Why I practice. Why I write. Why oh why.
A givealong: what moms (still) do
August 25th, 2009 - 36 Comments
From time to time I’m lucky enough to receive things from other moms who make things. These are things they might want me to try for myself or to pass on. Their work always reminds me how vast and universal motherhood is. How intimate and ordinary. How much we share in just a word or a blink. How the whole of life is told in a note, a sign or the twirl of a spoon.
So play along with me here. What follows is a list of things that mothers (still) do. Some have links to posts that have caught my eye recently. Others don’t. Claim a word or two for yourself, leave a comment with a link, if you like, or none if you don’t, offer more to the list that I don’t have here, and I’ll enter you for a prize of your choosing. The prizes are shown below.
Sing
Doubt
Believe
Discuss
Clean
Repair
Cook
Create
Decorate
Paint
Fill
Empty
Contain
Wonder
Write
Witness
Lie awake
Trust
Support
Play
Laugh
Laugh again
Giggle
Marvel
Ponder
Listen
Learn
See
Sew
Spy
Surf
Cry
Forgive
Work
Dream
Dance
Plant
Practice
Heal
Teach
Whisper
Scream
Snuggle
Wobble
Save
Wait
Wake up
Wish
Organize
Let go
Get wet
Astound
When you enter, please tell me what prize(s) you’re aiming for:
Blue Heron Cookbook – Nadia Natali’s simple family recipes from the wilds.
Wake Up & Go to Sleep – Sweet, silly, sleepy music for weary moms and teary babes by Francie Kelley.
Twirly, swirly party skirt – Reluctantly outgrown by Georgia, handmade for a princess of 6 or so.
Be sure you leave a way for me to reach you when you enter. I’ll choose the winners on September 1.
Good morning, good luck, good appetite and good night!
Congratulations to our winners: M, exileinkidville and Chookooloonks.
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Cleverness is serviceable
August 22nd, 2009 - 15 Comments
Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing – Fortune cookie
I once got a fortune cookie that said that. Not exactly. This guy said it first. I was so impressed that I kept the slip of paper in my wallet for about 20 years. Eventually I cleaned out my wallet, it might please you to know, but you can see how dear these words are to me still. Needless to say, the fortune came true. It is the truest fortune I’ve ever seen. It is the truest fortune there is. It is everyone’s fortune.
What does it mean?
Surely you know. You’re smart and clever. Perhaps too smart and clever. Cleverness works, for a time. You can look “serviceable” up in the dictionary. You can figure some stuff out. You can get better at certain things. You can acquire knowledge and skills. You can work harder and longer. Figure out Twitter. Get a leg up on the next thing. You can do more, be better liked, with a bigger reputation. You can set a goal and maybe even reach it. And then another. And another.
But is it ever sufficient?
As long as you are in the realm of cleverness, it is not sufficient. By that I mean, as long as you are in the realm of judging yourself and your life as being one way or the other (good/no good, full/empty, success/fail, made/not made) it is not sufficient. How do you know? Because you will still feel insufficient. You will still feel as though there is something more, better, greater and more fulfilling for you to get. At the same time, it will seem as though there are a few charmed folks on the other side of the scale who already “got” it. But I promise you, whatever it looks like they “got,” they didn’t “get” nearly enough.
You can acquire many things through cleverness, but sufficiency is not one of them.
That being said, cleverness is serviceable for something truly wonderful and life altering. Cleverness will bring you to the last gasp of cleverness; to the end of judgment, greed and envy; to the brink of chronic dissatisfaction and despair. It will bring you to the starting point for sufficiency. A chance to be content with things as they are, the fortune you already possess, the potential for deep and radiating joy, and a life that goes far beyond anything you can engineer.
How do I know? It brought you here.
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Chapter and verse
August 20th, 2009 - 4 Comments
Blah blah blah. Meditation is good for you. But I’m bad at it. It’s boring. Who has time for it? It’s hard to do. Too spiritual. Not relevant. Some day soon you’re going to have to stop reading about it.
But when?
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The road traveled
August 18th, 2009 - 7 Comments
Spying the untouched package, realize this is the last doll.
Watching her take a bath, realize this is the last of childhood.
Counting the days until deadline, realize this is the last draft.
Lifting the carton from the shelf, realize this is the last Mint Chip.
Tasting the grounds in the cup, realize this is the last coffee.
Facing the shrinking summer, realize these are the last lilies.
Remembering everything, realize this is the last regret.
Nearing the horizon, realize this is the last stretch.
The color! The color!
This is the road traveled.
None traveled less, none traveled more.
Everyone travels the same, alone and yet never apart.
Hello, traveler.
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Yield the floor, take the sky
August 13th, 2009 - 14 Comments
August feels like a lost month. Slow boiled, a pot left on the burner and forgotten until a quicksilver memory sends you back to find it pitch darkened and empty.
And so my daughter, my sweet little, is 10. It is different at 10, you know. That extra digit on one side. The roundedness of zero. The empty whole of it.
“I don’t want to grow up,” she sighs on every day but her birthday today, when she didn’t say it. She doesn’t need to say it. It is the lyric we all live our lives by, and now she does too. The going is always gone.
Once I would have called it bittersweet. But I don’t taste too much the bitter any more. It benefits us both that her mother is ancient, so long and well-lived. I’ve lived forever! A hundred years or more, and the last hundred years were the best 10 years of my life.
I don’t want to grow up either. I don’t want to expend a minute of energy nursing myself: my make believe dreams and unrealized aspirations, the tug, the rift, the tides. I don’t want to become anyone else, or even more of myself. I’ve yielded that floor, scuffed and rutted.
Instead, I’ll take the sky. That sky!
Happy birthday baby girl. The world is yours.
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Robbed of meaning
August 12th, 2009 - No Comments
I seem to recall that Maezumi Roshi said something like, “People misunderstand Zen because it is so plain.” Maybe he didn’t say it. My memory doesn’t always serve me because memory doesn’t keep things plain and simple. Perhaps I remember it this way because it serves my purposes right now. That’s what memory usually does: whatever I want it to do.
Even if he didn’t say it quite like that, we can see right away that it is true. We can see how our effort to understand something makes it complicated, and therefore, more easily misunderstood. Why, how, what does it mean? Explain it, debate it, defend it, describe it! The search for meaning robs our life of meaning.
Read the rest and leave a comment on “The Laundry Line”
my blog at Shambhala SunSpace
my blog at Shambhala SunSpace
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Falling upside down
August 10th, 2009 - 3 Comments
Mother’s Autumn Plunge
Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009
Assisi Heights Spirituality Center
Rochester, Minn.
There is a story about what brings me up so high this time, so far out there, beyond any place I’ve ever been or even seen on a map.
There is a story about how all of us – against odds, hope and reason – will come together for another day of effortless oxygen and quiet astonishment.
Listen. It is the story of your life.
About two years ago, I got an email from a complete stranger, the lovely writer Elissa Elliott. She had read a powerful essay by novelist and teacher Dan Barden, “Writer as Parent: No More Aching to Be an Artist,” in Poets & Writers magazine. Dan was another stranger to me, but he wrote convincingly about what my book had meant to him in the early confounding years of parenthood when ambition and opportunity seem forever lost.
Elissa read Dan’s words, and then mine, and in a flash, she let go of her well-founded fears about motherhood. “I believe I can do it,” she wrote to me.
I lost touch with her until a year ago this month, when I read about her adoption of Liliana, now three, from the Ukraine. We can always do the thing we are most afraid to do; indeed we must.
I’m humbled and awed at the mysterious force – wind, breath, words – that can release us from old fears and resistance. Awed, and yet it happens all the time. It happens when we exhale. And when leaves fall.
When Elissa wished off-handedly for a retreat in her northern neck of woods, I didn’t know where she lived. I only knew I could find it. I trust it’s on my way. More than that, I trust it is the way.
How lovely to see that Rochester has a 100-year-old tradition of healing. And that our retreat home, Assisi, recalls my own conversion experience to the unholy goodness of the whole wide world. How awfully kind that airlines are offering insanely low fares. I have my ticket to paradise.
If you live in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota or North Dakota, I insist you come. If you live in Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana or Michigan, I’m saving you a place. If you live north of the 32nd parallel, especially if you don’t even know what that is, let go and fall up to the Autumn Plunge. And tell your friends.
We’re blowing in the wind and diving into a golden pond of wonder. Turn everything that’s stopping you upside down.
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10 early warning signs of a preteen
August 6th, 2009 - 4 Comments
1. How old do you have to be to be a preteen?
2. This is definitely my color.
3. This is definitely not my color.
4. Awesome.
5. I wish you would have talked to me about it first, Mom.
6. Because I mean, like, it’s my life, you know.
7. I’m just not that into it.
8. Random.
9. Do you think I can pull this look off?
10. When are you joining Twitter?
OK, that last one wasn’t her. It was me.
So, like, why don’t you follow me on Twitter? Because it’s like my life, you know, only I’m not going anywhere!
The world needs a homemaker
August 4th, 2009 - 28 Comments
Forgive the double posting from The Laundry Line, but this is so very important to see everywhere we look:
Last week I attended a retreat and came home infused with quiet calm and well-being. Then I glanced at the headlines in the newspaper and was shocked anew at the unimaginable depth of pain in this world. The scope of suffering is inconceivable. How can we respond in the face of this? Where do we begin to do good? I will tell you the only way I know to begin.
Empty the full hampers, sort and wash the laundry without resentment or commentary.
Sweep the floor of dust, mud and crumbs at your feet.
Don’t ask who made the mess.
At the grocery store, give your place in line to the person behind you.
Ask the checker how her day is going, and mean it.
On the way out, give your pocket money to the solicitor at the card table no matter what the cause.
Buy a cup of lemonade from the kids on the sidewalk stand. Tell them to keep the change.
Roll down your car window when you see the homeless man on the corner with the sign. Give him money. Have no concern over what he will do with it.
Smile at him. It will be the first smile he has seen in a very long time.
Write a thank you letter. Yes, a letter. If you do not have a reason to write one, do it without a reason.
Do not fight with your partner, your roommate, your spouse, or your children. If that seems impossible, just do not engage in the next fight, and don’t worry about the one that comes after. It might not come.
Do not try to convince anyone else of your point of view. That’s why they call it “point” of view. The point is just you.
If you feel yourself tensing in frustration, no matter what the circumstance, say, “I’m sorry.”
Do not indulge in despair over the futility of your impact or question the outcome.
Make yourself at home and take care of it as your own. It’s the only one there is.
Tiny bubbles
August 2nd, 2009 - 29 Comments
Celebrating the news that my next book, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, will be published by New World Library in time for Mother’s Day 2010.
The half-life of Susan Boyle
July 26th, 2009 - 8 Comments
Half-life: The time required for something to fall to half its initial value
Last week my nine-year-old was in the chorus at what was billed as an All Stars Concert for 60 kids in a summer theater program.
Just do the math and you know that 60 kids can’t All be Stars but try selling that to the kids or their parents who paid admission.
The day before the show, she fairly exploded with expectation. Then show time came. We couldn’t see her in the second row of 60 kids sing her heart out, but we know she did a fine job. Walking to the car after, she said, “I’m depressed.” Stardom will do that, apparently. The high lasts through one rendition of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!” before you’re slammed back to the hard pavement of the parking lot, as we see so painfully time after time.
I mean no insult to my daughter, or anyone else’s ambition, but our cult of stardom, this collective craving for instant inflation, the plucked-from-obscurity-to-overnight-hysteria thing, has me vaguely ill, as though I’ve been overfed.
We seem to have become sensation junkies. Each week a new sensation goes viral, whether it’s astonishment à la Boyle, grief à la Jackson, or this week’s cherry on top, the wedding dance being sensationalized for its “novel way of sharing matrimonial joy.”
Everyone puts on a good show. Indeed, All are Stars.
But gravity always has the last word. The simple cruelty of physics brought Susan Boyle swiftly low and likewise ensured that Michael would never rise to the occasion. I too, feel depressed, after I blow up ballooning expectations that inevitably blow up.
Now we have newlyweds that have reached, within a month of their nuptials, a summit that will surely never be scaled again. Two Today Show appearances in two days. Perhaps next they’ll be invited to have a beer at the White House. I know a thing or two about marriage, and this honeymoon would be hard for any ordinary couple to recover from.
Most of us have never seen anything like it, but there’s a veritable YouTube subgenre of choreographed wedding dances out there, the couples spreading their ambition for matrimonial joy by breaking into breakdance and hip hop, then posting it on YouTube just for friends and family. Tell me: are you surprised? These plucky couples and their videos feed the diet of morning news shows which are front and center in the televised wedding business. Weddings are already afflicted with an increasingly outrageous need to trump all. Don’t you know thousands, maybe millions, of betrotheds are now scrambling to top a new bar in the wedding-as-viral-video department?
When did we stop seeing the obvious? Viruses make us sick, and can even kill.
I hope Georgia picks herself up and keeps going for the love of performing. I hope Susan Boyle endures for the love of song. I hope the happy couple stays together in anonymity and health, as I wish for all couples. And I hope Michael Jackson rests in eternal peace.
As for me, I’m going away to a place where I can practice spreading another kind of sensation: obscurity.
Don’t worry, you’re safe. It’ll never go viral.
