Wherever we Are

According to my yoga training I am supposed to attempt to be present in this moment.  I am supposed to take advantage of this moment by acknowledging it, appreciating it, being grateful for it.  Today is one of those days filled with moments I'd rather forget.  Moments when I lost my cool, or when my kids lost their cool, or when I felt so sick and tired I could hardly have gotten out of bed if it weren't for the one kid shouting about how the other kid just threw all the bath towels in the bath tub full of water...

How should I appreciate these terrifyingly disgustingly disturbing moments?

Like when you go outside to check on the dinner you've been planning and marinating for days, made special for company, only to find the BBQ appears to have (at some unnoticed point in the last half hour) been engulfed in flames and totally given up the ghost....dinner a burnt offering to the apparently vengeful BBQ god.

Or like when you're in the middle of shouting at your kid that if they had started practicing piano fifteen minutes ago instead of farting around they could have been done by now and they choose that moment to fall off the piano bench and hit their head with a sickening crunch on the floor?

Or like when your kid is begging and nagging and hounding you to let them eat more Halloween candy and you find yourself manipulating their naive enthusiasm to bribe them into doing something they should have done without being asked?

Or like when you haven't slept through the night in weeks and your kid is downstairs crying your name and you actually find yourself thinking, "Maybe I can pretend I don't hear him"...and you sort of hate yourself.

Oh Lord.  What I come to see after writing it all out (and crying to my mother-in-law over a cup of tea), is that I am thankful the kid didn't drown in the tub instead of the towels.  I am thankful the house didn't catch fire when the BBQ exploded.  I am thankful the head smashing didn't require a visit to the ER.  I am thankful that no matter how manipulative I am, my children still seem to know that I love them and I am so thankful I am not the only adult influencing their growth process.  I am thankful for the little boy who comes stomping up the stairs shouting, "I'm awake!!" after naptime and wants, before anything else, to give his baby brother a hug (yes, the baby in my belly).

I am thankful, but it is so hard to see past my anger and anxiety sometimes.  It is so hard to see past the blame and guilt I cast on myself, to the beautiful, forgiving, loving-ness my family and friends cast on me.  But it is there.

I learn again and again that, wherever we are - this moment or the next or next week or next year - I can find something for which to be thankful...even if it's only, "Whew, that could have been a lot worse".

When the yogurt hits the mat

I don't allow myself the luxury of many beautiful things.  With boys, it's just not realistic to think that beautiful things will make it long or far, and I get so tired of saying good-bye to beautiful things.  I just needed to cut out the emotional reaction to each and every CRASH.  Because there are so many CRASHes in our house.

Out went the gorgeous thin glasses in iridescent rainbow colors - one CRASH at a time.  Out went my great-grandmother's crocheted afghan (with scissors instead of crashes).  Out went my fancy crystal vase, my glass salt and pepper shakers, my ceramic african violet pot.  Pretty soon my heart felt like it was in as many pieces as the shards of my butter dish and I made up my mind: No more pretty things until the boys are older.

Then I began doing yoga.

In yoga I breathe more intentionally.  I slow down and allow my attention to be drawn to things I am grateful for.  I am grateful for the things in my yard that are pretty, and will always grow back (even if the neighbor kids mow down my lilies this year, they will grow back next year).  I am grateful for the colored glass in a high window that (so far, fingers crossed) the boys haven't figured out how to reach, but even if they did I would know that each glass cost less than a dollar (thank-you thrift store!).  I am grateful for colors on the wall. I am grateful for smiling boys.  I am grateful for sunshine.  I am grateful...most often, I repeat, I am grateful for this mat.

I say it again and again.  I am grateful for this mat.  I am grateful for this time I have to do yoga.  I am grateful for the way I feel after I have done yoga.  I am grateful that my children get to see their mother working hard to stay healthy, mentally and physically, and having fun doing it.  I am grateful for little boys that giggle and laugh when their mother asks them to do "Dead Bug", and then they DO it!  I am grateful for this mat; this mat where I laugh and cry and remember and breathe and feel strong and feel beautiful.

To do yoga, my mat needs to stay unrolled.  It needs to stay accessible.  Otherwise I will not take the time, I will not remember my need, I will get complacent.  So my mat stays unrolled on my bedroom floor.  And the dog chews his toys on it, leaving fluff and plastic behind.  Once Linus even puked on it in the night.  The boys drive their race cars over "the bumpy road".  Occasionally a child wanders into the room with hands covered in yogurt or strawberry juice, which make their way onto the yoga mat.  We all walk across it daily leaving dust and hair and footprints on it.  And each evening before bed I shake it out, step onto my mat, and find I am still grateful for this mat.  This beautiful thing I am allowed, in the midst of my rambunctious, sticky, messy, loud life.  I have a beautiful thing.  My yoga mat.

21 weeks.  And yes, that is batman.

Photographers and Yogis Get In Strange Positions

 For every pose the bride assumes, the photographer assumes three.  Encumbered not by cinches and girdles, but only by her imagination, the photographer acknowledges no physical limitations that inhibit the creation of Art in this wonderful Reality.

Long Weekend @ Clear Lake

warm sunny naps

campfires at dusk

marshmallows

waking up to the sound of wind in the poplars

adirondaks

bike rides

sandy children

cold water on feet

splashy boat ride with a baby muttering all the way home about getting wet sitting in the front of the " 'toona boat" (as luke called the pontoon boat)

ice cream eaten outdoors

the argument:  Madelyn says, "You will marry me!"  Luke says, "I won't!" Madelyn says, "You will marry me!"  Luke says, "I won't!" Madelyn says, "You will marry me!"  Luke says, "I won't!" devolving into the cliche childhood bickering match, "YES!"  "NO!"  "YES!"  "NO!"

sun salutations

fabulous flea market finds

red wine

BBQ chicken and au gratin potatoes with corn and poblanos

olympics olympics olympics

friends

Why I need yoga today

an excerpt from my journal today:

I am feeling...Overwhelmed.  But no, I’m not using that word because it’s too easy to let yourself off the hook when you say you’re overwhelmed, make it somebody else’s responsibility.  I’m not overwhelmed, not truly.  I can handle this all.  It’s just a lot and I need to think.  no, not to think.  to stop.  to breathe.  I need to remember to breathe.  I need to do yoga.  Yoga is very very good for me. It helps keep me sane.  It reminds me to breathe.  It reminds me that I’m here, only here, right now, only now, doing this. This is my body, I am moving this way, breathing this way, breathing, strong, breathing, healthy, doing good things for my body so I can go back into my day with fresh breath, and new awareness of my strength, new vigor and tenacity, fresh perspective and clarity.  Yoga. Yoga. Yoga.

Summer Splashing Auntie Sarah

Dear Auntie Sarah,
    Thanks for coming 2,000 miles to play with me in the pool.  I had a great time showing you around my home town.  I especially liked that you were around for Luke's swim lessons so you could hear me say, "Bubba" (brother) for the first time as we watched him swim!  Your commitment to your yoga practice inspired me to commit myself to my walking and a few days after you left I decided to just go for it.  I'm walking everywhere now.  It was so funny: you left  Thursday, Mama counted me taking seven steps Saturday, thirteen steps Sunday as I followed Luke down the aisle at church to hear the children's story, and on Monday I heard her tell Grammy on the phone that it wasn't really worth counting anymore because I was off and running.  But I'm not running yet, so I don't know what she was talking about.  She's so dramatic sometimes.
   The day you left was really hard for me.  It was a long drive to Fargo, but this time the drive home wasn't nearly as interesting as when we picked you up and had you in the car on the way home.  We were all tired and Mama said she was going to cry because she just wanted to get on the plane with you, so to keep everyone distracted we watched Lady and the Tramp (shout out to Auntie Lissa!), and Mama told us stories about you when you all lived on the cotton research station. It also was pretty cool to watch your plane take off.  It was too hot to wait outside in the heat, so we stayed in the van, but we had front row seats!  Your plane went so fast and then went - ZOOM - into the air!  I laughed and clapped my hands.
   We'll see you soon, Auntie.  Mama says we're going to get on that plane real soon and then we'll get to feel it ZOOM for ourselves.  I am so excited!
                                                        Miss you so much already,
                                                                                        Seamus

On a drifty day

With snowflakes as big as my thumb falling and a soft downy cover over my garden, I remember California.  People have been asking me excitedly, "SO.  How was your trip to California?!"  You'd think I'd have a lot to say.  We were there for an entire month!  We did so many fun things, visited interesting places, saw people we don't see very often.  But mostly my answer is, "It was good."  And somehow I feel like I should apologize for that brief answer.  So as an explanation . . .

We were in California long enough to get into a groove of our own; long enough to feel comfortable enough that we could daydream about living there.  We did fun things, and saw people we don't normally see, but mostly we just pretended like we lived there.  We took advantage of having my parents at our fingertips.  Dad made salads and BBQd, Mom went to work and we took evening trips to Bakersfield, I went out to the grocery store and left the baby with his grandpa, Luke and grandpa flew balsa wood airplanes and grandpa told the story of putting together a plane with his Dad and just when they tossed it into the air for the first time, a dust devil came by and the plane went up and up and up . . . and they never saw it again.  We held starfish and jumped rope with seaweed and painted our faces with wet stones and walked among the giant sequoias and fed the giraffes and played blocks and dinosaurs and marbles at great-grandma Judy's house.  We walked in the almond orchard and fed the neighbor's calf malva weeds through the fence.  We had a fire in the grotto, photographed old junk in the yard, mowed the lawn and ate cold chicken while sitting in the grass after a morning's yard work.  We picked cotton and got an ice cream cone and wrote words in the leaves piled on the grass and picked lemons and threw the rotten lemons at the pampas grass to see the birds shoot into the air. We had a slumber party with Auntie Lissa and danced to her rap music at Brookside over biscuits and gravy.  We walked to the park and walked to the museum and walked around the block to visit an old friend and walked around town to look at Christmas lights and when we heard the sheep braying down the way, we walked to find them.  We happened upon people we knew and met up with the old men at the donut shop.  We sang songs in the car and did yoga before bed and watched funny sitcoms in between conversations about theology and Life.  It was home again, for a while.  

And that is why I say "It was good."  Because there's not much more to say.  It was. So. Good.

Here are my favorite photos from our trip - sorry if it takes a long time to load; I didn't skimp out!  It's so hard for me to choose favorites from a file full of photos of my favorite people and places.