

I’m overwhelmed by the urge to post from the Nest again. It’s been months since I’ve been here, and I can’t quite say why. The easy answer is too much other work, real work, though the longer I’m away from here, the more I think that maybe this is my real work: wrestling with the balance between creativity and motherhood (or maybe there’s no “between”—if I’ve learned anything in the past couple of years, it’s that the two are completely enmeshed, symbiotic, inseparable), scrapping out a few minutes here and there to do the writing that makes me feel sane, grounded, and whole, while life in this house gets increasingly busy, messy, and unpredictable. 

What I’m realizing, though, is that I may have things backwards: Abandoning the Nest isn’t a symptom of feeling overscheduled and disconnected, it’s the cause of these feelings. I need to grapple with the inexplicable wonder and weirdness of trying to mother two girls and keep writing, in equal parts. Months can go by when I’m not thinking about it actively, but instead living it chaotically. There are birthdays, cross-country flights, road trips, powder days, Christmas cookies to bake and houseguests to entertain. This is called Getting Things Done, and it works—for a while. But it’s also pure survival mode, and as such it’s pretty reflexive and unconscious. Which after a while begins to feel foggy and dull, like having a really bad hangover. 

That’s when I know it’s time to claw my way back into the Nest and start trying to make sense of it all again. It’s not that I think I’ll ever have the answers—like, how to write a kick ass first novel and maybe also a memoir while raising two curious, compassionate, intrepid daughters and simultaneously training for an ultramarathon, nixing gluten and sugar from my diet, and being a good mate who doesn’t get too grumpy when my husband asks me to do his company’s bills. Last week, I went to Alta for a ski clinic, led by former Olympic mogul racer and big-mountain extreme skier Kristin Ulmer. She said repeatedly that the mental techniques we were learning are so infinite and universal, they're ungraspable. “I’m not asking you to understand these concepts,” she told us. “I’m asking you to be them.”

Leaving home, like I did last weekend, is fabulous for perspective (not to mention a full night’s sleep), but to do the thorny work of untangling the strands only to try to see how they might possibly fit together, I have to bring myself back to the thick of the action, where it’s all happening, right here in the Nest. 

But boy, do I fight it sometimes. Like for the last three months. I’ve developed certain depraved but effective strategies for avoiding the Nest. Mostly, I take on too much other work. I say yes to everything, so I can say to myself, “I’m so busy, I couldn’t possibly write my own stuff,” and it’s easy to justify because I’m earning money, posting stories that actually pay rather than writing for free, and what’s more important than that? Well, probably a lot of other things, but try telling that to the deep, dark heart of my resistance, which sits like a lump of ancient bedrock somewhere below my solar plexus. (“It doesn’t pay,” I told a friend a few weeks ago while we were skinning up the mountain at sunset, talking about novel writing. He replied, “Well, not money.” Point taken.)

So here I am. But coming home isn’t always pretty. For starters, there are kids to tend to at inconvenient times, when you’d rather be skiing or sleeping or writing, and mouths to feed. Some days, parenthood can feel like one long interruption. Like yesterday, when the babysitter called in sick and I held a little pity party for myself all morning, bemoaning my skills as both mother and writer while trying to corral two semi-sick girls with serious cases of cabin fever and trying to finish my Raising Rippers post for my Monday deadline. 

I did have a moment of clarity, though, amidst the lunacy: Forgiveness. My goal is to finally write my novel this year, but I have to be prepared to let go of that if the interruption called life and motherhood pulls me away. And I have to trust myself that the writing will come when the time is right. It always does. Until then, I can forgive myself—a little more every day. 

Somehow, just being in the thick of the resistance all day, not so much figuring it out as seeing it clearly, from all its unflattering angles, I broke free. When Steve came home to spell me for a couple of hours, I dragged myself out for a run; then I went for tea and 15 minutes of peace and quiet and writing at a coffee shop down the street. Then I came home and while the girls played musical instruments in the playroom, I scraped together my Monday deadline, one eye on them, one eye on the screen and my heart somewhere right in the middle. The house was a disaster, the girls were making a racket, and I was glued to the computer when I should have been with them. Lesson: Even on the most impossible days, creativity will come if I surrender to the chaos exactly as it is, suck it up, and try my best. Ah, forgiveness. It works. 

It's good to be back!


—Katie Arnold

Crossing Over

It’s been grayish and cool for a few days—an eternity for Santa Fe’s climate—and so when I woke this morning to see the sky scrubbed clear of clouds and cornflower blue, I knew there was only one thing I wanted to do: go for a run. The clarity was a gift; often I feel so torn between motherhood, writing, and adventure that I can’t decide how to spend the free time I have. Am I an athlete today, or a mother or a writer? Should I be working, playing, or hovering around the house with the babysitter, to compensate for all the times I do leave? I miss the predictable rhythms my days used to have before the girls were born, when activities fit in neat little boxes. First you work, then you run, or vice versa. Multitasking was something that harried mothers with spit-up on their shirts and food in their teeth had to do. Now I’m that mother, and figuring out how to fit it all in is its own task, a time-suck I can’t afford. 

So I was psyched this morning to be able to so clearly visualize my day. First I run, then I write, then I mother. My heart and mind knew exactly what to do. But my body didn’t. The minute I stepped out of the car at the trailhead and slid my toes into my Vibrams, I knew something was up. The soles of my feet protested the thin layer of rubber beneath them. I was the Princess and the Pea—I felt every pebble in the parking lot pricking at my heels. I’ve spent the last six months running in my five-finger shoes, building up thick calluses on my soles. But today everything hurt: the long, reptilian crack in my right heel, exacerbated by four days on the river. The sometimes-tender spot between my big toe and its neighbor. My right Achilles. 

But I ran anyway, limping through the first downhill, with the awkward gait of a just-born foal, my limbs moving in opposition to each other, my feet reluctant to fully settle on the ground. I thought if I could get through the first descent and start climbing, my body would know what to do. But even after my gait eventually normalized, I still felt like I was running on knives. I couldn’t figure out why I felt so sticky and sore, my body fighting itself and the normal paces I put it through, the very thing that usually brings me such strength and joy. 

Then I came out of my myopic little pain cave and remembered. 

A year ago today, my father learned he had kidney cancer. I don’t know how he got the news that day; I never did ask him. But as I hobbled along, I could sense his shock, the stoicism and disbelief that would follow, the dread at having to acknowledge this truth, the private way he must have held it at first, this knowledge of how little time might remain and the tasks that lay before him. His wife would have been top of mind. And his farm. And his unfinished work. And then, when the news settled a bit, how to make the necessary phone calls, to make it real, to set this new paradigm loose on the world, on us, his daughters. 

He called me two days later. It was a Sunday, hot and sunny, summer still clinging hard to us, and vice versa. We decided to go rafting on the Rio Grande with some friends and their son. I knew it would be the last raft trip of the summer. I didn’t know that it would be the last raft trip before my father died. 

My phone rang just as we were about to drive into the Rio Grande Gorge. A minute later, and we’d be swallowed up by the canyon walls, with no service for the rest of the day, but he caught us on the cusp. “Hi, Katie, it’s Dad.” His voice always used to rise on that last syllable, audible excitement mixed with golly-gee surprise that I picked up the phone. 

“Hi, Dad,” I said. “We’re going rafting. We’re about to go into the Gorge. I’m probably going to lose you. Is everything OK?”

“No, not really.” Those words, a body slam to the chest. 

I don’t recall my response, just that I lamely assured him that I’d call him as soon as we got off the river and out of the gorge. I felt the blood rush to my head and looked up as we passed the gas station and the fruit stand and the creepy abandoned motel-looking adobe and the glazed pottery shop and met the Rio Grande on our left and saw that it was still clear and flowing and that we would have a good float, regardless of the words I had just heard but had not yet uttered or dared to make real. 

The canyon was the threshold between knowing and not knowing, between life as it was and life as I didn’t care to imagine, ever. I didn’t know the details, but I knew. Uncertainty rippled over me in waves, and dread sat down to stay. It was bad, I knew. 

We floated the Rio Grande that day. The river was low but still passable, the day warm and gorgeous. Our friends borrowed our canoe and got excited and accidentally ran it into some willows on the bank, which scratched their son’s cheek. There was some drama, but none compared to the horrific scenarios in my head. I told my friend about the phone call, and she said, “Don’t worry until you have reason to worry. There’s no point,” and her advice sounded good, so sound and rational. I threw myself into it, that sensibility and level-headedness, to no avail. Steve rowed and I held the baby and wrestled the two year old and I worried. I knew. 

the river that day

The rest of the day was a blur, except for this part: When the gorge spat us out again and I saw that my phone had service, I actually thought about not calling. Fear had me in its clutches, and rather than surrender, I was going to avoid it, ignore it, as long as possible. Fortunately my husband was more sensible. “Just call,” he said. “You never know.”

I did know, but I didn’t know, and then I did. I called and my father told me. Malignant tumor on his kidney. What he didn’t tell me was how long he had, or how big the tumor was, only that he felt relieved to know, relieved that the pain came from an irrefutable source, not just from his head, not from fear. This seemed to give him some comfort, even though it was the worst kind of news to receive, and deliver. “Stay positive,” I said, as much to myself as him, and for a moment I latched onto my own advice, as I had my friend’s. Yes, no reason to panic just yet. 

So it began, the season of denial (mine) and despair and dying. When I visited him in Virginia a week and a half later, he said to me, “You know when your body is trying to tell you something. You know when something’s wrong. Listen to it.”  I knew he was talking about his stubbornness and fear of going to the doctor, to get his lethargy and lack of appetite checked out. But instead, he’d pushed through for months, out of denial perhaps, or out of an uncanny certitude of what lay ahead. Perhaps he knew but he didn’t want to know, just as I hadn’t wanted to know. Perhaps he thought he could just push through, until he couldn’t anymore. 

I didn’t think about all this while I ran this morning. I thought simply about my dad, and of being on the cusp of this season again, and not being ready for it. I thought about stopping, of sitting down on the pine needles and really thinking about what had happened, but instead I kept running. I pushed through. I thought that if I could keep running, I could shed my pain, which was his pain, really, and send it out into the ponderosas and the sky that was clouding over and the air that smelled like fall. I felt like I could push through, and I did. 

Thresholds

We made it to first grade this past week. And, let me tell you the anticipation was immense for me. I felt such a mix of emotions as I watched him go from our long summer days of togetherness to the fall days where he is at school for most of the daylight hours. Well, maybe I am exaggerating a bit but for a huge chunk of them. Last year he went to half-day kindergarten and that felt like enough, now he is in full days, and while he was scared of them, he comes back saying that it was “awesome.” And then the first few mornings woke up and asked to only go half-day. 

However, this shift to full days is larger than first grade, from now on he will spend more and more time at school and less and less time with us. And, well, I love this kid, I love to hang with him, and talk with him, and do art with him and play with him. And now I have to share him more and more with others. I will miss him, and as my neighbor’s husband said when her babe went off to full day school, “He’s still mine, and there is still a lot of parenting left to do!”

Amen to that! 

*First day of school picture to follow…still trapped on my camera!

Getting a boost!

Last Tuesday I got a shot of penicillin in the arse. Yep, 36 years old and I donned my never saw the sun skin to a nice medical tech or nurse, not sure which he was, Andy, and gratefully received that long needle in my right cheek. 

You see I was dragging! Vicious headaches, raw sandpapery sore throat, aches everywhere for five days, until finally after my hubby’s urging I went into after-hours care to see my daringly talented neighbor, who also happens to be a doctor, who swabbed my throat and proclaimed STREP! 

I awoke this morning, still sick, but with the promise of getting better, to this quote from the Dalai Lama as one of my first facebook feeds. It was a gift.

“In daily practice, reflect on the benefits of love, compassion and kindness, then reflect on the disadvantages of anger. Such continuous contemplation, the growing appreciation of love, has the effect of reducing our inclination towards hatred and increasing our respect for love. By this means even anger can be diminished.” 

You see, I have been feeling maxed as I shared a few posts back and when I get maxed, anger creeps in. This is not fair to those around me. It affects my relationship with my husband and the littles, when mean momma raises her vicious head. You see I loathe anger in myself. A friend of mine made the connection between her sleep habits and her resort to anger as a tool for kid management. She brought what was lingering beneath my consciousness to awareness. An Aha moment you might say. Thanks Jenni, and, now I too am joining the sleep make-over. 

My sleep makeover began last spring when I was still pregnant and Katie pointed out to me that working with a computer or iphone in my room late at night is not good chi, and does not promote good sleep, Then, Katie visited me when my fourth was ten days old and raved about her sleep system, eye mask, ear plugs, white noise and zzzzzzz, it helps take the edge off. She even went as far as mailing me my own sleep system. Now after being sick for five days, (something I also loathe, and do not have time for,) I realize even more with school around the bend I need a boost and it is not just through penicillin in the bottom or sleep alone, but also prayer. I’d been neglecting my prayer, which I have a hunch will make me slow to anger too. So this time when I kneel it will be for grace and not just an antibiotic makeover. And instead of letting myself get so run down to the point of needing an antibiotic boost, I'm going to get a sleep boost and hope that makes my immune system naturally balanced and healthy! Bye bye strep! And with school around the corner who couldn't use a few more zzzzzz's.

My sleep pledge: I will shoot for 9-10 pm bedtimes, no iPhones or computers within reach, and last thing uttered on my lips prayer and the first sounds spoken grace.

Post Script: boosters do hurt and if you want to do your littles a favor rub the spot out after they get a vaccine!

Walk, Run, Sit.

You have to walk before you can run. At least this is the manta I kept telling myself as I tried to run for the third time since my fourth boy. This time from my house, down the Summit boulevard trail to the monument at the river. The path, a worn, dirt one, hugged by clusters of pine trees, some with large enough bases to be a fort for a 6 year old in the winter. Sun and welcomed shade graced my face, as I wove between the trees from a run, to a jaunt, to a walk back to a run again…it’s humbling to say the least as I grasp for breath. All the while I envision myself running these two short miles with breath full and bold circulating all the way into my sacrum and pelvic floor, not pausing at my neck where it seems to be stuck on a loop. 

I approached the last leg of the trail before it hit the River Road, I was stopped by a small boulder that had a plaque on it dedicated to the Junior League Women of St. Paul in 1977 for the reforestation of the city; those trees that lined my path placed by dedication to beautify. I paused with my hands cupping the rock, and behind me a bench invited me to sit on it with the morning dew still present. 

(I wrote the above paragraphs on Monday, it is now Wednesday and I am just now getting back to this, to that moment.) 

You see something happened in that moment I chose to sit in stillness with the wet dewed bench soaking my god-awful yellow running shorts. I felt my spine grow tall, my shoulders open up, my mind settle downward, and I tuned into my breath, I imagined it moving from my neck to my shoulders down to my stomach settling and circling through my sacrum and pelvic floor. An occasional car, or barking dog would punctuate my sitting meditation and I would notice them, even at times glance their direction, but then I would return to my breath. To feel the rising sun’s rays, slant cross the boulevard, and dance across my face. Gradually, with each breath I was more and more in my body and less outside of myself. I finally turned to go back on the trail I had come from instead of going the last fifty paces to the river, I realized later the importance of this, the river holds trails I walked as a child with my parents, but those old paces hold things I no longer wish to hold for myself. And, just like that I was ok with stopping short of my goal, the monument, and grateful for that small plaque on that small boulder, that invited me to sit and still myself. 

As my feet hit the trail, I was in a different place. My mind felt clearer, calmer, and I felt more in tune with my body. My shoulders down and back, my hips more open, my feet more purposeful in their walk, and my walk became a walking meditation. And while I wished for the trails of the mountains I once hiked, I settled for the plains of the Midwest and I was ok with that. 

Creatures of Habit

Every Tuesday morning I go hiking with my writer friend Natalie. We have been doing this for nearly a year now, and we have our system down to a science, or our routine down to an art. Whatever—we do the same thing each week we are both in town, which this summer hasn’t been very often. Natalie teaches and travels a lot, and I guess I’ve been gone my fair share of Tuesdays, too. 

[not this trail, but one like it]

But this morning is a hiking morning, so I pick up Natalie like I always do on the corner by her house, and she peers in the backseat window at Maisy and cooes hello, just like she always does. Then I rive us three-quarters of a mile or so up the road to the trailhead. We always hike the same trail. Every now and then we discuss hiking a different trail, but it has yet to happen. The one we like is close to both of houses, so we don’t have to waste precious walking time driving. There is a granite outcropping about halfway up where Natalie likes to stop and meditate while Maisy and I keep hiking toward the top. The trail to Picacho Peak passes through a shady canyon, then switchbacks through stubby pinon and juniper and offers plenty of distractions from the ascent in the way of western views to the city below and the Jemez Mountains on the far horizon. There is nothing not to like about this hike. It is hard to imagine improving on it. 


The first part of the trail hopscotches over the Santa Fe River (a couple feet wide, usually dry), climbs steeply to a road crossing, and then clambers over a series of rough, railroad-tie steps that are crowded by weeds and sometimes badly eroded, depending on the recent rains. Then it veers left and becomes more gradual, and prettier. Natalie and I always chitchat until we get to this point, catching up on whatever’s happened since we last saw each other. But at the place where the trail bends left, we stop talking and start walking in silence. That is the rule. This is how we’ve always done it. Most days, I feel like I could keep talking the whole way up, but it’s our ritual instead to say, “OK, see you at the ledge,” and then the only sound is the crunch of our sneakers on dirt and the breeze rustling pine needles and we fall into our own rhythms and paces. Before long, the distance between us has widened, so that Maisy and I are hiking on our own and Natalie is on her own; every now and then the trail swings wide one direction or the other, and I can see downhill through a few turns to where Natalie is, walking silently uphill, her face obscured by her nylon sun hat and her hands clasped resolutely behind her back. 

When I get to the granite ledge, I keep climbing through half a dozen or more switchbacks to my favorite tree, a regal ponderosa that shoots up out of a precipitous slope with great confidence, as though it has always been there and always will and is not phased by the thousand-foot drop below. The summit is not far, but this is where I turn around, in part because I don’t want to keep Natalie waiting too long and in part because I am excited to talk to her. When Maisy was only three weeks old, before I started hiking with Natalie, I used to turn around here, too, so that I could make it back to the car before I’d need to nurse her again. Maisy has always been a very tolerant, undemanding baby and until recently would sleep the whole way up and down, but her sister before her would, without fail, reach her limit by the time we got to our tree. So it has become tradition to turn around there. I am always pleasantly torn between wanting to keep hiking and wanting to head back, and I like that either choice is a good one. There is no bad decision. 

It’s 15 minutes back down to where Natalie is sitting, with her back arrow-straight against a ponderosa pine and she always says “Katie?” swiveling her head just a little, even though she says she can tell it’s me by my footsteps. Then we launch into all the thoughts and ideas we’ve both had in our own minds, brewing, the whole way up—food, fried eggs, writing, eating, motherhood, meditation, allergies, yoga, North Dakota—it’s all alive and fair game to us on the way down. 

This is how we hike.  We are creatures of habit, but of course things change: It was fall when we started, then winter—the driest we’ve had in years—now summer. Sometimes it is grey, but mostly it is sunny and bright. The baby is what has changed the most in the past year—she is the thing that is most different from week to week. She was 9 pounds when we started. Now she is nearly 20. That is a difference you can feel, in your hips and shoulders and the soles of your feet.

But this morning, something radical happens. Just as we get to the turn off, Natalie says, more to herself than to me, “I’m walking to write.” “What do you mean?” I ask over my shoulder, and she says, “I’m walking to prepare myself for writing.” It’s time to be silent, so I pipe down and don’t ask, though I want to, what she means, or how she will do that, or what it might feel like.  

I think about it the whole way up, this declaration of intention, and though it’s not my intention, it changes the way I walk. I am more here, less scattered, feet scuffing pine needles, eyes casting about to the view, my mind a narrow tightrope instead of its usual freeway of chaos and sprawl. I think about what I’m walking for today, and the sensation that comes to mind—it’s more a feeling than a word—is clarity. Like how I felt when I cleaned out my office threw out entire piles of junk mail and filed and tidied and made it my own again. I’m walking to prepare myself for all the mental clutter still to be cleaned, the tasks I’ve been procrastinating for no good reason, the chores I dread, the tasks I need to attend to.  

A few days ago, I picked up the September issue of Shambhala Sun on a whim at the grocery store checkout. The whole issue is devoted to love, and I thought it might give me some tips on how to stay compassionate and sane and loving in the face of our recent sleep crisis. In a short article about meditation, Pema Chödrön writes: “Each time you dare to remain where you are and do something completely fresh, unconventional, and nonhabitual, you open up new pathways in the brain. You experience that as strength and it builds your capacity to be open the next time around.” 

For the past year, Natalie and I have done the same hike twice, six times, two dozen times and have been inspired and comforted by the ritual. Natalie’s casual remark this morning cracked open the day and superimposed on our well-worn path—with its familiar landmarks, ledges, and trees—a new way of walking and thinking about walking. It was the same hike, but completely fresh. 

When I meet up with her back on the ledge, Natalie tells me that she hiked in her hips, felt her body rooted in those twin joints and felt herself settle into the walk and the day, so that when she settled at her desk later, she would ready to be there, in her bones. But you will have to hear from her how the rest turned out. Until then, I highly recommend doing your favorite thing backwards or in reverse or upside down, or in mismatched clothes like orange and purple, or simply with a purpose you say out loud. I guarantee it will crack your day open, too. 

Anchoring the Monkey-Mind of Motherhood

Ok you got me. I am dusting off the keyboard and plunging in after many mental failed attempts to post…so here is a string of almost posts. A form I feel like I have written in too often as of late: as of Seamus’ impending arrival, arrival, and now post arrival. Between travel and motherhood, and boys bickering, I am fried at the end of the day too. It’s the constant refereeing I find myself in, and you are right even if it is just a phase and one I pray will pass, it sucks to be in it. I can’t figure out if they are fighting because they get my attention, albeit negative; they are coming off of a month of travel, they realize that Seamus is here to stay, or they need school and that schedule to start up again. Or all of the above. But, man, I am sick of saying, “You need to listen. You need to be nice to your brother. You need to be kind.“ Or the threatening, “That’s one, that’s two, that’s…” and before I get to three they snap-to. Not sure what I would do if I actually got to three, but I am tired of hearing myself on repeat these days. Especially after solo parenting for five days. I know I need to raise my horizon line to the far off distance and not the nearsightedness I am stuck in. 

So I sigh, and try to get back to something larger than the minutia of my children and whether they are getting along or not. This blog, my writing it helps me exhale get past my monkey mind and settle into my breath.  So what has happened in my month of blog neglect?

Well we traveled…to Boston to see friends and family and languished on the ocean drenched in sun, sand, and waves. We caught crabs and picked dead sand dollars, and played in tide pools. We bar-b-qued, and went to carnivals, and ate ice cream at Captain Dusty’s, and for the first time in years Peter took a proper vacation. No checking email or responding to work. This was not his initial intention. It never is, but when you leave you blackberry out in the rain that is the result. And after ten days, well nine, because day one he was still plugged in, he was a new man. 

The Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Ann

During July I have to say my anxiety hit a peak. It hit a peak because well I don’t know if it was a hormonal shift that I didn’t see coming. The lice our neighbors accidentally shared with us that we had to rid ourselves of before departing for the east coast. Or the adjustment of being blessed with four kids six and under—it can feel at times an abundance of joy and good fortune or an abundance of needs and demands that I do not have enough hands to meet. Never would I trade it especially after going through a few years of not being able to have children. But wow sometimes the awesome responsibility hits me. 

After being out east, where it felt like I was literally bumping up against my past life of living in Cape Ann, we traversed to the high desert of Santa Fe. Seeing the browns of the desert punctuated by crisp colors of green and blooming desert flowers, I began to sink into myself more. However, Peter was back at work and my past fears of being solo parenting in the desert tapped me on my shoulder again, ever so sneakily. For the first few days I had the knack down. We went to the Children’s museum, swam at the Santa Fe Hotel pool, hit the library where we stocked up on books. Then day four hit and Peter had a sixteen hour day of work and wow anxiety spiked so strong I ran from that day like a wild animal in retreat. Instead of sinking into it I over planned and by the end of the day I was fried and crying and so were the children. You see, going places with four kids all in car seats is an undertaking much less doing it five times in one day, equals ten ins and outs of the car. It was too much. I realized that I was living life like a person without kids who has the freedom to plan a jam packed day, not one with kids who needs to listen to their rhythms and respect them. And so I once again learned the hard way, that part of parenting is mastering the art of being still while the littles dance around you in circles like a Mayflower pole; they occasionally bounce into you and ricochet back out from its center.

The calm of the desert grasses

So when we returned to Minnesota it took an act of will to just stay home and unpack. Sink into home after travel. Be an anchor after being adrift. Turn my head toward the unopened mail, the grocery shopping, the back to school preparations, the reconnecting of our friends here. I still have not done it all, but I am slowly reintegrating one step at a time and realizing our roots go both deep and wide simultaneously, like those of a dandelion, which makes them hard to pull up. And for this I remain grateful.

The Power of Now

I feel horrible. I haven’t posted in over a month. Here I am neglecting our blog about creativity and motherhood because, quite simply, motherhood has gotten in the way. It's almost impossible to carve out 20 minutes of brain time when your three year old who used to sleep through the night—7 to 7 and then some—has completely regressed and now wakes more times per night than the one year old. (Eight, at last count.) When instead of grabbing a notebook or laptop and sitting outside in the fading lovely light and feeling the words return and stories take shape after you blithely put her to bed (and expect her to stay there like she always did), you spend the next hour standing guard outside her bedroom, putting her back to bed five, ten, 28 times in a row while trying not to lose your shit. And failing, miserably. 

ahh, the old peace & quiet

Evenings used to be my time to write, a guaranteed few hours of wide-open mental space and freedom from all parental responsibility, uninterrupted writing time. I know what everyone says: It’s a phase. This too shall pass. I want it to pass now. I want my evenings back. I want to not feel like I’ve been run over by a truck every morning when I wake up, exhausted from clenching my teeth in my sleep, and putty-brained by 7:30 PM, like I am right now in a condo in Colorado while Steve's out hiking and I'm so wiped I can't even be bothered to read my book or decipher which remote control turns on the TV. I want to be able to put her to bed and write a few pages in my notebook and then eat a slice of cheese or just zone out and do a yoga pose or two and watch the cat scratch her claws on the fence post without having to play prison guard to a three-foot-tall escape artist with attitude. Is that too much to ask? Yes, apparently it is—at least right now. 


I know I’m whining and should just suck it up. But I miss my writing. I miss my freedom. I miss my time. I miss feeling the rat-tat-tat of ideas knocking around in my brain. So, a resolution, inspired by motherhoodwtf: Write anyway. Write even when it’s messy and you feel like chucking your computer out the front door, screaming at the defiant child, or running away, or all of the above. During those moments, write anyway. Don’t wait for long idyllic stretches of peace and quiet because you might be waiting a very long time. Don’t expect perfection. Don't hold out for inspiration. Write right now. Especially now. 

There, I did it. It's not pretty. But I sort of almost maybe feel a little bit better already.

River Legs

I am sitting at our kitchen table writing while the entire house naps. It is raining outside again, overcast, sky filled by cloud coverage, no sun in sight. I feel as if I live in Seattle instead of Saint Paul. This summer has been filled with rain, only punctuated by sun. The drenched squelch of the Twin Cities is such a contrast to the forest fires and aridness of Santa Fe.

Reading Katie’s post about her awesome river trip brings back that sweet day last spring when Katie and Steve took our crew down the Rio Grande. We were so stoked that anyone would give such an offer! Katie and Steve were just the couple to do it too, they have the skill, knowledge, and experience of having young kids out on the river. I was psyched and ready to have our virgin voyage be with them. Our motley crew consisted of: Kieran who was 15 mos. old, and fiercely attached to his paci, Pippa nearing two, Finn and Liam 5 and 3 respectively, Baby Maisy still in Katie’s belly, while Baby Seamus was yet to be. We launched. It felt amazing to be on the river, sun high, wind breezing over us as Steve steered us gracefully down the river with such strength.

Readying to launch...Kieran in the flag swimsuit.

We picnicked on the bank for a break since Kieran was ready to launch himself into the Rio Grande, but only managed to launch his paci.

Our panic at his paci launch! “Paci overboard!” We yelled as we scrambled to save it without tipping the boat. Novice mistake to only bring one for him. That meant we couldn’t plug his whininess.

Pippa to the rescue! She graciously gave up her paci for the common good.

Only to rediscover and reclaim Kieran’s lost paci hours later down river, nothing short of a miracle.

Exposing our boys to “adventure and fresh-air,” seemed so easy to do in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Now I grapple with finding ways to “let the kids explore and be wild, and play outside and get dirty and not have every minute scheduled with Stuff and Things to Do,” like your dad cautioned. So far this summer we have had art camp, and baseball, and soccer, and swim lessons…and when Liam pushed back and told me he didn’t want any scheduled sports, he just wants to be four and play outside I heeded to his wise lead. Finn on the other hand seems to relish his practices and games. Am I losing him to this march of the sporting world? Where are the idle arroyo explorations? The leisurely hikes, (leisurely because the littles were in tow)?

Leisure break with the littles.

Or just playing in the red dirt building short-lived dams with buckets of precious water, watching stink bugs lift up their rear ends? It seems to be such a delicate balance, and one I strive to strike again before I am out! Thanks for this sweet reminder.

The Flash playing ball.

Newborn Bliss

So I am emerging, even if brief, from my newborn cocoon to post. He, our fourth, was worth the wait! The extra twelve days of waiting post guess date--that is really what they are, even if you are sure of your conception date like I was and am. He was worth the extra 2 hours and 45 minutes of pushing, and the amazing release I felt once he emerged gracefully in water and much to everyone's relief and wonder. He was worth losing all my hair this pregnancy and still waiting it's slow regrowth, which since giving birth 2.5 weeks ago has sped up substantially. I managed to avoid induction! An induced labor is way harder than waiting a baby out! I know I have been there with my first. No matter the angst in waiting it is well worth avoiding the devil's spit, also known as Pitocin, at least in my humble opinion.

S. is a calm baby, a little love, who eats and sleeps and eats and sleeps and poops and poops and poops. His big brothers LOVE him, and say it to him daily..."I love the new baby," is a phrase that melts my heart at least three times a day! I am stockpiling these utterances because in nine months when he is mobile and attacking lego shrines I know it will be replaced with shrieks of "Mooooooommmmm, HELP!"

It's taken a while to name cuatro. I thought we were settled and then out he came and Peter said I think he is not a James. What? Not a James? That is the way I thought of him almost every day since six months when intuitively I felt yep, another boy! So to not have it be James threw me. Threw me to the point of we need to wait to announce his name. This throws everyone else by the way...to the point of no more "baby yet?" texts, but instead they are replaced with "name yet?" texts. Finally, we have decided...but I have yet to officially post it. Call me gun shy, or just soaking up my little time with him, but I know I need to go public and soon.

And then what every woman needs postpartum is a visit from a good girlfriend! And I got that in spades when Katie came with her daughter, M. Truly. It makes you feel capable again. I felt energetic and daring enough to walk around lakes, hit the mall, walk the neighborhood, lug home bags of wipes (did I mention we are going through a lot of poop again?!), and drink glasses of wine and chat and laugh. 

I hear my little calling through the monitor. This is all I have time for now, but be assured more to follow! And with that I hope next time to post a picture or two!

PS Just read your post "Be the Trout," and you make me feel like I could climb a mountain!

Mother Trouble

Had to share this link today from Motherlode about the new 2011 State of the World's Mothers report, published by Save the Children. It's a sobering reminder that our woes as Western mothers—too little time for this or that, a teetery balance between self and kids, oh the angst!—pale in comparison to those of mothers in sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan, where it's dangerous to bear and rear children. 

The study analyzed economic, health, and education conditions for women and children in 164 countries. Norway, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, and Denmark grab the top five spots, while the U.S. ranks 31st out of 43 developed countries. (One of many reasons for our lackluster rating: We have the least generous maternity leave policy of any wealthy nation.) Afghanistan ranks last.

Read more here at Motherlode, and thanks to Lisa Belkin for the reality check on this run-up to Mother's Day.  

Shelter from the Storm

I’m just back from a long weekend in Sonoma, celebrating my mother’s birthday with my sisters and their kids. As always, Sonoma was gorgeous and I found myself missing a landscape that’s never been mine, but still manages to tug at my heart: the high, bucolic hills a patchwork of grassy meadows and neat grids of grapes. How vines so twisty and gnarled can give the illusion of such precision and order is a mystery to me.

After the birthday celebrations were over, Steve and I snuck out for our usual run up the one-lane road to the top of the Mayacamas Mountains. The sun was setting and as we gained altitude, the air became damper and richer, more alive with the summery smell of Douglas firs and sweet bay leaves and far to the southwest we could see the high rises of San Francisco and Oakland shrunken with distance and glittering in the late-day light. It felt both Mediterranean and maritime, with a bit of Northwest big-tree grandeur chucked in for good measure, and it made me wistful for a life I don’t lead, or used to lead, or might someday want to lead, but I didn’t say any of that. If I had, all fears and exhaustion and doubt might have spilled out, and I wanted to be free of them, at least for a little while.

It was a choice I made. Sometimes it’s easy to forget we have choices. We may not be able to choose the events that define our lives, but we can choose how we respond to them. In the past few weeks, no matter how fast I run, grief and motherhood have finally caught up to me, weighing me down with a heaviness that feels both inevitable and inexplicable. It’s hard to put words to the darkness, only that when it settles on me, most everything I love feels difficult, insurmountable, wearisome. It moves in as a storm, clouds blowing in from the west, wispy and innocuous at first, wind building until it’s directly overhead, flattening me for a few hours or a few days with its wall-to- wall charcoal skies and sideways rain.

This is a meteorological event—I don’t have a say in the matter. The only thing I can do is root down, fling my ice axe into the ground and hang on so the cyclone doesn’t pick me up by my pinky toes and suck me in. I suppose this is normal, this reeling of birth and death. Maisy is nearly 10 months old; she has been out in the world longer than she was in the womb. My dad has been gone for five months, twice as long as he was sick. What to do? How to make sense of it all?

When I was little and feeling out of sorts, my mother would say, “Just get busy and do something”—a gentle, upbeat prodding, the verbal equivalent of whisking me on the bottom with a tea towel. She made it sound so simple, and it was. I’d go shoot hoops in the backyard or ride my bike around the neighborhood or pester my sister to play Trivial Pursuit or stretch out on my bed and read Harriet the Spy. Invariably, it worked. Activity was the antidote to that nameless, shiftless loneliness we know as kids, when we first become aware that time is passing and life is moving, carrying us with it, and that nothing lasts or is permanent.

But it’s tiring to be busy doing something for so long. So now I am trying to choose stillness, to find silence and peace in even the most fragmented moments, to slow down and do less, to live in the troughs between the storms. I don’t really know what this means, only that I need to find a balance between endless, instinctual striving and a visceral need for stillness. I could try to figure out, right here in this post, how to do this, but that would defeat the purpose. So I think I’ll just settle in and shut up and see where the troughs carry me. It’s a mystery.

Feathering the Nest

(A writing excercise on the term "Overdue")

Our nest is ready. We wait. We wait some more for our fourth. I am settling into the tension of being asked perpetually by well-wishers and wanting to be in this sacred space of anticipation. It is hard to be the watched pot. The texts, the emails, the phone calls, the random inquisitions about the progress of my cervix, my effacement, the station of the baby in my canal. The obnoxious comments of, “Wow, you look like you haven’t dropped at all,” loudly called out by a neighbor in a crowded restaurant. I wanted to bop her. It interrupts my rhythm of waiting and my baby’s. I feel like I should be further along in this progress of birth by everyone else’s expectations, but I root myself into my reality and wait.

To be in this present moment I savor my last days of squirmy movements, feet in ribs, butt in upper lung area, head in pelvis. When I roll from one side to the other at night and feel my baby reposition himself to either side fingers grasp at lower hip, feet push off my sides, a head that swirls like the hair that swirls on his head in growth. A sage friend of mine reminded me today that the best gift I could give this child now was to allow him to enter this world on his own time and rhythm. This child is gentle, and harmonious, and beautiful, and grounded, and rooted, and spiritual. And the sooner I honor these gifts and his desire to come on his own terms the better able I will to mother his fullness, his gifts, out of his shy nature into brilliance.

I find myself at times already catapulting my kids from the nest as I sit and write this. I see my mom and how she has aged and dealt with the empty nest and I rally against it. She seems sad…and somehow I inhibit this sadness as I think of the inevitable; missing my present. I am not my mother, nor will I be and what fills my time now will shift but my life will remain full and vibrant. Sage wisdom from an older mom I was told when I had Finn, “That as mothers our jobs are to create memories.” To elaborate on her thought, the only way to do this is to be fully alive in the present.

The more tuned in I am to my own rhythm and allow my children the honor to be in tune with their rhythms the healthier and might I venture happier we all will be and become. Such joy and excitement as we await for our number four!

We Wait

Patience Being in the now, that is what I am doing as I wait for our fourth to debut him or herself to us. My first due date has passed yesterday, my second one is imposing on me with it’s inevitable arrival tomorrow, and I wait. I know due dates are only estimations, a best guess as to when to hope your baby will emerge. And, while I have never been one to rush the baby out, knowing that they are easier to care for inside than out, I must admit this go around I am getting a little impatient. Just slightly. Perhaps I wouldn’t be, but my other two girlfriends due the same days as me have already received their babies, a boy and a girl respectively. Perhaps, if I didn’t feel like I might be pregnant for the next five years, I would be more ok with the wait.

So for now I am enjoying my big, round, full belly. The way this baby moves across my abdomen in waves and then pauses to extend his feet to the upper left, and stretch his fingers to the lower left while his back hammocks to the right like a crescent moon embraced. Or how occasionally I feel the baby bouncing on my waters, almost willing himself to come out like my others did by starting with the breaking of the waters, the seal that separates us. Or how at my touch to his foot he retracts and extends playfully. I release my fears I have of birth, of becoming a mother of four and embrace the amazing-ness that is my good fortune. This pregnancy I am grateful for winter caps and darling scarves that have helped keep my shedding head warm, and me feel somewhat normal when an abnormal thing is occurring. I am grateful for the love and amazing support Peter has been to the boys and myself.…knowing by now when I am having a hormonal shift that can’t be argued only assuaged and making meals, and singing for an hour every night to the boys at bedtime to settle them from Johnny Cash to the Beatles. I imagine his sound track he is creating with them will live with them for their lifetime, classic songs they will come across as they grow and listen to music. I am in deep awe of the wonderful girlfriends I have who support and encourage me. Some physically near and many far, all who call and check in and encourage, others who whisk me out for one last pedicure before baby—I’m donning blue toes at the moment, and text me to invite me over for pancakes. I go to bed in a sea of abundant gratitude, perhaps my last night pregnant, perhaps not, with the fortitude to wait for my baby’s sweet debut.

Nesting Frenzy Notes (accumulated at 39 weeks 1 day pregnant with our fourth child)

Today I raked fall leaves. Yes it is spring. Yes, they should have been raked in the fall except the ones for insulation on the flowerbeds. Yes, if left the snow mold accumulated on them would kill our green grass. And so I raked. I raked like my life depended on it. I raked for my labor to start. I raked for the green to emerge and the molten brown-crusted patches of leaves to disappear. Like a molting of my yards skin, I raked. My winter cap I wear to shield my baldness/regrowth of hair felt hot and cumbersome.

Peter and the boys bagged the manic piles I made, finding it hard to keep up with my pace. The boys and a neighbor boy took dump trucks of leaves from one pile to the next. The sun shone, and I broke a sweat, and it felt good and cleansing and clearing as beneath the leaves emerged the green of summer, of full bloom in my own fullness. And then I tucked my tuckered boys into bed and went off to run errands. More nesting.

This breakneck speed has been my pace. Alternating between I-need-it-done-now to utter exhaustion. I am trying to find balance, but have yet to discover it as I feel like once this baby comes I may not leave my home for four months! I know this is not true. But this feeling is hard to rationalize with. I wish I could bottle my hormones and energy and spread it out over the course of months instead of this intense baby-is-almost-here-get-it-all-done phase.

Below are fragmented glimpses into my energy driven brain and fully pregnant body from the past three weeks of almost written, almost posted posts:

On Birth 
So I am in the three-week countdown before baby four’s debut. And being in this space, and probably our last baby birth this lifetime, I find myself copiously note taking. I am trying to remember little things like the way it feels to be sitting still but have the waves of your belly move as a leg stretches near the top of the uterus or a hand tickles the bottom left quadrant of your pelvis. Absurd, strange, and wondrous, and I have no control over the baby’s movements.

Or how when I try to roll from one side while sleeping to the other an excruciating pain shoots through my pelvis.

Or how I hope post baby all my hair returns to it’s glory and find myself excited for the postpartum phase, not to skip the excitement I am growing for this birth.

I realized the other day while I was riding a hormonal wave that included tears, and birth fears, and worries that once those were released I had a lot of space for the joy of this baby and the thrill of birthing our baby. And, this got me excited. Got me happy even. I am not sure I ever went into a birth feeling this way: happy about the labor, happy about the birth, even though I have always been happy about meeting my babies.

On riding the pre-birth hormonal waves: 
I told Liam, “I am fragile today Liam.”
“You’re breakable?” He responded.
“Yes.”
Later in the day he asked, “Are you still fragile?”
“No I am better.”
Then I overhear Finn say to Kie Kie my legos are fragile,” and they are.
But I realize as a mother I am not. And I too can ride the waves and keep my balance with breath and perspective as my guides.

On your return from Mexico: 
Whew I am glad you are back! I am back from my distracted nesting diversions. While I have been taking notes on the process all along they are fragmented glimpses into how I am preparing for baby four, most likely our last, and this being the last few weeks as a pregnant woman I dedicated myself to noting one thing per day for the last 30 days. Here we go, the twigs that make up my nest to date.

Twig Notes leading up to Due Date April 14
Twig Note 1, Monday, March 13, 2011:
Feeling hormonally imbalanced, like I am not sure I can parent well this week if it keeps up. My mind races and I can feel the wave of hormones crashing over me. My baby kicks on my right side, with his spine on my left side. Today the baldness on my head bothers me especially. I realize I am having a hard time being present to my present.

Twig Note 2, Tuesday, March 14, 2011:
I opened my nightstand drawer to see charts of past cycles where we conceived babies. Sitting next to them is a newborn diaper, so small. I put it there awhile back to remind myself of how much each of my babies have grown and how tiny they enter the world. I have a pang of sadness thinking that this phase of our marriage, the baby-making phase, is probably coming to a close. Peter is in San Francisco on his last work related trip until post baby. The Visitation Sisters offered the baby and me a gracious blessing tonight. It was lovely to be prayed over.

Twig Note 3, Wednesday, March 15, 2011: I still need to type up the rest form my notebook….so my sharing on this strand stops here.

On releasing labor fears: 
I spoke with my hospital midwife, Stephanie, about all my fears that had me in tears undercover last night, and afterward sleeping with the exhaustion only a good cry provides and Stephanie said the following:
1.    Fear of forced vaginal exams: I think you will find birthing here very different we will trust you and honor you in your birth. We will talk through options and possible course if and when we need to, I won’t just do something to you.
2.    My baldness: She agreed to put a note in my ob chart and encouraged me to talk to the intake nurse too.
And then I spoke to Ann Marie, my volunteer doula coordinator, who so graciously offered to come and bring normalcy to my birth should I desire that. And I can’t tell you the wave of relief I felt at hearing her gracious offer.
 
On postpartum mood disorders: 
I read the article on post partum depression and Jenny’s Light and I clenched and sobbed for the loss of her life, for the misunderstanding about emotions and hormonal imbalances after and before birth. A clench of my heart, a choke of my throat as I read her story. I rally against the perfectionism that plagued her. I noted it before I read the line in the article near the bottom. I recognized it in myself from the early days of motherhood when I was trying to get a grip on the chaos and found the only sure footed way through my fear was to clutch to perfectionism. Unlike Jenny I was able to release this need before it totally killed me, but like Jenny I struggled with it.
 
On Spring, Breath, and Yoga: 
It snowed again, two days after the spring equinox, and my next door neighbor came by with two bunches of daffodils she held in a plastic bag with the casual caveat that they were left over ones she did not give her mom. It was touching and real and nice, and gave me another moment to take yet a deeper breath.
 
After dinner I departed and went to yoga. I needed to stretch to release my sadness and fears, to breath. Paul, our yoga teacher gave the opening homily on Spring and the transition of the season and how it brings us out of balance before going back into balance. I’ve noticed this in my skin, it’s recent dryness as I spend more time outdoors. I sat spine fairly straight, and head bent forward and cried as I felt my unbalanced-ness of the day shift slightly. He said we would work with breath, but to do that we have to first release the breath, then breathe without constraint, and then release the breath again. We did chest openers and shoulder relaxers and my observation of how the shoulders and hips are connected was confirmed by his insights and knowledge of the body. Yes indeed they are connected and indeed when one is relaxed and open the other is relaxed and open. Bringing me back to birthing my baby and the need for better posture and spine supple and strength working in concert. Ahhh, deeper breath. My heart releasing. I was further relieved that the home birth midwife, Clare, was not teaching the yoga class tonight I did not need to fully embrace what I had given up just moments before my departure for yoga via email, a home birth. Somehow the universe seemed to be speaking kindly and gently to me that this too will be ok.

I do not want to go back on my decision to give birth in a hospital again, despite my fears of laboring there. I recall what my basketball coach said to me in high school, “Eilers, hesitation will kill you.” And think to how my historic pattern of waffling stems from the emotional mood shifts of my mother, always reading the waters she swam in, willing myself to adjust to the currents even if it was at my own peril just to stay near her. It was a way of life, a way of living in a hyper-hypo concerto, one that now affects my thyroid as I try to take root of my life amongst the chaos of my family…to bring new order to old discouraging patterns to let go. To establish a new pattern I need to make my decisions with the agility of an athlete and the resolve of a confident woman. 

I read about decision making in a New York Times Blog by Gretchen Reynolds entitled How Sports May Focus the Brain. The blog reports a study on student athletes in college verses non student athletes of similar age when watching them cross a simulated road of traffic.:
“The student athletes completed more successful crossings than the nonathletes, by a significant margin, a result that might be expected of those in peak physical condition. But what was surprising — and thought-provoking — was that their success was not a result of their being quicker or more athletic. They walked no faster than the other students. They didn’t dash or weave gracefully between cars. What they did do was glance along the street a few more times than the nonathletes, each time gathering slightly more data and processing it more speedily and accurately than the other students….
“’They didn’t move faster,” said Art Kramer, the director of the Beckman Institute and a leader in the study of exercise and cognition, who oversaw the research. “But it looks like they thought faster.’”

So here is to creating healthier patterns, to thinking faster, to a speedy labor and delivery and to I hope a sooner than later welcome to our fourth baby!

Day 2 of raking, this time with K. on my back and five bags later!

Short is the New Long

Once upon a time, in a distant last life I can only sort of foggily remember, I used to go on three-hour mountain bike rides. I would actually sit on my bike and spin the pedals for many hours in a row, as though that were the only possible thing a sane person would choose to do with their Saturday.

She's one of the reasons I run

I had the luxury of time and fitness. Some might say I had nothing better to do. Oh, but I could have weeded the garden or written my novel or learned how to cook or volunteered at the homeless shelter. But I didn’t. I played instead.

Life is different now. Of course it is. Now I go to Sunday morning gospel yoga and sneak out half an hour early because it’s Maisy’s first time at yoga daycare and I'm distracted, wondering if the R&B version of U2’s “One” is drowning out her hysterical wailing (nope). I blitz out on before-dinner bike rides, 40 minutes tops, because I have to get home to nurse the baby. Sometimes after the girls go to sleep, I retreat to the back patio for a 20-minute emergency yoga session in the graying dusk. In a weird way, it’s kind of liberating—being so off your game that a six-mile ride feels like an epic physical feat. Who needs three hours in the saddle when you want to amputate your ass after only 45 minutes? It’s so much more efficient, really.

And it’s actually more worthwhile than I thought. Back in 1996, the Surgeon General issued a report finding that the benefits of exercise are cumulative. At the time, I was kid-less and 24 and too busy riding my bike to pay attention. Plus I’d grown up doing the Jane Fonda workout on the beige wall-to-wall in our den, on a TV so old and boxy it had an on/off switch. My limber, frosty-lipsticked guru, in her striped lavender unitard, beat it into my impressionable head that I had to “feel the burn” in order to see results. I was flat-chested and skinny as a stick. I was 12. What kind of results did I think I was going to get?

I kept upping the ante anyway. Thirty minutes of leg lifts became an hour. I ran 10Ks and did three sports at school. My step-dad irked me by calling me a jock. I preferred “athlete.” I got older, and I went longer and got stronger. I had the luxury of fitness and time, and though I couldn’t put it into words, I’d begun, somewhere in the deep recesses of my cells and bones, to realize that why I exercised had more to do about how I felt while I was doing it than what I might look like when I was done. I just felt better, clearer, brighter, more full of breath and life. I kept going, figuring the longer I went, the better I’d feel until the opposite began to be true: Moving my body became more like an obligation, less like the original, pure joy of shooting hoops in the driveway for hours at a time or riding my bike around the neighborhood, making up elaborate stories in my head, becoming a writer as I played.

Last week, reporting a story for a wellness magazine about the mistakes healthy people make, I interviewed Michelle Segar, an exercise and behavioral scientist at the University of Michigan, who reminded me of this fact: Exercise is cumulative. You don’t have to hammer it out all in one go to reap the heath benefits. Short is the new long. (If you don't believe me, check Tim Ferriss's new book, The Four Minute Body.) Excuse me while my world is rocked.

Michelle intentionally parks a couple miles away from her meetings and walks across campus to squeeze in a 30-minute walk. During the last two weeks, I’ve changed my behavior, too. Instead of wasting time whining about my lack of time to ride, I’ll get on my bike and pedal for as long as I can. For the first time in my life, I finally get it: Something, anything, is better than nothing. And just like that, the old, unencumbered joy returns.

My motivations are changing, too. I used to ride and run to improve stamina, to know that when I did have the time to ride for three hours on a Saturday, I’d be ready. That was always the unspoken benchmark. Why ride long? Because I can! I was multitasking: building endurance and feeding my ego.

Now, if I’m honest with myself, I can see that maybe I’ve outgrown that goal. Letting it go isn’t easy—I miss my 24-year-old self with the freckled nose and no obligations—but life is different now. I’m different. Maybe my real goal these days is to simply stretch my legs, let the fresh air whoosh through my brain and unleash a flood of ideas, and feel strong in my body so I can feel good, and grounded, in my life and my writing.

Goodbye, I'm going out to play!

Bat-her-up...

Yesterday morning I took note to pay homage to the bat. That’s right as I woke to start a fresh week of spring break vacation in Minnesota (where spring still feels two seasons away!) a bat was being euthanized. I felt slight guilt, some shame, and sadness because he was being put down because of his wrong turn, my fear, and our doctor’s logic.

It started Friday night, after dinner, I cleaned the kitchen, Peter read books to the boys when I heard him say in a terse, flat lined voice, “Bat. Bat in the house. There’s a bat in here!” His voice grew in intensity and intonation and I knew it was no book he was reading and yet I had a hard time comprehending that there was an actual bat in our house.
“Take the kids out of here.”
I pulled them into the kitchen. F. dodged under the kitchen table. Peter yells for the broom. I oblige.  As I pass him the broom I see this graceful, wobbly frightened flight of a little brown bat swoop from one corner of our living room to the next and then up the stairs, and see my husband, broom in hand dash up after him. He managed to catch him alive in what the boys call LegoLand, our guest room that has been transformed into a Lego town of their own creation.

Sealed in a ziplock gallon bag we were at a loss as to what to do next with this bat. I love bats in their natural habitat, but I feared this bat in my own natural habitat. If we let him go outside our house chances are he would reenter. While the risk of rabies is low in a bat, it exists. And, they say they can bite you in your sleep without you knowing you’ve been bit-their teeth are so small, and their bite marks nonexistent. This was the freaky part for me. And, while I googled what to do with a bat, the what if he bit one of my boys already thought ran through my head. So I called a girlfriend of mine that works in the Sudan Mines of northern Minnesota. With her help, we decided to bring our bat to the University of Minnesota diagnostic lab for testing. Without this test, our doctor wanted us to go to the ER within four hours of exposure for rabies vaccination—which I hear is a painful series of four shots. No thanks.

My fear led me to lose sleep that night. What if there was another bat in our house? How could I sleep with my boys unprotected from more bats in the other room? What if another came in our home? What if we already had contracted rabies and didn’t know it? My mind raced, I slept little, and my boys slept together in the bottom bunk that night. I knew I needed to release this fear. So I researched what bats symbolize and have decided to take the presence of the bat as a messenger so that his last flight is not in vain, and my fear does not persist but instructs I found this blog the most helpful explanation of what this bat could mean:

Yes those are Batman sheets my boys sleep on, and the irony is not lost on me.

“Bats represent: Social relationships, communication, motherhood
It is a symbol of communication. Native Americans observed bats to be highly social creatures with strong family ties. They are nurturing, exhibiting verbal communication, touching, and sensitivity to members of their group. Bats are sensitive to their surroundings and are seen as intuitive, with the ability to see through illusion and discern truth. Devotion of the Bat totem will never fade, encouraging the journey to achieve the highest possible potential from an individual. (Information paraphrased from this page on Animal Totems)
Since bats are the only winged creatures to suckle their young, they are also a symbol of motherhood (and by association… fertility and sexuality… which is also supported by the dwelling in caverns in the “womb” of mother earth.)
Eastern cultures view the bat as a symbol of wealth, longevity, peace, good health and a good death. In China, the symbol for bat is “fu” — which is also the symbol for “good luck.”

So as I prepare for baby 4 to arrive, I take comfort in the bat symbolizing motherhood, rebirth, shedding the old so that the new may emerge, needing it’s night vision in order to see more clearly what awaits me. I thank our bat for his bravery, his visit, and his compassionate understanding of my innate, and short sighted fear—even if I still hope another doesn’t enter.