Equations

Everything in life is about input and output.  Our cars need fuel to run; our bodies need food to function; our homes use energy and electricity for heat and light.  Yet, somehow, many of the moms I know, including me, sometimes try to function outside of this basic truth about life.  We become mothers and we think we can cast off the limits of time and space.  We give and nurture and manage (here’s the output), but we often forget the input.

The input part of the equation is hard for moms because of the dirty truth about it: self-care looks like it comes at the cost of our children’s care.  Once, when I asked my grandma about how she possibly managed raising four children in a tiny house, without any sort of babysitter, she looked at me like I was crazy.  She said, “Look out the window.  You see the houses on my street?  In every one of those houses, lived a mom in the same situation.  So, the whole neighborhood helped.  We would just open the door and shoo the kids out and they would roam the street and go in and out of the houses, and we knew they were fine.  And, every evening, I would put on nice clothes and lipstick, and go have a cocktail with another mom.”  Was she a “bad” mom because her kids roamed the neighborhood and she actually, maybe had a second to read the paper and drink her coffee?  Nah. 

How can we be super moms and take care of everything, AND stop to fill ourselves back up?  The reality is that sometimes we just can’t.  But the real problem is that often we choose not to because we can’t figure out the equation of exactly how to do this.  This is where some basic math could be useful.  Remember back in middle school algebra class, when we learned that, in solving an equation, whatever you do to one side, you have to do to the other side?  If you have 2x - 4 = 3x + 3, and you want to solve for x, you have to first subtract 2x from each side and then subtract 3 from each side.  You have to do the same thing to each side.  There is no emotional content here; you’re just trying to solve the equation.  So maybe our self-care could be the same way.  Say I just made the kids’ dinner and I feel like I want to sit down and read a magazine and have a glass of wine.  That sounds like a balanced equation—some input and some output.  But instead, do I choose to put in more laundry, clean up from making the dinner, and put away the legos that I keep stepping on?  We push and push ourselves, but how can that be good?

A great woman I know, who works with families told me once, when I was having a hard time: every morning when you wake up, you need to ask yourself, what can I handle today?  She said that the answer to that question needs to guide that day.  So, if it’s a get-up-and-go kind of day and you have the energy to do a million errands and fix a fabulous dinner, great.  If it’s what I call a “maintaining” day, that’s fine too.  Your output is based on the input you have been getting.  So if you don’t have a lot of umph, maybe it’s because your tank is low.  During a “maintaining” day, you simply keep everyone alive.  Nothing brilliant or special or enriching occurs.  You might not be the most engaged and charming mom.  There might be some serious TV-watching.  But everyone is just FINE and at the end of the day.  They have eaten, they have played, and they are alive.  I mean, really, that’s got to count for something.  And, that kind of day shouldn’t be viewed as a failure, or as less, in any way.  It was what you could handle on that day.  There will be other days.  (Lots of them.)

Yesterday I had a day when I knew I couldn’t handle very much.  I know that on a day like that, if I push myself, everyone pays.  I end up cranky and short with my children and my husband, and I end up feeling like a basket-case by the evening.  So, I decided that nothing would happen.  We would go nowhere; we would accomplish nothing; the house would just get messier and messier.  Now, all moms know that in reality, even on such a day, a mom is doing dozens of little things to keep the house running and the children cared for.  So, see, even when we decide we can’t handle much, there is still so, so much that we have to do.  Yesterday, my kids watched 2 (yup, count ‘em)… TWO hours of TV while I got in bed and rested and read and then took a bath.  Then, I kicked them outside to play while I’ll finally got a handle on the clutter that had built up while I was pampering.  On this day, my input looks like neglecting my kids.  But I think we just have to come to terms with that, because there is no other choice.  We can choose to not take care of ourselves, or if we’re very lucky to have lots of family around or childcare available, we can have someone else care for the kids while we care for ourselves.  The daily reality, though, is that we just have to keep track of the equation the best we can.  Here’s another thing: during this day, my children were safe and happy.  They got to watch a cute movie together, curled up on the couch under blankets.  They played creatively out back for two hours together—building their own seesaw, constructing various sculptures out of wood scraps.  I heard them laugh and discuss and problem-solve together.  Sometimes I think we might consider removing ourselves from their world even more.  Perhaps there are things they will do and figure out if we were just a little less in their faces.

At the end of my maintaining day, when the kids came in from the backyard because it had started to rain, I had the house tidied up and a beautiful, healthy “funny” dinner on the table, with candles lit.  “Funny” dinners were something my mom did when we were little and I just recently remembered them… and realized how truly brilliant they are.  You put out a bunch of food (that you don’t have to cook or prepare), from all the food groups, and kids get to pick what they want.  After dinner, a nice long bath for the kids, stories, and bed.  Maybe I didn’t interact and play a lot with the kids, but once I had filled back up, I was able to have a wonderful evening with them.  I had the energy to delight in their cuteness, instead of be grumpy and annoyed.

When I came out to the living room after tucking them in, I stopped and listened to the rain, and I breathed in its damp air.  We don’t get a lot of rain here, so I sent up thanks for it.  It struck me as a cleansing rain.  It was one more piece of input for me that day.  I reflected on how there are days when you think you might not get through, when you feel so overwhelmed and buried… but that sometimes you get enough of what you need to refuel… and the equation feels balanced.

Balance

Tonight I was at my meditation class (a 6-week course at the ashram nearby.)  I go on Thursday nights for an hour and I sit with two other students in the meditation dome, with a lovely instructor who has a voice that just makes you want to breathe deeply.  To begin class, she read us something about how if you live life on the surface, you’re very easily knocked off balance.  This resonated very clearly with me, tonight in particular, because of the day I had had. 

Thursdays are the days I have been tutoring students this summer.  It’s my one day of work, which I do appreciate.  It’s a break from the kids and a chance to earn money, which lately we have needed for running the household.  On these days, though, I am aware of how fixated I become on the schedule of who I am seeing at what time, on what preparations I need to make for each client, and on where I might have a small break to eat or pee.  This very clearly flies in the face of the wisdom I am gaining from meditating, which suggests becoming more removed from all the crap of life and focusing more inward.  On these work days, I tend to schedule folks back to back, all day long, to maximize the earnings and minimize the childcare costs that cut into profits.  Today got all messed up.  It started a day ago when I got my first call from a student who had double-booked herself and needed to cancel.  To accommodate her, I said I could see her at 8:00, before my day officially started at 9:00.  Then another client couldn’t make her slot, so I called someone else to switch with her.  Then, another guy cancelled altogether.  This didn’t totally bother me because it gave me a nice break in the middle.  But, just before this break, a student didn’t show up. (She had over-slept… yes, I deal mostly with adolescents, so that has its own complications.)  To be flexible, I said I could see her a little later, during what was going to be my break.  So, my break got all interrupted and I felt all out of whack.  Living on the surface. 

Then, I came in the house (I tutor in a studio office in the back yard) to get lunch and see the kids and check in with the babysitter.  I was walking around the house eating (bad habit, not calm or focused), sort of paying attention to the millions of things the kids were telling me, when the phone rang.  It was the bank.  Now, it’s not like the bank would normally call us when there is a problem, but I had recently decided that I needed a human contact there, when we had had some over-drafting issues.  It’s been a tight month.  I made friends with a wonderful woman who, I felt, was on my side in this whole banking endeavor.  She was doing some stuff for me with our account and happened to be looking at it today and noticed that we had yet another over-draft, this time in a different account that I use mostly for my business income and paying out childcare.  I was shocked because I had been so on top of our finances these last few weeks, given our other over-drafts.  As she reported, we had a negative balance.  That is sure what I had been feeling like, but it took a call from the bank to help me see that I had been tottering and now even my bank balance was affecting my own balance. 

It made me want to try to remember that balance comes from the inside and that I can always go inside to find it.  As my meditation instructor has said, even when life is swirling around, you can use your breath to find the eye in the center of that hurricane.  My breath can lead me in to a quieter place where I can restore my sense of balance so that I’m not so easily knocked over.

Tree Pose

I’m not really the “___ has totally changed my life!” type of person.  But I will say that, in fact, yoga has pretty much changed my life.  About a year and a half ago, I started realizing that I was really struggling with feeling okay.  I had a 5 ½ and 2 year old.  I’m a firm believer in the idea that it takes many years to recover from having a baby (not the 3 months that our society tends to suggest.)  And sometimes I think we kind of have delayed reactions to things.  You hold it together for a long time and then you just… can’t.  I also believe that we all have stuff we were meant to learn on this journey.  These are the things that keep smacking us in the face, but that we are really, really slow to grasp.  We’re kind of learning-disabled about ourselves.  My friends in college used to make fun of how good I was at figuring out everyone’s life for them, but couldn’t seem to get a handle on my own.  

I started having these kind of random, scattered “symptoms,” including feeling dizzy and light-headed, having low energy about mid-morning (which I solved with more coffee), feeling high-strung and anxious in the evenings (which I solved with alcohol), and just not feeling balanced at all.  I wasn’t sure what was going on.  I started doing some reading and decided that whatever I wanted to call it, my body wasn’t quite right and it was time to make some changes.  I wrote about the things that drained me, the things that fed me, and how I thought I could achieve better balance.  Fitting yoga into my life was at the top of my list.  I had done it on and off for years now, but had never established a consistent practice.  Yet, I’ve had a hunch that the physical and spiritual benefits of it would meet many of my needs.  I found a studio that was walking distance to my house (to eliminate the excuse that I didn’t feel like driving somewhere); I enlisted a friend to join me (to impose peer pressure on myself); I figured out a schedule that was manageable (two evenings a week- no excuses.)  Perhaps because I put so many supports in place, I did it, and it has stuck.  For the last 18 months, I’ve been doing yoga twice a week.  It really has changed me.

Yoga teachers often speak of your life “off the mat”—and how yoga is less about the hour that you’re practicing, and more about applying what you learn to the rest of your life.  Over the months, there have been some messages that have slowly sunk in with me.  One of the things I never really understood about yoga, as an occasional practitioner, was when instructors would say that there was no end goal.  I would look around the room at these experienced, flexible people, doing triangle pose effortlessly.  I would be aware of my own body, awkwardly bent sideways, ribs aching, barely able to breathe, and I’d think, “ya, right—no end goal… those people are doing it right; I’m doing it wrong.”  Over time, though, I have come to accept the idea that there is always room to grow in a pose, and that there truly is no final, correct way.  How about that for a good life lesson?  There is always room to grow.  There is no end goal.  Applied to my “real life,” this takes the pressure off.  As a mom especially, knowing that there is always room to grow has helped me be much kinder to myself.  I’m not perfect.  I’m working on growing.

Another phrase I hear spoken by instructors has to do with the idea that maybe we could try a little less hard.  They say, “Is there a place in your body you can soften?  Can you try less hard?”  I have begun applying this to my life.  When things feel way too challenging, I ask myself, “Am I trying too hard?”  If I plan an activity for the kids and it is falling apart, we scratch it.  If I’m starting to make dinner and I’m stressing out over it and the kids are driving me crazy, I pour us bowls of cereal.  Trying less hard is quite refreshing.

Last week in class, we were in “tree”, which is a balancing pose.  Sometimes you get in these poses, and you try really hard not to fall, because you think falling is “bad.”  I’ve come to understand that it’s okay to gracefully fall and then just try again.  My yoga instructor said, “Trees sway.  This pose isn’t about being rigid and still.  It doesn’t matter if you sway or fall; it’s how you recover that matters.”

On Being Busy

My cousin recently wrote a blog post called “Why We Are Not Busy.”  (http://tumbledweeds.wordpress.com/2011/04/26/whywe-are-not-busy)  I have been thinking on this topic lately and have come through my own journey from busy to less busy.

With my first baby, I signed up for many activities of the “mommy and me” nature.  Even saying that phrase brings back waves of nausea.  I did it, though, because I thought that’s what you did.  Plus, I was trying to distract myself from this new job of motherhood—which I will admit, I wasn’t in love with.  (Make the distinction between not being in love with my new role with not being in love with my new baby.  It was only the former.)  The activities I liked best, it turned out, felt the least “mommy-and-me-ish.”  For example, hiking with other moms while baby slept in the pack on my back.  Gymboree class was not for me, although I did fake-smile and sing through the 9-week session, since I had paid for it.  In his early years, I never felt like I over-scheduled my son, but even the few activities we did never felt quite like a fit either.  When son number two came along, Will (age 3 ½) was engaged in the occasional gymnastics or swim class.  Now having to get two kids dressed and ready, diapers and snacks packed, and out the door to be somewhere by an actual time put me in a downright agitated mood.  Kids just don’t understand time—at all.  It was like herding cats.  So, the writing was on the wall for little Elias’s future as a soccer tot extraordinaire.  The poor kid has never been registered for a class.  He’s now almost 3 ½.

In fact, over the last year or so, I’ve signed up for fewer and fewer kiddie classes.  It happened slowly.  I went through various phases of still participating in activities and/or feeling guilty that my kids were not getting a jump start on whatever sport they were destined to medal in.  But over time, I have refined and clarified my approach, and now we do very few official activities.  Our days have less structure, yet they feel more full—in a good way.

Talking to a friend the other day at the park, I was trying to convince her that it’s okay to not have her first grader completely overscheduled.  To this she answered, “Ya, but it’s tough when you look next store at Betty Sue who is also in first grade and knows how to swim and ski… and she’s already really good at tennis.. and she takes art classes.. and for spring break she’s taking a trip to the… Grand Canyon or something… to do some service project to help the… Hopi Indians!”  This mom was somewhat tormented by worrying that she was going to fail her kid in some way.  We are all going to fail our children in one way or another, but perhaps it would be good for each of us to at least feel like we followed a path that was genuinely our own.

Here’s what I’ve decided: it stressed me out too much to schlep kids all over town.  It involved too much yelling and feeling tense about being on time.  The cost outweighed the benefit.  And, they are kids.  They are supposed to play and use their imaginations to create worlds in which to grow and think and figure stuff out.  And, as long as they live in a safe and happy environment, they are most likely living a very rich life, in which they are making art, acting, dancing, playing sports and developing skills and passions.  For free.  There’s another part of this picture that I’ve also come to terms with.  My sons have me for a mom, with my gifts and my limitations.  One of my limitations seems to be that I just can’t stomach participating in lots of structured activities.  On the flip side, because my boys have me for a mom, they get some things from me that maybe other kids don’t get from their parents.  Not better or worse… it’s just going to be their experience.  It will all be just fine.

Poop

I apologize for the off- putting title.  But I’ll explain.  Poop is a big part of motherhood.  I remember when I first began to realize this… and it wasn’t even all about my baby’s poop.  One morning, shortly after we had Will, Derek came in from outside.  He had taken Will, all swaddled up, and our dog, Cortez, out to the field near our house for his morning constitutional.  Derek came back in and delivered Will to me in bed, where I was grabbing a few extra minutes of sleep after having been up nursing all night.  He announced that Will had pooped, the dog had pooped, and even he, himself, had pooped.  He tucked Will in with me and was off to work.  As he walked out, I thought, great, everyone got a nice leisurely poop this morning, except me.  If I had only known how few private bathroom moments I would have during motherhood.

For various reasons, we waited to have a second child until Will was 3 ½.  Once number two, Elias, came along, I was relieved that Will was completely potty-trained.  I was happy to not be dealing with two creatures’ poop.  What’s funny is that I seem to be continuing this trend.  Last year, we were thinking about getting chickens (for the eggs), but I just couldn’t do it.  Something was getting in the way of making the decision.  Then, this spring, we discussed it again, and I was totally on board.  In fact, I surprised myself at how I was able to just dive in.  I started reading all about raising chicks.  I’d call local feed stores and ask questions like, “Are your chickens sexed?”  (Meaning bred in such a way to 98% guarantee that you are getting hens and not roosters.)  And, “Do you carry non-medicated, organic feed?”  And, “What do you think of the deep litter method?”  This last question is about… poop!  So, there we go, I am dealing with poop again, but…Elias is fully potty-trained, so I can handle it.  And since now would be about the time one might decide to have a third child, I think I must be replacing that need with chickens.  They poop, but man, they’re a lot less work than kids.

The Galloping Goose

            I was in a funk this weekend.  Why can’t we just be happy all the time?  I know I sound immature asking that question.  I know life is full of peaks and valleys.  And I even have the wisdom (somewhere under the bad mood) to believe that sometimes it’s in the valleys where you are forced to see things in new way, or to become more resourceful.  Necessity is the mother of invention.

            On Saturday I wallowed in my funk.  “How’d that work out for you?”  It was stupid.  I was annoyed at my husband, annoyed at my kids, but mostly annoyed at myself for probably being so annoying to be around.  Nothing seemed to make it lift.  Often exercise in the key, but the tricky thing about that is that sometimes the funk-dom is so pervasive that I can’t pull out of it enough to make myself do the thing that would make me feel better.  In fact, on Saturday, at 4 pm, my husband finally forced me to “get some fresh air.”  So, I walked, very slowly, a quarter mile to the shopping center to buy potatoes.  Whoopy.  It didn’t work.  By that evening, I decided something had to give.  I announced to Derek that we would need to plan an activity for the following day.  He was amenable, but neither of us quite knew what that meant.  I found myself saying, “What is it that people with children do?”  I had an image of some of the moms I admire, off on culturally enriching day trips with the whole family.  Everyone smiling, feeling very enriched and happy.  But I couldn’t think of one thing that we might do.  I finally asked a friend, who suggested the railroad museum.  Luckily, she informed me that it is mostly outdoors, (which is good since I get museum headache), and that it’s only 25 minutes away and was an easy outing for her family.  I’m certainly not a train buff, but Derek and I agreed to lattes on the way there and taking the kids out for lunch when we were done.  Sold.  I was so excited that we had a PLAN!  And we were going to do one of those things that all those other people with kids probably do all the time on weekends.  The funk was lifting already.

            The next morning, the drive alone did it for me.  Just heading out of town, getting a different angle on the mountains.  The kids were excited, Derek and I felt smug about our plan, things were looking up.  The mocha latte helped too.  The museum was super fun for the kids, and Derek.  I don’t really get off on transportation museums, but I was happy to be outdoors, watching the rest of my family have a good time.  It was fun to take pictures of them on all those super-old black, shiny steam engines and bright red cabooses.  I did like seeing the old passenger car, with the red velvet seats and so many windows that the light just streamed in.  Why don’t they make trains like that anymore?  I didn’t bother reading any of the historical placards about the dates they were built or the routes they traveled.  I don’t really care even a little bit.  But towards the end of our time there, I was waiting for Elias to finish “doing work” on one of the train cars, so I was wandering around near the car he was on and the historical placard with the title “Galloping Goose” caught my attention.  The deal is, during the Great Depression, since money was tight and big steam trains were really expensive to operate, folks invented these Galloping Geese.  There were only seven ever made.  For some reason, that right there intrigued me.  These railroad vehicles were part old-fashioned automobile, part train car.  If you can picture this, then you might be envisioning a fairly silly-looking contraption.  They are.  They’re not much bigger than a modern-day SUV.  They would carry 3-6 passengers and a small amount of freight or mail.  When times were tough, this allowed the post to still run, and some goods and people to get where they needed to go, for less money.  Their name came from the fact that they kind of waddled down the track.  So, they were slow, and not too pretty, but they were an inventive idea for the Great Depression.  But, honestly, when I was reading the sign, I wasn’t thinking about all that.  I was just intrigued, and slightly curious as to why this particular display grabbed me like it did.  I was delighted that, although I didn’t expect to get anything out of our activity, I had found this quirky, interesting piece of history that tickled me.

            That was Sunday.  Monday, I woke in a familiar-feelingfunk.  Damn.  Sunday had successfully distracted me from it, but apparently it was still there.  I wallowed for the morning (in pajamas and greasy hair that was crying out for a shower.)  By lunchtime, I knew, just like yesterday, the boys and I needed a PLAN.  Sometimes, when I’m at a loss, I just ask the kids what they want to do.  They both definitively announced that we should most certainly go to a park today.  Ok, but I knew I needed a different park than the neighborhood ones we can walk too.  I needed something reminiscent of the drive yesterday… that feeling of getting out of the normal rut and doing something different.  Derek had the car, so I couldn’t travel far and wide, but luckily I am in the place (and in possession of the gear) where I can throw Elias (3) in the bike chariot and Will (6) can hop on his own bike (and get a bunch of what he needs), and bonus—I get to haul 100 pounds around town.  That means I get that hard-core exercise I spoke of earlier, which often releases those nice, happy endorphins into my little moody brain, and creates less funk and more joy.  Perfect.  We rode two or three miles to a fun park that has lots of climby and spinny equipment.  I was hitting the jackpot with getting Will the activities he needs.  The warm sun was up, so I sat down on a bench, and I had some moments to breathe and then to think.  And it was then that I started remembering the Galloping Geese and how funny I found them.  I started to analyze why they struck me as they did.  I realized that it was during a “valley” (the Great Depression) that someone had to get creative and figure out how to move stuff along those rail lines without the cost of big, honkin’ trains.  There was no glamour to what they came up with, but it worked.  This reminds me so much of motherhood.  It ain’t pretty, but it works.  And necessity is the mother of invention, even if the necessity is just a royally crappy mood and the invention is just finding a new park on a bike ride with the kids.  And… mothers are the inventors of necessity.

Birthday

Last night, on the eve of my 37^th birthday, I was awoken by my husband coming in at 1 am (for the sake of his reputation, I will state that this is not a typical occurrence.)  I had gone to bed early… being so old and all.  In our world, with small children, it seems to me that both of us should always go to bed very, very early and be as well rested as we can possibly manage, for fear of the inevitable kid with a bad dream or fever at 3 am.  So, perhaps it was the shock that he was coming to bed so late, or maybe it was the particular part of my sleep pattern that I was in… but whatever it was, it led to being awake all night long.  It has been a very long time since I have experienced that (since my days of un-medicated post-partum depression, which evidenced itself with insane insomnia.)  Finally at 3 am, I got up, made the kids’ lunches for tomorrow, took the shower that I would have to take in a few hours anyway, and got stuff packed for the day.  Instead of getting up at 6 to do all that, I could do it at 3!  (How perfect.)  But life goes on.  I got up, applied large amounts of make-up, put on a nice sweater and cute shoes, and off we went.  This is one of the motherhood strategies of my friend, Betsy.  You always know when she’s had a really shitty night with the kids because she looks amazing—eye liner, lipstick—the whole nine yards.  If you haven’t tried it, you should.  I did lament the fact that, because of the bags under my eyes, I looked 50 on my 37^th birthday.  Well, I guess a damn good 50, anyway.

My parents have told me that when I was little, I used to have trouble falling asleep on the eves of my birthdays.  I would wander into their bedroom well past my bedtime, and complain that I just couldn’t fall asleep.  My mom would talk to me about it, and apparently, my response would go something like, “I am not ready to turn 7.  I like being 6 and I don’t want to turn 7 tomorrow.”  Don’t most kids LIKE their birthdays and getting older and being able to do cooler, big kid stuff?  Apparently, not me.  It was just a source of anxiety… “I know what 6 is, I get it, I’m good at it… and now I have to be something else?!”   

When I think back over my year of being 36, I realize that I have learned quite a bit, and I think I have grown as a human being and a mom.  Maybe my 6 year-old brain was just scared of turning 37.  What if 37 brings more hard lessons?  (It will.)  What if 37 brings more challenges to finding balance?  (It will.)  Ever since I became an adult, I haven’t really had issues with birthdays.  Okay, well maybe there were one or two tough ones.  My college roommate reminds me of the time she came home to our dorm room and I was sobbing on the top bunk about how I just wasn’t ready to be 22… that I felt like I just finally settled into what 21 was.  (Yes, I am a bit of a nut, but it’s obviously been with me since childhood.)  But mostly I just have a birthday, and I’m done with it—and especially during the last few years of having babies, I think each year that ticks by is a relief because it gets me farther from the days of crying infants, nighttime feedings, and post-partum depression.  I know that makes it sound like I’ve been wishing my life away, but, I guess if you have had babies, you know what I mean.  But this year has been different. I am in good place.  Maybe it has taken me 6 years to finally settle into being a mom, and to really and truly embrace it.  Because I tend to be kind of hard on myself, I was asking Derek the other day—why has it taken me this long to understand the balance?  This complicated equation that includes what my kids need, what our whole family needs, what our house needs to run smoothly, and… oh ya… what I need.  Derek, who is my biggest cheerleader and supporter, said, quite simply, “How can you figure that out?  It’s constantly changing.”  Yes, the moving target of motherhood.