This morn in the shower I was afraid to lower the fences at the boundaries of Me to feel the Sun and the Waters of Earth, as I normally do. It's a busy mother's stolen moment for ritual meditation, a chance to connect with the divine, to lose the differences between me and anything else and be, as literally as possible, at one with the world.
I was afraid and I didn't know why. Maybe some anxiety I'd been carrying since yesterday's annoying need to use Facebook? Oh, the way Facebook makes one anxious unconsciously! It's a long ad we tell each other about how inadequate we are, and we tell it on behalf of those who would sell us adequacy or distraction. Makes me so mad.
I did let my shields down anyway, forcefully, and I met in that moment this thought: "Nothing you do actually matters." That is, the sun will keep burning 'til it stops and I can't affect that. It was peaceful, not upsetting. "Right. I am okay. I am small, thank god."
Later that day, I was in a fiddle practice session with my small son, observing his difficulties. He was crying, but determined, and I was goading him through by narrating a fantasy. "You're at the farmer's market. You pick up your bow."
"I hate this. It's not comfortable!"
"A toddler begins to dance."
"I can't do it."
"Someone puts some coins in your open fiddle case."
"My elbow is tired."
"One of the farmers laughs and does a quick jig to your tune."
And he was smiling.
After, in our customary post-difficulty snuggle, I praised him for hanging on to his goals despite discomfort. He said his real goal was not busking but to play for his own children, to entertain them in the wilderness home he would build for them himself, like Sam Gribley in My Side of the Mountain.
I saw myself in him then - setting clear, daydream born goals and clawing his way at them against pain and better judgement - and I squeezed his lanky frame against me. "You found the path to a happy life," I said. "Know the simplest thing you want and take it."
After, when I was done with all the boys' lessons and enjoying a few moments as alone as a homeschooling parent gets, buried in my headphones and my inner space, a song I heard many times at the start of this life came on the shuffle - singing, "leave the road and memorize this life that passed before my eyes". I thought of my recent aches and pains, my kidney threatening to fail, that dead-strong-in-my-belly CERTAINTY I was met with on the morning of my 32nd birthday telling me I was at the fulcrum and would not live past 64. I looked up at my good, happy boys floating around my colorful, cozy apartment, showing off the dorky and clever projects they wanted to enlist each other in. Then the eleven-year-old old self who used to sing that song thrice daily thought, "So that is what I made of my life. Not bad".
If this was it, it was good. Let it sunset, full of new arts and crafts to master, harmonies sung with my partner and our lovers, wisdom hard won the stupid way, holed up with a sheepdog and a cup of chai in a tiny mural-painted apartment tucked up on top of the sky next to a historic estuary, watching my children set their own lives up to end beautifully. May humankind learn to mind what they do that does matter, so this sort of simple daily bliss may carry on for my children and their children in the same way 'til the sun burns off into something new.
I was afraid and I didn't know why. Maybe some anxiety I'd been carrying since yesterday's annoying need to use Facebook? Oh, the way Facebook makes one anxious unconsciously! It's a long ad we tell each other about how inadequate we are, and we tell it on behalf of those who would sell us adequacy or distraction. Makes me so mad.
I did let my shields down anyway, forcefully, and I met in that moment this thought: "Nothing you do actually matters." That is, the sun will keep burning 'til it stops and I can't affect that. It was peaceful, not upsetting. "Right. I am okay. I am small, thank god."
Later that day, I was in a fiddle practice session with my small son, observing his difficulties. He was crying, but determined, and I was goading him through by narrating a fantasy. "You're at the farmer's market. You pick up your bow."
"I hate this. It's not comfortable!"
"A toddler begins to dance."
"I can't do it."
"Someone puts some coins in your open fiddle case."
"My elbow is tired."
"One of the farmers laughs and does a quick jig to your tune."
And he was smiling.
After, in our customary post-difficulty snuggle, I praised him for hanging on to his goals despite discomfort. He said his real goal was not busking but to play for his own children, to entertain them in the wilderness home he would build for them himself, like Sam Gribley in My Side of the Mountain.
I saw myself in him then - setting clear, daydream born goals and clawing his way at them against pain and better judgement - and I squeezed his lanky frame against me. "You found the path to a happy life," I said. "Know the simplest thing you want and take it."
After, when I was done with all the boys' lessons and enjoying a few moments as alone as a homeschooling parent gets, buried in my headphones and my inner space, a song I heard many times at the start of this life came on the shuffle - singing, "leave the road and memorize this life that passed before my eyes". I thought of my recent aches and pains, my kidney threatening to fail, that dead-strong-in-my-belly CERTAINTY I was met with on the morning of my 32nd birthday telling me I was at the fulcrum and would not live past 64. I looked up at my good, happy boys floating around my colorful, cozy apartment, showing off the dorky and clever projects they wanted to enlist each other in. Then the eleven-year-old old self who used to sing that song thrice daily thought, "So that is what I made of my life. Not bad".
If this was it, it was good. Let it sunset, full of new arts and crafts to master, harmonies sung with my partner and our lovers, wisdom hard won the stupid way, holed up with a sheepdog and a cup of chai in a tiny mural-painted apartment tucked up on top of the sky next to a historic estuary, watching my children set their own lives up to end beautifully. May humankind learn to mind what they do that does matter, so this sort of simple daily bliss may carry on for my children and their children in the same way 'til the sun burns off into something new.