Five Minute Friday: COMFORT

Gypsy Mama does Five minute friday again: stop, drop and write on a topic given.  'Sposed to be unedited, and that is how i roll...

COMFORT:

homemade Macaroni and Cheese, alarm clocks keeping us in line... mind you, the one we have is too high-pitched for me to actually hear, so i suppose i should mention the quilts on my bed and the luxury of staying in them without alarm clocks...
baby cribs, baby blankets, baby heads... cat rubs on my legs, arriving in the Light of Meeting, the purity of the whiteness in there, the tall windows allowing the meditation of worship to wax and wane with the positioning of the clouds, the five year old yelling to hear the echoes- and then stopping, the quiet is never so great as when he stops...
finding the phone. crossing off the last item on the list, folding laundry, emptying baskets, where i find my comfort these days, making bags for goodwill, hearing the stories of who gets all this babyclothing, my god, the need is great...
reading, watching the baby smile when she makes it up to all four, rockin' the almost-crawl. pineapple. husband skin. rumbling voices, chest carrying sound.
dirt. growing things.  with all we've done to the world, growing things still work.  astonishing. just stick it in the dirt, and tend, and wait. 
chickens and eggs.  how is that even possible?

there is so much astonishment in the world and i am part of it... while i forget this regularly, it is a fantastic comfort when i remember.  i told my 7 year old boy in trouble that we are all children of god, and so 'safe' last week, and he smiled and dropped off the face of the earth into sleep... and thats the comfort we're all looking for, i think.

Blissful Parenting. . .

the only blissful parenting is the willfully ignorant kind, (is that true?!) and i'm all in favor of the ignorance, and the happily delerious smile of the toy giraffe, inexplicably stiffened internally... 
Last friday, my kid socked another in the stomach, because he wouldn't return the pilfered DS when asked.
in a stroke of wonderfully appropriate teaching, my kid was not suspended, but simply told his mother would be notified after the teacher sorted it out between the two kids with remorse, apologies and so on and so forth.
i say 'wonderfully appropriate' because my kid is seven. and because we've spent the weekend as parents fighting about zero tolerance policies and what punishments are appropriate and what it means about our kid, if anything, and what impulse control in a seven year old actually IS.
and still I am unresolved. 
He got his punishment, which felt severe to him but not to me... losing all video games for the weekend, which is the only time he gets it all week anyhow.  but it was a big deal to him.
meh.
He is a good boy, I do not think he is an aggressive one.  He and his brother play together like hellions, and they often get violent, can boys be aggressive with siblings and know that it is not to be spread outside the sibling relationship?

Are we doing enough? How can we claim pacifism if we beat each other up? hm? how do we impress the seriousness of the mistake? How do we instill the idea that a mistake is not lifelong agony but might be a weekend-long agony? How do I get a grip on my own parenting self-esteem to allow him his own mistakes without sending myself down a river of blame? embarassment is here, and it shouldn't be. i get that, but still deal with myself.   shoot.

Irish Pirates. Scottish Pirates. People who drink to endanger. . .

anyhow, i just read a suggestion to turn downtimes into good ones by singing it out in an Irish drinking song. ... and while I am not drinking these days but remembering fondly my times of singing in bars, singing in general is still a part of my life. just ask the six month old how much singing goes on in the midst of diaper changes... go on, ask her.
so, ho ditty ho.  my cup runneth over, as always, with beauty and unmentionables. . . damnit.
irish pirates.

oh ho, remember the cup, remember the cup,
drink up, drink up

the cup has no bottom, its full of the flow
remember the cup, remember the cup
drink up, drink up,
remember the cup.

the diamonds, the dewdrops, all lie within
remember the cup, remember the cup
drink up, drink up,
remember the cup.

the light, the light, can't stop the flight,
drink up, drink up,
remember the cup...


ADD YOUR own VERSES AND SING IT OUT.



*thanks to Salon for the Soul for the suggestion, and musical interlude.

scared, fearful... what a difference . (DEUX)

i'm scared of spiders. man, like, my heart races and i start to salivate in a not-hungry way and i have to move really fast in order to accomodate the adrenalin.  i can't really save face in front of my children anymore, although i like to talk about my fear and so i think they get to see me processing and so all is not lost, on the parenting front. i also don't feel that killing them is an option, as my personal 'right to life' applies to all and everything. (except mosquitos, damnit.) clearly, i am morally problematic.

this week it happened that there was a large, very large, arachnid in the kitchen that was big enough for the cat to simply sit and watch it... she'll kill mice, but not this thing, if you get my drift.  it had a walk, for instance, a lumbering gait that took it underneath the cabinet, in the end.   and i had two opportunities to run from his/her company in the presence of my children. two. I didn't put the baby down in its company in order to better run, I didn't cry, I just realized that in order to capture the spider i would need to get far too close to the spider...and I completely left the room. in hopes, i tell myself, that the cat would pounce or that the manspider would find his own way to the door.
but. that kind of fear is exhilerating, heart-pounding, perhaps sweat-inducing, but exciting. so exciting in the face of my daily motions about the house and in child-care.  an utter change to the pace.

and then, there is fear.
not exciting. and far less 'simple'. . . and i think, almost always, based on something that we think we have 'put away' somewhere else.  perhaps a childhood hurt, a marital splinter, a teenaged slight, a real trauma.  it ain't no joke, and seems to find it overwhelmingly simple to overwhelm, in the moment.  fear can cause many emotions too, in our need to avoid the underlying issues. in myself, i frequently find myself angry, when a flash of fear came first. i'm very good at ducking, finding anger some sort of release.

*none of these are casual, zipped through, they are utterly real and once written, i can argue every single one of them into non-existence. but i have to do that, i have to argue, every time i feel them. they are upsetting, and if i don't have the 'space' to argue them, they can make me insane and driven to despair.

fearful things:

i'm afraid I don't love my people enough.
i'm afraid the love that I do have isn't enough, to save them, to do right by them, isn't really 'love', but some byproduct of responsibility and tenderness.
i'm afraid my husband scorns me.
i'm afraid when i think 'i'd be better off without him'.
i'm afraid that my kids won't think well of me when they are grown ups, this woman that i am.
i'm afraid I might not exist outside of the laundry room, in this family, in this marriage.
i'm afraid people only see me as my husband's wife.
i'm afraid I only see myself as someone's wife.
i'm afraid to hurt him when he reads this.
i'm afraid my heart is going to atrophy, because i'm holding it too tight, and soon it will be 'too late'.
i'm afraid that people only like me because i do stuff for them. or smile at them. i have a smile that makes people think everything is allright. suckers.
i'm afraid people humor and tolerate me and that is it.
i'm afraid i can't think anymore, with any depth. maybe i never could.
i'm afraid i am a sham.

dude. dig?

Fear, Grief, Your MOTHER. (PART ONE of many, probably, as in octopus-ital...)

I do know the differences between your, you're and you are. same with they're and their and there. i do. and i wish everyone did, but they don't. and i have to move on. . .
deep breath.  i feel the grief.  for public education in America, for time wasted, for sheer laziness... i feel it. . .
deep breath.
i shame myself too, so as long as its evenly spread, we're good.

in this week of crisis, in Boston, and in this town, where young suspects schooled themselves, had friends, smoked pot...  it has created many flows and eddies of thought, swirling tornadoes of seemingly interconnected spouts. we live nearby, my sister lives nearer by, everyone here is related to a police officer, everyone here knows someone who runs, lives there, did live there, did go to Chechnya, everyone is connected. and thats all i'm going to say about that.

because it isn't New York again.  It isn't. while truly terrible, it is not a first time... not that shattering of innocence, a fear of world war, impending doom.  (maybe that was just me.)

what there has been, for me, is a realization, again, of how difficult it is for us, collectively, to allow ourselves to feel fear and grief. to just sit in it, get down and dirty with it.
it seems like that is what we did around Newtown, and look at how different that was. . .
maybe we are allowed to feel fear when children are involved. maybe i know a lot of mothers, and we talk about it- or at least in its direction- more often. . .

fear and grief.  if we (I) don't figure out how to process that, to allow it, what does it become? irrationality, rage, vengeance-seeking, short-tempered anger, 'yelling at the kids for singing'... , depression...strung out. we are strung out.
how do we fix this? how do we even begin? if the only possible certainty in life is death, why does it get so little play? and why does its sudden appearance (so-called) drive all of us so wild with insanity and resistance ?
why is our fear so tied into worry, the least productive thing in the world?  if we worry about our fear, does it lessen?  does worrying keep anyone from death?
and at the same time? i dodge what i think i am afraid of, don't want to talk about it or look too closely at it...so i get it. i don't want anyone to die. ever. i get it.

but i also get that i am making that shit up. its not true that i don't want anyone to die. i just fear the emotional upheaval of the grief and the fear that it won't be peaceful or painless .

i feel more free to grieve, to spend my time with compassion, to empathize, sympathize, to shudder at the understanding that it could have been me, at any time, it could be me. or them. and i have to somehow assimilate that feeling into my psyche, without turning to 'worry' it... sorrow is somehow easier to relate to.. react with, seems less likely to morph into anger. is it? my friends who have big grief? is it?
probably would do me some good to dive deeper into meditation these days, get my 'mind' self all up in my grille.

- i apologize for the schizophrenic nature of the post. like my own pulse, it is random and inexplicably fine.  and there will be more, because i've actually managed to 'not' talk about my real fears, and while i skillfully and adroitly dodge and weave, my point gets left to dangle...