just love.

This first full week back to school has had a topsy turvy kind of vibe to it.  Trying to find a rhythm with this new schedule along with mandatory wake-up time (no snooze button for me - that is a hardship!) has me shuffling through my days annoyed by any and all requirements placed upon me.  Dinner? You all want dinner?  I mean, isn't it enough I packed you a lunch? 

Given my mood, I don't know why I was surprised to find one of my favorite horses at the barn acting peevish of late. Usually she is very sweet with me. I am a horse-lover but I am not a horse person. I do not know all the ins and outs of their behavior so my assessments are pretty simplistic and I keep them to myself (my job is to know their poo, not their minds.) This horse I feel needs lots of reassurance and when I am around her, I try to give it to her. When we are alone, that is. 

But lately there have been others around and I realized today that we both have felt rushed. In that space, feelings are often brushed aside and dismissed. The equivalent of being told "Get over it!" With this horse, I've found it has always worked best when I've acknowledged her responses. "Oh yes, that big tractor IS strange and scary, isn't it? But I am right here and we will walk by it together."

I know some of you get this (please tell me you do!) And I am recounting all of this because I recognize for the horse and for myself, being pushed on without time to acknowledge our feelings is a guarantee for upset, outbursts, nips, and all sorts of unhappy and unloving responses.  

Today I had time to slow myself down and just hang out with her for a bit. Not expecting her to act a certain way nor trying to make her behave (according to human expectations) but holding space for her to be, well, her.  And very quickly, the sweet horse I knew emerged.

This got me thinking. 

Earlier in the week, a mother with a special needs child said to me "He is scaring me right now ... I don't know what to do for him." Not to diminish her situation, but it struck me that as a mother I know all too well the squeeze of wanting so much for my child and fearing myself not equal to the task. Perhaps too this is how the horse felt: the burden of expectations making her anxious, overwhelmed and acting out. I wanted to wrap my arms around this mother and let her know it was okay to feel scared. I wanted to tell her I see how much she loves her child and how she does so much for him. I wanted to make her feel better ... which is really a reaction to my discomfort with her pain. And in that moment, her pain was immense and beautiful. It spoke of the fullness of her love and it needed to be expressed.

Years ago, prominent yoga teacher shared with a group of teacher-trainees this advice: "You think you are here to teach your students yoga, but you are not. You are here to simply to love them."

Those are the words I would say to her now. Those are the words I need to remember myself.  My job is simply to love. My child. The horses. My family.  My friends.  My life.  This world. 

turning towards simplicity

While the calendar says otherwise, today marks the end of our summer. 

the thermometer also indicates summer still has us - and this poor bunny! - in her fiery grasp!

Today Cowgirl had a half day orientation at her new Middle School. Tomorrow is the official First Day.

Middle School.  Yes, I am clutching my heart as I type those words.  I am also trying my very best to remember that my middle school experience (level one of Dante's Inferno) has no bearing upon what her experience will be. 

Still. Cataclysmic changes here.  To mark the end of our summer break, the three of us went to see the movie Pete's Dragon.  It is an incredibly sweet, lovely movie.  It was especially wonderful as we were the only three people in the theater.  A private screening if you will for my dragon daughter. It is a gem of a movie in the vein of simple, uncluttered story telling with characters you immediately like.  It was so good the Girl overcame her initial resistance to a furry dragon with a dog-like nose.("Dragons have scales, not fur!")   Overwhelmed by all the nostalgia - end of summer, dragons, little boy happily living wild in the woods - I cried several times. I thought I was sneaky about it, but at the end of the movie my girl outed me. "I heard you crying mom."

Yes, a computer generated dragon brought me to tears. Or rather, it was the moment when Pete, the little boy, separated from his dragon woefully cries "I want to go home!" and then howls like a wolf lonely for his pack.  The emotion of that moment brings me to tears right now. Because the pain of such immense longing touches a tender space of longing within me.

I want to go home. Who hasn't longed to return to the place and time when life felt simpler? When love was clear and connection unquestioned?  I watched my newly minted preteen staggering under the weight of a backpack loaded with school supplies making her way towards a middle school that I swear looked ready to swallow her up. In that moment I wanted nothing more than to whisk her back to age 2 ... to the summer cottage where I bathed her every morning in the kitchen sink (there was only an outdoor shower.) 

I want to go back to the time when my mother bathed me in the kitchen sink of a different summer cottage. 

Of course nostalgia and memories tidy away the confusion and chaos.  But such simplicity can be a practice and every day I have a choice to turn towards it.  Pete's dragon  can make himself invisible. He chooses to reveal himself to those whose hearts allow them to see the dragon for who he really is: not a dangerous monster but a loving, playful and loyal friend. 

The world feels crazy right now ... it seems like the way forward requires making choices that require sacrificing our dreams or ideals.  In the movie (spoiler alert!) we imagine Pete faces a  similar fate. He cannot stay with his dragon in the woods and so it seems he will have to  leave that world behind. Except ... he doesn't. He can have both worlds: the human family he misses and the relationship with his dragon - his best friend - Elliot. 

I am determined to create that life for myself and for my family; I am determine to see how I can stay in the simplicity of summer the whole year round. Feeding our dreams every day and every day living in the space of dreams manifesting: that is something I choose to embrace, I choose to feed.  Reconnecting each day with what truly matters and letting go of the internal clutter that confuses or distracts me is part of my practice.  And through practice - whether it be meditation, chanting, painting, running, patio daydreaming - I strengthen the connection between heart, intuition and imagination. 

In our family, we see dragons. I am determined to keep it that way. 

august memories ...

Summer is hard for me. I feel heat and humidity more intensely than the cold and it may sound perverse, but too much sunshine makes me grumpy. 

 

But summer has been bringing me some lovely moments which I record in my gratitude journal -

~the pleasure of sleeping with windows open after a long heat wave
~finding baby peppers growing in the garden box
~waking to bird song
~walking Moose in the coolness of night
~an abundance of marigolds
~fresh peaches from the farmer's market
~monarch butterflies on my walks
~an afternoon thunderstorm
~corn still warm from the sun and the fields

Ah, corn. I buy it from a truck parked daily in the corner of our neighborhood gas station. I buy 6 ears and they always throw in an extra "just in case" an ear is less than.  We usually end up with left-over ears and recently I have taken to cutting the kernels from the cob to use for soup. 

I am cutting a cooled ear when I remember cleaning out my mother's kitchen shortly after her death. In her freezer were six small plastic containers, each filled with corn. Individual meal sized portions of summer corn set aside for winter months when the taste of fresh corn would be most welcome.  I am struck by the hopefulness of that action and then undone by the reality that I held the bits of my mother's last summer. It felt sacrilegious, but I emptied each container down the disposal. There were too many memories to swallow in her stuffed apartment. Crackers of every kind (she was a cracker afficienado), canned goods long expired (stashed away for those rainy days that never arrived), spices I still use, and a half emptied bottle of Kahlua. (DId she drink it with friends? Or by herself? A solitary pleasure enjoyed as a daring gestures in her golden years?) 

I realize part of the weightiness I have felt this summer perhaps can be attributed to a growing list of bittersweet August memories. The last real season with my mother. The last time I saw my father was in August. He was in the hospital recovering from by-pass surgery and I flew out to help my mother for a week. When it was time for me to return home, I hung back from my mother and brother. I slipped back into his room.  I didn't want to believe I was saying good-bye, but part of me knew.  

My father asked me, "Do you think I will be alright?" I can't remember what exactly I said, but I know I reassured him. I reminded him he was going to have a new granddaughter and that he would be meeting her soon. He had to get better.

Less than two weeks later, the Husband and I flew to China to bring Cowgirl home. One month after I became a mother, I lost my father.  He never got to see Cowgirl in person, but at least he knew finally we had become a family.  He never said so, but I know he was thrilled for me to become a mother. 

This month will be our ten-year anniversary. Ten years as a family with Cowgirl. Next month will bring the ten year anniversary of my father's passing. As I get older, I become more fluid in the dance between grief and joy, sorrow and gratitude, loss and hopefulness. I store up memories like my mother put away corn. I feed upon the moments, the memories to sustain and inspire me. 

And we fill up our days with new moments, new memories. The imperative is to enjoy the Now because the future can be a long way out and all we have is right here, right now:  life rich and hard and heartbreaking and heart filling all at once.