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Talk Books: The Art of Family

May2

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Last month I finished reading The Art of Family by Gina Bria. I’ve already quoted it here a couple of times and I’d like to offer another series of quotes and insights I enjoyed from this book.

We will have doubts about our depth of relationships with our children. Questions will haunt us. (If a baby-sitter picks them up at school today, will they be irrevocably damaged?) But to a parent, doubt is a way of asking all the right questions. What we so often experience as doubt is really the process of creating ongoing relationships. It is when we stop doubting, thinking, questioning, in relationships that they die.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (p. 7). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

I really loved this. It reminded me of another reassuring mothering moment that happened for me at the La Leche League International conference in 2007. Martha Sears was speaking and she said something to the effect of, “does anyone ever wonder if they are ‘attached enough’ to their kids?” She then said that the very fact that you think about those subjects and ask yourself those questions means you are. And, that you are a good mother. She said that only good mothers worry about being good mothers. I found that tremendously reinforcing and have drawn on it repeatedly over the years! I’ve heard other parents say that they feel confident they are making the “right choices” for their families, because if they weren’t right, they wouldn’t do them, but I often lack that sense of complete certainty. I see a lot of possible “right choices” as well as piles of “good enough choices” in the world and it is helpful to remember that turning these things over, asking hard questions about them, and having doubts about your own parenting is actually part of the process of a healthy, alive relationship with your children.

And, speaking of making mistakes and having doubts, I also enjoyed this reminder that children are watching how you handle mistakes and how your repair damage:

Perhaps it will come as no surprise to nonreligious parents that teaching children to resist the status quo is a spiritual gift; but observing what’s wrong about what surrounds us is the first necessary step leading away from the brokenness of a particular culture, setting, or time. Spiritual leadership at home earns a special place in children’s formation, especially in their imagination. Refining our children’s spiritual imagination is essential; it will become their storehouse, a granary, for making choices about the way they will face loss or triumph. Their imaginations will be shaped by the world we present them. Children need to hear not only what we believe in, but also what we long for, what we hope for—not just what we think the world should look like, but what it doesn’t look like, and why. And, yes, we want them to be like ourselves, but more. We want our children to admire us on the deepest level of our own spirituality. Not just our ethics, our morality with others, but also what is our being, our nature, what choices we make, who we are in front of the vastness of everyday life, and what we do when confronted with evil. These questions are alive for children from the very beginning of their lives. We cannot wait until we, as adults, as individuals, have finally answered, to our satisfaction, our own questions and doubts about God, the world, and human nature. We are meant to do it together. We are joined spiritually to our children, it cannot be otherwise. Our children want computer software, Matchbox cars, and iPhones. But what they want most from us is who we are. To them we are Adam and Eve, the first human specimens of their universe. They keep their eyes on us; they know that no other adult will matter quite so much to them while they grow. They want us to be good. And when we are not good, they watch carefully to see how we will handle it. Here is where most of us will have a chance to be heroic—exactly when we stumble.

And, with regard to parents as everyday heroes, Bria touches on something that I’ve tried to communicate in a past poem for mothers:

You may feel uncomfortable and puzzled about this or you may be the most agnostic person you know, and yet, in loving your children, you are practicing the profoundest spirituality. In this you are heroic, and there are days when you know it. You know you’ve been stretched to the limit, faced insanity, wept in the closet, physically found an entirely new level of exhaustion. It’s called sacrifice. No one else, except maybe, maybe, your partner, will ever know what you’ve done. No one else will ever guess how hard it has been. No one will thank you for it. Even when your children have their children, they will only vaguely realize what you’ve done—they will be too frantic caring for their own kids. Yet you do it. Now, that’s heroism.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (p. 80). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

YES! Though, I do actually feel like my children are really good about expressing thanks to me. Little Alaina has a somewhat new habit of saying “thank you” to me for almost everything. She asks me to pick her up and when I do, she throws her arms around my neck, pats my back, and says, “SANK you, mommy!” And, she almost always says, “thanks” for nursing too. She’ll talk to my “na nas,” saying, “thank you, nonnies. Love you, nonnies. Thank you, mommy. Love you, mommy.” No thanklessness there 😀 My boys too will often tell me I’m the “best mom in the world!” or that they would never want a different mom because I’m, “the greatest mom ever!” So, I do, in fact feel appreciated by my kids on a regular basis. However, I identify with the remarks about no one really know how hard its been and that you are heroic in continuing to meet the challenge! March 2013 057

And, as I prepare for a major trip to California later this month, I call to mind two particularly àpropos reminders about having so much to do all the time:

“Face it, now, you will never have enough time to do all the right things, the necessary, even important things you can eternally think up, but you will have enough love.”

“I want my sons, both of them to learn from me that they are free to be rooted in home and still be abroad in the world as men.’’ She also feels being a mother to her sons involves giving them pictures of her as a woman engaging her gifts. She is sharing her interests with him, preparing him to see women as partners, with many interests, giving him a model.

And, finally, a thought about making a home:

HOME IS THE FIRST PLACE we spend our love. It is the site, the space, the enclosure, where we love each other and spin ourselves into a family—mother, daughter, father, son, and over all, lovers. It is the place we disburse our energy, expend our life, and exercise our imagination. It holds all our little memory objects and, with them, the people we love—the ones we are willing to spend our lives on. The ones we most want to show and tell to. It’s never just four walls. Home can be thought of almost as a body to care for; a body that contains the spirit of the family. One can read the character of a family by the home they make. It is not the things they have, but the spirit of life that is manifest in their home, because home is the ultimate joint project families do together. It is imperative that home be made by all family members. It is not a woman’s private project, whereby she creates a space and everyone else just inhabits it. Home is a joint project—that means children must be fully engaged in “keeping’’ house in the same way the adults are. Most chores for children are assigned to build character—not really to attend the body of the home together. By giving children an explanation about why their contribution to the home is important and giving them an opportunity to contribute—a true sense of ownership—a discernible difference in the attitude takes place; it’s a community effort. Young children “play house’’ for real because they understand that you depend on them; and if they feel how vital they are to you, to this project, they respond. After all that is what children inherently want, to belong to someone, in some place, and to give their little selves too.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (pp. 126-127). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

And, one about goblets. Yes, goblets. I feel her!

What is it about goblets that gives me a lump right in the throat? To see a little fist brandishing one about, drink half-sloshing, ought to fill me with terror. Instead I get the deeply satisfying affirmation that, for the moment, we are princes of our palaces, little or big as we are. Goblets ring royalty bells for me, aristocracy, or even only mere martiniesque sophistication, but they symbolize elevation, reminiscent of a chalice. A goblet lifts you up, even as it lifts up the body of liquid you are drinking. The imagery of a child sipping from a goblet is a glimpse of a lost land, some original garden, where animals talk, flowers sing, feasting abounds, and every servant is a noble in disguise. Maybe our little diner parties for children are a silly attempt to taste this vision, but I can’t give it up, even if we do, in the end, lose some goblets, in peril of a gash. When the other mothers come to collect their children, I know they contain their askance glances: I’ve let their children play with glass. I, too, wonder sometimes if I am a demented, too-casual mother. But I am not, I am crazy for the real. I so want to put the real into children’s hands, to promise them while they are still children, still believers, that it is beautiful, exciting, and dangerous to be at a table.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (p. 138). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

Alaina with sparkling cider on New Year's Eve.

Alaina with sparkling cider on New Year’s Eve. She’s got the real in her hands! 🙂

 

 

Kidbits

Apr22

“They look so small and frail but they are so great and magnificent. They are born of the same womb that birthed the cosmos and knitted together the galaxies. If you could see them as they truly are, you would be astounded. You would see not little children, but dancing clouds of light, energy in motion, swimming in an ocean of love. They are so much more than what you see. As are you.”

-William Martin
The Parent’s Tao Te Ching

Some things I saved recently to remember about my funny little children:

  • Adorable toddler nursling moment: I was carrying Alaina in the kitchen and she patted my chest and said, “love you, nonnies.” Then, she said, “sank you, mommy.” 🙂 ♥
  • Another charming moment: Alaina standing before me and giving that cute toddler hands raised sort of shrug gesture and saying, “babies…grow…up!” She has also started doing a thing wherein she points at her own belly and says, “baby…belly…me…grow…up,” telling me that she will grow up to have a baby of her own and then points to herself and says “Mama…ME! Babies…grow UP! Mama…ME!”
  • Zander bought hair gel and spiked up his hair, put on a gold chain and sunglasses, took off his shirt and started doing some rocking dance moves and handstands in the living room. Lann said: “hey, we could start a band and call it the Wiggly Brothers.” Zander continued to groove with no response. Lann repeated himself about three times and then said kind of to himself, “I guess I’ll be the weird one…” ;-D
  • At the beginning of this month, Lann brought me an illustrated “breakfast menu” and said I could start ordering breakfast from him in the mornings. Each item is 50 cents or $1. SOLD! He has been making me a spinach and cheese omelet many mornings and I really appreciate it. The café is called Big Spoon. It is so fun to have a kid that is nine!
  • Alaina found some shiny tappy shoes at the thrift shop. The same day, we also bought the Gremlins movies (which I’d never seen) and she  energetically explained how she will use her new shoes to kick bad gremlins–she will “hug good Gizmo” and “kick bad Gizmos” (complete with demo-kick shiny shoe action). In case anyone cares, we didn’t let her keep watching it after they mutated and we muted the computer during the “Santa dad in the chimney” story, which Mark mercifully remembered (due to his own past childhood trauma) just in the nick of time.
  • Said tiny girl likes to push (literal) buttons and last week while still in bed in the morning I was surprised by the serenading CD from the living room where she must have programmed it to be on a timer (I don’t know how to do that myself!) She woke up and I said, “did you make the radio start playing?” And she said, “yes, mommy. Me do dat ting.”
  • Me last week: “Argh! I have SO much I want to do.” Lann: “Me too, Mom. It IS kind of the primary feature of our family.” ;-D

And, video special: Alaina dancing in the car while we waited to get Lann from gymnastics.

 

Tuesday Tidbits: Mothers and Work

Apr16
MollyNov 085

One of the best pictures I have of the “mothering” while “personing” experience!

“I’m winging it every day, praying, surrendering, steeping myself in grace by any means necessary. I grapple with finding my own integrity, to trust the path that I have chosen, to believe that I am mothering well, that I can claim for myself a belief in my own goodness.” – Elizabeth at Mothering with Soul

“Giving birth to a new life is about so much more than just the moment itself. The power of finding your strength as a woman through birth resonates for the rest of your life. It shapes you as a person, and as a parent.” ~ Gina Sewell

I want to say first that I believe, as the organization Mothers and More does, that all work that women do, whether paid or unpaid has social,  political, and economic value. In my own life I don’t distinguish between what I do for money and what I do as a volunteer, but that is partially a function of privilege, because I love all of my work and choose freely to do it. I recently finished reading the book The Art of Family and in it the author makes a point that I’ve made in various posts as well, mothers have always “worked,” it does no good to try to distinguish between “working mothers” and “stay-at-home mothers,” because the difference is much more fluid and alive than a category can hold.

FOUNDATIONAL TO A LASTING FAMILY is acknowledging that we will be many things to each other for our whole lives, even past death. We can abandon the old fears that family life will smother us and instead go after fully practicing ourselves in the presence of partner and children. In short, making a family is the best way to present ourselves, to stake our claim to a spot on earth. But “practicing ourselves’’ in front of our family, what does that mean? To give the essence of ourselves to our children is not necessarily dependent on the amount of time you spend with your children. Here, we must recast the debate over moms who work and those who stay at home with children. This is one of those divisions that turn up damned if you do, damned if you don’t, because it is a false one from the start. First, mothers have always been “at work,’’ whether farming, spinning, pioneering, running cottage industries, or investment banking. In history, women have always, of necessity, worked for the welfare of their families, some even forced to leave their children behind to find ways to sustain them. Imagine that pain, next time you come home late from the office.

The real issue with at-home moms and working moms is the struggle for identity. Having children is the most identity-challenging and identity-changing thing women do—starting with pregnancy, when even your body gets an identity change. That should be our first big clue. But we are terrified to face it. Who wants to watch your identity evaporate, which is what having children often feels like? Identity isn’t about societal roles, either, though the ones we get stuck with can be more burden than help to us. In fact, if we allow societal roles to determine our identity, we are not really in control, we are accepting a series of masks. We have to ask ourselves the hard questions: Who would I be without this job, without this kid, without this income, without this education?—getting at the core of who we are. This is a work we must do solely on our own, and it is excruciating work. But no human gets out of it, not even mothers. Babies make you ask, “Well, who am I now?’’ Though it is currently hot in intellectual theory to say we are nothing but social and cultural constructions, this is not a spiritual truth. Identity is something you build relationship by relationship, not role by role. Families, especially at the young-children stage, are not the pause button pressed down on who you are and what you want to pursue. Yes, we may have to put off finishing that degree, taking the promotion that requires weekly travel, writing that screenplay, or finally learning French, but those things weren’t going to make you you anyway. Your relationships make you who you are, because they give you a chance to actually manifest yourself, which is what you really believe in. We fill up what we do with who we are. What we do can never fill us up.

Gina Bria (2011-11-28). The Art of Family : Rituals, Imagination, and Everyday Spirituality (pp. 8-9). iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

This notion is also explored in an article I enjoyed from Mothering:

“…Women a few hundred years ago worked their butts off every day helping their family survive. They planted and harvested, killed and prepared their own food. The children either watched younger children, played (often unsupervised) or worked right along side them. Women who had to work outside of their home had other people or family members care for their children while they cared for others. The wealthiest women probably had other paid servants care for their children much of the time. Children played with other children. Children worked. Children solved some of their own problems and they found things to do…”

—The Benefits of Ignoring Children (Sometimes) – Mothering Community

Personally, I refer to this as “grinding my corn”:

Nov 2012 042

Grinding my corn sculpture from several years ago.

I want to be with my children, but I wish to be engaged in my own pursuits at the same time. When our lives feel happiest and most harmonious is when exactly this is occurring—when we are all together, but each working on our own projects and “doing our own thing.” I envision a life of seamless integration, where there need not even be a notion of “life/work” balance, because it is all just life and living. A life in which children are welcome in workplaces and in which work can be accomplished while in childspaces. A life in which I can grind my corn with my children nearby and not feel I need apologize for doing so or explain myself to anyone…

—I just want to grind my corn!

Returning to the issues of identity raised in the quotes from The Art of Family, the question is explored beautifully in the article Beautiful Catastrophe: The Death and Rebirth of Becoming a Mother:

You were twenty, twenty-three, thirty, thirty-five. You were free and young and somebody else.

We were free and young and somebody else.

But now, we’re mothers.

At some point the reality will hit us: We are never alone again, no matter where we are, and we are the only ones in the world who have become this person toward this child.

…

I’ve been the same woman my whole life. What about her? Where is she? Is she just dead?

Yes, she is just dead.

Does that seem harsh? Well, it is. So is motherhood.

Perhaps we can soften this whole thing by saying our identities are “transformed,” or we are “forever changed,” but the fact of the matter is that the woman you once were is gone, and she will never come back.

Period.

I also recently finished reading the anthology The Maternal is Political and in it Jennifer Margulis (later birth writer of the new book Business of Baby) says:

Jame’s working full time and my staying home wasn’t working. My working full-time and James’s staying home hadn’t worked either. We both wanted to be with our children. And we both wanted to work (something I was only able to admit once I tried being a full-time mom). But neither of us wanted to do one or the other exclusively.

–Jennifer Margulis April 2013 002

This is what we are working towards for my husband and me, hopefully this year. I think we both deserve to be home with the kids, I think we both also have other work that is valuable to pursue. I envision a life of seamless integration of our various roles and passions–all of us. We have a family mantra: “our family works in harmony to meet each member’s needs.” 🙂

“Is there one single aspect of motherhood that isn’t political? From conception to graduation, from your kid’s first apartment until you die, it is basically one political decision after another…” –Rebecca Walker

Also in The Maternal is Political, Beth Osnes writes about Performing Mother Activism (she has a one woman show) and I love her analogy of care being like a loaf of bread…

I go on with scenes that tackle the onslaught of societal expectations and repressive forces that creep into a woman’s life once she becomes a mother: “it happens one day. You find a large parcel on your front porch. You open it to find the status quo being delivered to you…well, actually, the status quo manual…” I go on with scenes that lambaste the fearmongering that goes on in our government and media: “The status quo wants you to dumb down, mother. It will tell you who to trust and who to fear.” I remind mothers that we must think for ourselves: “I say rage, mother. Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of your light.”

I have also stopped expecting that caring needs to be a whole and perfect project, like an unsliced loaf of homemade bread. I am April 2013 009coming to accept that, at least for me, caring about the world is more fragmented, much more like a store-bought loaf that splays open as soon as you open the bag. Here’s a slice of caring about antipoverty legislation, here’s one of caring for my three-year-old with the flue, here’s a slice of caring for victims of our country’s warring and, whoops, here’s even a slice of caring about my curtains. I have stopped imagining that caring is pure and unselfish; many people, including me, fashion their identities out of caring, whether for kids or for the world. Still: Bread is bread, and caring is caring. Whole or broken. Homemade or purchased. Consumed or given away.

I’m also learning that social movements will go on, even if nursing mothers or parents of toddlers have to drop out for a while. We will be back,someday, maybe when the youngest turns two or whenever we can again afford to dream like activists, rather than work like dogs. We may be more distracted than before, less available…But when we return, we will give a break to someone else who needs it—like those erstwhile college students who may be finding that carting babies to marches is harder than they anticipated.

And when we do rejoin the movement, it is possible that we will agitate and march and advocate from a deeper place within ourselves than we had known existed. It is possible that we will act from that cavity our children have hollowed out of us, that place where breath begins.

–Valerie Weaver-Zercher

And, as a lovely closing tribute to all women and all their work, remember this…

Mothers — you are powerful. Stand tall. You are full of grace. Stand tall. Join together and stand tall. Be as a Redwood tree. Stand April 2013 028tall. If you have stood next to a Redwood tree or seen photos of one, you will notice that they do not grow alone. They grow in groves with all of the trees connected together, even if they appear to be separate. Their shallow roots form a web that holds these big trees up in the wind. Redwoods do not fall very often. We can emulate those trees, mothers. We can hold each other up.

We may feel alone at times, but believe me and remember: You are being supported underneath the surface of where you live. Right beside you there is somebody thinking about you and supporting you whether you know it or not. Think of all the mothering that goes on in life. I have found in my life that it comes sometimes when you do not expect it and from someone you do not realize has your back. Someone in your root system seems to know that you need something. Women have a natural mothering instinct if they just listen to it.

—Stand Tall

Other past posts about mothering and working:

The tensions and triumphs of work at home mothering

Guest post: working/parenting interview

The Ragged Self

Surrender?

April 2013 020

Driveway Revelations (on Family Size)

Apr1

Family size has been on my mind since Alaina was born two years ago. Before we got married we talked about having four or even six kids, but as March 2013 022we got a little older we settled on “probably three.” There was a time, post-miscarriages, in which I wondered if two was “enough” and whether we should be happy with our family of two boys. Then, after Alaina was born, even though we’d said she was the last, I found myself spending many moments during her first year thinking, but maybe one more! I fantasize about having a little sister for her. I look at the tight brother-bond of my sons and I want that for her too—for her to have someone on her own little team, rather than being the little tagalong at the end of the family. I have a nagging question of whether three feels like an “unbalanced” number. Then as we moved past one year, I started to have more moments of feeling “done.” Those moments usually came from frustration—i.e. after a long, whiny day, I’d think, “yes, family size is complete. NO MORE! AHHHHHHH.” I also kept having the thought that it makes sense to end our childbearing years on this high, sweet, clear, beautiful, joyful, triumphant note following her birth—why wait until we are fully “burned out” with parenting, why not retain some sweet, delicate wistfulness about infancy and childhood, instead of maxing our personal resources to our fullest extent? (Though, logically I know it isn’t necessarily an either-or proposition, that is how it often feels to me anyway.)

We decided we’d make the final, ultimate decision after she turned two, because too much longer after that point would make more of an age gap than we’d want. I posted on Facebook asking how do people know they’re “done.” I had an expectation of having some kind of blinding epiphany and a deep knowing that our family is complete, as I’ve had so many other people describe: “I just knew, our family was complete.” I didn’t have that knowing though—I vacillated day to day. What if I never know for sure, I fretted. Perhaps this sense of wistfulness and possibility with continue forever—maybe it is simply normal. One more. No, finished. But…ONE more?! And, I have a space in my heart that knows with great confidence that four (living) children would be the ultimate maximum for us. I definitely do not want more than four…so, does that mean there still is one more “out there” for us? And, back I go. I started out postpartum getting rid of maternity clothes and outgrown baby clothes, except for some special pieces and then at some point, I started putting them in a box in the closet instead. I smell her sweet head and think that she’s so wonderful how could I possibly never do this again. I look back at my pregnancies and births and think, WAIT, was that ALL? Is it over? Are my childbearing years behind me now? But, but…they were SO REAL! There is something about keeping the door open still. Not yet saying for sure. And then…some other moments have come recently. Rather than only having exhausted moments of “doneness,” I’ve had some sweet, beautiful moments of doneness too. Two weeks ago, we were all walking in the driveway. Alaina was in the middle with a brother holding each hand and me holding Lann’s hand and Mark holding Zander’s. I looked across at our line of our a family and suddenly there it was…a moment I’d not yet experienced…the sense that our family is complete. And, I thought, it IS a “balanced” family after all, even number or not. Yes, we’ve got the pair of brothers, but we also have “two girls,” so to speak, and that feels more balanced than I expected.

Then, last weekend, we were reorganizing our computer room and I was taking some things down off the walls as well as talking about having let one of my childbirth educator certifications lapse. I looked across at my birth art wall and I had this profound sense of distance from it, like, “oh yeah, I remember that life. It was a long time ago.” It no longer felt current or possible to me, like a part of my future reality, but felt firmly located in the past, in happy memory, rather than linked to possible future. I felt a sense of having “moved on,” past that stage after all, not waiting for the cycle to begin anew.

After my little brother got married last year, I’ve also started to have feelings of readiness to “pass the baton,” so to speak. It can be someone else’s turn to have the newborn, the baby, the toddler, the little kids. When I put away baby things and cloth diapers now, it is with an eye towards being able to give them to my sister-in-law or my sister, rather than saving them for myself. One of the things that has been challenging about the child spacing of my own family of origin is the age gap between my youngest sister, my brother and me. I am almost 11 years older than my sister and 9 years older than my brother (I do have another sister who is 22 months younger than I am too). This has created a “generation gap” of sorts in our lives and sometimes it feels difficult to reach across. A benefit however, that I’ve noticed for a long time, is that it offers the opportunity for each generation to be the “cool people,” to the current little kids of the extended family. Mark and I were the cool people when March 2013 021my little brother and sister were pre-teens and early teenagers—they would come stay at our apartment and we’d take them to the mall and things like that. Then, as they grew and we had kids, they became the cool, fun people to my own kids. I can look forward into a future slightly and see how my kids will now have the opportunity to be a cool, big people to my (as yet unconceived) future nieces and nephews. They won’t have the close-in-age cousin experience, but they will have the opportunity to take their turn as the fun, exciting role models. And, if my sister or sister-in-law hurries up and has a baby, it won’t be too much younger than Alaina and so at least one of my kids still has a shot at having a close in age cousin (and hey, maybe that baby can be her “sister” and teammate like my boys are for each other?! I’m liking this plan!).

Another benefit I can see to this generation-gap style extended family spacing is that each set of grandbabies can have their turn in the sun. If we were all having babies at the same time, how would my parents equally divide up their doting grandparent powers? How would my mom zoom around the state offering her postpartum nurturing skills to multiple new baby households? How would my dad patiently carry around a pile of curious babies? Would I still get my two hours during the day, or would the grandparents be too overwhelmed by having to have 50 grandchildren come over every day? How would I get to be a good, helpful aunt if I was busy taking care of my own newborn at the same time? Now each baby will have the chance to be the center of all the baby-attention and baby-love my whole family has to offer. We’ll all see and celebrate the first crawlings and first steps and first words of each new extended family member in their own turn, rather than having them lost in a shuffle of multiple babies all at the same time. And, I’ll have a chance to be the aunt who smells a tiny newborn head, and cradles soft hair, and marvels at delicate toes, and gummy smiles instead of thinking, “same old, same old.” ;-D

On Sunday afternoon, we took another stroll down the driveway. Mark and I were holding hands and chatting about various topics and when we turned around to head back the opposite direction, this is what we saw…

March 2013 011

And, again, I felt that moment of bright, clear, certain awareness. THIS. This is our family size. These are our babies. We’re done.

(Or, are we?! :-D)

For some gorgeous thoughts on family size, do check out Leonie’s lyrical post On Choosing To Only Have One Kid.

—

And, on an unrelated note, I also took two pictures of the greenhouse. One during the delightful spring day…
March 2013 013And another during a delightful sunset…

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Oh, and back to the original topic of family planning, don’t get me started on a conversation about birth control or how we truly plan to make that “ultimate” decision. I don’t freaking know what to do about that. All I know is that while I’m still willing to entertain the possibility of a “surprise” baby at this point in our family life, I am simply NOT willing to push the “reset” button at age 45 and accidentally have another baby then instead of menopause.

And, I realized as I set this to post on April Fool’s Day that someone might think I’m posting this as an April Fool’s joke—surprise, I’m not really “done” after all, in fact I’m pregnant again!!!! Not. ;-D

The Revolving Wheel (Gift from the Sea)

Mar25

“With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls–woman’s normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Lindbergh’s notion of mother as the axis of the household wheel really resonated with me, as did her descriptions of being pulled off center and distracted by a million aspects of the “wheel” of life. Her comment that saints were rarely married women made me smile, because it makes me think of Wayne’s Dyer’s comments that gurus rarely have eight kids, because there is nothing like the experience of parenting to shake your sense of yourself as someone who has it all together, spiritually or otherwise. And, it makes me think about how after some reading about Zen philosophy, I decided that Buddhism and Zen were not for me, because attachment is at the core of a mothering life. I got super irritated with old Buddha and his remarks about being “non-attached” and I thought, “easy for you to say, Mr. Go Sit Under a Tree and Wait for Enlightenment while your wife stays home and takes care of your kid—I guess she was too unenlightened and ‘attached’ to let go.” Being a mother has taught me a lot about relationship as the ground of being and relatedness, not non-attachment, as the core of a rich human experience. As I described in a prior post:

I have learned a lot about the fundamental truth of relatedness through my own experiences as a mother. Relationship is our first and deepest urge. The infant’s first instinct is to connect with others. Before an infant can verbalize or mobilize, she reaches out a hand to her mother. I have seen this with my own babies. Mothering is a profoundly physical experience. The mother’s body is the baby’s “habitat” in pregnancy and for many months following birth. Through the mother’s body the baby learns to interpret and to relate to the rest of the world and it is to mother’s body that she returns for safety, nurturance, and peace. Birth and breastfeeding exist on a continuum as well, with mother’s chest becoming baby’s new “home” after having lived in her womb for nine months. These thoroughly embodied experiences of the act of giving life and in creating someone else’s life and relationship to the world are profoundly meaningful.

via Breastfeeding as a Spiritual Practice | Talk Birth.

Anyway, Lindbergh says:

…to be a woman is to have interests and duties raying out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The pattern of our lives is essential circular. We must be open to all points of the compass; husband, children, friends, home, community; stretched out, exposed, sensitive like a spider’s web to each breeze that blows, to each call that comes…
How difficult for us, then, to achieve a balance in the midst of these contradictory tensions, and yet how necessary for the proper functioning of our lives. How much we need and how arduous of attainment is that steadiness preached in all rules for holy living…

She also acknowledges the essential, and yet often difficult to find, need for solitude to find stillness as the axis of the revolving wheel of life:

…Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensible center of the whole web of human relationships. She must find that inner stillness which Charles Morgan describes as ‘the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body so that it might be still as the axis of a revolving wheel is still…
This beautiful image is to my mind the one that women could hold before their eyes. This is an end toward which we could strive–to be the still axis within the revolving wheel of relationships, obligations and activities…
… she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrifugal forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself…
…It need not be an enormous project or great work. But it should be something of one’s own. Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day—like writing a poem, or saying a prayer. What matters most is that one be for a time inwardly attentive…
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh from Gift from the Sea

I recall feeling this way about my own mother—that she was the center of our family, the anchoring space, the core to return to.

Other thoughts from Lindbergh that I related to after finding them online when reading reviews of her book and stories about her life include:

“I cannot see what I have gone through until I write it down. I am blind without a pencil…I am convinced that you must write as if no one were ever going to see it. Write it all, as personally and specifically as you can, as deeply and honestly as you can. … In fact, I think it is the only true way to reach the universal, through the knot-hole of the personal. So do, do go ahead and write it as it boils up: the hot lava from the unconscious. Don’t stop to observe, criticize, or be ‘ironic.’ Just write it, like a letter, without rereading. Later, one can decide what to do.”

And that made me think about story and being a story woman and I also saved this quote (not from Lindbergh):

We constantly weave life events into narrative and interpret everything that happens through the veil of story. From our smallest, most personal challenges to global issues that affect nations and generations, we make the world fit into the story we are already carrying. This unceasing interplay between experience and narrative is a uniquely human attribute. We are the storytellers, the ones who put life into words. – Christina Baldwin, Storycatcher (via The Circle)

Here’s what’s been happening in my wheel lately and the stories I’ve been weaving (Zander featured heavily the last time I wrote a primarily personal update post. This one has more moments from Lann):

How funny that we had to wait for spring before being able to actually make a snowman this year! (*note bat posed for imminent destruction too!)

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Last week, Lann had his first test (yellow stripe) in taekwondo. He did a good job!

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Future plans involve moving on from cardboard armor, to real movie stuff…

In the car on the way home from a different class, Lann was planning his birthday party (Sept). He wants to learn how to make silicone movie masks. He said: “I’ll do the sculpting and art part, you do the reading and talking about it part, Dad can do the sitting around with his mouth open part, Zander can do the running around and squealing part, and Alaina can do the napping.” I said: “does Dad really only sit around with his mouth open?!” And Lann said, “Mom, in AWE!” He also said they’re going to go to the Drury Inn and dress up in Lord the Rings costumes, “and, we’ll have to hang up a sign that says Nerdfest.”

That same week we were briefly discussing the massive scale of the universe and the fact that the Earth is hanging around out there in space, spinning, and Lann said, “sometimes my brain hurts when thinking about a selection of topics.” 😉 And, that reminded me of a long ago Lann story when he was about four. We were doing the whole, “I love you as big as the sky” type of thing, and I said, “I love you as much as the universe–and guess what, the universe has no end, it keeps getting bigger, and goes on forever!” And Lann said, “oh mom, that’s so beautiful I don’t know what to say.”

The week before, Lann hitched a ride to taekwondo with Baba and since I was on break from class, I was home with Zander and Alaina (usually they go grocery shopping with Mark while I’m in class). Zander came running in to get my iphone so he could take a movie of something and I heard him their room taking a movie and narrating to Lann as he does so, so that he can give him the movies when he gets home and catch him up on what Z’s been up to while they’re separated! Good buddies!

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Heartbreak of tooth decay sculpture from fall of last year–mama covers head, not wanting to know and yet holding both baby and the extracted teeth. At her heart is a jewel, because she acts with deep love.

We’re dealing with ongoing dental issues with Alaina. Despite our heroic efforts, she’s ended up with the most severe problems of any of our children. Last week I took her to the local pediatric dentist. He was really nice and informative and Alaina did really great with him. However, she needs a LOT of work, more than I thought, and it is going to be really expensive. She needs the crowns she already has replaced because they were not fitted correctly by the first dentist and there is decay around/behind them, plus she needs four other crowns and also two regular fillings. :*(

We’re definitely going to have to go through the general anesthesia route. The local pediatric dentist only does this work in the hospital and we got the estimate from the surgery center for the hospital portion only and it was $8900. Our insurance will cover part of it (we’ll still have to cover about $4500), but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that that is absurd. What a broken system. Taking your kid to the hospital for two hours to get their teeth worked on just should NOT cost $9000, no matter who pays for it, that is patently ridiculous. So, I’m going ahead with the consultation I made for her in Springfield on Wednesday. I called in advance to double-check and they do their oral surgery work in an outpatient surgery center rather than in a hospital and their estimate for the clinic part is $2000, total. That is more like it and is worth the two-hour drive (one way). I wish I hadn’t bothered taking her locally, because now we just have to do the exact same thing on Wednesday and then still go back. She has to have a physical first, before she can have anesthesia, so I also made an appointment for her first-ever visit to the doctor. What I really, really wish is that I’d just taken her to Springfield in the first place, last year, when we first started to get her teeth taken care of. I am so angry with the dentist we took her to in St. Louis. I was happy with the same office for Lann (different dentist, 8 years ago), but I have HATED everything that happened there with Alaina and I wish I’d never taken her there. I feel like they actually caused the problems she has now by not acting to treat the teeth I first brought her in about and then doing an absolutely CRAPPY job on everything they did after that. I don’t actually feel like I really have energy to really be angry though, my primary feeling is sadness and anxiety about what is to come.

In a cuter Alaina story, I made myself a little sculpture to use as a pendant, but Alaina appropriated it. When I finally put it on her, she said…”dooool.” I said, “did you just say ‘cool’!?” And she said, yes!

She also “knits” and likes tiny dogs…

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We get a lot of use out of the Ergo still too!

And, I guess our kids should be in a band:

Alaina sings!

Zander drums!

Lann drums too!

We went to my sister’s house a couple of weeks ago and the kids immediately took to my brother-in-law’s drums. Neither had ever drummed before and Zander really rocked it! Alaina singing was a moment I captured last week when I was printing invoices and she was sitting behind me putting on a show.

In my own news, I finally renewed my ICEA childbirth educator certification after dawdling on it for a long time, but I let my CAPPA certification lapse. It was a hard decision, but made the most sense. I’ve been moving on from birth education for quite some time, and continuing to shell out money for something I’m not using often doesn’t make a lot of sense.

My new classes begin today! After the hectic disequilibrium that comes with the final week of a school session, the following week feels a lot like coming home from being out-of-town—excited to see your familiar life, yet also slightly panicky about needing to “catch up.” Plus, there is so much to be unpacked…and then, BOOM, two weeks off is SHORT. My online class is full and my two in-seat classes have 12 students each. There was a lot of prep to do get ready for them–I always forget that these “breaks” aren’t about having a vacation, they are about preparing for next session.

I’m not sure how good I do about being the “axis,” but my wheel is a pretty fulfilling one 🙂

Book list: Preparing Children for Homebirth

Mar16

MR_024The theme of our spring issue of the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter was Siblings. Happily, I got a lot of great content for this issue without having to write everything myself (sometimes I prepare issues that should be called “The Molly Issue”). Other than the letter from the editor, the only piece I contributed this time around was a short list of homebirth resources for children. If you have other good resources to add, I’ll gladly accept your contributions and update the list accordingly.

Here’s my list:

(Amazon affiliate link included)

  • Runa’s Birth by Uwe Spillmann and Inga Kamieth– my all-time favorite children’s homebirth book. The illustrations in this book are amazing; I love the tiny details like little shells/rocks on the windowsill and phone messages on the bulletin board.
  • Welcome with Love by Jenni Overend and Julie Vivas (also published as Hello Baby). It has nice, softly drawn pictures that glow with excitement and I really enjoy reading it to my kids.
  • Birth Day DVD by Naoli Vinaver—this one is great because the whole family is involved and older brothers join mom in the birth pool.
  • We’re Having a Homebirth by Kelly Mochel. This book is inexpensive, cute, and informative.
  • Being Born: The Doula’s Role by Jewel Hernandez and R. Michael Mithuna–really nice, detailed illustrations. Focus is on doulas and their job and the wide range of settings in which mothers give birth.
  • Mama Midwife: A Birth Adventure by Christa Tyner— this new children’s book about homebirth and midwifery is available to read for free online. It is cute, though kind of trippy. (I would have preferred it to be just people though, rather than a somewhat incongruous collection of animals.) LOVE the “birth song” at the end.
  • My Mommy’s Midwife by Trish Payne CNM—this one has children’s drawings as the illustrations. It isn’t about homebirth, but instead explains the role of the midwife and that she might come to a birth center, a hospital, or a home birth.

Books that I’ve not read, but would like to check out include:

  • Our Water Baby by Amy Maclean and Jan Nesbitt (water birth specific)
  • Mama, Talk About When Max Was Born by Toni Olson (home waterbirth)
  • Mama, Talk About Our New Baby by Toni Olson (companion book to the above about integrating new baby into the home)

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Children’s Birth Art Gifts

Mar11

I’m not the only birth artist in the house! Last month, while I worked on my own sculptures, Zander worked and worked and created one of the best gifts I’ve ever received:

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This is the Goddess of Everything, he told me: “See that pink stone in her belly, mom? That is the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.” She has a lot of detail. A snake on one shoulder, a bird on the other, a moonstone, and hearts. I love her! The boys then went on to create more gifts for me over the course of a couple of days. I love them all, but the one above is something pretty special!

Never Read the Comments

Mar8

I try to keep a simple maxim in mind with regard to reading or watching things on the internet: Never Read the Comments. This doesn’t apply to the comments on interesting personal, birth, or spirituality blogs that I read regularly—those comments usually contribute to the discussion and are interesting to consider. I’m talking about anything remotely “viral,” most things from the mainstream media, anything that is part of the natural parenting movement that has become picked up on by the mainstream media, most things about celebrities (particularly if they are making a homebirth or attachment parenting-oriented choice), most things about women’s health or about feminism, and anything that is controversial, particularly if I feel deeply about one side or another of the controversy. If I do read the comments, I often feel despairing about both the future and nature of humankind. It also creates a deep frustration and sadness that then has no real outlet. In my human services classes, I always teach that our first and deepest value to respect the “inherent dignity and worth of each human being.” I live by this. I persist in this belief even when I encounter those who challenge the notion. It is what I return to over and over again when my faith in people is shaken.

I also sometimes share with my classes that the quickest way to start questioning that value is to read comments left on YouTube videos. 😉

Yesterday, I shared some pictures that six-year-old Zander drew in what I’m thinking of as his Never… series of drawing. Today, when I once again yelled, “WHY do I read the comments?!” he said he would draw me a picture and he did…

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Kids: Hilariously Awesome & Awesomely Horrible

Mar7

Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh at Zander’s creativity and dramatic style or to take him to therapy! Today, he showed me this drawing titled, “Never Camp Outside.” It is both kind of genius and disturbing…

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Never Camp Outside

Other features in the series: Never Box a Bear, Never Dive into a Volcano, and Never Sleep in the Street…

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Never Dive into a Volcano

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Never Box a Bear
(yes, that would be a headless guy with blood spurts)

My kids are all pretty sensitive to violence in the media and we avoid exposing them to violent TV shows/games as much as possible, but their own brains come up with a lot of horrible stuff—if it comes from them, they’re okay with it and enjoying grossing people out. If it comes from outside of them, their tolerance is a lot lower (example: just today they watched a Good Luck Charlie episode and had to hide their eyes when Charlie was almost breaking a glass reindeer).

When we had a lot of snow days recently the boys got all into getting embellished (with washable markers) for a movie project! Pretty creepy!

A friend on Facebook commented that I was a “cool mom” for letting them draw all over themselves like this and my response was, cool or crazy or lazy or a combination of all three.

When it was Alaina’s turn to get embellished via washable markers (“beware a tiny girl with a blue marker,” Lann was heard to say), she then did some work on my cheeks too…
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Later, I was making pumpkin cookies in the kitchen and waxing eloquent to Mark about human trafficking and the roots in patriarchal religious structures and then looked in the bathroom mirror and saw my face was still decorated…sort of reduced the oomph behind my impassioned soapbox!

Speaking of Alaina, this month she learned how to say her own name. Instead of calling herself baby or “me,” when asked she’ll say, “Lainey” often accompanied by, “me tiny.” Last week, she described herself as strong and funny (true), and she petted my face and said, “Mama, pretty!” (Lest I become too conceited, I recall her also describing Daddy’s 1956 tractor as “pretty” recently). She also says both “thank you” AND “no thank you” and also “love ya! And, she loves squeezing into a box outside with her favorite kitty, Gizmo:

Zander’s drawings made me think I should do my own series. First up for me, based on some of today’s experiences, would be:

Never Read the Comments

(on any articles online about things that I care about and on YouTube videos whether I care about them or not)

Never Buy “Delicious” Fish Oil Capsules for Kids

(unless you like throwing away $17, five years later)

Never Trust “Tastes Exactly Like” Recipes from Pinterest

(banana ice cream…cauliflower pizza crust…garbanzo bean cookie dough…I’m always instantly intrigued, however, if you don’t have dietary restrictions that prohibit the “real” versions of these things, don’t bother experimenting with them. Your family will thank you.)

 

Birth art journey: mamapriestess

Feb27

This month during my computer-off retreat I felt the itch to add to my birth art journey collection. I haven’t made a new addition to it since Alaina’s dental work in September. Since she is so very interested in rituals and likes participating in women’s circles and wearing my special jewelry and setting up altars (this month two words added to her vocabulary were “altar” and “sacred bundle.” Adorable!), I created a mamapriestess sculpture as the next in my series:

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It felt perfect to me, which was great, because I’ve been experimenting with (single) priestess sculptures since my priestess ordination in July and I had a lot of bum starts like this unfortunate try:

20120918-175749.jpgCouldn’t figure out yet HOW to do a standing figure after so many creations of seated figures. This one quickly ended up in my closet as did this one:

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Not only not very attractive and leaning over, but ended up with burned hands and a broken skirt piece too!)

My next attempt was this one:

20120918-175651.jpgAh! Getting better! Then, this one:

20120918-175533.jpgI created a mini version of her intending to include it in a “sacred bundle” at a festival, but I didn’t end up using her for that after all:

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Larger priestess and mini priestess and tooth decay sadness mama sculptures.

I became enraptured with the tiny priestesses though and made this one also, who is still one my favorite sculptures (I call her the Womb of Creation):

20120928-130033.jpgEach figure in what I think of as my original birth art series has a special meaning to me. It is a 3-D journal of my life with my daughter. Each figure either had a message for me or was created to express a message or a lesson or to incorporate some aspect of my identity or to capture a memory. Here was the full series this summer:

20120918-175358.jpgAfter making the newest mamapriestess to add to the birth art journey series, I was on a roll and I created this version which I like even better:

February 2013 062And, I made a mini-mamapriestess as well:

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Then, I started making other mini mamas and their babies:

February 2013 120856227_10152570363905442_1915663021_oAnd, I made a custom sculpture for Journey of Young Women:

February 2013 164Before mailing, I included her figures in a little grouping of minis on the altar for our women’s circle ritual this month:

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The same week that my picture of my first custom sculpture order taken on my kitchen counter in front of a humble cake pan lid took off on Facebook (seriously, it had around 250 likes and over 130 shares, which is pretty close to “viral” in terms of birth art I think 😉 ), I also had two photos entered in a Goddess art contest in which this one won a prize…20120918-175346.jpgThese figures are very near and dear to my heart and really represent my own journey through pregnancy, birth, and motherhood is a way that feels very meaningful to me, so I appreciated the feedback from the contest hostess on the photo also:

I love this one, Molly. It’s so perfect in its simplicity. The cast of shadows from the bright sunshine is lovely! The detail and uniqueness of each of the Goddesses Gathered is amazing! I find myself looking at each one wondering which is me! Such a special little altar for the Goddess. I can imagine myself focusing all my prayers in the center…. knowing that they will either slip through the crevice as dream seeds planted in the richness of the dark unknown, or being lifted upward to be gathered by the air, the wind and the very spirit of life and infinite possibility. Thank you for sharing. Blessings.

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And this photo was a runner-up in the art contest 🙂

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The “famous” cake pan lid photo!

In new experiments this week, I tried making some very tiny sculptures to use as pendants, with one continuing the “mamapriestess” motif…

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Even tinier than that are these two I just finished late last night:

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And, if I do say so myself, I made a pretty cool sculpture using a rock I found in the woods:

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And, since my mamapriestess sculpture was about her in the first place, at her insistence, I gave the first little mini-mini mamapriestess to Alaina to wear as a necklace:

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20130223-171242.jpgFinally, lest anyone think all I do is waltz through the forest photographing my art in the sunshine and feeling all Goddess-esque and Earth-mama divine, this is really what is sometimes like behind the scenes:

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Crabby and wanting to go back inside (note my hand holding her back from stepping on me).

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Scratchy knocking-stuff-down cat and toddler with pig ball “helping” me set up my little sculptures!

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She also is very, very, very eager to help me put the pigment on (note the table and her arm!)

While this birth art journey has very much been intertwined with my pregnancy-after-loss journey, my preparation for birth, incorporating the lessons of birth, and expressing the phases and feelings of life with my new baby-turned-bigger-baby-turned-toddler as well as my life as a woman, I realized that it was high time I add another figure to my series that includes all of my kids!

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They’re all bigger than this in proportion to me, obviously, but these aren’t meant to be perfect representations (I also don’t just have a smooth, faceless head!)

I also finished a bunch more sculptures late last night (my oldest said they look like a rainbow :)):

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“In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves.”

—Everyday Blessings