The Path of the Warrior

Last Post

2010-01-20T09:58:00.001-08:00

Hello. It's been a long time. I've decided to post one final goodbye so that it's clear - this blog has run its course. I loved writing it, and loved the response I got for it. I will leave it up for as long as people keep sending me emails telling me they like the blog or the blog helps them in some way. That was the whole point of the blog.

So much is different now. One huge difference between when I began writing and now is that the children are older. They are 5 and 7. Their lives have expanded beyond Mommy's breast (literally and figuratively). They can dress themselves, go to the bathroom by themselves, brush their own teeth, get themselves a glass of water. They even set and clear the table at dinner time. They are each other's best friend. And Jonah now reads. He will sit and read for long periods of time, while Audrey sits and draws fairy tales on pieces of paper, which she then gathers into "books." Thus, more space and queit is available in the family. Also, we've put both kids in a wonderful Waldorf school. This was one of the best decisions we have ever made as parents. The school feels like our co-parent and our safety net.

I am still at 30 mgs of citalopram, daily. This is a smidge less than I used to take, but life has thown us a new challenge (which is beyond the scope of this post to describe) and my naturopath and I have decided to leave well enough alone for awhile.

All of my work and study and reasearch, not to mention experience, regarding women/mothers and mood issues, and spiritual work and study, nurtures my work as a prenatal and postnatal yoga instructor. I have actual classes at actual studios for which I get paid actual money. The schedule is not more than I can handle. Every Saturday morning begins my teaching cycle, and I am always grateful for it.

Thank you to all my readers. Peace to you.

-Susie

Gun Shy

2009-08-16T08:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Readers, I am sorry. I have been remiss. I don't write, I don't call, I don't stop by unexpectedly with flowers. This, after all of your support and loyalty!

The truth is that this story, or the blog-flavored part of it, may have run its course. While I planned to include the chronicle of a Mother of Two Going Off Meds and explore its universal themes of motherhood, spirituality and brain chemistry, The Eldest Magician* has other plans for me.

I'm going to stay on meds.

For the first time, I am too scared to even take the first steps of going off the medication. Life is so full, so rich, and I have come to believe (based on past experiences) that my staying medicated allows it to be so. I am pretty sure that the house of cards that Matt and I and the kids have going will collapse if I suddenly go off the rails.

Let me back up a little. A couple weeks ago, I went on a backpacking trip with my good friend, Sara. We camped for four days on Shi Shi Beach, which is just below the Makah Indian reservation on the northwestiest tip of the Washington state. Shi Shi is a place of total wilderness. If you break a leg there, you're screwed. We captured and filtered our own water, kept a constant driftwood fire alive, and stared out across the ocean for four days.

No kids. No computers. No cell phones.

When we came back, as we finally had to do, I re-entered my regular life armed with a few new guidelines:

1. Pull the wires out of my ass. Disconnect from the laptop. Start a paper calendar. Unplug more often.

2. Stay on the meds. They make everything else possible.

Upon my return, I was crushed by everyone's needs. Even Matt's. He needs me to decide about dinner. He needs me to help him put things in boxes. I am the lynch pin of this family. I have raged and railed and fought against this ever since my first baby was born. Now I am trying to grow up and accept the fact that I matter in this family.

Earlier in the summer, I felt more brave about exploring a meds-free life. Then, I didn't know that my hubs was going to have to take a long trip for work in the fall. (Picture me having a meltdown while my man is gone and I flushed all my pills.) Then I didn't feel the pressure of my kids entering a new school where a huge amount of parental involvement would be required. (You should know by now how much I loathe get-to-know-you potlucks and forced play dates with people I don't know, not to mention having to find a place in a new community.) Then, I thought my new diet would make everything better.

The diet was an interesting experiment and I lost a little weight and I felt light and mostly happy. But I was still on the drugs, and now I really doubt that it's going to make me "better."

Also, my man is a lot less willing to be my constant safety net than he was during the early years of our marriage. He needs to have his own periods of emotional precariousness without fearing that it will send me over the edge. My fragility made him feel unable to ever let his guard down. Do I need to say how unhealthy that is for a marriage?

We depressed moms don't experience our depression in isolation. Our nuttiness cuts a wide swath through the family fabric. As an emotionally unstable twentysomething, the worst that happened is that I tortured my boyfriend and spent my lunch hours in the office stairwell crying. (No one ever took the stairs there. It was a perfect sanctuary.)Now, when I get pulled down to the doldrums, everyone suffers.

And it's not just the checked-out, zombie side of depression that hurts the family. My angry outbursts and simmering rage (picture PMS as a daily occurrence)keep everyone unhappy. The last thing I want is for my kids to be afraid of me. Also the anxiety that always accompanies the rage and the sadness can be crippling and can overshadow everything else about me.

It's a blast!

As I write this, I am thinking of a hundred arguments against everything I am writing. For example, proper diet and exercise can make all the difference. An acquaintance of mine, who is a therapist and a longtime depression-sufferer, told me about all kinds of research out there that says 40 minutes of cardio per day can literally replace antidepressants. Can I do that? It takes so much time! But the kids will both be in school, so maybe I can...and what if it doesn't work and I go into a tailspin and the next drug I try doesn't work? (Depressed people tend to become increasingly drug-resistant the more they go on and off drugs.)

I can talk myself up or down a hundred times a day. My action right now is to take no action.

Who wants to argue with me?

Somebody please argue with me!

*"The Eldest Magician" is the name of a Godlike character in Rudyard Kipling's story, "The Crab That Played With the Sea." I read it to my kids last night.

Anyway, About My Transition...

2009-07-12T20:22:00.001-07:00

Yes, I posted about the meds thing and then promptly went off on some other tangents about relaxation and anger management. These are related in a holistic sense. But I meant to update you about what's happening meds-wise.

My naturopath advised me to finish the cleanse before eliminating my antidepressants. This was disheartening to hear, as the cleanse is taking what feels like forever and I want to make my transition before the weather gets dark and gloomy. So I just keep reminding myself that I have to do this right, or I will never know if I really did this right.

I have about two more weeks. I am on the last phase of eliminating potentially irritating foods. This week's irritating food to remove is anything in the nightshade family. That includes potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants and tobacco. Hot peppers and sweet potatoes are not actually in the same family, hence cleanse-legal for me.

I take full advantage of everything that is cleanse-legal. That's probably why I haven't dropped any weight. (Again, not that it matters; I'm just sayin'.)Certainly my newest discovery, Coconut Bliss non-dairy, sugar-free frozen dessert, is keeping my weight, um, stable. It packs a walloping 209 calories per serving, 124 of them from fat. I also snack on a lot of nuts to replace my cheese-cracker habit. This is better for me because it trades empty carbs for protein, but you don't want to know how much FAT nuts are hinding in their innocent little bodies. And avocados? Lord, have mercy.

The very last, superfatty-but-delicious legal food I want to tell you about is halvah. If you're Jewish, you know what it is. If you're not, here's the scoop: halvah is a flaky, dense, chewy stuff made from sesame seeds. You can buy it sweetened with honey or not sweetened at all and marbled with pure cocoa. It has the kind of mouth-feel you're looking for when you reach for a Butterfinger. In terms of avoiding a blood-sugar spike and crash, it's great. In terms of calories, well...let's just say a four-inch bar of it is on par with a piece of cake.

Not drinking alcohol has to cancel some of those calories out, though. That is mostly fine, not drinking alcohol, a lot easier than I thought it would be. Just please don't somebody write me and say pot is a nightshade or that Percocet is derived from cow's milk. I will seriously weep.

I really could go on for pages and pages about the diet and all I have learned from it, but I realize that not everyone has been obsessed with these things most of their lives like I have. So I'll spare you. (Feel free to use the comments section to share your own insights or ask questions, though. I really get a boner over this stuff.)

After I'm done with the elimination, then I start adding things back to see what kind of reaction I have. If my original problem doesn't seem to get worse in this phase, then the doctor says we might have to look at a hormone imbalance. Now, eliminating a food would be much easier than playing around with hormones. However, if I do have some kind of imbalance, what great info to have when I try life meds-free. This is one of the reasons that I have stuck with the diet and not gone to a specialist to fix my original complaint. (This presented as a skin problem.) In naturopathic philosophy, It's All Related, Man. So let's find out what It is.

Two weeks. Two weeks and I get to start cutting pills in half.

Whatever happens, I'll still have my Dark Chocolate Coconut Bliss.

Make Way for the Crazy Lady

2009-07-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my kids and my step-mother-in-law strolled through Boston Common in the sun. A vendor roasted peanuts. A young brunette woman stood in flip-flops and played her violin for change. We rode the Swan Boat around the pond as a young Bostonian frantically pedalled us. We found the bronze sculptures of the ducks from "Make Way for Ducklings." We sniffed the freshly cut grass and blooming trees. I felt that, if it weren't for the traffic, we could've been in another time altogether. We were one of a million families who have strolled along the curving paths of that grand park in the last century.

Lost in my thoughts, I followed Gail as she led us toward Boyslton Street and our car. Jonah trailed behind. As we passed a low wall spread with a street artist's half-finished canvasses, I was only vaguely aware that Jonah had hopped upon the wall. He always hops upon walls in parks. I had glanced quickly at the guy's work - crude, amateurish, but he obviously worked hard to produce the dozens of boards that lay spread all over the wall and stacked against a wide, shade-giving tree. I wondered how he made out. I was about to joke to Gail that my artist brother-in-law probably had a low opinion of these artists who sell their work in parks, when I heard a man shout, "HEY!" and turned around to see a tall, greasy man stalking toward Jonah. "Get off of my stuff!" he shouted at Jonah. "You better watch out that you don't touch other people's stuff, or you'll go to hell early!"

Was this guy kidding? I moved toward Jonah, who had already jumped off the wall and stood frozen. I folded Jonah in toward my body with my hand on his knobby spine and led him away from the crazy man. I did not even stop to look at the man's face. These things happen from time to time when you live in the city, and the golden rule is just to walk away. I would console Jonah as soon as we were out of this man's orbit.

You never, ever provoke the crazy people.

I looked at Gail. "He didn't step on the guy's paintings, did he?" I would've been shocked if he had, but if he had, I did want to at least apologize to the guy and be on our way.

But.

"No," said Gail. "He didn't even come close."

I drew the children like ducklings under my mama wings and began walking away. "Jonah, please don't worry about this guy. You did not do anything wrong."

"I know," Jonah said, shivering.

"You should raise your children better!" the man called after us, still amped and indignant. "You need to teach them not to mess with other people's stuff, you know!"

Without a thought, I reached behind me and held up my favorite hand signal to show the fellow my opinion of his parenting advice. It was dumb. It was crass. It was far from yogic.

I got the response I expected.

"Hey fuck you, Lady! You're going to hell early, too!"

Everyone was silent as we walked away. The atmosphere still buzzed around us with baby strollers and little kids eating giant pretzels. We, however, were all sunk in our bad feeling about the man. I needed to say something to break the tension, to let the kids know that they were okay, that nobody had done anything wrong (except, secretly, me), that the man wasn't really mad at us, he was sick and probably couldn't help the things he said. Gail came to the rescue.

"Sometimes when someone yells at us it's really hard not to let some of it get into your heart," she said.

"Yeah, said Audrey quietly.

I thought for the whole drive back to shady Belmont about why I had done what I had done. I have had other such incidents where my anger management was very weak or nonexistent, all of which I came to regret. In fact, what my husband and I joked morbidly about as my "rage" was one of the main things that led me to quit teaching school. I could not be trusted to handle things well when the rage took over. I didn't know how to change myself or fix the problem. Even with the children, I have these moments that are sheer tantrums. They typically come when I feel I've been insulted, kicked, or taken advantage of one too many times.

I have some notions, thinking about it now, where this comes from. But I don't have the notion how to change.

Someone gave me a little jokey notepad that says across the top, "I meditate, I drink green tea, and I still want to smack someone." There is a reason that person gave it to me.

I am a flawed woman.

But I do raise my children right.

Unexpected Grace

2009-07-08T08:50:00.001-07:00

Among my friends with children, it is widely acknowledged that "vacations" to visit one's family are not vacations at all. This is usually the case for us when we fly to Boston to be with Matt's family. It's not that there's anything horrible happening, or that we have to sleep on dirty floors next to the cat box, it's just negotiating the days with tiny kids and their issues and equipment can feel like scaling the mountain of Sisyphus. Add to that a couple divorces, a variety of jealousies, and New England reserve. Tensions - kept under wrap in company, exploded behind closed doors - can run high.

For whatever reason - the summer skies, the beauty of my father-in-law's rose garden spilling over with fluffy white blossoms, the Siamese cats who tolerate the children's attentions - everyone is relaxed. We spend our time drifing from the pool to the patio to the cool, open living room. We snack on the FIL's wife's phenomenal cooking. We lounge on the humongous Roche Borbois sofa and - readers, brace yourselves - we read.

I have read an an entire novel in four days, much of it during daylight hours. Do I need to tell those of you with children what a rarity that is? I have even had time to write long, luscious entries in my journal. I believe the reading and the writing and the time all bond together to create a perfect mental environment for even more elevated reading and writing. And thinking long thoughts.

This is Summer. This is Grace.

About the Blog...

2009-06-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

Hello, Friends. I think that I am almost done with the blog, but am hanging on just until I get to the point where I can chronicle my going-off-meds experience. I had hoped to be able to do this many months ago, but the fates did not allow it. I had to stay medicated.

I feel it would be a fitting end to this blog if I successfully go off the meds and stay normal for awhile. It would be just as fitting if the experiment doesn't work and I, like millions of other depressives, need that daily chemical adjustment in the form of a pill. I am hoping for the former as an end to this public story.

I have prepared my body. With the guidance of my naturopath, past research and some supplemental reading, I am on a Program. I do a level II yoga class twice a week. I do an exercise class called Body Balancing twice a week (this involves a lot of balancing on balls and isometric actions. I think soon I'll be able to crack a nut between my thighs). I try to walk for at least 30 minutes three times a week. And I meditate three times a week.

I drink green tea daily, and no longer drink coffee, even the cheating half-decaf drip I was making at home for awhile. No black tea, neither, so no more chai latte indulgences.

Some other things that are off-limits: processed sugar, wheat, baking soda and powder, processed soy, food additives like preservatives and fake colors, alcohol, and cigarettes. For the cleanse I'm currently on I will also go off dairy and nightshades for a time, but I won't be making that a regular part of my life. The rest of it, except maybe the leavening, I intend to stick with. I feel so good.

All of this is in preparation to go off the meds. And to see if I have sensitivities to any of those foods.

I let go of these things by degrees over the last month. Dairy may be harder to transition away from than coffee or alcohol, which is why I'm putting it off for another week. I can't deal.

The amazing thing I'm discovering is how much there still is that I can eat. Now, I confess, I am one of those annoying people who really could eat brown rice and broccoli most nights of the week and be perfectly happy. As long as I can also eat my new favorite dessert: mascarpone cheese sweetened with honey, sprinkled with strawberries and slivered almonds. It's not a low-calorie food, but it is 100 times more healthful than a donut. Or a muffin. And I'm not in this to count calories.

How I feel: Light. Energetic. Clear-headed.

At first I felt confused and frustrated. The first week of the no sugar/no wheat part of the cleanse I nearly cried because I missed my favorite foods so much. What the hell kind of comfort does a salad give you? None! Giving up coffee again made me somewhat miserable for a couple of days. I felt sleepy and depressed. (It passed.) Giving up alcohol, though, has proved to be less difficult than I thought it would be. I miss the taste of wine, but I do not miss the way I felt and the thoughts I had after a couple of cocktails. Drinking always throws me into a somewhat dark tailspin, and I don't need that.

My blood-sugar is stable because I'm not eating sugar or a bunch of high-glycemic-index carbs to send it shooting up and plunging down. I eat a little bit of protein every three hours. And I eat protein with every meal. I always have hard-boiled eggs and a pot of quinoa in the fridge. And bags of almonds.

I must confess to you that I was hoping this would all result in me dropping a dress size. Hasn't happened. Which brings me back to one of the reasons I want to go off meds: weight gain. The weight gain was minor, about 7-10 pounds, and even though people tell me to get over myself, I really wish I was back to my pre-meds weight. (Some people gain a lot more. I am lucky.)

I hope you will stick with me as I embark on the journey forward. Tomorrow I see my naturopath. It's my hope that she will tell me I can start cutting my pills into tiny pieces.

I'll be reporting shortly.

Whenever, Wherever, However

2009-05-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

In my Baghavad Gita study group, my fellow yogis and I often struggle to find relevance between the practices recommended by Lord Krishna and the lives we lead. We sit on the carpeted floor of my bright attic and our faces contort with concentration, as if in trying to understand this book we are twisting our very brains. This can be too much, so often one or another of us will get up off the floor and wander over the refreshments table. (That person is often me.)

"Look," said my teacher, Denise, one evening of particular group denseness. "These ancient texts were written for renunciates. We're all householders. We live regular lives. We don't live in monestaries."

Sadly, no, we must take care of other people and lend our energies to things besides finding the exact location of our third eye point. And this can be a serious hindrance when one endeavors to create a meaningful meditation practice, for example.

"Here's what one of my teachers told me," Denise continued. "If you have a busy life and you want to meditate, when should you do it? Whenever you can. Where should you do it? Wherever you can. How should you do it? However you can."

I flashed on a mom I know from a mom and baby group a few years ago, who told me about the time she time she drove to Nordstrom for "that essential makeup item," on a Sunday, only to find that the store didn't open for another half hour. She chose to spend that time sitting in the parking garage meditating.

Way to go. That's W.W.H. (whenever, wherever, however) in action.

I did a similar thing recently while in the bathtub. I lay back, let my ears fill with water, and listened to the sound of my breath for some minutes. I called it meditation because I was able to let my mind float in one place for a bit. While my body bobbed and bumped up against the sides of the tub, I wasn't planning what article of clothing I would slip on after the bath was over, which shoes I would wear to walk to my daughter's preschool, or thinking about anything but the sound of breath reverberating deep in my watery ears.

Later, I checked it off on the little spreadsheet I've made for myself to keep track of all the stuff I'm supposed to do to prepare for the upcoming Medication Renunciation. Hot bath AND meditation at the same time! Check!

Is that cheating?

Hey, W.W.H.

I Think I See the Light

2009-04-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

This morning, as I'm going through my routine, I'm looking out at the blooming cherry tree in my yard and feeling sunbeams warm me briefly as I pass by windows. My daughter is being incredibly cute and cooperative, due mostly to the fact that she is on break from pre-school and has had loads of mommy time.

We checked out "Free to Be You and Me" from the library - the book and the CD. Unlike every other child of the 70's, I did not grow up with this, so it's my first time being delighted by it. Audrey is addicted. She paged through the book while nibbling her cinnamon toast this morning. I asked if she wanted to hear the music.

"No," she said. "Because if I hear it I will need to dance, and I'm not finished with my breakfast."

We did a lot of dancing yesterday to FTBYAM. We practiced her ballet routine to it. I almost cried because she was so clearly loving dancing with me, and loving the music, and loving moving her body. Her joys and pleasures are so wonderful and basic - things that feel good, things that taste good, and love. Physical pleasure and heart pleasure.

I think she's onto something.

My husband said to me the other night, "We've lost our sense of humor. We're acting like life is one big chore to endure."

He was right. I was impressed that he'd noticed. I hadn't noticed. All I knew was that I woke up every morning feeling like I'd been beaten up during the night.

"We need to make sure to remember to have fun," he added.

Again, he impressed me with his insight.

"Right," I said. "Like...wait, how do we do that?"

Well, slowing down this week has helped give a little space for that. And now that all of Jonah's assessments have been scheduled and are coming up quickly, and the school tuition has been paid and enrollment has been arranged, we can exhale.

Spending that extra time with Audrey this week has also allowed me to see her charm rather than only her needs. For example, because we're having a slow morning, we've been able to laze around at the breakfast table and chat about planting some flowers today. I smiled about something and she grinned broadly and said,

"I love your smile."

Take my hand and come with me where the children are free...

My Baby

2009-04-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

Some loser on a train this weekend asked me if my son had "cleft palate."

"No," I said.

"Oh, well my mom has cleft palate and she has a lisp like him," he offered.

"He just has a lisp," I said.

We were on our way to the door. Jonah had been talking my ear off for most of our two-hour ride into Seattle. Because he's six, he talks loud enough for everyone to hear. And because he's...eccentric and totally adorable, folks respond to him. Usually people say nice things like, "My, what an inquisitive mind he has!" or, "He has so much to say!" or, "You've got a very special little boy." Most of the time my heart swells with warmth at how he draws people in.

No one's ever offered the observation that he sounds like the bones in his face didn't grow together. Even though the guy didn't say, "Gosh, your kid seems kinda retarded," I flinched at the insinuation that sometime, somewhere, something had gone awry.

It must be said that our friend with the cleft-palate mom had been offending me for the past hour by drinking and making his nine-year-old daughter give him kisses. Around men like that, my victimized inner child rises up with breath of fire and weapons of mass destruction. I truly felt if I'd had the chance I would've shoved this fellow off the moving train and the world would've been the better for it.

Unfortunately, he was seated comfortably nowhere near the door. I kept walking.

It's hard to say of this situation what hooked me more: the way the man behaved towards his daughter, or his thoughtless comment about Jonah - seeing that Jonah does have some kind of developmental issue and I'm trying to get used to that fact.

Maybe I've just had a bad month.

Has anyone ever said something about your kid that made you grow horns?

I'll Take It

2009-03-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

This week, my grandmother shuffled off this mortal coil. She was 78, mean, and one of the people I have most adored in my life.

I left Seattle and our whirlwind new life of doctor's and teacher's appointments, meetings with specialists and new diet regimens. My mother and I descended upon Grandma's double wide trailer in Onalaska, WA, to make some sense of what she'd left behind and feel if her spirit was still hanging around.

It wasn't. (For this I was glad. It would be totally in her character to haunt a thirty-year-old trailer with nicotine-stained ceilings rather than move onto celestial bliss. If I had felt her there, I would have shouted at her to GET AN AFTERLIFE, ALREADY.)

I unrolled flannel packets of tarnished silverware and marvelled at the daintiness and uselessness of the pieces. Grandma had packed away at least four silver sugar spoons. There was an olive spear. Seafood forks. Dozens of butter knives. A spoon made for easily scooping relish out of a jar and onto one's plate. At one point, I had unpacked half a drawer of silver and had it spread out over the dining room table in front of me in all of its anachronistic glory.

"Why did she have all this shit?" I asked my mom.

She looked up from Grandma's desk, where she was feeding fifteen-year-old power bills into the shredder.

"Some of it was Ba Ba Bessie's and Grandma Gayle's and Grandpa Ralph's. Oh, Honey, she loved to hold a proper Christmas dinner. We had some big Christmas dinners when we were kids, with all the china and the crystal and the silver. She kept it all these years I guess because she was a pack rat. And no one else wanted it."

I wanted it. I loved that she knew so much about the uses of curved bone plates, salt cellars, fish servers, pie servers, and cream pitchers. She could tell the difference between a mustard jar and a celery holder. She had, and used until very recently, crystal dishes made specifically for serving bunches of whole green onions. She enjoyed the gentility such items brought to a table, even to one's person; I know this because of the way she softened and brightened when she talked about them to me. Where she learned all of this is a mystery, but knowing about it, and amassing collections of it, brought dignity into her life.

So, even though I have nowhere to put the silver, I packed it all in a paper shopping bag and loaded in into the back of my car. It's now sitting in a heap of dirty flannel on my kitchen island, awaiting silver polish. (Which of course I do not own.)

Perhaps, since Grandma made us promise not to give her a funeral, I will hold a dinner in her honor.

I'll use every last relish spoon.

Don't Even Think About Reflecting

2009-03-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

Monday brought the promise of Regular Life. School, carpool, yoga classes, teaching, cooking, maybe a few moments for reflection and writing...

...and God said, HA!

"I want to talk to you about Jonah," said my son's teacher one afternoon as I helped her tidy up the classroom. "There are some strong indicators that he may be on the autism spectrum."

Really. I called a friend who has an autistic child, and she said, "No way."

I spoke to Jonah's occupational therapist and she said, "No way."

I called Jonah's pediatrician. The girl at the front desk didn't want to schedule an appointment. "Let me have her call you."

Missed the call while talking to the occupational therapist. Oh, she'll be back next week.

Interviewed with a Waldorf school for Jonah. Felt myself melt when their response to our report of Jonah's unique characteristics was this: "All of that is okay. That's what we support here. This is a healing program."

Unable to control myself, I started to cry.

"Here's a tissue," they said.

I called the pediatrician again to schedule an in-office appointment.

Now we wait to test our child. Is he okay? Is he not okay? What can we do to help him? Will switching to a more suitable school make the difference that we think it will? Will he ever learn to write properly? How could we have been managing this differently had we known there was a real problem and not just a "delay"? Is every day that he goes to his regular, chaotic, fast-paced school damaging him further?

Shit, I need to go for a walk. Maybe I'll take the do-

Nope.

RRRRRING! Can you sub two classes for me today? RRRRING! Can you sub for me for four days on Whidbey Island? RRRRING! The doctor needs to reschedule that appointment. We need your help with the school auction. Can we meet after school with special ed teacher?

Last night I crawled into the futon bed in the attic and cried until I fell asleep. I hated to do it. It smacked of the Old Depression Days, when this was my default behavior, but there was no way around it. I was saturated.

Today I am reading a book called The Out of Sync Child, because a few people have floated the idea that Jonah may be coping with something called Sensory Processing Disorder. And I keep crying. If only we'd known earlier!

When will we be able to find some clarity? My mind being what it is, I can't do anything properly right now. This morning I tried to load some dishes into the garbage.

All I can do is say no to any requests that come into my life right now unless they have to do with schools and Jonah. I have to slow down. I have to watch my child carefully, give him extra tenderness and space to be himself. I have to hope that stuff will stop happening.

'Cause I'm dealing with Emotional Integration Disorder.

Wham! Blam! Kapow!

2009-03-07T09:56:00.000-08:00

The day Ada died, I had two more hours of the Anusara workshop to do. Heaven knows I'm committed to my yoga, but there are limits.

Still, one of my teachers had asked me to teach two of her classes that night. I'd said yes the day before, before I'd known that my dog was sick.

So, at a certain point in the afternoon, I wiped my tears, squeezed into yoga clothes, and went to teach two classes.

Teaching in the studio where I'd been a student for eleven years felt almost forbidden. I kept thinking, Is this allowed? Am I really supposed to be up here in the front of the room? Jake, one of the students in the second class (which had been my class for several years until recently), looked at me as he unrolled his mat and said, "Are you teaching tonight?"

"Yep!" I said.

Another student from the back of the room added, cautiously, "Have you done this before?"

I laughed. "Yes."

I led the students safely through poses, I challenged their bodies, I cracked jokes and made references to the German yoga teacher I'd had in Mexico whose mantra was, "Hold za poose, doon't hold za breath."

And then I went home and thought, Oh my God, I just taught at Seattle Yoga Arts! Oh, my God, my body is in such pain from the workshop! Oh my God, my poor dog is dead!

I wanted to think about it all, to write about it all, but instead I fell dead sleep.

Goodnight, Ada

2009-03-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

My dog didn't make it. She was doomed by a tumor that had ruptured. From the moment she had started acting sick, her little soul was already aiming for Dog Heaven.

For a few days I kept the yellow quilt in a wad on the couch. It was the last thing she'd touched. It bristled with black dog hairs. I curled around it and squeezed it and tried to find a last drop of her life in it. I couldn't rouse myself to start putting her things away, even though her dog bed and plastic bags and toys still took up space in the back of the station wagon.

Then one day, Jonah said, sadly, "Mommy, can we please put Ada's bowls away?"

"Yes," I said, and immediately washed them and put them away.

The way we move through hard times, no matter how much we may resist this, is little by little. After I washed the bowls, a few days later I washed her bed. Finally, after I began to feel silly about keeing it around, I washed the yellow quilt.

Now Audrey is using it in her imaginary games of islands and castles and Peter Pan. Once, we stopped in the middle of playing and looked sadly at the quilt.

"This was my baby blanket," I told Audrey. We gazed at the little cut-outs of blobby, star-shaped figures that my great-grandmother had sewn onto the yellow fabric thirty-something years ago. "But this is also the blanket we took Ada to the vet in when she got sick."

"I miss Ada," Audrey said in a tiny voice.

"Me, too." I lay down on the blanket and pressed my cheek against it. "I wonder if some little bit of her spirit is left in here."

Audrey lay down, too. "I think I hear something," she said.

"We miss you, Girl," I said into the blanket.

"We love you, Ada," Audrey said into the blanket.

Goodnight, Ada.

Forces of Nature, Part III

2009-03-01T09:28:00.000-08:00

At six a.m. on the second morning of the John Friend workshop, I awoke to the sound of my dog falling down the stairs. The slip and crunch of claws and bone was unmistakable. With much wincing (ooh, the hamstrings, eesh, the triceps), I descended the stairs to find Ada, our agile and chipper border collie mix, limping aimlessly in the hall. She minced over to the living room, where she lay down between two pieces of furniture and commenced to breathe short, raspy breaths.

Matt and I made arrangements for him to take Ada to the vet while I went to the morning Anusara workshop. Before I left, we wrapped Ada in a small yellow quilt and loaded her into the back of the station wagon.

"I'll call you at the first break," I said to Matt, and took one last look at the dog. She was lying stiffly in the position we'd placed her. She looked terrible. This was really happening; I might be saying goodbye for the last time.

At the workshop, our theme was gratitude for our teachers. We were supposed to be thinking of them and praying for them and remembering all they had done for us. Instead, I kept thinking of my dog. When John said, "Remember that time when you needed your teacher and she was there without judgment for you," I thought of Ada.

I had complex feelings around my dog. I'd made a lot of my first parenting mistakes with her. I'd also never been so devoted to any living creature as I was to her in her early years.

But children happened, and a new career happened, and a bigger house and more demands on my time and attention. Over time she really became the lowest person on the totem pole. And sometimes, worse than that, I saw her as a nuisance. We no longer had a lifestyle that supported the needs of a high-maintenance working dog. There simply wasn't space in our life for daily hour-long walks, frequent trips to the off-leash park, agility classes, etc. I felt sad for her, because her potential was being squandered.

She had gotten fat and a little despondent. That was entirely our fault.

But back to the yoga workshop. John was talking about the power of being present. "You must be present to win!" he said. All 200 of us laughed. I was present.

I was present with my dying dog.

Forces of Nature, Part II

2009-02-25T16:26:00.000-08:00

The kind of yoga I practice is Anusara yoga, which was founded by a delightful goofball named John Friend. Whenever John Friend comes to town, all of my yoga friends go to his workshops. It's a no-brainer. For us, he's like the Pope.

This year I scraped together the time and the courage to go. Nevermind that the first workshop started at 8 a.m. the morning after I'd just gotten back from Mexico at midnight. I knew I'd get there and ride the collective shakti until I woke up enough to ride my own. And then, maybe I'd explode with happiness.

Two hundred men and women lined up their mats edge to edge in the great hall of the Nordic Heritage Museum. A full band played groovy Indian music on a stage. John, in shorts and sleeveless shirt, walked around, snapping his fingers to the drum, and saying things like, "Feels good!"

All of my people were there. Blue-haired Rebecca, bald Davida, Adonis-like Robin, the lady I teach up in Edmonds every Thursday, Jodi, Kit, Anne, Megan, Dan, Will, Richard...and my beloved teachers, too. They walked around like goddesses, helping us perfect our poses. I saw demonstrations by a man named Adam, whose thighs were as big as my head and who could lift one leg nearly vertical while balancing on the other foot. (Between you and me, he looked like the happiest, most glowing, healthy person on the planet.) And then there were the musicians, who, when not playing an instrument, simply stood up on the stage and did their yoga, too.

YES. These are my people, I thought. This is power and grace. This force I'm feeling is all strength and beauty! How shall I be a part of it?

I raced home to bring food to my family. We'd been out of town for a week; the cupboards were bare. Then, after wolfing a bagel sandwich and chilling with the kids, I raced back to Ballard for another two-hours of intensity.

That night, I nearly fell asleep while eating my dinner. I was so worn out, so physically tired and sore, I couldn't think. I could barely talk. I passed out in bed without the chance to process the day. Surely, there would be time for that tomorrow.

Ohhhh....Mexico

2009-02-25T15:24:00.000-08:00

Gracias, Isla Mujeres. Te amo.

Forces of Nature, Part I

2009-02-25T14:20:00.000-08:00

There is nothing that keeps a Northwesterner going in the early months of the calendar year like the promise of getting the hell out. Matt and I have made it a habit for the last three years to vacate the mud and moss of Seattle for at least one week during the crucial dark and rainy months of Seasonal Affective Disorder. We went to Mexico, Hawaii, and now Mexico again, this time the Caribbean side. It’s a long trip from here to there, and we had a dicey itinerary with nary a moment to lose between connecting flights in Salt Lake City.

We got the kids up at 4 am and made it on to our 6 am flight with no trouble.

And then we sat.

There was a problem with the hydraulic fluid. Seems it was leaking. No one knew why. Oh, whoops, the hydraulic line was broken. This would be simple to fix, as soon as a new one could be located and…oh, yes, the nearest replacement part was in LA. Everything would be ship-shape in a mere three hours.

Matt and I, in separate areas of the plane, texted each other on our phones. “Fuch,” he mistyped.

“Do you mean Holy Mother of Shit This Really Sucks?” I typed back.

“Yes.”

We deplaned. After Matt engaged in extensive conversations with Delta Airlines on his iPhone, it was determined that there were no seats left on any flights that day to Cancun from the western United States. Our best bet was to get on this flight to Salt Lake, whenever it left, and fly to Cancun the following day. But hey! We would get to spend a night in exotic downtown Salt Lake City, Utah!

While all of this business was transpiring, I led the kids though several rounds of goofy sun salutations in the waiting area. It didn’t occur to me to be self-conscious. The more steeped in the yoga world I get, the more I forget that not everyone else is. In any case, the people around us were sunk in their own private dramas, complaining to relatives and Delta Airlines on their cell phones. I even let the kids crawl on me and under me while I did dog pose, just because we were on vacation and having to wait four hours for the next flight.

We lived in the moment, moment to moment, all of that day, never knowing what would happen next, and never expecting what we hoped for to happen. It was a good strategy, especially with the children. We got on that plane, successfully made it to Salt Lake City, rode a shuttle to the crappy hotel the airline paid for, and then promptly enjoyed the indoor heated pool. The pool saved the day for the kids.

While we walked back from the brew pub where we had dinner, the temperature dropped deeply. Both kids had melt downs. And the next morning brought a foot of new snow. Guess what that meant? Oh, a two-hour delay while we waited to get de-iced. At that point, we had been travelling for 28 hours and there was not yet any white sand between our toes. There was just a lot of white snow blowing around the runway. I felt we had been there, waiting, forever, and that we might always be there, dreaming of Mexico.

Snow on Roses

2009-01-11T16:31:00.000-08:00

I opened the front door to my elderly neighbor. He was wrapped in scarves and gloves and a hat, and some mighty expensive looking waterproof boots.

"H-hello?"

"Do you have a digital camera?" he asked. His accent is thick and charming, German or Danish or Swedish. (His name is Hans; I can't be too far off.)

"Yes..."

"You must come take a picture off da roses," he pointed toward my side yard. "Der is snow on your roses!"

It was ten o'clock on a weekend morning. I wasn't dressed, the kids were running wild through the house, and well, it looked awfully cold out there. But I told him I'd be right out, threw on a sweater, grabbed my digital camera, and walked out the back door.

Hans met me inside my backyard (he was feeling very at home here)and allowed me to help him down the snowy steps out to the sidewalk where my roses were, indeed, blooming under a blanket of fresh snow.

He pointed to a jaunty clump. "Take a picture of dis one," he said. I did. "And take a picture of dis one, too," he said, pointing toward a lone, sad, rose drooping under the weight of a dollop of snow. I positioned the camera away from my body so I could see through the digital screen. Hans leaned in to get a look at my shot. He held my hand and moved it to where he thought it should be.

"Vould you like me to take it for you?"

"Sure," I said. I handed him my camera. He took it, placed a foot up on the side wall, and took it.

"I have been out here already taking pictures. I didn't vant you to miss it."

"Well, thank you," I said. "I appreciate that."

And I did. It was nice to have someone pull me outside to look at something beautiful. I'm usually the one around here doing that, because I'm such a big sap.

Hans and I stood around for a few more minutes, chewing the fat about my house and the people who lived here before we did. Then I got uncomfortably cold (it was snowing) and promised to invite him in sometime, but not today as I was a little embarrassed at still being in my pajamas. He smiled - his mouth was full of graying teeth - and he said he'd like that.

Maybe he'll point something else out that I've failed to notice.

Signs of Devotion in Las Vegas

2009-01-03T17:17:00.000-08:00

Outside of Caesar's Palace, between a shopping mall entrance and a walkway over The Strip, sits an altar to the Buddha. It's easy to miss as it's tucked away behind some bushes, and also one's eye is automatically drawn to the 10-story faces of Donnie and Marie Osmond plastered to the side of The Flamingo hotel. Once I saw it, I grabbed Matt's sleeve and slowed down to study it.

It's a place to pray in the middle of shopping and gambling and drinking. The 10 foot high, gold buddha, in full Thai headdress, sits with perfect equanimity in the center of a fenced square. Along the rails are kneelers, on which devotees can comfortably rest their knees and elbows while they pray.

One young woman chose to forgo the kneelers and instead just hit the pavement. In her skirt, she pressed her knees, the tops of her feet, her forearms, and her forehead onto the dirty concrete. She stayed that way for awhile. Around her, other women knelt on the kneelers and held long sticks of incense in front of their faces. They bowed their dark heads and closed their eyes.

"Praying for luck at the blackjack table," Matt whispered. I shrugged. Who knew what people prayed for? The altar offered a chance to dip into spiritual reverence, in a place that seems to revere mostly designer shoes, sex, and winning big. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)I itched to kneel down in front of the Buddha myself, as I see every place to pray as a universal invitation to offer myself up for a few moments. But I worried the people there might not appreciate an obvious interloper, even if I did exactly what they did. I was sure to commit some gaffe. So instead of metaphorically jumping into the hot tub uninvited, I gave a silent inward bow and took a few secret photos.

Our next stop was The House of Blues for a Sunday gospel brunch. There, we ate shrimp and cheesy grits, bacon and sliced melon. We drank Bloody Marys. Then we watched a rousing, Praise-the-Lord gospel performance by a slick group from LA. Since it really was a performance and not a church service, I wondered how much Jesus would be a part of things.

Well. Jesus' name was alive and well in The House of Blues. Witnesses raised their hands. People danced in the aisles. Those who knew the songs hollered along. I watched, in myself and some other people there, a confusing conflict take place. We were swept up. We wanted to ride on the river of Love. But oops, woops, Oh yeah, I don't actually believe Jesus Christ is my personal savior. Kinda forgot about that, and kinda forgot about all my Issues With the Church, and blah blah blah. Aw, screw it. When you think you feel divine love, stand up and say yeah.

So this time I did.

Hitting the Earth with a Thud

2008-12-05T21:15:00.000-08:00

"Stand with your hands over your heart and look across the room to one of your friends," said Jane, one of my fellow yoga teacher trainees. She had arranged us, her peers, in a horseshoe shape around the edge of the studio. Typically, we're looking at the back of each other's hairdos; the most intimate moment we're going experience is our head coming a little too close to our neighbor's personal area in a wide-legged forward bend.

I looked across the oak floor and was delighted to meet the eyes of one of my favorite yoga friends. It was so out of the ordinary to experience full-frontal eye contact in class! I held his blue gaze and grinned.

"Keep looking at your friend as you fold forward and bow to them," said Jane.

I looked, and looked, and bowed. I bowed to what I had learned of this person over the past two years of teacher training. I bowed to his light, his heart, his sadness, his beauty.

Jane led us into exalted warrior pose. This involves a deep lunge and a decent backbend, with one hand pointing to the sky and the chest opening in triumph. I love this pose. I'm still not very good at it. I think I must look only somewhat exalted in the pose, like a maybe just an ambivalent warrior who aspires to someday be exalted. But today it was fine that I still can't bend back very far. This wasn't my pose anyway.

"Give this pose to your friend," Jane said. "Shine your heart out across the room."

I pictured my friend's typical exalted warrior: major backbend, heart looking at the sky, nose pointing at the wall behind him. Well, I thought, maybe this will be like a my-heart-to-his-diaphragm energy shine, but here goes. Zap.

The room had gotten very quiet. I heard the breath of the women on either side of me. Jane led us into Warrior II. This is another deep lunge with the arms streaming out in front of and behind your body. I like doing this pose with my front palm up, like I'm offering something out to a little bird that may come land on me. Today I offered my effort to stay in the pose to my friend.

This was great stuff. Not only was there all kinds of good, clean energy zapping all over the room, but I was most definitely not thinking about myself and my little worries. I wasn't even thinking that much about my usual irritations and pleasures in the poses. I was just giving it all up to my compatriot in reverence.

What a new and unusual way to relate to another person! I'm used to other kinds of bowing. I know the worshipping kind, the "I'm not worthy" kind, and the "please love me" kind. Here, there was no psychological drama. Just hi, I'm bowing to you because you're wonderful.

Later, as I stepped in through the side door of my house, the first thing I laid eyes on was my daughter sitting naked on the toilet. Bathroom door open, lights blazing, big grin on her face.

"Hi, Mommy!" she said brightly. "I'm going poo! Can you wipe my butt?"

Reverence. Yes.

I stepped into the bathroom and reached for a Wet Wipe.

This Just In

2008-11-25T09:14:00.000-08:00

The New York Times published an article on Sunday about a movement called "Slow Blogging." The idea is to actually reflect before posting. And to see how infrequently you can post before losing readers.

See, I'm so ahead of the curve.

A Light Subject Before Bed

2008-10-13T15:10:00.000-07:00

Last night while we played a game called "guess how much I love you," my 4-year-old said,

"I love you so much that when you die, I want to die, too."

I said, "I want you to live a long and happy life, even if I die."

She said, "But wouldn't it be better if we can be together and talk in Heaven?"

This girl is heavy. I could only smile at that sentiment, and say gently, "We don't know when that will happen."

Suddenly her face changed, crumpled, and she grabbed my hand. "I don't want to die!"

I wanted to hold her against my body and promise that I would never, ever let that happen. Instead, I walked her calmly to the bathroom and assembled her tooth brushing accouterments: red toothbrush, non-minty toothpaste, cup.

"Most people don't die until they are very old," I said. Then her brother refused to move off the step stool in front of the sink, and that caused a brief row, and the death talk was left behind.

You've got to have nerves of steel to do this job.

Long Thoughts

2008-10-13T14:43:00.000-07:00

I entered Day One of my sixth yoga teacher training weekend feeling full of vitality and excitement. I was so excited to see all my people that I couldn't settle down to meditate.

By the end, though, I felt disappointed. I hadn't finished my homework. I hadn't given the kind of thought to our reading that some people had. The level of studentship among some of my peers was putting me to shame. Of course, many of my peers are not raising small children. Maybe they can spend as long as they want following their yoga thoughts.

Or their long thoughts in general. I read this idea somewhere, I think in an A.S. Byatt novel, about the near impossibility of pursuing long thoughts when one has little children. Long thoughts are cultivated over time. You piece something together, and build upon it, until it stretches out behind you and in front of you too far to see either end. Long thoughts are what I need in order to understand the Indian texts I'm reading, for sure, but long thoughts are also what keep me interested in life. They are what keep me feeling like myself. They are proof that my brain didn't slip out along with my placenta.

In class, someone announced that a visiting scholar of Ayurvedic medicine would be speaking tonight about one of my as-yet untapped fascinations, kundalini. I was all wound up - I wanted to go. Towards the end of the 6 hour day, though, I realized that it would be difficult for everyone in my family if I went. And that I would end up feeling guilty and greedy. This was disappointing. I wanted to be unfettered to follow where my mind wanted to go, to learn more. But my life just isn't like that.

In a last ditch effort to find a good reason to go beyond my own desire - some serendipity or synchronicity or kismet - I asked one of my yoga friends (one of those who put me to shame)if by chance he was going. He said no. So now it was up to me to be selfish and greedy or act with my family in mind.

As I rolled up my mat I felt the pressures of what my family needed from me pressing behind my eyes, pressing against my forehead. It was all so complicated. I only wanted to learn. I only wanted to weave long thoughts. But - shit! The class had run long. I was already 15 minutes late relieving the babysitter. I wanted to stay and chit chat with my people. I wanted to be paid attention to by them.

I left feeling unfulfilled.

But then I came home to happy children. We snuggled on the mohair couch and read a long chapter book. When Matt came home, we took ourselves out to a neighborhood family Mexican restaurant. By the end of the night, I felt more fulfilled, but still saddened by my inability to work deeply on my yoga assignments.

Mothers' Political Hazards

2008-10-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

"She...spent Sundays in the kitchen cooking five meals to store in the freezer so the family could eat together during the week," says the Seattle Times this morning about Washington State governor Christine Gregoire.

Gregoire has been governor for four years and before that held a little post known as State Attorney General. Oh, and before that, she had an amusing little job as Director of the Department of Ecology.

Yet, the Seattle Times would like us to know, she never missed one of her daughter's high school soccer games. Says daughter Courtney, "We're close because Mom always made us priority."

Excuse me, I know it is Ms. Gregoire who is up for re-election and not her husband, but I must ask: What was the husband's job that was so important that he was not the one cooking five meals on Sunday? King of the World? Was he also at the soccer games? Did he make the family a priority?

I just have to ask, because if we don't ask that question, then we will never have a real, publicly-acknowledged answer to why more women do not rise to the highest positions of public office.

Reading this article this morning, the answer is so black-and-white to me that I can't believe it's not addressed by the article's author, Andrew Garber. (Any guesses, readers?)I mean, ok, there are issues of self-esteem and gender-conditioning that begin in infancy. But, damn, we don't have a female president yet because most women bear children. And of those, most mothers are attached to male partners, who, all the research you care to quote will show, do not raise the children.

The mothers raise the children. The mothers make their children a priority.

Even when they are governor of Washington State.

Exalted Daughter

2008-09-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

From Sept. 5

My mom and I are staying in this midcentury modern house on a hillside overlooking an inlet. The deck is perfect and we’ve spent most of our time out there.

When we got to the house I rolled out my yoga mat on the deck and did about 40 minutes of a practice. During this time, my mom sat on an Adirondack chair with a glass of Chardonnay, smoking and making snarky comments about things people had written in the guest book. The quality of handwriting was low. Previous guest had no taste because they wrote that they liked the décor. She sure hoped the house’s owner didn’t come by with ice cream and wine for us like she apparently did with other guests, because that would be annoying.

Like that. Meanwhile, I continued my practice. I did my utmost to remain embodied while my mother bitched about the freezer not being turned on. I exhaled forcefully and moved my body into powerful poses to keep the flies of her discontent from landing on me. I was reminded of a cartoon by Ellen Forney (local cartoonist, illustrator, performer and yogini), in which a character stands next to her teacher, complaining about how commercial yoga has become. Meanwhile, her teacher does her poses and utters neutralizing rebuttals to the spewing student’s uncharitable arguments.

Well, that was me and my mom this evening. I flashed on how I would draw this scene, how comical it would look. And, after awhile, it was comical. I was in this fierce Exalted Warrior pose, and she was still complaining about something. I thought, wow, how can a person look at someone doing Exalted Warrior and not be awed into silence? It’s a pose of great beauty and strength. When I see someone do it, I get a hit of energy. (In yoga, we call this a shakti, or force, transfer. ) And then I wondered if she was able to enjoy anything at all, or even feel the shakti or any powerful force when it’s being zapped her way.

And then, finally, compassion. I continued my practice with great care for my joints and my muscles. In my standing poses, I gazed out at the majectic evergreens all around me. I did not follow the dramatic story line my mother was weaving. Instead, I felt empathy for her nervous heart. This is not to say that I didn’t wish she would shut up and get a life. It’s just that those sentiments petered out before gathering much flame.

This feels like progress.

On the Island with Mom

2008-09-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

Earlier this summer, my mom called me and bitched that we never get any time together. “There’s always a kid on your lap,” she said. “They won’t let you talk on the phone. And then, every time you come to my house, you wander off and take a fuckin’ nap.”

“Well, I’m tired,” I said.

“Too bad,” she wailed. “Make some time for me.”

These moments for authentic relating between me and my mom only come about once every five years. So while there were a lot of things I could have said, like “I don’t visit often because you depress me ,” or “your house smells like a bar,” I decided to make this moment of genuine talk work to our advantage.

We made plans to go away for a weekend together. To a cabin in the woods. On an island. I questioned the intelligence of this over and over, but stayed with the plan because it felt right. I wanted to seize the chance to have a real conversation with my mom. I could sense that she really needed time away from her life. I wanted to make that happen for her. I also wanted to chance to change our pattern, which goes something like this: she reaches out in a rare moment of vulnerability, I try to rescue her. She professes a desire for a different kind of life, I encourage it, offer to pay for it, give her inspirational books, and believe it might actually happen.

Dysfunctional people and addicts are not known for their ability to manifest their true desires. In fact, they are not known for even being able to contact their true desires. They lost that skill a long time ago, or maybe never even got the chance to develop it. And, it must be said, self-reflection gets in the way of cocktail hour. So it is with my poor mother. After Part I of the pattern passes, inevitably, Part II arrives: the same old BS. And the daughter, who has been so devoted and giving (and superior and judgmental), despairs and hates her mother again and stops calling.

It’s a fine line to tread for someone who loves an addict or a very injured soul. How does one make space for a self-destructive loved-one without falling into what may be an old habit of Rescue and Reform? Anyone who has grown up in a dysfunctional/alcoholic family knows what a dead end that is. (Or if you haven’t figured that out yet, please give yourself a much-deserved gift and call your local Al-Anon chapter.)

So I told myself that I would not try to fix her this time. I have finally come to believe that I truly do not know what is best for her. I only know what’s best for me. I told myself that she and I would spend time together, but I would keep certain boundaries.

1. I would do what I wanted to do regardless of her level of sobriety or inability to get off her ass.
2. I would not tell her what to do with her life.
3. I would remember that she is in pain that I can’t begin to understand.
4. I would take care of myself.
5. I would expect nothing.

My report to you, Reader, is forthcoming.

One Thing at a Time

2008-08-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

The day I wrote the previous post, I’d woken up feeling like I was coming down with a virus. I cancelled dates and asked my husband to stay home a little later and help out with the kids before he left for work. I called the sitter. I did everything I’ve learned how to do when the flu is coming on.

Only it turned out not to be the flu. It turned out that my brain had the flu, or my soul, or whatever it is that gets “depressed” during these episodes. As I understood over the course of the morning that I was sick in the head and not the body, I told myself there was only one thing I could do to get through the day:

(Reader, are you sitting down?)

Do only one thing at a time.

“Do one…thing…at a time?” you parents might be asking. “But what about the…and the…?” I know. How can you possibly make the kids lunch while not talking on the phone? How can you get them dressed without also doing a load of laundry? And what about all that time you spend going to the bathroom and eating? There are hundreds of questions from the kids that will have to go unanswered while you’re behind the closed door! And if you don’t read the newspaper over breakfast (while also checking e-mail and ferrying food and drink from kitchen to table and letting the dog in and out 14 times), then whenever will you?

Well, some days are just about survival.

I’ve tried other means of survival during mental crises, usually with a different twist, like: no chores before breakfast. No reading the newspaper or being online while the children are at the table. I thought this one simple rule, doing one thing at a time, would streamline the day.

I recruited Jonah and Audrey to help. I sat them down on the window seat in the dining room and made my intentions very clear.

“I am playing an important game today,” I explained. “Since I’m feeling sick and yucky, I’m going to only do one thing at a time. So if you ask me for something, and I’m doing something else, I’m going to ask you to wait until I’m done.”

“Why?” asked Jonah.

“Because this will keep me relaxed and help me get better sooner. And I probably won’t yell as much.”

They were down with it. Having my “game” as the reason why I didn’t cater to their whims all day was a wonderful thing for my mind to fall back on. Normally, I’d have despaired that my kids would NEVER let me get any peace, and they were spoiled, and in my grandma’s day they’d have already been wacked upside the head with a wooden hairbrush. I reminded myself that, oh right, I was trying something different today. And I reminded the kids that. And they were fine with it.

Doing one thing at a time turned out to be a meditation of sorts. It didn’t nourish me the way sitting meditation does, but it kept me from committing what my teacher calls, “unskillful behavior.” Doing one thing at a time, I was always present and I could always handle what was happening.

The downside was that I stayed up late folding laundry, cleaning the kitchen and writing. I couldn’t bear for those things to go undone. Some things took longer. But I was calm.

Is this kind of behavior really possible in modern life?

What if we tried? How different would our days be?

Oh, Crap

2008-08-23T21:02:00.000-07:00

I am not well. My irritation is pure PMS (thank you , my dear friend Sara, for setting me straight that no, everyone is not purposefully being an asshole just to make my life miserable), but the heaviness gathering in my belly and my great desire to be wrapped in fuzzy blankets at all times is something else.

Feeling like – being – an instrument controlled by nerve receptors and hormone leakings makes me question the point of anything. I feel like nothing more than a highly-refined reptile. I wonder if this descent into the mental life of a snake is partly to blame for all the crying we depressed people do. We're flooded with inexplicable grief, like someone dear to us died. We lost something essential that kept us warm. We lost something that kept us human.

All I can hold onto right now is what the yogis discovered – a system that expands and liberates even the most stubborn, infantile, unworkable minds. They found an opening to the beating heart of the universe. I have to have faith that they were onto something. Otherwise, I should just unhinge my jaw, swallow a whole mouse and then go sit on a warm rock for the rest of my life.

What I Can't Resist

2008-08-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

I’m playing a game with myself where I try not to get carried away by my moods all day long. Right now I’m in a foul mood and thinking all kinds of uncharitable thoughts about my family, nuclear and extended, so I’ve escaped to my bedroom to observe this quietly.

Moodiness and negative thinking are so familiar to me that they feel like coming home. “Come to Mama,” they seem to say. “We’re the ones who really understand you.” Their pull is often irresistible, like the smell of cinnamon rolls baking at Pike Place Market. Follow that smell! You know you want to. It seems to promise comfort, or at least the kind of comfort that falling back into an old pattern brings for awhile.

My ego wants me to believe that things are always other people’s fault. That way it can feel superior and separate, which are its primary goals. It wants me to believe that I am the hardest working member of this family and I have every right to throw tantrums.

But that is all a story. Pema Chodron talks about how we all have a storyline about ourselves that we like to follow. We wake up every day and our egos kick into gear, recreating that story, which leads us by the nose because we think that’s all we are: some story. Today my story goes something like this: I am so much more together than half the people in this family and it’s really a shame that I have to put up with their incompetence.

Now that I’m sitting here observing my thoughts, they are losing their bite. They actually sound goofy. None of the storylines I’m creating right now are even true. So what next? What am I supposed to do with my addled mind and my bad mood?
I guess look at the mood. Say yes to its existence. Hi, here you are again. Let the irritation, indignation – whatever emotional maelstrom my ego has dreamed up to protect itself – dissipate.

Failing that, I will look at design magazines until I have to go downstairs and clean the kitchen.

Does That Come with Fries for My Kids?

2008-08-22T16:44:00.000-07:00

(Disclaimer: this post is about a diet for a healthy brain. I include it only because I know some of you, gentle readers, are burdened with the affliction of depression and anxiety and parenthood, often all at the same time, and so this post just might hold some interest for you. Others of you may find this topic incredibly dull and for that, I apologize and ask you to check back soon.)

In the past, I have waited until reaching crisis points before I'd deal with the signs of depression. Then my treatments involved talk therapy and pharmaceuticals. Now that I have discovered the great joy of living in my body (that pesky thing I never paid much attention to as a younger person), I am going to try a new tactic: treatment of the body to balance the chemicals of the brain.

Yoga has gotten me to this point. To complement it, I’m officially on The Antidepressant Diet, designed by my naturopath, Amy Fasig, ND. The diet-for-mental-health involves a change in my daily garbage-disposal eating habits. As you can probably guess, this means moving away from all the foods and drinks I go toward when I'm down, have PMS, am ovulating, mad at my husband, or ready to murder the children.

Goodbye:
• Sugar
• Caffeine
• Hooch
• Wheat
• Rice
• Excessive dairy

Hello:
• Cod liver oil
• 14 capsules worth of herbal supplements per day
• Leafy greens
• “Ancient grains” such as quinoa, spelt, and amaranth
• Food every three hours, like an infant
• Protein with every meal
• Animal protein at least once a day

I am supposed to increase yoga, walking and meditation. I am supposed to cultivate earth and fire elements. It turns out that, in ayurvedic language, I have a vata imbalance. (Ayurveda is an ancient Indian medical practice.) This means, in not too uncertain terms, that I’m an AIRHEAD. See, I knew that, but it was nice to have it confirmed by a professional.

The animal protein thing will be interesting. I learned to cook at fourteen, when I believed that Meat is Murder and announced to my family that I would no longer be eating any of that chicken-fried steak. The animals had rights, too. Anyway, I had never liked the mouth-feel of animal fat. I had always secretly slipped my bacon into a paper towel in my lap to blot it before eating when I was a kid. (This may sound like the beginnings of an eating disorder, but I don’t have that kind of capacity for self-denial, so I was okay.)

My mom rolled her eyes and told me I’d better learn how to cook, because she didn’t intend to run a short-order café out of her kitchen. So Molly Katzen of the Moosewood cookbooks became my Julia Child. I enjoyed discovering things like pesto and exotic pilafs, and torturing my asshole stepdad by stinking up the house with fried falafel. He, in turn, enjoyed gagging at the sight of my hippie/other culture food and torturing me with Karen Carpenter references at the dinner table. Those were good times.

Anyway, I haven’t been a real vegetarian for years. Chicken was the gateway food back into the life of an omnivore sometime after college, and then when I got pregnant with Jonah I acted on my body’s deep need for swine. I ate salami, bacon, and ham. But the vegetarian cooking background means that I’ve never properly learned to buy or prepare meat. I don’t know a T-bone from a pork butt. And I still can’t stand the taste or smell of beef and lamb. Given my druthers, I’d eat mostly vegetarian food forever. It’s what I am used to.

But I’ve got my eyes on the prize, which is drug-free mental health. So, when my husband brought home some organic, grass-fed beef jerky, I ate a piece. Reader, it was delicious. I’m sorry, but it just tasted good. Apparently I have a taste for cured meats. If I want to get well, I’m going to have to go with that.

The biggest impediments in my quest for balanced blood sugar are my kids. I know there are people who swear they’ve raised their children on seaweed and barley water from day one, and that their six-year-old would rather eat steamed tofu than mac-and-cheese any old time, but I can’t make those claims. My kids enjoy a limited selection of sushi, but they do turn their noses up at a steaming plate of quinoa-and-chard. So what’s a girl to do? It already takes more time in the kitchen to prepare “whole foods” (i.e. things that don’t come in packets). And not only do I refuse to make separate meals for my kids, I don’t want them eating so much of the bread, sugar, dairy and chicken nuggets that have become the staple of the American childhood. Look what it does to me, their mother! And God knows my girl doesn’t need anything that will increase her mood swings. She's only three, but she usually acts like a fifteen-year-old girl on the rag, bless her heart.

So. I will continue to serve the quinoa and the fresh veggies. Sometimes I grate cheese over it for my kids and bribe them with ice cream. It’s a balance, you know. They get a few bites of ancient grains into their system and a shred or two of fresh vegetables, and then they get rewarded with a flood of heart-clogging cream and blood-sugar-spiking "evaporated cane juice." At least they didn’t eat a plate of fish sticks and the ice cream. And maybe they’ll develop new habits? Or just start eating out of fear of starvation?

Cranky Pregnant Yoga Snob

2008-08-02T12:36:00.000-07:00

It is the week of Seafair, and whenever the Blue Angels come to Seattle, I remember the time when I was pregnant with my second kid and trying to find a few minutes of peace in a prenatal yoga class. The Blue Angels, as they screamed over the neighborhoods ringing Lake Washington, made this hard for me. So did my substitute teacher.

I wrote this post after that class:

Yoga class is supposed to be a place for me to learn about how to practice compassion and emotional equanimity. When I’m not pregnant and can attend the classes of my favorite teacher, Denise Benitez, I learn to practice compassion by watching her. She has been practicing yoga for thirty years, teaching for around twenty. In class, it’s easy to ape her attitude, naturally follow where she leads me. She reminds me that I don’t need to control everything, at least in that room, and shows me how to practice compassion for myself.

I don’t usually have to practice compassion for others in yoga class. Everybody takes care of themselves there. We know the routine. We turn inward. In a good class, you can just focus on your practice. A good teacher relieves you from the responsibility of taking care of her.

Today I took a prenatal yoga class with a teacher who was not good. She subs for my favorite prenatal teacher. Unfortunately for me, this teacher is also a doula and often has to attend births. Which means here comes Maia [not her real name], fresh-faced, busty, clear-eyed, and brainless. Maia reads aloud too much from books. She talks too much during meditation. She speaks in what someone must’ve told her is a soothing voice, but really makes me feel like I’m a kindergartener rather than a 33-year-old pregnant lady trying to get some goddamn spiritual fulfillment.

I have taken classes from Maia before (when my real teacher was out), and find that I turn them into something counterproductive. Instead of releasing tension, I fixate on everything that’s “wrong” with the class. It doesn’t take long for me to actually become hostile. Soon I’m in a state where there really is no way Maia could guide me into any sort of spiritual awareness, because I’m just going through the motions; I arranged for child care, drove and paid my drop-in fee to be there. I’ll be damned if I’m leaving.

Today I was in the agitated state I feel in firelogs pose (in which you sit with your shins stacked on top of one another), pretty much for an hour and fifteen minutes. I didn’t feel the need to practice compassion for myself. I had so much compassion for myself that I felt I deserved a better teacher, right now, and an air-conditioned studio, and the banishment of Blue Angels fighter jets from Seafair for the rest of eternity.

I composed a letter of complaint about Maia in my mind: "She is a lovely girl, I’m sure, but she clearly has no idea what she’s doing. Kindly get rid of her so I can have a nicer prenatal yoga experience. Yours truly, Cranky Pregnant Yoga Snob."

Really, what could one say? I knew she was a beginning teacher. She told us so, and also I recognize some of the New Teacher hallmarks, because I have displayed them myself in countless middle school English classes. Hadn't I wanted compassion from my students when I was struggling? I recalled how hard I had worked as a new teacher. How much I wanted to do everything right. How impossible it was for me to do very much at all right, because I was young and clueless and inexperienced. But damn, my heart was there.

And so, I had to admit, as I rolled onto all fours, was Maia’s.

I decided to abandon my mental letter of complaint. I settled into my modified pigeon pose and just focused on releasing all the tension in my hips. Afterward, Maia led us into what she called “vocalizing,” which was really a way to practice making the unattractive noises we would make while riding the waves of labor. This, I could use. I gave into it.

“Aahhhhhh,” I moaned. And with that came notion that this class was a chance for me to practice compassion for someone else when I didn’t feel like it. I did not relish the opportunity like I thought a good yogi should: The day was bleeding hot (no A/C, another thing to add to the letter of complaint), the Blue Angels were screaming right overhead, I had heartburn and my toes were cramping. If anyone deserved an hour of pure self-compassion, it was me.

But that was not on the day’s agenda.

So I dropped the attitude and kept breathing.

"Good For You, Honey!"

2008-07-28T18:03:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered about the responses you get when you tell people you're a stay-at-home mom? I have come to believe these responses say so much about the person giving them, and so little about you.

For example, there's the fierce, "Good for you! That is so awesome!" which always makes me suspect the person I am talking to thinks I'm a right-wing homeschooler (I am not), or that I am doing something righteous (I am not). I often feel the person is about to embark upon a long speech about the selfishness of women these days, how they don't understand that what a child needs is his mother, etc., etc. My response: a small smile. (An interesting aside: most of the people who give me this particular response are men.)

Another one I get is this: "How fun! You're so lucky to have that option." I believe this person wishes he/she had that option, or that his/her parents had that option. If they asked (which most people don't) I would tell them that part of the reason I am a SAHM is because my mom never was and I always wished she could be. So I understand this response, but I also think it could be very wrong when applied to someone else. Like, someone who doesn't really have the "choice" whether or not to stay home with the kids for whatever reason. My response: a small smile.

When people find out that I used to be an English teacher, they will sometimes ask, "Do you think you'll go back when the kids are older?" My response: Hell, no. When they're older they'll be playing with matches and sipping off my liquor bottles after school. (Well, at least my daughter and her friends will be while my son is at the chess club meeting.)

Here's one that I heard recently, from three or four moms: "Oh, God! I could never do that. One week I had to stay home with my kid because he had the flu and I almost killed myself. I was so bored. I mean, hats off to you, but..."

One of these women also complained that even though she and her husband both had important jobs, his always trumped hers because he's a doctor. She was totally over it. "So I'm the one who has to come home early if the kid is sick because some patient tried to commit suicide. Like I care!" I don't think she meant to be callous, but her point was taken. It gets old when your life is always the one being shunted aside "for the children."

For my part, I don't like the "Good for you, Honey!" response because what the person giving it doesn't understand is that I'm commitment-averse and I hate working for a living. I am a much more productive member of society now that I am raising kids and gardening and cooking and being a good friend and sending flowers to my grandma and teaching the odd yoga class than I EVER was as someone's paid employee. Some people might think I am a loser for this reason (my ex-boyfriend's smirking face comes to mind). Maybe I haven't lived up to my potential. I'm not sure what kind of potential that might be, but I've a feeling being a 7th grade English teacher wasn't it.

This is my potential right now.

Good for me.

(And another thing. How do these "good for you honey" people know that I'm not a big old princess who hires out 60 hours of childcare a week so I can play tennis and paint my nails? Hmmm? Is it the pasty skin and scraggly fingernails that give it away?)

What's the Real Altitude?

2008-07-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

After giving it a lot of thought - say, about ten years - I finally went to a naturopathic doctor. Enough was enough with the meds, already. I could handle them making me stupid, but I could NOT handle them making me fatter. I've been very patient with this over the last two years, but really, I want to wear my old clothes again.

I sat on a padded Ikea chair in the naturopath's waiting room and tackled her multi-page intake form. What were my bowel movements like? Had I ever been raped? How often did I drink and had I ever been treated for it? All easy to answer. Then came this one:

How would I describe my general emotional state?

Well, I'm here about depression, right? So hadn't I better write some word that describes me at my worst? Like, "spent" or "overwhelmed" or "seething with rage"?

The truth was that another, very different word had immediately sprung to mind. But I didn't trust it. Yet if it wasn't that word, then what word would it be?

"First thought, best thought," says my teacher, Denise. All right , I thought. And I wrote the word "contentment."

Immediately I left my body and viewed this scene from somewhere in the upper corner of the calm, purple, wellness-center-themed room. Ok, I said, let's get this straight. You're a not-actually-fat person seeing a specialist to get off meds for your depression because they make you fat and stupid. Yet you write that your general emotional state is "contentment." Are you really content? Are you really having a problem?

I came back to my body and said to that voice, in the nicest possible way, "Oh, do shut up." Then I finished filling out the forms.

So, contentment. This is a huge milestone. This is a revelation. Nay, a revolution! A revolution has taken place inside my mind! Thank God for all the yoga, the meditation, the loving husband, the children, my good friends, the flowers blooming in my garden, the blue sky, all the suffering that is now GONE!

Or maybe it's just the meds.

Still Growing Up

2008-06-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

“If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.”
-Ram Dass

Last week my 5-year-old son was diagnosed with a physical problem that will require physical therapy twice a day for some time. As the therapist explained to me the details of his home program, I listened with interest and asked insightful questions about muscles, bones, and the forms of the exercises.

“This is great,” I thought. “I study yoga. I totally get this. I can do this with him and it’ll be a fun, yoga-like thing. He’ll love spending the special time with me.”

I’m so dumb sometimes. Ten minutes into our first session of “yoga stretches” I realized I was close to actually smacking him and his sister, who wouldn’t allow me to focus on Jonah for more than five seconds at a time. She jumped on my back, giggling maniacally, demanding that I observe her special yoga poses. She threw things at Jonah, and she harassed the dog (who insisted on being a part of the action, too). For his part, Jonah was claiming thirst, bathroom urgency, and unexplained itchiness all over his body.

(“Keep it light,” the therapist had stressed to me. “It has to be fun.”)

“Why are you acting like such a silly-billy?” I hissed to Jonah during this session. I didn’t call him a dumb-ass, but I thought it.

“It’s just that I’m sooooo itchy,” Jonah explained, falling out of his supine groin stretch in order to rub his knobby ankles together and scratch his legs. His falling out of the posture was complete, as he is built like a noodle and behaves like one that is hanging from a fork. I literally had to re-form him back into the shape.

This new routine in our lives happened to fall in the same week that I taught my first yoga class. I went into the studio thinking I totally understood what these postnatal women needed, simply because I had been there myself, twice. And plus I knew a few things about yoga.

The students barely restrained their irritation throughout the class. They looked at me as if to say, “Why are you asking me to hold this pose for so long? I don’t want to pay close attention to the position of my tailbone right now. Would you please bring back our real teacher?” I noticed that many of my instructions were not followed. I found this strange and disheartening.

It is the same way I have been feeling with Jonah as we struggle through our twice-daily “yoga stretches.” Only the difference is, I have power over him. Because he is completely dependent on me, I can snap at him and he’s not going to take his yoga mat to another studio.

Where is the love and compassion? I approached this physical therapy thing not with concern for Jonah, but a desire to see myself succeed at helping him. It is the same with my yoga students. I say want to be useful to them, but when I enter the room, I really want to be GOOD.

My ego is at the forefront, not my heart.

I have watched my yoga teachers make compassion look easy for years. Yet they have always said that showing true compassion for our loved ones is one of the most advanced spiritual practices we can undertake.

Don’t I know it.

Living on the Right Side of the Brain

2008-05-26T21:21:00.000-07:00

This just in: engaging in only left-brain activities inhibits happiness, peacefulness, and well-being.

So concludes Jill Bolte Taylor, MD, a brain researcher at Harvard. And she would know: she had a stroke, lost the use of her left brain, and experienced nirvana. She discovered that when she left behind logic, sense of time, analysis, and story-making, all functions of the left brain, she could contact what she calls "the deep, inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres."

While I stood in my kitchen and read the article about Dr. Taylor, I continually pounded the counter and said, "Yes. Yes. YES." The yogis and the Buddhists have been patiently explaining this for thousands of years! I find it very gratifying to see another soul on this earth giving up exclusive worship of the left brain. To boot, she's a scientist!

Being unable to release the left brain is a problem. In mothers, I see a particular frustration that the list-making, multi-tasking part of our brains (left) can't shut up long enough for us to give our attention to anything else. Like, our own peace of mind, the beauty of our children's souls, or perhaps what's in our partner's underpants.

In addition to having amassed a lifetime of training mostly in the skills of the left brain, on top of really needing those tools to manage family life, the intense feeling of protection and danger that many women feel when we have babies can cause us to plunge into a constant fight-or-flight readiness. So we're secreting all kinds of danger-hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which tax our bodies and literally burn us out. (The authors of Women's Moods, a fantastic book on the subject, call this "brain drain.")

And we wonder why we can't find calm or restoration in our lives.

Before I go further on this tangent, let me bring my thoughts back around to left brain-right brain and Jill Bolte Taylor. For a couple years I've been fixated on the influence hormonal fluctuations have on a mother's mental health. Reading about Dr. Taylor's research lends another facet to my inquiry into this and other subjects, such as the effects of meditation and yoga for moms.

While the right side of the brain is linked with intuition, seeing relationships among various things, and "non rational" thought (i.e., thought not requiring fact or reason), which are typically typed as feminine qualities, I believe that many mothers spend their days smack in the middle of their left brains. Scheduling, talking, planning, and organizing are all left brain functions. For myself, when I spend too much time there and only there, I get overwhelmed and undernourished. I need some relief, some softness, some largeness. This is when my head feels like concrete. My brain needs the other side to fire and liquefy some of that rock.

It's that overwhelming sense of depletion that I experience and observe in other mothers. Now I'm thinking about it in terms of our brain hemispheres.

What is one thing you can do to play on the curvy, holistic, nonverbal side of your brain? What gives you a great sense of relief and openness when you think of it? How would you like to leave your task-master behind for some part of the day?

Does My Mind Look Fat in This?

2008-05-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

Today I am aware of my failures as a mother. And a wife. And a friend, a daughter, and a person in general. You could say that I have been meditating upon these failures all day. That's what it is when we focus so completely on one thing; it's a meditation.

So I am meditating in this way as I drive my car when a message that someone told me once runs through my mind. Who was the messenger? The writer Anne Lamott? The Zen monk Thich Nhat Hahn? My mom? Who knows? But it comes, as if by magic. Here it is:

Listen to me.
I want to tell you a secret.
There is nothing wrong with you.
There never was anything wrong with you.

But I looked so fat in all the swimsuits I tried on today. And I should've been at home with my little girl, who needs me so much. Is it worth it for me to leave her with the sitter just so I can burn fossil fuels to drive to a department store and try on synthetic swimsuits that make me look fat?

There is nothing wrong with you.

It's all well and good when I have my clothes on. I can fool everyone, even myself, that I'm not gaining weight, as long as I'm not standing naked in front of a 3-way mirror under flourescent lights. When am I going to get myself in order?

There is nothing wrong with you.

Let's just say for a moment that I'm not fat. Then why am I having all these deflating thoughts? Is this depression talking? Are my hormones fluctuating again? Is my mind stuck, for no reason at all, on the negative self-talk radio station Anne Lamott so accurately calls KFKD?

Let's say it is. I decide to let my brain go on with its prattle, minus my attention. I pop in a meditation CD. I am driving across the floating bridge. I am turning my attention to the sound of Thich Nhat Hahn's voice.

"Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out." BONNNG goes the bell.

There never was anything wrong with you.

This is so much more pleasant. I am enjoying the feel of my breath between sounds of the bell. I am feeling a nice warm feeling spread through my body.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with me.

Knocking Boots; the Married Version

2008-04-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

I stood in the kitchen slapping together PB&J's while my husband, at the kitchen table, scrounged through a pile of my son's laundry to find matching socks.

The sock situation frustrated him.

"Jonah has fewer socks every day," he complained.

I shrugged. Matt worries about some things, I worry about others.

"We should just throw this one away," he said. I happened to have the gargbage drawer opened at the moment, so I stood back and pointed into it while making meaningful eye contact with Matt. He lobbed the white sock across the kitchen. It flopped over the edge of the garbage bin. I picked it up and inspected it.

"This is a perfectly good sock," I said. "Let's just save it. The other one might be in the wash."

"I guess so," he said. He held out his hand for me to toss the sock back across the kitchen.

"Are you guys flopping socks?" Audrey asked. She was at the counter pretending to spread jam on a piece of bread, but really licking the knife.

I smirked. "Is that like knocking boots?" I asked Matt.

"Is that what I think it is?" he asked.

I smiled. "Yup. And I guess flopping socks is what married people do."

Jesus and the Red Dress

2008-03-21T14:15:00.000-07:00

One Easter, when I was nine or so, I spent the morning with my parents eating chocolate and our typcal holiday breakfast of eggs and bacon. Then I settled onto the sofa with a copy of the Bible.

There was a pause while my parents digested this heretofore unwitnessed Bible-reading scene.

"What are you doing?" my mom asked.

"Looking for Easter," I said, flipping through the fine pages. Would there be a chapter heading entitled "Easter: What it All Means"?

"Well, hurry it up, because we have to get ready to go to Aunt Rhonda's," she said.

This led to a Q & A about why we got together at Aunt Rhonda's for Easter, and why we brought chocolate eggs and Peeps in little baskets for the cousins, and what any of it had to do with this book I was holding.

"Well," she said, pausing at the edge of the living room in her nightgown and bathrobe. "This is the day that Jesus rose from the dead."

She obviously didn't know.I turned my attention back to the Bible. I wanted the story. I wanted the back story. I wanted the spiritual signifiance.

I still want the spiritual significance of most things (though Christian holidays in America no longer rank high on my list). I want my children to know the spiritual significance of things, too. When they begin to wonder what it all means, I want them to have some tools, some steps to take, so they don't have to scramble through impenetrable books when they're supposed to be getting dressed for Aunt Rhonda's. In fact, Matt and I have been knocking around the idea of finding a church we could tolerate for, oh, eight years or so. Since he was raised a Unitarian, we thought we might check that out. Since Unitarians tend not to be connected with witch burnings, gropes for political power or abortion-clinic bombings, I figured I could probably stomach it.

Reader, I figured wrong.

When the day finally came that we had agreed to meet my mother-in-law at her Unitarian church here in Seattle, with the kids, I was gripped with the realization that I would much rather stay home and stick my hand down the garbage disposal. I flung my clothes on the bed. I sighed heavily and stomped around the room. I wanted to wear serious lingerie. I wanted stiletto heels. I wanted something that said, "I don't belong in church."

In the car ride over, my husband and I didn't say a word. The children filled the silence with their own arguments about whose turn it was to hold the Red Robin balloon that we'd left in the car the day before. Finally, I spat, "Remind me why we are doing this? To make your mother happy?"

"Because we agreed that we wanted to do this, a long time ago. Remember? Remember how we talked about wanting to find a place we like for the kids?"

"Yeah," I admitted with great bitterness. I couldn't remember what that felt like, to want to find a church for the kids. I couldn't remember what it felt like to want that for myself. I had yoga now, I had Tantra to delve into, I had meditation and my yoga community. What could I possibly want with nice white people dressed in ironed clothing sitting with pleasant smiles on their faces?

"You obviously don't want to go," he said.

"That doesn't matter," I snapped. "I'm going." The children, previously riotous in the back seat, went quiet.

By the time we pulled into the parking lot, he was telling me that I had a problem with church and was acting like a brat and was going to ruin it for everyone else.

I denied everything except acting like a brat. And I pressed on with my commitment by rising from the car and unbuckling the kids.

We filed into the entry and began searching for Matt's mother. I looked away when nice ladies wearing big "WELCOME NEWCOMERS" badges on their bosoms caught my eye. I stalked over to the tea and coffee table. I had put on my most masculine, clunky boots, the heels of which now pounded the scrubbed wooden floor. I wondered, while pouring apple juice into paper cups for the children, why the idea of going to church always makes me want to show up in a red cocktail dress, smoking.

Inside the sanctuary, I looked around at the other families. I paid close attention to the expressions of the men. Were they dragged here by their wives? Was this their choice? Why did I think it might not be?

During the service, a storyteller came to the front and asked all the children to gather round. She was clever, and warm, and amusing, and the children responded to her with laughter and rapt attention. When she sent them back to the pews, I stood to be sure Jonah and Audrey were finding their way. I saw Jonah holding Audrey's hand, leading her confidently back to us. She followed mutely, her blue eyes wide and vulnerable. For a moment, I was swept up in the feeling of belonging, of goodness. "Those are my kids," I wanted to tell someone.

But then the singing started, and I stood silently while on either side of me Matt and his mother sang reedily into their hymn books.

The service drew its content from the Gospel of Recycling. I kid you not. They talked about green living. I was deeply unmoved. I couldn't get into the mediocre art hanging on the walls. I couldn't feel any power in the dull hymns. I felt exasperated by the relentless, nice humanism of the place. It felt like being in a public school, only everyone was better behaved and a lot older. My kids liked the place and my mother-in-law was clearly pleased that we were there, but I just couldn't feel anything there but a great urge to bolt.

I don't know how we are going to bring a formal spiritual lfe to our children. When my mother-in-law is here on her long visits, she can take them to church. I have no problem whatsoever with anything they are going to learn at a Unitarian church.

I just don't want to go.

How to Tell When It's Time to Get Laid

2008-03-20T18:08:00.001-07:00

1. While watching the PBS show "Zoboomofoo" with the children, your mind wanders to what the fit, handsome Kratt brothers might look like out of their adventure-wear shorts. In the duck pond. With you.

2. While flipping through the Sunday New York Times Men's Fashion issue, you begin to sweat a little bit. You think you have never seen so much luscious man-skin, so many firm torsos and pouty mouths in one place. Not to mention the photo of Posh Spice's husband modeling a pair of underwear between muscular, spread thighs. What a magnificent pack-

"Mommy? Can you get me a snack?"

-age! My, it really is gettin' warm in here.

"In a minute!" Flip.

3. Again, while in front of the TV (it's been a long, cold winter), Handy Manny's toolbelt holds your fascination for longer than necessary. Handy Manny is a computer-animated character. But he's a grown man. And he's in your living room.

4. You count the minutes until your husband is due home, and not just so that he can take the critters off your hands.

5. You suddenly understand what your husband may have felt during all those nights when he begged you for sex. You were breastfeeding or postpartum or exhausted by too many fights about apple juice with the toddler, so you more or less told him to go in the bathroom with a bottle of lotion. Suddenly you want to make it up to him.

6. After a quick calculation that takes into account the flu that recently ravaged the household, the business trip, the weekend away with your best friend, your period and the long night your wee one spent wired on pediatric cold meds, you realize: it's been awhile.

Then again, maybe you're just ovulating.

There's Nothin' Wrong With Her That A Hundred Dollars Won't Fix

2008-03-05T10:19:00.000-08:00

The sun comes out around here and we soggy Seattlites take our socks off on our front porches to air out the webbing between our toes. Everyone's happy. Everyone except me.

On me, the unseasonably long stretch of sunny days had a deranging affect. It was as if the bright light illuminated the dirt and disorder of my kingdom. My grip on sanity began to loosen. I was alerted and put on standby for depression by these warning signs:

1. I wrote a post about how unambitious I am.
2. I started getting anxious about teaching yoga. I started to doubt that I really wanted to do that. This lead to feeling like a loser.
3. I stopped answering the phone and picking up the mail.
4. When friends invited me out, I didn't want to go.
5. I decided that once and for all, I am not all that cute and I should just get used to it.
6. I fell into deep naps during Audrey's afternoon "rest time."
7. I burst into tears while talking to a sweet friend over green tea at the Madison Park Starbucks.
8. I began to feel that my children were making me sick.
9. I began to feel jealous of other writers.
10. I became paralyzed by the piles of CRAP around my house. I mean the papers, the kid artwork, the wrappers, the empty boxes, the broken crayons, the drawers that won't open because they are stuffed indelicately and haphazardly with CRAP, the drifts of pine needles and dirt that are collected in the corners of my porches and deck, the rotting front steps, the peeling paint of the south side of the house, the yoga teacher homework waiting to be done, the field of dog poop that is my backyard, the unanswered pleas for prenatal yoga subs from various members of my yoga community, the unpaid bills, the dog-eared catalogs, shall I go on?
11. I lost myself in fantasies about getting a studio apartment or office space or a room somewhere OFF-SITE so I could read and write and meditate alone and leave my own stuff around and not be disturbed by anyone. I began to think this was the answer to all my problems. If I could JUST have that, everything else would fall into place.

The sun is only partly to blame. More significantly, our beloved sitter who has been keeping me rational for a year and a half now has gone on to better her life in graduate school. She can only come a few hours a week.

FUCK ME.

For about two weeks, all I did was cry, obsess over all the stuff that needs to be done, drive my children to and from their schools, arrange playdates, cook 3 meals a day, tidy the house, do load after load of laundry, manage The Master Calendar that runs our lives, and ask myself, in the words of the Talking Heads, Well, how did I get here?

This isn't really my life. Oh, God, is this really my life?

Then, my mother-in-law took pity upon me (or had a sudden surge of desire to be with her grandchildren every day)and took the kids off my hands unexpectedly a few times.

Suddenly, the sun feels good. I made some appointments, I hired someone to fix the gutters, I bought some more clothes for the children, and I ate about a half a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread.

I'm smiling again and I can sleep without first going through a huge list of stuff that has to be done and despairing that there is no bloody hope of it ever happening.

See, I'm NOT getting depressed, but I probably WOULD if I didn't have some help. There's nothin' wrong with me that a babysitter won't fix.

Sometimes the answer is so simple.

*title quote by Tom Waits

March Blues

2008-03-03T20:23:00.000-08:00

Today I listened to the entirety of Simon and Garfunkel's Collected Works.

Tomorrow it's going to be Bob Dylan.

My state of mind isn't going anywhere good, anytime soon.

Do Your Yoga and All is Coming

2008-02-13T17:40:00.000-08:00

“Do not think you must have something extraordinary to show people. [The fruit of your yoga practice] has to come naturally, not artificially. So work, and let it come or let it not come, but continue your practice. Then, even if you have a family life and family commitments, there are no problems.”
-B.K.S. Iyengar, from the Tree of Yoga

So work, and let it come or not come.

This idea is a balm to my mind. My crazy mind usually can’t forget about all the things I have not achieved. It reminds me almost every day of the job titles I have not held, or the people I’ve met who didn’t respect me, how I haven’t earned the right to call myself anything but a female human, aged 36, sucking resources and stinking up the planet like every other ordinary person. It asks me what I have got to show for myself.

It’s ironic that my mind offers me this thought so often, because at the same time, I really am not an ambitious person. I have been reckless when attempting to write novels that had no purpose, foolhardy when I took jobs for which I was woefully unqualified, and arrogant when I overtook projects because I didn’t like the way someone else was doing them and thought I could do better. But really, truly, ambitious in the way we think of it? No.

I am playing with yoga very carefully now as I tread the teacher’s path. I do not want to become ambitious with yoga. I do not want to become greedy with yoga. Ambitions, when they come to me, tend to be short-lived. Then I become so disappointed with myself. At the same time, not having enduring ambitions to, say, become a famous writer before I hit forty, saves me from so much grief! With ambition comes attachment to outcome. If there is one place in my life that I do not want to be attached to outcome, it’s in yoga.

Once my best friend asked me, if I loved yoga so much, why didn’t I become a teacher? I made a face. “I don’t want to have too many goals in yoga,” I said. “I don’t want to worry too much about getting my heels to the floor in downward-facing dog by next month, for example. I enjoy the way my practice serves me right now.”
Then I went crazy and found a new purpose in life, which is to support the mommies of the world. One way I want to do this is through teaching yoga to pregnant ladies. Now that I am training to be a teacher, people ask me, “So you want to open your own studio?”

We’re funny creatures. We’re always thinking of the next step. Anne Lamott, in her great book Bird by Bird, says she writes only as far as the headlights shine, which is to say, she goes a little, looks, goes a little farther, looks, goes a little farther. She doesn’t run ahead where there is nothing. I like this approach in general, and especially in what I’m doing with yoga and my “supporting mommies” vision.

As to the “family life” part of the above quote, I must admit it’s comforting to hear the father of yoga in the West, also a father of six children, believed that one could have a meaningful spiritual practice even in the midst of family life. I have often wondered about this. Often I have wondered about this while doing yoga poses in my living room with my children crawling all over me. But, says Mr. Iyengar: “The yogis of ancient India were householders, and reached the zenith of yoga while living amidst household activities.” Here I must respectfully point out that the yogis of ancient India were not personally bearing children. They were all men. Even so, this doesn’t discredit Mr. Iyengar’s following statement: “You have to find out your own limitations. This is what yoga teaches: first, to know your limitations, then to build from them.”

Oh. So what I’m doing with my struggle to balance my responsibilities to myself and my family is exactly what I am supposed to be doing. Maybe there’s not some other, better, easier way to do it.

What do you think, readers? Do you ever feel like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing?

Can I Get an Early Dismissal?

2008-02-06T16:48:00.000-08:00

“Go away.

No, really.”

This is what I’ve been telling my children all day. I woke up mean. The meanness was inspired by my daughter’s every-15-minute disruptions last night, between the hours of 9:30 and midnight. “Mommy, I have a tummy ache. Mommy, I need to be tucked in. Mommy, I want the light on. Mommy, I need some medicine. Mommy, I want you to sleep with me.” Worse were the moments when I was ripped from dreamland by Audrey’s raspy breath at my ear. She just came in to breathe and stare at me.

To be fair, her behavior was probably induced by the cold medicine I gave her at bedtime. Decongestant reacts with Audrey’s blood roughly in the same manner as a stimulating street drug might; such as, say, cocaine. Even though it wasn’t her fault, technically, I fell asleep so full of unexpressed rage that when morning came, I rose from bed with a great urge to kick the shit out of something.

On top of it I feel absolutely no creativity or interest toward my little wards today. I look at them and my mind offers nothing.

There must be something.

Is it too early for a drink? I thought, at nine a.m.

Later, an idea came. I will finally send out thank you cards for Christmas presents. Audrey can put stickers on the envelopes. Yes. Expressing gratitude is exactly the antidote for my foul disposition today. But the “Curious George” movie was on TV, and setting Audrey in front of it afforded me the opportunity to clean the entire house. For that time at least, I wasn’t growling at my daughter.

Here is the central problem of parenthood for me today: I’m in a crappy mood and I don’t have any patience for anyone’s nonsense. Yet my daughter is also in a crappy mood. She’s been in a crappy mood for about three months. She looks at me having difficulties and says, in so many words, “Like I care! Get my freakin’ juice.” Absent of motherly love, I perform my motherly duties with all the enthusiasm of a hungover 7-11 employee with irritated facial piercings.

There’s a great line in the book, “The Big Rumpus” that describes parenthood perfectly. It’s something like, “Being a parent is like getting off your job at Burger King just in time to start your shift at the coal mine.” When approached with the right attitude, such a life doesn’t necessarily have to be miserable, but there are days when I just want to be a three-year-old. When I want someone else to put up with my nonsense.

After the office lady at Jonah's school called to ask me sweetly if I had forgotten that today was an early dismissal, I pretty much gave up. I took the kids to Vios, set them loose in the play area, and ate a hummus plate I didn’t want. I kicked back with a weekly newspaper and read about all the upcoming shows I won’t be going to. It wasn’t exactly grace. And on the way home, Audrey threw a tantrum about some bullshit, and then she knocked Jonah over on the sidewalk.

There are two more hours until dinner and Audrey keeps trying to touch the keyboard.

Now is it too early for a drink?

Brokeback Soul

2008-01-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, around this time, I went with my husband to see "Brokeback Mountain." I was in love with Jake Gyllenhall because he's so damn cute and has a special place in my heart because I watched "Bubble Boy" while in the first stages of labor with Jonah. I still haven't gotten over him.

Heath Ledger's character, Ennis, devastated me completely. He reminded me of my grandfather. All the people in that movie reminded me of my grandfather's people. Not too many of them are left on this earth, including my grandfather, and for the first time in awhile I felt their absence in my bones. I missed their speech and their smell (cornbread, bacon and coffee). Ennis captured some essence of my grandfather that I have not been able to catch in my own writing. I felt that Grandpa and his whole generation were wiped out or close to it, and the world was poorer for it. I sure was.

And then the story, well, the story I had read years ago when I was in love with E. Annie Prouxl's writing. It blew me away because she matter-of-factly portrayed two Montana tough guys as lovers, though lovers in the most animal sense. More accurate would be to call them fuckers, because in the story, that's what they did, on hard floors and in the dirt. It was violent and they hated each other for it.

"Brokeback Mountain" director, Ang Lee, kept this essence and added so much more to create a decades-long love/hate story, and told of the destruction of all the lives caught in its orbit. That tragedy, all the tragedies strung together, churned up more longing, regret, and sadness my body.

And then there was the wife of Ennis, who did her laundry by hand in the kitchen sink while the kids cried in their cribs. This was the life my grandmother had when she was sixteen, eighteen, twenty. This is the life so many women have, in fact, most of us mothers have, one way or another. At the time I saw the movie, my second baby was a year old, and I was unable to assimilate to the life of mothering two toddlers. I didn't have to wash my clothes on a washboard in the sink, and I didn't live on a ground floor apartment around the corner from my grocery store job on a Texas plain, but for some reason I couldn't shake that image of Michelle Williams scrubbing clothes and yelling at Heath Ledger to please pick up one of the dirty babies.

Plus there was the painful, devastating love between the two men that was never fully realized and never calmed. That terrible love that made them sick and crazy.

AFter the movie, my husband and I went home and went to bed. I didn't get up again for about two weeks. It wasn't the movie that did it to me, really; I was primed for a breakdown. I'd been yelling and crying for weeks. Something about my life had gotten out of control. But the spirit of that movie, and Heath Ledger's performance in particular, opened a gate to my own inner drama and my own pain.

There was no question of fighting what came. It was as if the ocean decided to roll over me, take me out, fill me with its salt and force me down to the muddy floor where the mutated, one-eyed creatures live.

I'll never get over Heath.

Which of My Darlings Shall I Murder Today?

2008-01-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

I've neglected to tell you that I'm operating on half-doses of medication these days. My life is stuffed to capacity and sometimes I even have to schedule pee breaks, so it seemed like a choice time to introduce a new health regimen and take away one of the pillars of sanity in my life.

It's not like I'm doing anything else right now.

I'm not, like, training to be a yoga teacher. Or raising two little kids. Or writing. Or maintaining friendships and family relationships, or a marriage. Or performing most of the household duties, planning, driving, phoning, and organizing for my wittle nuclear family. (I don't know who is going to start sweeping the porches, taking the dog to the park every day or cleaning the bugs out of the light fixtures, but they better do it soon, 'cause...DAMN.) Not to mention the bleeding grand jury I'm still on. And I'm learning Italian.

I'm also trying to eat better and, dare I say it, work out. (I don't want to go into detail, but I'll just say that I am not, and have never been, a gym girl, and I really hope that my lame fumblings on the treadmill at the Y are amusing to someone.)The main purpose of my "get healthy" plan is to pave the way for going off meds altogether. I'ts about stabilizing blood sugar and increasing opportunities for natural seratonin production and absorption. But the thing is,

I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT.

What I consider "this shit" will change from week to week, but I really don't have the capacity to entertain all of it all the time. I know that, yet wince at the thought of stopping anything I do. (Except maybe housework and planning. Sadly, my maid and secretary have banded together to start their own company, and they didn't invite me to stay on as a client. Oh wait, I never had a maid or secretary...)

So whom do I ignore today? My friends? Do I let those phone messages and e-mails gather dust for awhile? How about one of my children? Audrey clearly needs a lot of attnetion right now, but just because Jonah is so easy to ignore, doesn't mean he should be ignored. How about my husband? Oh, wait, he's already being ignored! Maybe it will have to be my family. I don't really want to talk to them anyway. My son's school? My daughter's school? I get a lot of notices about ways I can better participate in my child's learning experience.

And which of the other things in my life that I hold precious shall I ignore or let go of? My yoga? My yoga training, now that I've finally figured out my next possible voaction in life? My writing? Books?

What will it be?

I Want My F***ing Meditation

2008-01-14T21:18:00.000-08:00

On our last full day in Hawaii, I got up early on a grey, wet morning to do a teacher-led walking meditation with some other people at the resort. I was a wee bit hungover and feeling the effects of not enough citalopram coursing through my veins. (Since deciding to stay in Hawaii an extra three days, I'd been rationing fractions of those pills to keep from going into full withdrawal.)A meditation class with like-minded people was just what I needed.

I stood in line at the coffee stand at the foot of our tower. I kept standing in line at the coffee stand at the foot of our tower. Ok, everything in Hawaii takes twice as long because nobody is in a hurry, and that's a good thing, because in real life we're always in a hurry as a matter of habit. Which is unnecessary most of the time.

So breathe and quit yer bitchin'. Right?

At T-minus 15 minutes, I departed the line and walked on down to the breakfast restaurant where it had taken us an hour to get served the day before. I sat at the bar. I kept sitting at the bar. If anyone had looked at me, I would have croaked, "just a cuppa coffee," but no one did, so after awhile I got up and and walked down to the very last outpost of the resort.

Things were not looking good for my well-being at that point. A drug-withrawal headache was definitely settling into my frontal lobes. My stomach felt unhappy with the number of mai tais it had been forced to digest the night before. Worst of all, I was going to be late for the class. I stood in line at this coffee stand, got served in under ten minutes, and then walked carefully along what I thought was a path to Buddha Point, cradling my hot paper cup, desperate to drink from it but knowing the coffee would singe my lips off.

At some point I looked up from the path to realize that I was not where I thought I was, and backtracked through the pools and the tropical plantings and the coconut trees to where I had begun my hand-burning journey with the cup of coffee. Tears smarted. I just needed to get to that class. I turned onto the real path to Buddha Point.

Buddha Point was one of the best things about the property. The little hill overlooked the sea and was anchored by a huge statue of a Thai version of the Buddha. It was one of the few places one could feel a sense of calm in that circus of a hotel resort. So I told myself I didn't mind waiting there for the teacher, who was also late but would surely be along any minute. I eyed a woman lingering at the edge of the grassy point who looked to be about my age. Longish hair. Glasses. A cloth bag strapped across her torso. She could be a meditator. Hell, she could be from Seattle. I smiled at her. She looked away.

I waited twenty minutes. The teacher never came.

Reader, I cried. I found an unused cabana lounge at the foot of the hill, turned its cushions upside down to the dry side, pulled the pram-like top over my head, and boo-hooed. There had been so much tension and pressure on this trip with my family. A lot of major business was happening between me and my man. My daughter had been nothing but awful. I was no longer to hold it together. I really needed a kind teacher to remind me how to find a modicum of peacefulness.

I wasn't going to get it. I cried and drank my four-dollar coffee.

After awhile I noticed a brown gecko, about the size of my thumb, wedged into a tiny crevice of the wooden frame of the lounge chair. It was completely still, and looked terrified. Or dead. It's dead, I thought, feeling sicker. The poor bastard. I'm sitting here crying over some bullshit and this precious creature has died in a fucking lounge chair.

Just to be sure, I touched the thing. It moved!

"Hah ha!" I laughed out loud.

And then I just had to laugh at myself, at my desperation. What normal person would make such a shaky pilgrimage just for the chance, for a few minutes, to go deep? Ah, well. It didn't matter. I wasn't a normal person.

I settled into the cabana cushion and gave myelf the permission to go it alone. Just for a moment. To drop into the sound of the ocean and of the maintenance guy squeegee-ing pools of rainwater off the path behind me.

I stayed in my meditation posture until I started to feel calm again. I can heal myself, I thought, getting up and looking around me.

Or maybe it was just the coffee.

What a Mess

2008-01-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I cannot seem to control the flow of objects in my house. There are too many of them, and they all need to find a place to live, and it is too big a job for one person who spends time doing things other than putting things away.

Like this morning, for instance. It's the last day of winter break for the kids. We slept late. I am allowing them to wander and play and fight and get into mischief because I am trying to write and read for awhile this morning. Having been on vacation for ten days, there wasn't much of a chance for me to do those things. I am surveying the premises from my seat at the breakfast table and things don't look good: There are still empty boxes and wrapping paper on the living room floor from the last blast of present-opening two nights ago. The mail, about two weeks' worth, is lying in heaps on the kitchen island. Also there are stacks of books piled there, as well as the travel-related contents of my giant mama-purse, which I hastily dumped out before dashing off to jury duty yesterday morning.

There is so much Christmas Crap to clean up and dispose of. All the clothes from our trip are still wadded in our suitcase. I have no clean underwear. You know, the usual post-vacation duties lie in wait. Now that my husband is gainfully employed, I do all of this myself, and it reminds me what I didn't like about SAHM-hood and housewifery in the past years when I, like, lost my mind.

One of the ways I regained sanity was by retraining my mind to see the mess around me as a part of the scenery and not something I had to clean up. I had to stop trying to correct things. I noticed that my regular mental habit was to fix my eye on something - my house, a book I was reading, other people - and decide how it should be improved. I noticed this caused mostly anguish. It gave me a permanent worry line between my eyebrows.

I am grateful to report that this mind-state wasn't permanent after all. I'm not doing it, as a habit, these days. I think the meds help a lot, and so does my yoga practice. I remember to laugh at the absurd, unstoppable fecundity of daily existence in all its servings of peanut butter toast, orange peels, plastic toys from Wal-Mart, shopping bags, dog hair, water stains, sippy cups with gnaw-marks on the spout, discarded band aids, phone calls, beeping appliances, doctor appointments, new friendships, dentist appointments, dog walks, e-mail conversations, computers, newspapers, dying plants, flaking paint, birth control, scratched floors, medications, yoga classes, malfunctioning automobiles, and the other ten thousand things that make up my home life. I can't control it, and I can't put it all in order. I can push the breakfast dishes aside and clear a space on the table to write.

And I can remember, as my teacher likes to repeat (in a the chirpy Indian accent of the teacher from who she heard this): "Do your yoga and all is coming."

Found Conversations

2008-01-03T15:08:00.000-08:00

Things I have said and overheard on Christmas Hawaii trip:

“Look, I’m just trying to understand what everyone wants to do, so there’s no reason to be bitchy with me.” [me, on cell phone, from the beach, to my mother]

“Finish your hamburger or I’ll take away your French fries.” [me, to Jonah at a restaurant]

“Please leave your penis alone.” [me, to Jonah, in airport]

“Do you have any nonalcoholic beer?” [me, to bartender at lu’au]

“I’ve always wanted to do that.” [me, to my brother, at the lu’au, after downing my dad’s beer behind his back and replacing it with a pint of O’Doul’s]

“Awesome.” [my brother to me at lu’au]

“So begins another starch-filled day.” [fit, good-looking dad to his wife in line for a breakfast buffet at the Hilton]

“I’m hot! I’m cold! I’m hungry! I don’t want to eat! I need something to drink! I’m not thirsty! No. No! NOOOOOOOOO!.” [Audrey, every day, in every location]

“Something I’ve noticed about Hawai’i is that it really dehydrates you.” [Jonah, on taxi ride to Kona airport.]

“Your dad says he’s sick today.”
“What kind of sick?”
“Says he’s dizzy, headachey, nauseous.”
“Could it be those 14 beers he drank last night?” [me and my mom to each other, on aforementioned cell phone conversation]

“They’ll split a PB&J. I’ll have whatever you’ve got that’s frosty and alcoholic.” [me, to waitress at Lagoon Grill at the Hilton.]

“You’ve been the most beautiful person everywhere we’ve gone on this trip.” [my husband, to me]

“There’a local bar called Sharkey’s up at Waikoloa Village. But I don’t recommend it because you’ll probably get beat up by some Hawaiians.” [taxi driver to my brother as we set out for a night of drinking]

“Sharkey’s? Nah, you won’t get beat up there. Well, you probably would if it was a Friday. But it’s Christmas Eve. Don’t worry about it.” [bartender at Mariott lounge, who subsequently drove us to Sharkey’s, where my brother did not get beat up.]

“Hawaii is good for Japanese people.” [Japanese fellow on Hilton tram, to our friend Ashwani, after being asked why Hawaii is so popular to people from Japan.]

How To Plan a Family Vacation in 10 Easy Steps!

2008-01-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

1. Invite alcoholic parents to stay with you, your spouse, and your two small children in a suburban-style townhouse on the edge of a lava field on the Kona coast of Hawai'i at Christmas.

2. Forget to reserve a minivan for your party of six. By divine luck, secure a 4-door sedan one week before leaving. Be sure this is the very last car available on the island, and that it is not large enough to accommodate your entire party.

3. What the hell, invite your brother.

4. Do no research before leaving. Reserve nothing, plan nothing, and laugh that "winging it" is what vacations are all about. Somehow forget that "winging it" with a 3-year-old, a 5-year-old, and two alcoholics in tow is wild and dangerous.

5. Bring along all mental and emotional baggage.

6. Once in Hawai'i, communicate with members of your party by cellphone, no less than 27 times per day. Wish desperately you could throw all the cell phones into the ocean.

7. Toward the end of your stay, become seduced by the notion of staying a few days longer in the warmth and beauty of the island. Don't worry that you're out of antidepressants. Wave off the reality that your change in plans will require dozens more frenzied calls on your motherfucking cell phone.

8. Send parents and brother home. Move into the Hilton at Waikoloa Village. This will cause a surprising amount of inconvenience and irritation among many people close to you, with whom you have plans, appointments, and commitments. Feel only mildly guilty. You're just starting to relax. This could have something to do with being away from your parents again.

9. Plant ass on ridiculous man-made beach at Hilton lagoon. Rent whatever boats and toys the kids want. Watch them have a smashing time.

10. Pretend that money is just a concept.

Bon voyage!

R.I.P., Crocodile Cafe

2007-12-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Warning: In this post, I will be strolling down memory lane. If you are over 45 or under 30, or don't listen to music or don't live in Seattle, you may find no relevance here. Unless you are a younger parent still wondering how not to become culturally pointless. Then you might relate.

Last night I met my friends Sara, Maria and Sharon for drinks at a new restaurant on Pike Street called Quinn. The surrounding blocks have changed considerably over the past few years. In fact, the place that Quinn now occupies used to be a crappy Mexican restaurant, which has always been rumoured to be so bad that I never felt the urge to eat there, no matter how young, drunk or hungry I was. Quinn is a huge improvement. In fact, most of the changes in that area are an improvement.

Sharon and I continued our quest for more whiskey at the Moe Bar down the block. Moe is part of the music club Neumo's, which first opened in 1994 as Moe. (Between now and then it had a run as an electronic-focused gay boy bar, outside of which I met a sweet cross-dresser named Greg who took me to a drag show at another place that no longer exists.) Sharon and I sat in the bar and recounted the shows we had seen in the club when it was Moe: Pavement. Tricky. Mercury Rev. Modest Mouse. Spiritualized. Superchunk. Will Oldham. Silkworm. The Folk Implosion. 5ive Style. Blues Explosion. Mike Watt.

"I must have seen fifty shows here," Sharon said. Or maybe I said. As I mentioned, there was whiskey.

So it was apropos to open the newspaper today and read that the Crocodile Cafe, Seattle music scene institution for fifteen years, abruptly shut down on Monday. No warning, no reasons given, just shut.

As if I didn't already feel a hundred years old. Now the Crocodile is gone. Like the old Moe, it'll be a memory in the minds of oldsters like me.

Here are some memories I have from the Crocodile: The owners of a coffee house where I worked in 1994 had started their business out of the Crocodile when it first opened, with an espresso cart in the little tiki hut by the front entrance. They were insane. I worked under them for a year in their crappy Queen Anne coffee house with commercial carpeting and lawn furniture and some friend's stuffed animal collection as decoration. They had a newborn and while he was cute and all, I did not have the slightest sympathy for the mother and nothing but disdain for the father. (He slept in a van outside the shop. One of my duties was to rap on the van door at 6:30 after I opened the shop up for the day. Then he would climb out, come in, sit at the bar, and wait for me to make his doppio macchiato.)

I also remember taking my dad, step mom, and cousin to the Crocodile. My cousin was in town and wanted to check out the music scene. Where else would I take him? We saw Mavis Piggot and Modest Mouse. Modest Mouse were just starting to get good shows around town then. They were fresh as daisies, cute as buttons. They rocked us hard. At one point I looked over at my dad, who was leaning sideways from the waist, head cocked, beer bottle aloft, trying to stay upright. My boyfriend and I put him and my step mom into a taxi and said goodbye. We stayed for the rest of the show.

One of my first dates with my husband was at the Crocodile. We saw Lois, an old favorite of mine from Olympia, and Beth Orton. We waited for an hour between sets but it was worth it. Beth Orton and her band squeezed themselves and their instruments onto the smallish stage and blew us away with their beauty.

I saw: Low, G Love and Special Sauce, Unrest, The Band that Made Milwaukee Famous, Joel RL Phelps, Laika, Juno, Smog, Sleater-Kinney, Stereolab. I saw terrible shows that I had to wait too long for, standing in a stuffy, smoky room holding a plastic beer cup. Once, I was hit on, in a very nice way, by two men visiting from Scotland. I was introduced to the writer Rebecca Brown there. I talked to the drummer from Juno there. I saw magic happen onstage there.

I never actually liked being there, though. Something about the feng shui, or the vibe, or the confusing Habitrail-like layout, put me off. If I wanted to drink or eat, I'd go somewhere else.

So I don't actually despair at the closing of the Crocodile. Especially now the the Showbox is hosting such great bands, and Moe is reopened as Neumo's. My life is full of other things now besides hanging out and watching bands, but I am glad there are still good places to see non-mainstream music that aren't total dumps. (Anyone remember The Off Ramp? RCKNDY? Enough said.)

My last memory of the Crocodile: Driving my son's hipster babysitter down there one night after she finished her shift at my house.

"Do you know where it is?" she asked. I shot her a look. "OK," she said as we approached Blanchard on Third. "You can just drop me here."

"It's ok, I don't mind taking you all the way there," I chirped. It was late. She was alone. It was Belltown.

"No, really," she said. "Here is fine."

You embarrassing old person with baby seats in the back of your Saab.

The Purple Lady

2007-12-06T20:47:00.000-08:00

As I rode the bus through Capitol Hill to downtown for my jury duty the other day, I felt a sense of joy and calm. I don't know why; maybe it had to do with the divine wisdom of my iPod, which shuffled through fabulous song after fabulous song. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I was getting out of the house and away from regular life for a whole day. Maybe it was because I was bobbing my head to the music and closing my eyes and smiling when a particularly good crash of guitars filled my ears. Whatever. I rode the feeling.

That day people seemed especially irritated to be awake and pushing past other people to find a seat on the crowded, steamy bus. I felt for them. Some of them were probably running late. A few might have been hungover, or wrestling with sadness. You just never know with people. In any case, I turned my attention to my music and folks walking down the street. The bus stopped in front of Seattle Central Community College and I looked across Pine to the loose congregation standing in front of the Egyptian Theater.

People were looking down the hill, toward the bus that may be coming any second. Many wore black. They clutched umbrellas and laptop cases. They looked worried and annoyed. One lady, a middle aged woman with dark brown hair stood out for me. She was wrapped in a big purple sweater/shawl thing, and her expression said that she was glad to be here. She looked peaceful. She looked happy.

She looked so peaceful and happy that I smiled. I continued to look at her, drink her in. Then I beamed her a bunch of love.

Then another good song came on.

It was a good morning.

I told my husband about the Purple Lady over dinner that night and he smirked. To illustrate my feeling further, hoping he might believe these kinds of moments are more than hormonal surges, I recounted a story my teacher has told about such a moment. As she tells it, she drove past a garbage truck one morning and was inexplicably overcome with gratitude. He laughed.

I guess not everyone experiences these moments of unaccounted-for grace.

Try it today. See what happens.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

2007-12-03T16:01:00.001-08:00

This week, the noise of full-time parenting is getting to me. I don't mean the cartoons on TV or the clomping of shoes throughout the house, or even the banging of utensils on the kitchen table.
I mean the talking. The incessant, inane talking. I got to the point today where I actually asked my daughter, "Will you please stop talking to me for a minute?" She wants us to be in conversation all the time. My end of the conversation would seem to be unstimulating, as it consists mainly of such bon mots as "Mmm," "Oh, yeah?" and "I see." Yet Audrey laps up even this minimal attention as if it were mother's milk. Which, I suppose, it kind of is. But giving her actual mother's milk, way back when, was just so much...quieter.

Once I read, in some other magazine, a deconstruction of what makes Martha Stewart Living such an attractive magazine to women. It's not just the hearkening back to a simpler time when all housewives knew how to bake bread, blah, blah, blah. Mainly it is the photographs. The photographs feature lovely objects bathed in calming natural light, and they tend to be free of people. The scenes look cool and inviting, like one could just sit down at that white linen-dressed table, sniff the fresh lilacs spilling out of the pewter jug, and enjoy one's hot beverage from a vintage coffee mug. In silence.

That's SAHM porn, right there.

In this month's Esquire, Tom Chiarella writes an article about what happens when he stops chatting to everyone he meets during the day. (See the entire article here.) His conclusion is that silence affords him more power. Silence not only allows him to contain his own personal power rather than letting it leak out through his mouth all the time, but the people he encounters cede him a little something extra. By being quiet, he gains the upper hand.

This may be the case with valets at restaurants in LA, as Chiarella illustrates, but it for sure doesn't work around my house. Here's what my silence provokes: "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy did you hear me?" Alternatively, my darlings may choose to just repeat their question or comment more loudly. As if I were deaf. It makes a lot more noise.

Still, I appreciated reading a man's point of view on this subject. Had this been an article in, say, Cosmo or Allure, the title would have been something like, "His Silence: What it Means." There would be a photo above the article showing a hot man wrapped in a bathrobe, sitting on a sofa, staring at his laptop screen. On the opposite end of the sofa would be a woman in pajamas, leaning toward the man and furrowing her beautiful brow. (Obviously this woman has no children. In a parenting magazine, this article would be called, "Silence: How to Get Some.")

Sometimes when I seem particularly irritated at the end of a day, my husband will ask me if it's been a hard day with the kids. Today, no, it hasn't been hard.

Just noisy.

What Passes for Grace

2007-11-23T12:07:00.000-08:00

It's a holiday, we're traveling, and we're staying with family. I'm having difficulty loving and accepting those closest to me.

No, really.

I tried a couple of little "grace" exercises over the last couple of days. I didn't know what else to do. At one point, it was either that, or swill a Bloody Mary at 9 a.m. on the airplane and fall asleep later at a critical juncture.

My husband tries his best to make everything orderly and safe for us when we travel, which is lovely, but I respond to his Travel Personality with disproportionate irritation and eye-rolling. (Yep, he loves that.) On the plane from Seattle to Boston, we were seated a row away from each other, me across and behind him. (He had both the kids, I had a sweet young couple beside me.) At a moment when I was really getting into my inner rant about Matt's Travel Personality, I experienced a crossroads. I thought, hmm, I can continue to sit here and feel tense abou how tense I think my husband is, or I can do something else. What happens if I try a little metta meditation* on him? So I stared at his broad shoulder wrapped in an olive green cotton sweater I bought for him five years ago, and I breathed in the suffering he might have been feeling then (tension, anxiety, annoyance at bitchy wife), and breathed back goodness and peace. I did this until a flight attendant began squawking over the loudspeaker.

Then, you'll never guess what happened: Matt got up and started dancing in the aisle!

Ok, not really. Since we didn't interact for awhile, I've no idea if he actually calmed down then. But I sure calmed down. And that made me nicer. So I was one less person on that plane thinking bilious, vile thoughts. I was one more person in the world meditating, which meant I was causing no suffering at that moment. And this was all practice for me in contacting compassion for someone else when I really didn't feel like it.

And then later, when I really felt compassion for him, I offered to trade seats.

*metta is a Buddhist technique of meditation in which the practitioner breathes in the suffering of another person and sends back something positive, like liberation. It's also called "loving-kindness" meditation. This is my primitive understanding.

Rats!

2007-11-16T15:30:00.000-08:00

Rats

I’m single-parenting this week. It’s turned out to be better than I expected. I don’t have to confer with someone about every little thing, and I don’t have to wait around for someone else to do what they said they’d do. I just take care of business.

The down side is that I had to perform the manly task of hunting down a dead rodent in the basement. There was an unmistakable smell wafting up through the heating vents. Shit, I thought, how come every time Matt leaves town I have to deal with varmints? (It’s true. The last time he was gone for more than a few days, there was raccoon issue and the appearance of a hornet’s nest in the tree overhanging my car). Armed with Matt’s yellow rubber dishwashing gloves, long tongs, a plastic bag, and a flashlight, I went down into the basement to investigate. My son trailed behind me, holding his nose closed, asking me what the rat would look like, or would it be a mouse, and why was it dead, and how did I know it was dead? I pulled up a stepladder to the aluminum heating duct where I could see the corner of the big wooden rat trap hanging over the edge. I grasped it with my BBQ tongs and pulled it toward me until I saw the sad little grey lump matted with blood lying on it.

“Is that it?” cried my son, hopping from foot to foot and craning his neck toward the ceiling.

“Jonah, get out of here,” I said. “This is gross. I don’t want you to see this.”

“Mommmmmm, I want to tell you something-"

“I mean it!”

He ducked his head and walked out of the furnace room. I deposited the poor rat and its instrument of death into a plastic Safeway bag.

“Mom, it still smells out here,” Jonah reported.

I raced past him to run up the stairs and lay the animal in its final resting place. Then I had to go back and swab up the leftover gore.

After it was all over I felt victorious. I texted my husband that I had succeeded.

“Did you find the new rat hole and cover it up?” he asked me later on the phone.

“What? No. The old crib is leaning against the wall, I can’t get into that corner to even look. “ Who cared? I was a pioneer woman for God’s sake! I could do anything! I could probably rope a steer.

I’ve been living with my husband for nine years. During this time it has become clear that he and I are not cut from the same cloth, especially when it comes to dealing with, say, pestilence. His response upon seeing a rat leap from the top of a heating duct to the floor, inches from his face, was to yell and then rush upstairs to call an exterminator. Mine was to laugh hysterically and hold my hand over my heart. Left to my own timeline, I’d have called an exterminator several weeks later after sweeping up rat turds for too many days in a row. In this case, I was all about putting out the fire, and he was all about preventing one in the future.

This is as good an analogy for our respective upbringing as any. It’s no mystery that we found each other. It’s really true that opposites attract.

So while I missed him this week, I also enjoyed being my freewheeling self. My kids and I ate a lot of food on the fly. We went for dog walks at night and watched an extra movie or two this week. I let bedtimes go long when it made the kids happy. I would never do this if I were a single mom for real, because that would set me up for a nightmare, but it was fun to let things go a little lax this week.

Another bonus is that I didn’t have the chance to feel guilty about not being a better mother. I wiped my kids’ butts, I made their food, I read them 1,000 stories, I put their covers back on them at night, and no one was here to do it better.

That feels good.

Pick Up Your Shit

2007-11-05T09:30:00.000-08:00

7 a.m.

Here's the scene: dirty white tablecloth on table. One green poker chip in the center. Salt and pepper shakers. Folded over section of yesterday's newspaper. Kid's brightly-colored plastic place mats askew as if fallen from the sky. One empty foil chocolate candy wrapper. One Matchbox car, blue, upside-down, occupants presumed dead. All six dining room chairs are pulled away from the table, like everybody left in a fire.

My entire house looks like this. I can't do anything about it. No force can stem the tide.

Sometimes I feel like my real job around here, if we are to be frank, is putting items back where they belong. Because really, that's what I do all day. I put away the laundry, the food, the shoes, the coats, the toys, the mail, the recycling piles, the stray scraps of paper, the kid art, the bulletins from school, and the dog's toys. Then there are my own things, such as the contents of my huge mama-purse which regularly get dumped on the counter because I'm in a fit and can't find my keys (Chapstick, money, ID, whatever). It's ongoing. We stubbornly keep taking things out and using them. But that's not the only cause of the constant mess.

My daughter is in a power-trip phase right now where she drops things on the floor at dinner and stares at me to see what I'm going to do about it. Typically, I stare back and raise an eyebrow. Then she yells, "GET MY FORK!" Then I look away and say, "You can get it yourself."

Can you guess how this goes over with her?

"No, YOU get my fork!" she says, eyes squinched shut, fists balled.

At this point, my blood pressure rises. Nobody likes being ordered around by an imperious three-year-old, but to add to my irritation is the keen awareness that if I'd ever uttered such words at home, I'd have been smacked and sent to bed immediately.

Anne Lamott says that when you overlook a kid's bad behavior, you injure them. "You hobble their character," she says.

I believe this. So, I don't want to overlook this behavior, but I don't want to smack Audrey and send her to bed. The alternate consequences we tend to employ do not often have the intended result, and they exhaust the whole family. Still, not knowing what else to do, I pull the same ones out every time.

In any case, picking up her damn fork is the last thing I want to do at dinner, since, as I mentioned above, I've been picking things up off the floor all day. Not to mention that I would hate to set a precedent that I'm Audrey's servant. So I'll be damned if I'm picking up that fork.

And so will she.

Hence the exhaustion, noise, and stress that will ensue.

I guess this is just life with kids. Why do I expect anything different?

Anyone have any tips, techniques, or sage words they would like to share with me? I could really use them.

Is it a Sign?

2007-10-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

I'm over my embarrassment enough to explain what happened.

I was trying to apply to a writer's retreat. In order to do this, I needed to prepare a ten-page original writing sample, and two essays. I started at least six weeks before the deadline. I know myself, I know how family life goes, I know that everything creative takes at least three times longer than a reasonable person would expect.

Still, I found myself down to the wire, and struggling. You would not believe how hard I worked on this application. I haven't done that much soul-searching about my art in...well, maybe never.

The night before I was to send out the packet, as my ancient printer slowly choked out the writing sample, I gathered the rest of the materials for the application. I wrote the date on the check for the application fee: 9/25/07. I glanced at the application checklist, where the deadline was printed in bold: ***Applications must be postmarked no later than Sept. 25, 2007***.

But...

I glanced at my watch. Midnight. Midnight of September 25. Which meant that, technically, the date was now September 26. Which meant...

***All applications bearing postmarks after September 25 will be returned unopened***

...which meant I had just fucked myself.

I sat at my desk and stared at nothing. Was this for real? How had this happened?

My brother-in-law, a manic-depressive painter, happened to be in the same room, working feverishly on his own project on another computer.

"Tim," I said. "I missed the deadline."

"What?" he said. "You mean all this work you've been doing is for nothing?"

"Um, yeah, I think so. I can't believe I did this. How could I not notice the date? Oh my God, I'm a moron."

Tim, across the room, turned back to his computer screen. "I've done that many times," he said flatly.

"But I can't apply for another year," I whined.

"I've missed deadlines where I couldn't apply for another two years," he said.

How could this happen? Everyone knew my deadline! Even my husband, upon whom I rely to remember dates and deadlines. He's Rainman-like about these things. Had he not been so obsessed and focused and stressed out over his stuff that week (multiple job interviews), I feel certain that he would have corrected me that Wednesday was actually the 26th, not the 25th.

It is frustrating in the extreme that the first time I've abandoned myself completely to a creative project in a few years, I screwed it up by not knowing the date. I worked my ass off. I didn't cook or clean or walk the dog or play with the children or practice yoga for a week straight because I was so busy with this. I really had to set everything else aside to get continuity. It worked, at least creatively speaking. My tether to reality snapped, but the creative part worked. I stand by my old assertion (made cavalierly before I had children) that it takes at least six hours per sitting to write anything. (Blogs appear to be an exception, thank the Lord.)

I refuse to take this whole experience as a sign that I just should give up. Here's why: 1. I've already tried to give up writing, and failed repeatedly. 2. The triumph of finishing the writing, and the joy of doing the writing, and the pleasure of being lost in it for days and days, is better than anything else, maybe even sex. 3. I can try it again next year. 4. I fucking finished! I am a star just for that.

My dad is an artist and most of the time he doesn't know his phone number or whether or not he put on underwear that day. My brother and I like to joke that it's brain damage from a lifetime of chemical excess. Maybe it is. But there's something to the fact that he lives his life in his right brain.

Now I just need to make my own retreat happen.

Help

2007-10-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a dicey month. I won't go into details, because most of it's private. I will share that we've had two visiting relatives, a child's birthday party, four job interviews, and one massive writing project disaster.

The writing project disaster is far too embarassing to discuss. Let's just say that the combination of the maternal mind and balls-to-the-wall right-brained living are (a) fundementally incompatible, and (b) disastrous.

What's balls-to-the-wall right-brained living? That's when an artist is immersed in her work and can't quite surface into the real world of food and clocks and calendars. What's maternal mind? That's when the mind is stuffed to capacity with a list of small tasks to be completed, school schedules, and all the other basic shit we moms live our lives having to remember. Either right-brain or mom-mind can land a person locked outside the house without keys or shoes. For two weeks, I found myself alternating between the two. This was no fun for anyone. And, ultimately, it was ineffective for the purposes of actually making the deadline I needed to make.

It's been hard for me to write a word since. It just feels pointless.

The Renunciation

2007-10-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

As a tethered bird flies this way and that

And comes to rest at last on its own perch,

So the mind, tired of wandering about,

Settles down in the Self

-from The Chandogya Upanishad

Friday at noon I started yet another three-day yoga training immersion. This is my tenth in the past year. I was tired. I was also deranged by some personal iss-yews which my mind resisted relaxing about. I dragged my carcass to class, and submitted to my teachers' direction, and by and by allowed myself to step into the goodwill of my beloved tribe of yoga people.

A little. It's not easy to let go of some problem or thought that has become part of my recent identity. I can get pretty invested in it. Oh, I think, I've done all this work to get to this state of obsession! I would hate for it all to go to waste. Maybe if I obsess a little longer, I will solve my problem.

So even though I was noticing some pretty strong indications that it was time to lay down my burden for awhile, I continued to grasp it. I thought, I won't let myself be pulled into this squishy, goody-two-shoes, everything-happens-for-a-reason BULLSHIT. Never mind that it's probably true. I'm enjoying my torture. Anyway, I'm just going to end up right back here, because, hello, the problem has not been solved.

By the beginning of day two of the immersion (hour seven, but who is counting), I started to think, well, maybe I'll let it rest just while I'm in yoga class. We talked about the idea of renunciation. Denise, my teacher, asked us all the question, What happens when you think of renunciation? Several people said they felt a huge sense of relief. I said the same thing. It was true. I felt relief when I thought about giving up about half the shit I own (even my house!), my many consuming desires, and smoking, to name a few things. Just for a start. What if I didn't have to argue with myself about these things anymore? How glorious and free would I be?

Denise told us that the way the Buddhists talk about renunciation can be described thusly: Release the grasp. YES! I thought to myself. What a wonderful, uncomplicated, non-wordy, non-esoteric way to think about it. This will work for me. I scribbled into my notebook:

Release the Grasp!

"Susie," said Denise. "What is your relationship to renunciation?" I looked up at her, my pen still scribbling. I started to laugh. "There's this one thing I really don't want to give up," I admitted. "I can't get my head around it."

She nodded. "Try to observe that moment of grasping that arrives when you think of having to let go of something."

Uh huh.

"Consider the difference between gratification and fulfillment."

Okay, I know, I know. But is it so wrong to want to take the low road sometimes? Is it so bad to immerse oneself in the baser pleasures of life every now and again?

The Upanishads say that once you release your grasp on all things, you will be prepared to meet your true self, which is to say, God.

"Reaching the state of Self is 5,000 times better than any of the sense pleasures," said Denise.

All right, fuck it, I thought. Maybe there is something to this. (The fact that wise and transcendent people have been practicing these ideas for 4,000 years just isn't a good enough reason to buy into it, apparently.)

By the time we practiced yoga for 75 minutes and had reached the pose of savasana, I had undergone a subtle shift. I lay in the dark, spread out like a corpse, covered by a scratchy wool blanket. Around me, 40 or so people did the same. My teachers sang us the Gayatri Mantra, which is the most beautiful song I have ever heard. By the time they rang their little bells to signal us to start stirring again, I felt such fullness in my heart. I felt grateful, really, for the whole human experience.

I went home, ate dinner with my family, played a game of Go Fish with the kids, and put them to bed.

Maybe I am going to be ok for awhile.

Surrender Now, Obsess Later

2007-10-03T12:20:00.000-07:00

In yoga class ten years ago or so, I felt for the first time the earth beneath me. I was lying in the dark with a blanket over my prone figure. My teacher said, "Let the earth support you." I thought, okay, if you say so. I noted the floor beneath me as it met the points of my shoulder blades, vertebrae, sacrum, elbows, heels. I relaxed into it until I could feel gravity tugging at my skin, my muscles, my deep heavy bones.

By some miracle, I was not immediately swallowed up by a sinkhole. Nor was I left to scramble at some post or floorboard like the doomed passenger of a sinking ship. Nothing tilted, nothing moved, nothing hurt. I was just spread out heavily and the ground held me. I kept breathing. And that's what it was like to feel solid ground. I realized that I usually walked around as if I were about to fall through a trap door.

No wonder I was so tense.

This is what savasana does for me. And as far as I can understand, this is what it is supposed to do. Now, much of the time I struggle to quiet the shopping lists and plans for dinner and thorny conversation I need to have with some person later. After class, Honey, I tell myself. You can go back to thinking about all of this after class. It will still be there!

Sometimes, this is about as far as I get in savasana with my mind. If it's a missed opportunity for real integration of mind and body after a hard practice, well, that's what it has to be today. (Really, though, spiritual teachers say there are no wasted efforts and no missed opportunities so long as the intention and awareness are there. So if I notice that I'm having a hard time letting go of my daily mental hamster-wheel marathon, then I am more conscious than I was five minutes ago.)

Lately, my life feels disorienting and relentless. Savasana has been one of the most challenging yoga poses for me to perform. The strong, muscular, pushing-the-edge poses of yoga practice feel like a great release and something solid to master. But when I come to a moment of quiet, when I am invited to "relax", I feel that old sense of sliding off the deck of the Titanic.

Yesterday when it came time for savasana I found myself right back on the mental hamster-wheel. I realized I was trying to solve a problem for which there is no solution. I knew there was no solution, but I couldn't seem to abandon the effort, however fruitless and exhausting. I remembered that savasana is my chance for a wee vacation from that. I promised myself I would be allowed to continue obsessing later. So I felt the points of my bones push into the floor. And then my skin, from the back of my head to my heels, spread out a little. And then my deep muscles fell downward, too. I surrendered.

I floated in the quality of surrender for about five seconds. Then I thought, Right! This is what I am supposed to do with my life right now. Surrender! I can surrender to this situation, and that situation, and then maybe x or y will happen...

Soon I was obsessing again. But I had contacted a quality that I could remember, that beautiful sense of not being in charge. Chances were good that I'd be able to contact it again. Practice, practice, practice.

This kind of mental training is not unlike training of the body. The muscle must be built. The memory must be made. Then you can come back to it, recognize it the next time, have something to work toward.

I will try again today.

What if You're Already There?

2007-09-23T11:09:00.001-07:00

What if there was
No other shoe?
Instead, just
The sun splash on my cheek,
Perfect grapes,
Good grooving tunes,
Happy, basking smiles,
Long, warm hugs,
Clothes that fit,
Deep, heavy sleep,
All things in their place,
Wide, expansive time.
And disruptions were
Merely
Small
Drops
In
The
Ocean?

-Jonna Hensley

The Finer Points of Breathing and Booty-Building

2007-09-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in my yoga immersion class*, after a long discussion of energy channels and muscle alignment, and a hard practice using muscles I didn't know I had, Denise said:

"When your gluteus medius are strong, they act like a Wonderbra for your butt."

Now, I don't have a lot of back. And I would like some more. So this was music to my ears. Additionally, Denise said, "Now those for you who are thinking, well, I just don't have a butt, I will tell you something. Your butt is just depressed. You work these muscles, and you will have a butt."

There's hope for me after all! "Thank you, Denise!" I said. It was sort of like a hallelujah moment. (Not to mention comic relief after the above-mentioned activities.)

Later, my other teacher, Rainey, demonstrated uddiyana bandha - it's this crazy thing you do with your abs and diaphragm, while leaning over, holding an expelled breath, and moving your stomach muscles around in a circle like a revolving door. It's freaky. On her, since she is pierced and tatooed and gorgeous, the act looked freaky and sexual. After she was finished and the rest of us were blindsided with awe (especially me, since I had been kneeling directly below her to get a good view) fellow student Jodi said,

"I can hook you up with some people and you could make a lot of money with that."

This is why I love my studio.

*The Anusara yoga immersion is a series of weekend workshops I'm taking to prepare for teacher training.

Stretching Your Sympathetic Imagination, Exercise 7

2007-09-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

Here is the last exercise from Susan O'Dohery's book Getting Unstuck that I'm going to post. This one is about expanding beyond your comfort zone in what you read, so you can stop being so snobby and judgmental about other kinds of writing. The idea is you might actually grow as a writer this way. Even if only a leetle tiny bit.

So I'm a big ol' snoot-snot about most kinds of "genre" books. Partly because I haven't been made to read many of them, partly because they come in ugly fat supermarket-style book forms, partly because all the biggest nerds I know (including my man) have bookshelves crammed with them, and this turns me off like a mouthful of bad teeth. Whatever, I'm a nightmare, whatever.

I asked my husband to recommend a good genre book written by a woman. He piled about five of them on me, a few in that tattered-flimsy-yellowed form, and a few nice hardbacks. I chose Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell, one of the former kinds. It's crime/mystery novel written in wordy British. (As opposed to American, an entirely different language by contrast.) Funny that I should choose this considering my aversion to bad teeth.

My response upon finishing it: huh. Nice little read. I do not feel changed, I did not learn anything new about myself or humanity. I may have learned a few things about arcane British tax law. I was not transported in any way. The writing was witty, taking place almost entirely in conversation. But there were no evocative images, nor much in the way of appealing to the senses. It was a murder mystery wrapped in a play of manners with English attorneys as the central players. I suppose you could say that is also true of the movie "Gosford Park," but GP at least delved into the culture clash of Americans, English upper classes and their servants. Adonis did not.

In any case, I wasn’t moved by this book. But I had fun with it.

I did appreciate how, in a mystery, every detail matters. Something I can stand to work on in my fiction is how certain objects or small behaviors of characters can tilt things one way or another. Nothing can be there for fluff, it all has to be considered a part of the storytelling. What if I wrote my Oly novel* as a murder mystery? The murderer is whatever kills the relationship. And it will seem almost preordained. I think it was preordained.

God, could I really take up that novel again?

I liked that the language was an important part of the story in Adonis. It's not what I expected for a genre novel. The conversations were hilarious in their circumvention of saying anything outright. Crazy flippin' Brits.

The other interesting thing is that one never knows whether the narrator is male or female. It’s interesting how that disturbed things for me. When I wanted to decide whether another character was treating the narrator properly, it mattered. I couldn’t tell.

I’m glad I did this and I think I may move on to something sci-fi. That’s an area where I have a real prejudice. And it’s too bad because lots of smart people who I respect read sci-fi. I need to get over myself. Maybe this will help.

* "My Oly novel" is a novel I wrote two years ago in 30 days as a part of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Every now and then I take it out and move things around and masturbate with it a little (in a figuritive sense, of course), decide it's juicy and decide it's all fucked, and then I don't look at it again for awhile.

SAHM Juror

2007-09-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

I took this photo across from the federal courthouse, where I do grand jury duty four times per month for the rest of my natural born life.

Or maybe it's only the next 18 months.

Anyway, whenever people ask me why I didn't try to get out of this rather lengthy commitment to public service, I tell them that I didn't want to get out of it. I love it. Four times a month, I ride the bus downtown during rush hour and feel of a piece with the rest of the world. There is no kid hanging on me, wiping body fluids on me, or asking me questions about the cranes and the tractors outside the window. On those days, I feel like an adult.

Nay, a civilian.

Over a bowl of udon at Red Fin, a fellow juror/SAHM and I shared revelations about our jury experience.

"It's like a mini-vacation from the house," she said.

"I know," I said, slurping my steaming, fat noodles. "And I get to have tofu udon for lunch!"

"Right, like, if I was at home, my kids and I would be eating something with melted cheese on it." She paused. "Though I do realize that maybe it's time to get some new clothes. I think I've been wearing the same stuff since I had my kids. I look at all these other women down here in their fancy little pencil skirts, and I feel like a slob."

I shared that I had recently been bitten by a bit of a clothes bug. I mused it may be that for the first time in five years, I'm not lactating, pregnant, flabby, or constantly being peed on. We looked at each other for a moment, feeling a little happy and proud. Then she rolled her eyes.

"Of course, this might not work out for me for much longer." She described the complicated tag-team game she and her husband play with caring for the children on her JD weeks, for which she has to travel by ferry and long distance and be gone for nearly three whole days.

Well, there's that. For me, though, it's not a hardship because I live right up the hill and I don't have regular paid employment anyway. I am, in fact, a perfect candidate for grand jury service. I cost them very little. I don't have a lot of onerous jury-service forms to be processed like other people do, for their employers, hotel expenses, and mileage.

My only complaint is that they don't pay for child care. I can see how doing so would quickly become a tangled web of liability and fraud, but still it digs a little when out-of-towners get to stay at the Max Hotel, and my per diem doesn't cover the price of a baby sitter. For many women, this would be a major hardship.

And that's too bad, because we all deserve the right to indict pimps and child pornographers.

sweet man tricks

2007-09-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

I was sneering over the popularity of "life lists" the other day, and describing how making artificial lists like that only causes tension and disappointment and also causes us to put things on them that we don't really want, just to fill them up, etc., when my husband interrupted.

"The other day you said Clive Owen was on your list," he reminded me.

"Oh, ha ha! I meant THE list, you know, the one where we get a free pass to sleep with the celebrities on our list if we ever get the chance."

"Yeah, except that there is no such list," he said dryly.

"Oh, come on, it's it's a fun idea. It's not for real. Like there's any way I'm ever going to get the chance to sleep with Clive Owen! Ha!"

He walked toward me, deadly serious. "Clive Owen would like you." He wrapped his arms around my waist. "I'm not going to agree to any list."

Sigh. I guess the next time I'm at a premier at Cannes and a gorgeous international superstar wants to get into my pants, I'm just going to have to say no.

Life is so unfair.

To Keep Your Side of the Deal

2007-09-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

In Seattle, a huge music and arts festival called Bumbershoot heralds the end of summer every Labor Day weekend. It takes over the sprawling facility surrounding the Space Needle and draws 40,000 people per day for three days.

When I was childless, whether or not I should go to Bumbershoot was a no-brainer. I took the bus, paid my money, and stayed all day. I'd hear six or seven bands. I'd drop in on some book readings. I'd wander through the galleries. When I felt like resting, I'd sprawl out on the grass somewhere until I felt like getting up again. I'd come back the next day and repeat.

Everything's different now that I have little kids. If a kid is involved at a big event like this, the time is fractured and focused on food and potty issues. If I go without the family, I'm required to negotiate times and chores with my husband, weigh this activity against other upcoming things I might want to cash in my child care chips for, and shoulder some guilt.

This year the timing wasn't right. It was a busy weekend. I was suffering some kind of mental/physical sickness. It all just seemed like too much of a pain. I decided to forget it.

I was okay with this decision, mostly.

I was okay with it until the last night of the festival, when, while I stirred a pot of Thai curry on the stove at home, a Steve Earle song came over the radio. I rushed to the nearest speaker.

"I love Steve Earle," I sighed to my husband. I turned the volume up, went back to the kitchen, and continued to swoon.

"Never heard of him," said Matt.

"He is a great songwriter. In the 80's he - wait, is this LIVE?"

Matt, sitting in the living room with his laptop, offered to look it up on the KEXP website. "Yep, it's live," he said. "Some private KEXP thing at Bumbershoot."

Motherfucker. I sunk down into a chair beside him. My heart had started to bleed a bit. I got up and turned off the pot of rice. I assembled the kid's quesadillas.

It's okay, I told myself.

We all sat down to dinner. Steve Earle continued to play this intimate show where I was not present. My heart started to bleed more. It was no longer okay.

I dropped my spoon with a clatter. "I really want to go see The Frames and Steve Earle tonight," I blurted.

The bus dumped me at Seattle Center just in time to see The Frames. I nosed my way past casual onlookers into the part of the crowd where people were screaming requests at the band and standing shoulder to shoulder with one another. All I had to carry was my own bag. All I had to listen to was the music. A great tree canopy overhead released a few drying leaves on our heads to memorialize the last day of summer. The sky grew steadily darker.

Glen Hansard, the tall red-headed Irishman capturing our attention onstage, sang about how hard it is to keep your side of the deal. I knew what he meant. I'd been trying all weekend.

Watching Hansard's lanky body jerk and shimmy, hearing him cry "you'll see how hard it can be," gratified about nineteen different desires, and brought to mind the fundemental struggle that is always mine to manage: how do I keep my side of the deal and keep myself at the same time?

Sometimes it can feel as if feeding any need or desire I have will take something away from my babies or husband. It can feel as if wanting to be lost in pure pleasure - like music - is somehow aberrant. This is especially so since my husband and I follow different passions. It feels like if it's purely mine, it can't be good.

I tore myself away to catch Mr. Earle on another stage. He sang of a woman ("Whatsername, wherever the hell she is") who ran wild and disappeared into the sunset on a motorcycle.

I took a cab home, helped with last-minute bedtime water cups and pee-pee trips, and slept beside my domestic husband just like millions of other women were doing that night. I fell asleep thinking about the Whatsername-like woman inside me. She shimmers below the surface most of the time. At times she's so close I think she might take me over. Just noticing her makes me feel aberrant.

Well, I thought, snuggling in for the night, here's one more day she stayed put. Meanwhile, I'm still here keeping my side of the deal.

(Photo by joshc off Frames website. See more here.)

Claiming Creative Time, Exercise 5

2007-09-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

The title of the chapter this exercise comes from is, "The Impossible Position: Managing Motherhood and Creativity."

It took me two years and a hard second pregnancy to hire a regular babysitter.

It took a major breakdown for me to use the time for writing.

There is always something else to do.

This exercise from Susan O'Doherty's book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued, has only one directive: take the time you would be using for something else (such as an exercise) and make some art. Do whatever you have to do to get someone to watch your kids. Pretend you're sick, whatever.

Then repeat as often as necessary.

Because I have learned to do what the exercise suggested, I wanted to take this idea a step further. I wanted to see what it would be like to live the whole cycle of a day totally around writing. I needed at least a full 24 hours.

My family and I took a short vacation to the beach condo of a friend. Matt and the kids stayed for two nights. I kicked them out the third morning, at a hair before 9.

Then I promptly applied my iPod and walked on the beach.

That day, the tide was out very far. The sky was clear and I could see the Olympic Mountains across the Sound. Fog sat on the horizon, just off the water. I was the only soul on the beach. I scrambled over piles of rocks. I walked on the trunks of fallen trees.

I sang to the seagulls, the sandy bluffs, the mountains, the fishing boat passing out into the Pacific. I felt divine and whole and free. Like my natural self.

Denise, my beloved yoga teacher, uses that term every now and then. Natural self. She lets us decide what it means. I try not to dwell on it too much. ("First thought, best thought," is another Denise mantra.) First thought says this is the real me, this freedom, this open heart.

Three years ago I would never have been able to feel this way walking on the beach. I could never just appreciate something for what it was. My head was too full of what I should be feeling. I was disappointed that I couldn’t get outside myself enough to feel the air, smell the drying seaweed, be happy that the mountains were out. I was burdened with thoughts about the person who was waiting for me back at the beach camp. And if someone were with me, I was burdened by trying not to annoy them, or hoping they were having a good time, or letting it be known that I was having a good time.

(Are there women who do not engage in this kind of behavior? I would like to meet one.)

Now...ah! The sky! The fishing boats! The dead crabs on the beach! I love it all!

After my walk, I spent the day eating, writing, cooking, and reading. I left my laptop and notebooks open on the table and went back to them whenever I needed to. I didn't have to divide my time the way I normally do. Like, now is writing time, now is kid care time, now is the time on Sprockets when we must dance.

It was the way I would always live if left to my own devices.

The following morning, I drank my coffee while watching a Presto log burn in the fireplace. Fog was so thick on the water, all I could see outside was white. I wrote some more. After awhile, I put my notebook down and looked around the place: I'd left shit lying around everywhere. It was still all there. I had to clean. I had to leave.

How could I possibly leave?

What it's Like for a Girl

2007-08-30T20:59:00.000-07:00

Today I had a quintessential female day.

I felt frisky, so wore heels and a bustier under my clothes. Being nipped in here and pushed out there was feeling all nice and happy until I went to the federal courthouse to do my twice monthly grand jury duty (more on that later). There, my undergarment set off the metal detector. Hoping to God this was not the case, I submitted to a wanding by a US Marshal. Finally, he asked me gently if I could lift up just a piece of the hem of my blouse so he could see what was setting his metal detector off there. "I won't tell your boyfriend or husband," he said.

"It's got to be this thing," I sighed, piching the bottom edge of the garment in question.

"OK, ma'am," he said, letting me through. Whereupon I retrieved my high-heeled sandals from the metal x-ray conveyor belt and made a note to myself never to wear a bustier in an airport.

One of the cases we heard today was a proposed indictment of a child pornographer. Some of the evidence we had to hear included graphic descriptions of the images found on this fellow's computer. The FBI agent who testified tried his best to be tactful, but there really is no nice way to describe photos of children being violated. I listened to one. Then I felt coated with bile from the inside out. Then I stuck my fingers in my ears.

I felt overcome by the vulnerability of children, and suddenly couldn't bear the thought that my son was about to enter kindergarten. To imagine him being shepherded by one teacher along with 17 other five-year-olds for 6 hours a day, and succumbing to playground injustices, and just being without me all day, gave me such a heaviness in my gut that I wanted to lay my head down on my yellow legal pad and cry.

At the end of the day, a few of us lingered around in the jury room chatting about what we heard that day. There's a sweet woman there from Rhode Island who is always telling me I look nice and that she likes my drawings, and that day she had given me a graphite pencil to sketch witnesses with. So we stood at a table talking about art (she also draws) and by and by other subjects came up. Two other women drifted over, and pretty soon we were holding a summit conference on the vulnerability of stay-at-home-moms. I mentioned the horrifying spectacle of a column of zeros on the Social Security documents I receive yearly.

"The really scary thing is the disability," Rhode Island interjected. "I work with women who are going through divorce, and what I see over and over are women who stayed home with their kids for years, they get divorced, and then at some point need to draw on disability. It's just not there if you haven't worked for a long time. It takes much longer to accumulate credits for that."

"...!" I said.

Another woman piped up. "That's why it's important to always have your own 401K or CD, and stay connected to the work force as long as possible. You need to have financial independence, and you need to be getting those Social Security credits. I had four kids and my husband and I were both in the military but we made it work."

"...!" I said.

The gut-heaviness increased. It lasted all through my wax appointment afterward, where I lay on a cot in a shorty white terrycloth robe and submitted to the pain of hundreds of leg hairs being ripped out by their roots. This quelled the heaviness for some time. But by the time I'd paid and tipped the esthetician, it was back.

At home, while stirring a pot of simmering vegetables and a whole chicken for stock, I felt a deep need to smoke. Smoking, I realized as I sat in my little side-of-the-house smoking roost, also alleviates that heavy feeling in one's gut. Why was I having that heavy feeling today? I wasn't quite sure. One of the side effects of the drugs I'm on is that it can be hard for me to distinguish mental/emotional disturbances from physical ones. Which is to say, if I'm feeling sad, the sadness may manifest itself as a stomach ache rather than tears.

Over a glass of wine on the back deck I told Matt about my conversation with the jury ladies. "If you divorced me and decided to be a jerk about money, I'd be screwed," I said.

"I wouldn't stress about it too much," he replied.

Easy for him to say.

I finished making dinner, served it my family, and took the kids on a walk afterwards while Matt settled into a long night of World of Warcraft. Jonah pedaled ahead on his little training-wheel bike, while Audrey walked beside me, her hand in mine. The August light was draining from the sky quickly, and as we passed a neighbor's burgeoning front-yard pumpkin patch I noted that her fat green pumpkins were turning orange. We passed a row of lettuce that had gone to seed. The small stand of corn looked dry and ready to harvest.

How did this woman keep a kitchen garden, a four-story house, and three children?

Did she have a long column of zeros, too?

I herded the children home and observed that the feeling in my stomach had not faded. Well, I though, if it's something to worry about, it'll be back tomorrow.

Meantime, I'll go home and pop some more Advil for the menstrual cramps. Bathe the kids.

Sit with this feeling and see what it's about.

Communicating With Your Shadow Self, Exercise 4

2007-08-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

In this exercise, I'm asked to imagine a day without consequences. What would I choose to do if there would be no repercussions and I didn't have to make anybody else happy?

I wrestled whether to record this on the blog. One's deepest fantasies are (a) not always interesting to others, and (b) private and meant to stay that way.

But this exercise blew my mind, so I can't leave it out. It is edited to focus on work.

First, I imagine and record the fantasy:

Wake up alone, drink coffee in bed while reading a book. Get up when I'm hungry and eat a sausage and a fruit yogurt smoothie.

Go for long walk or do yoga practice. Shower.

Write.

Eat hot meal while writing. Maybe a nice grilled panino. It's still only 10:30 in the morning.

Read and write some more.

Nap or go for walk.

Go out to dinner with fun girlfriends.

Read.

Now I have to characterize this person who does all the things on this day of no consequences:

A person like this would be a little bit mean and a little bit ruthless. She would put her art first before anything. She would have to be mostly free of responsibilities. Her name would be Susan or Sarah or Sharon, some "S" name, and she would have red lips and brown hair and be in her 40's.

When I talk to her in my mind, the book says I am to tell her it's safe for her to show herself and that I'm not going to act on her impulses.

The thing is, she's not actually dangerous, and her impulses are really a way of life. That is to say, my way of life, or the one I want to have some day.

I want her life.

What she feels and says about my life: "Just wait, Honey. You need to do all the things you need to do now, and this life awaits you. I am right here and I'm going to live this way until I die. I want you to live right, so that when you get here you are clean, free and deserving. Earn it, my Dear, and it'll be yours."

Identifying Your Inner Critic, Exercise 3

2007-08-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

In this exercise, I was asked to think back to the earliest creative effort I can remember sharing with an adult, and what happened.

By the time I was about eight years old, I needed a teacher. I had a lot of talent and passion, but everyone around me saw what I did (drawing, paintings, little sculptures from modeling clay, illustrations, calligraphy, lettering) as parlor tricks. Adults would lean over my shoulder and say, "Are you an artist?" They were asking me? What did that mean? I didn't know what to say, so I said maybe someday when I get paid I will be. They all thought that was hilarious.

The only time I came close to getting actual instruction was when I plagiarized an entire book by Russell and Lillian Hoban, creators of the "Frances" series. One night I sat at the dining room table of a house we were renting on Comanche Drive in San Jose and recreated the story and drawings about a little hedgehog. He was rather full of himself and gave himself a gold star on a calendar every day, just for being his wonderful self. (In the end, his parents take him down a peg in some loving storybook way.) I had read this book at my cousin's house, where I spent every day after school until my mom got off work. I set about recreating it, page after page, and when I was done I stapled my plagiarized pages together. I did not intend to show it to anyone. I just liked the story, and I was possessed by the artist's drawings. This book was unlike any I had at home. I wanted a copy for myself. So I made one and had a blast recreating those drawings.

My mother wandered in to refill her wine glass or something, and saw the booklet. She looked through it. She went nuts. She said it was amazing. She said if I had that kind of talent, she'd a find a "write a story" class to put me in. Would I like that?

Does a bear shit in the woods? I nodded. Visions of me and some other smart kids huddled in a class room after hours danced in my head. I thought my heart would explode.

But, aside from nodding, I said nothing. I felt very weird. She rushed into the other room to show her TV-watching boyfriend. Finally she asked the dreaded question: "Did you make this up all my yourself?"

I shook my head. I confessed it was a copy of a book I'd read at my cousin's.

"Oh," she said, adopting her usual tone of world-weariness. She gave the book back to me. "For a minute there I thought I was going to have to find you a special class or something." The subject was dropped. I wasn't going to get the class. Obviously, my mother was disappointed.

Here's the thing she was not: curious. From whence did this irrepressible need to create come? ("Her dad's an artist," she would tell people, her voice dripping with irony. "I guess it's in the genes.") What could be done to shepherd it? That was a question that never seemed to keep anyone up at night.

Looking back on this now, it strikes me that I was just looking for something to do with my hands. I wanted to make things, I wanted to write books and illustrate them, but I needed to figure all of this out on my own. That's a lot for a little kid in my circumstances. My dad was just an occasional visitor. He was an artist, but his lifestyle was not too appealing to anyone. He drove a Frankenstein VW bus, had long hair and a long beard, and lived in a group house with people who gave themselves wheat grass enemas.

It's a classic step to take as an emerging artist - you copy other people's stuff to figure out how they did it. It's totally normal. The work of other artists and writers were the only teachers I was going to have for a long time.

As this all relates to my current feelings about my work, I find it interesting that even as a kid I thought I wasn't going to be a "real" artist until I got paid. And that I didn't have a direction all my own, just a strong need to make art.

My mother will never understand what I do. And that's getting to be okay, and I'm getting to the point where I don't have to scold her in my mind for it. It's just my thing now.

Oh, and p.s. Much later in life, I wrote a short story called "Stars" about a 6th grade tomboy who is spending her summer before entering junior high trying to rid herself of her bad habits. She and everybody around her feels it's time for her to become a proper girl. For every day she doesn't smoke, look at her step dad's Playboys or hit anyone, she gives herself a gold star. Naturally, this doesn't altogether work and the day she karate-chops an annoying neighbor boy in the testicles she decides to give up the campaign completely.

I used this story to apply to a creative writing program at my college.

I got in.

Unleashing Your Inner Wisdom, Exercise 2

2007-08-25T20:37:00.000-07:00

In this exercise, I'm asked to picture myself in a safe place that has some meaning for me, and imagine that out of the mists walks a benevolent person who has something important to tell me. This person is, more or less, my mentor. I listen to this person, and write down everything she says to me.

I'm at the Sleeping Lady Retreat Center in Leavenworth, WA. I'm sitting alone in a cabin, resting on a bed made with down blankets and pillows. My yoga teacher Denise appears. She says to me:

"Work with your vanity, your pride, your egoism. They are a part of you. They are a part of your practice as a yogini and an artist. Don't fight with them."

"Apply principles of yoga to making your art. Use yoga to drop down deep, to listen to your natural self."

"Cultivate neutrality instead of judgment."

"In the end, it all comes down to compassion."

I could meditate on each one of these statements for a lifetime. In them, I see all the things that have held me back, and all the things that will release me.

Girls Should...Exercise 1

2007-08-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

I'm posting from Freeland, WA, on Whidbey Island. Last family vacation of the summer. As a bonus, I am staying an extra day...alone. To write and read and walk on the beach. The beach condo on Mutiny Bay that I've rented from a friend has no Internet service, which is a lovely blessing.Thanks to the Island County library system, I am able to reach you.

Here is the first of the exercises from the book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued by Susan O'Doherty. She asks me to draw a picture of the person who was my primary caregiver when I was a child, with a dialogue bubble starting with the words, "Girls should..." At first I had an image of my mother, but then I had an image of my husband! Instead of freaking out, I went with both. Here is what I wrote:

My primary caregiver then...

[drawing of my haggard mom with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth, a frazzled perm, and a dialogue bubble]

"Girls should be pretty and well groomed. You want to be able to attract a man. It's important to be sexy. Iron your clothes, make sure your hair's clean, and use proper English."

Both of my mom's parents had come from homes with no stability or safety. Together, they raised a family that tended to be one paycheck away from broke, but strived to be clean and respectable. It was a point of pride to have a spic and span house, to owe no favors or debts. They were quite strict about boundaries and limits, even when it came what one was allowed to ask for in life. Especially then. About being so strict, my grandma told me, "My mother didn't know what all I did when I was girl. I rode the street cars all over Oakland and San Francisco when I was ten, twelve years old. When I had children [at 16], I wanted them to know that someone gave a damn about them."

My primary caregiver now...

[drawing of my husband with a mild expression and dialogue bubble]

"Girls should enjoy being wives and mothers."

His mother was quite stoic and I don't believe he had any idea how unhappy she was. They don't complain in his family. When I'm with them in Boston I pick up on their sense of duty and repressed conflict. It's one of the things I actually found refreshing when I met them.

In the interest of fair representation, I must point out that my husband is supportive and wonderful. But we had to work to get to a place where it was okay for me to blow off steam about the kids or struggle openly with postpartum life. I don't think he witnessed this kind of thing as a kid.

Getting Unstuck

2007-08-22T10:50:00.000-07:00

There's a ghost from my past who visits me often. I'll call him Curtis. Curtis and I had a relationship during an impressionable period in my life. He introduced me to an expanded world of art, books, and music that proved to be a marvelous jumping-off point for me. His influence in other areas, however, has lasted in a way that I would rather it didn't.

More often than I care to admit, I still look at things from Curtis's perspective. This is too bad, because in the end, Curtis found me inadequate for his purposes. Curtis and I had the kind of relationship you hear about when two "creatives" get together. If one finds success and the other doesn't, things don't altogether work out. While I struggled to earn a living and find relevance as a writer, Curtis was hired by a newspaper as an editorial assistant, then moved on to critic and editor. I got and quit lame job after lame job. From my perspective, he got to do exactly what made him happy, for enough money to pay rent and buy beer. He followed his dreams and desires, and seemed to find opportunities everywhere.

I didn't. It was a frustrating exercise for me to analyze the reasons behind his success and my failure. He felt he deserved what he wanted, and didn't question the motivation to go for it. He took risks, was willing to look a fool, elbowed his way into things when necessary. The best reasons I could conjure for his easy sense of entitlement were that Curtis had supportive parents, a financial cushion through them, and had gone to an Ivy League school. He'd travelled. His parents travelled. He also had a lot of good dumb luck. This is the story I told myself.

I, however, had substantial barriers to being a real, paid writer. I was often depressed, chronically broke, and struggling mightily to break free from my family. I had a silly education from my four years at The Evergreen State College. I had not done internships, had not sought out extracurricular writing opportunities in college, and had not really learned any skills. I wasn't qualified to do anything. I had no support and no connections.

This is the story I told myself. I tried my best not to believe that there was any more going on in this scenario than my external circumstances. I was a good writer. I was just starting at a deficit and needed a lucky break.

This little story worked moderately well for me, most of the time. Every so often though, I broke down. It was too hard shoring myself up all the time, hoping that Curtis would not lose respect for me, hoping that my life would change somehow and I'd get out of the deep hole I was in. It was also pretty hard not to believe that I was just a fraud, a hobbyist, a hanger-on; in short, a loser.

Once, when Curtis hung up the phone after making plans to visit a friend in New York, I fell into a deep funk. We were at my apartment, and I'd been listening to his excited phone conversation with increasing bitterness. Once again, he was doing something interesting and glamorous, and I was still toiling over my little stories and drawings and striking out every time I tried to improve my life.

"You always get to do cool stuff," I blurted after he hung up the phone. He looked at me like I was nuts.

"I don't GET to do cool stuff," he replied with irritation. "I just DO cool stuff." From which I inferred, "So could you if you would get your head out of your ass."

"It's easier for you," I sniffed. "All the people you went to school with are doing interesting things. Your parents know people all over the place. They give you money for stuff like this. There is no way I could do what you're doing."

He looked like he was about to explode. "It's not all about money!" he said. "I see interesting things to do and I do them. Nothing's stopping you!"

A lot was stopping me. And reading Susan O'Doherty's new book, Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued; A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity has helped me see what it was.

My blockages have not so much been related to money, as Curtis suggested. They are, however, deeply rooted in the culture from which I sprang. I came up in a world of certain expectations for life. These were, more or less, (a) finish high school, (b) get a job, and (c) shut the fuck up. Getting by was the most you could hope for. It was foolish and even sinful to want anything else. If you were female, even more so. People in my family do not travel, pursue creative work, or go to college. I won't say it's a bad life for all my cousins who stayed, it's just a very particular life that doesn't lend itself to supporting dreamers, drifters and creative types like myself. To leave it, I had to reject everyone from home.

Still, their ideas about life followed me, especially the harder things got. Curtis would seem, on the surface, to have been a perfect influence for me, but he turned out to be a terrific snob and I turned out to be pathetic. I absorbed his disdain. He started wishing for a different kind of girlfriend.

I continued to not know how to do much but survive.

It's many years later. I am no longer stuck. Still, the very title of O'Doherty's book brought up such a wave of Curtis-like disgust that I had a hard time opening my mind to it at first. But through doing the exercises, I began to look at my past behaviors and habits of mind in this area with much more compassion than I had before. O'Doherty, a therapist, does such a good job of getting right down to what matters - the creative lives of women and our specific issues - with great compassion for what we are up against.

My therapist, Joan, once told me after I apologized for boring her with my dithering, "I'm never bored with you, Susie. I only try to understand." O'Doherty gives this impression, too, on nearly every page, about women who do creative work. She tries to help us see and understand.

I first wrote a review for this book in which I tried desperately to distance myself from the book's intended audience. "I am not one of you," I seemed to say. "I do not have your silly problems." If I needed to read a book like this, I must not be a real writer. I must be just another whiny female with too many excuses.

Oh, Curtis. Do shut up.

I have to thank O'Doherty for getting me to see that my drawn swords and plates of armor caused me to write a review that was not only dripping with bitterness, but was not a good read. I was trying too hard to protect myself to develop a thought.

In case you are interested in reading Getting Unstuck, doing the exercises, and comparing notes with me, I am going to post my written exercises in future installments of the blog. Please tell me about your progress! I recommend it to any female artist or writer who has an immediate distaste for the title, like I did, or for one who feels the mystery and mechanics of getting one's head out of one's ass have become overwhelming. As a companion, I recommend Pema Chodron's fantastic, funny recordings on a similar subject, also called Getting Unstuck. Download it, plug it in to listening device, and watch your experience on the bus become something altogether different.

And thanks for listening to my story about Curtis's ghost. It feels good to liberate it.

Hang On

2007-08-20T15:55:00.001-07:00

It's probably no coincidence that my latest break in posts coincides with the closure of my yoga studio for a long summer holiday. I just ran into another student from the studio who asked, "How are you doing with the closure?"

"It sucks," I admitted.

"It totally sucks," she agreed.

The other thing I've been doing is reading and doing the exercises for a book I'm reviewing for MotherTalk. I can only do this at half-hour increments. Such is life with two small children. I'll be posting the review on Aug. 22 as part of a "blog tour" to support the author.

Please come back and visit.

Kindergarten, Again

2007-08-06T12:32:00.001-07:00

A psychiatrist once told me that as mother, I would be reliving my childhood through my kids.

"Whatever ages they are, those are the ages you get to experience psychologically once again," she said.

Oh, shit. No wonder I'm on medication.

My disinclination to go back to early childhood typically manifests itself in a heavy heart and even heavier feet when it comes to matters involving my kid's schools. This all came up again last week, at playground meet-and-greet for Jonah's incoming kindergarten class. The kids went for the Popsicles, my husband went to meet the other parents, and I went because I had to.

On the drive over, my carcass pressed deeply into the seat. Movement felt barely possible. We parked. We unbuckled. We admonished Jonah and Audrey to stay close in the parking lot. I walked heavily behind my family toward the massed grownups and scattered children. Within seconds, I was staring at the ground and digging my toe in the dirt. I felt like I had felt every day of my life as a kid: like my insides were being sucked out.

Meanwhile the kids wandered off to the playground equipment. Matt chatted up an old college classmate and a mom he'd met at a kiddie birthday party.

I.

Wanted.

To disappear.

But I got myself together and weakly greeted some other moms. Many stood around in little gaggles, or followed their children through the park. There didn't seem to be much to say. Those not in a gaggle seemed, like me, a little wary. So I wandered alone. I observed how the diverse body of children came together and split apart. Particularly, I noted those kids who simply played by themselves. I remembered that in kindergarten, one doesn't always have a stable group of friends. The social scene shifts almost daily. I marvelled at how much we were left to our devices during play times and recess.

For me, this meant that I curled up inside the bottom of a tall climbing tube. It was just me and the wood chips and darkness in there. Circles of sunlight blazed through the foot holds, and I played with running my hands across them, making shadows on the wood chips and illuminating my skin. I sang little songs to myself to hear the way my voice echoed in the tall chamber.

When other kids invaded, kicking up dust and shouting for me to move out of the way, I left.

Maybe I was a bit of an oddball.

My son is an oddball for sure. He doesn't play like other kids play. He's passive. He doesn't understand the first thing about aggression. Also, he can amuse himself for a very long time following the progress of a beetle across the blacktop. I think this is a lovely quality and desperately don't want it to get beaten out of him on the playground.

It's like Lord of the Flies out there.

At the meet-and-greet, my husband and I wandered back to one another. "Where's Jonah?" I asked. I'd been tracking Miss A, who is more apt to get into physical peril, and had ignored Jonah completely.

"Last I saw, he was at the top of that slide. Uh, oh, there's a line forming behind him."

My heart leaped. Indeed, there was a bit of a jostling mob at the top of the slide. I bolted over there to find my sweet innocent boy hanging from a bar, wailing, tears and snot streaming, and running his little feet on the plastic slide to back up. But his Crocs wouldn't stick, and so he was trapped there, unwilling to go down and unable to go back up. Five or so slightly older boys stood behind him, one in particular shouting, "Go! Go!"

I elbowed them out of the way. I rescued my child.

"Oh, Honey, I'm here, I'm here."

I rescued myself.

"Why didn't that boy help me?" Jonah wailed, while I cradled him on my lap. "I kept telling him I didn't want to go down and he just wouldn't listen!" Oh, the injustice. I knew. I understood. My heart bled all over the both of us as we sat in a desperate embrace on the ground.

"He needs to listen!" Jonah cried.

The mother in me had overtaken the child by now, and I began to get an idea for how to turn this into a skill-building experience. If I can't protect my babies from everything, I can teach them some ways to deal with what happens. Especially Jonah, who can hang onto a perceived injury for a very long time, and remain offended and upset. So I asked Jonah if he wanted to air his grievance to the boy who wouldn't help him off the slide. He said yes.

"We should tell him that I wanted him to help me, and that next time he needs to help me when I ask."

"Absolutely right," I said, getting to my feet. We spotted him on the swings. We began our approach. I just wanted J to get this off his chest, and maybe the boy would say sorry, or maybe the boy would tell him to shut up, I didn't know. He was only, like, seven. But it was worth a try. Unfortunately, our little rapscallion dashed into a game of chase with about ten other kids, and Jonah and I decided it wouldn't make sense to try to get his attention now.

"Are you feeling ready to go home?" I asked.

His face clouded, then brightened. "Um, I would like to go climb on those tractor tires."

I went with him. I didn't want either of us to be alone.

TMI?

2007-08-04T20:28:00.000-07:00

From time to time I'll pass my URL onto people who I think will like it. I'm wrong as often as I am right. As many people that say they like it never mention it to me. That's fine. At least it didn't cost them any money.

Two people who didn't enjoy reading my blog made comments to me that I have been puzzling over ever since. One, a friend of my husband's, said he felt uncomfortable reading such personal things about someone he knew. He felt he wasn't sure how to respond, or why I would want people to know these things about me.

Okay. Noted.

Another, also a friend of my husband's, told me last night at my kitchen table, over a plate of my food and a bottle of my wine, that he read it once but stopped because it stressed him out. "It's too deep," he said, smiling. "I mean, everyone has issues, but you don't always want to know all your friend's issues. It's like how we all go to the bathroom, but we don't talk about it because we don't want to hear that part of each other's lives."

Okay. Sort of the same as above, though relating what I talk about to bathroom issues is a new twist. The fact that this friend entered college without knowing that women menstruate may inform how I receive that comment.

My friend Jane, who has been very positive about the blog, asked me how I can be so bold about putting such personal things out there. We were standing on a dark corner of Capitol Hill digesting the beers we'd shared at Smith.

"It's not personal," I blurted. "I never put anything on there unless I think a bunch of women are going to identify with it."

"But how do you keep your family from having opinions about it?" she asked. She has something like nine brothers and sisters.

"My family doesn't know my URL," I said. "And when they ask for it, I tell them no."

"YOU TELL THEM NO?" she gaped. "That would never have occurred to me." She stared out into the night. "Huh."

I shrugged. "I can't write the blog if I think my family's going to read it."

"But how can you report what you report knowing that you have no control over things?"

This question perplexed me the most. Perhaps I misunderstood it. As I see it, I have total control over what goes on this blog; I write the damn thing. I do not have total control over the happenings in my life, but it wouldn't occur to me to include everything in my life. Maybe Jane meant that I have no control over the material once it leaves my desktop. She's right. I tend not to worry about that. I have a 12 stepper's attitude about it: "Take what you like, and leave the rest."

The whole point of this blog is not so that my intimate life can be known by many. That would be a skeevy impulse, at least for me. I just know that the lives of a good many women are too full; of self-doubt, irritation, hormonal-related illnesses and health issues, outright depression, huge mental and physical burdens, daily kid-induced insanity, confusion about who they are supposed to be, and very little real understanding from their families, communities or partners. In fact, the general sense I get from talking to a lot of women is that they are perpetually in a struggle of one kind or another, made intractable by motherhood. So when I get an e-mail from a woman telling me that I am the only mother she knows who has ever said it like it is, well darn it, I feel a little bit more sane. So, I hope, does she.

In any case, if I'm doing this blog right, it isn't really about me. So whatever you think about it is fine. Really.

Taking a Break

2007-07-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday. I have four hours of childcare today. Here's how I've spent it:

Hour 1: Housework. I cleaned the kitchen, sorted through weeks of stacked periodicals, put toys away, did laundry. It is satisfying to do this uninterrupted.

Hour 2: Showered and read periodicals that I'd been saving for weeks. This includes a silly article about birth order written by Elizabeth Gilbert and her sister, an article about whether using income rather than race as a tie-breaker for public school selection really works to diversify schools in a way that makes a difference, and an article about unlicensed backyard trattorias in Sicily.

Hour 3: Watched two episodes of "Weeds: Season 2," while eating mashed potatoes and red velvet birthday cake.

Hour 4: Watched one more episode of "Weeds" and am writing this. I think I can still taste the red dye from the cake. It leaves a certain aftertaste.

I ditched yoga class to do all of this. Instead of being pleasantly sore with a calm mind, I'm hopped up on sugar and carbs with a high glycemic index. My mind is swimming with lustful images of marijuana plants, Martin Donovan, and Mary Louise Parker's wardrobe. Now I must ferry my son to The Little Gym.

Om.

Distractions

2007-07-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

One thing I love about my daytime yoga classes is that there aren't too many younger, single, straight men there. Whenever one appears, I find myself immensely distracted by his presence.

This is due in part to my status as a SAHM. We SAHMs don't see a lot of men during the day. If we are having a day filled almost entirely with school drop-off/grocery store/pediatrician/playground visits, we can go for hours without seeing a man, except perhaps the guy slouched in front of QFC shaking a paper cup of coins. Anyone who has flung open the front door to greet the UPS carrier and felt a small, giddy rush of adrenaline at being in the presence of A MAN, for God's sake, knows what I mean.

Still, in yoga class, it is nice to be without that particular adrenaline rush. I enjoy this time to pay close attention to how my body feels as I practice. To note what my mind does. I appreciate this one place where I don't need to think about how I appear to others, or how they appear to me.

This is made easier for me by the demographics of my classes: the women, who make up 85% of any given class, are my age or older; gay men, who are bored, bored, BORED by all the full, female buttocks and breathy sighs all around them; straight men in their 30's who tend to show up with their wives or girlfriends; and the surprisingly studly silver-haired set. Those men tend to be cyclists and runners and in amazing shape, they just don't give off that certain...vibe.

A younger straight man who is unattached and in a room full of women gives off a vibe. Forgive me for saying so, but in my rambles I have observed that no matter how nice a single man he may be, he is either thinking, "Who in this room would I like to fuck?", "Who in this room do I have a chance of fucking?" or "How can I get someone here to want to fuck me?" (As you may have observed, this is not restricted to yoga class. I welcome any and all male readers of this blog to set me straight if I am wrong.) The older he is, the less he tends to broadcast it, but it's still hard to miss.

As a woman still in my child-bearing years, I am primed to pick up on this vibe. My DNA is patterned to receive this prowling energy, and I have been socialized to then start deciding what I am going to do with it. (Not to mention that I'm a brazen hussy at heart, if not in practice.)

I am happily married. What I am going to do with it, literally, is nothing. But how does this vibe effect my yoga practice? How does it effect my thoughts? Do I change anything about what I do, where I look, and what I think about?

Well, yeah. And it's annoying.

It happened this week in my Tuesday class. I got squished right up front next to some new guy I'd never seen before. Turns out he was visiting from an Anusara yoga studio in West Hollywood, the gayest city in California outside of San Francisco. Briefly, I looked forward to observing and maybe even riding some nonsexual gay boy-energy. Variety can refresh a girl.

And then he said, "...and I'm always the only straight guy there."

Dammit! Immediately, I took stock of my appearance. It was a day where my schmate yoga clothes were in the laundry so I wore my pretty ones. I had taken a shower before coming to class, due to lank hair separating into V's all over my scalp and giving off a stale smell. So my hair was wet, and trailing down my bare back. I was fresh as a daisy and feeling lovely.

"I'm Rob," he said, extending his hairy hand.

I thought, He heard me talking to the woman in the row behind us about my kids, right? He's not going to think I'm flirting with him if we have to become partners, right?

"I'm Susie," I said, taking it.

As our practice began, I realized, with some irritation, that I was giving off my own energy. The female, receptive, attracting kind. It was almost reflexive. Over and over, I breathed it out. Put my mind where it belonged: in my pelvis. I mean my CORE! I mean, my abdominal muscles! Not all of my core! Just the muscular part!

"Lift up through your pelvic floor," sang my teacher. Bloody hell. I'm lifting already, I'm lifting. Does a straight man know where his pelvic floor is? Does this guy, Rob, know how to lift up his pelvic floor? Is he aroused by all of these women around him lifting up their pelvic floor?

After class, Rob asked the teacher about other classes he might drop in on while he's here visiting. On my way out, I said, "Oh, hey, Rainey's class at 8 on Thursdays is really good."

"Thanks," he said. And then, "Are you going to be there?"

My teacher told a story once about another teacher she knew who brought along one really annoying person to every yoga retreat, just to give his students the chance to really practice mindfulness. It's easy to be all kind and peaceful and focusing on your practice when there are few distractions. But can you do it when that irritating stinky guy who groans orgasmically every time he pushes back into dog pose keeps placing his mat next to yours? How about when the boor of the group elbows into the private conversation you're having with your two favorite yoga friends about meditation making you a better person?

It's all fine and good to protect myself in my little yoga enclave of mostly menopausal women. What would happen if I dropped into a hipster studio and took a class with a bunch of 22-year-old hardbodies? I'd probably feel like a hag.

But that would be very good practice.

And no, Rob, I won't be there for that Thursday class, but thanks for the eye-opener that I still have so far to go.

The Path of the Warrior, Part II

2007-07-13T10:29:00.000-07:00

Allow me to introduce you to this section of the blog. It could have many titles, none of which really get to the heart of the matter. And the heart of the matter is that I'm not depressed anymore, not identifying myself as a depressed person, no longer researching meds and motherhood, no longer wondering how in the bloody hell to get through a day with my children. (Ok, I still wonder that, but at least now I have some tools that I even remember to use.)

But, like every one of us, I am still on my path. I find I've moved down the path a ways, out of depression and into something else. So far, the something else seems to be silence, rest, and observation. It's no wonder I've been craving a few days in the woods alone, to move into a bigger silence, so that I can listen more attentively.

Listening is what I do in yoga practice. And when I listen, new thoughts come to mind. Here is where I want to explore this experience, and the experience of belonging to a yoga community, and of following the yoga teacher path.

Of course, this is all from my perspective, which includes the stewardship of two small children and the specter of depression always hovering around.

I will do my best to write about these matters in a way that doesn't make you want to stick your finger down your throat.

P.S.

2007-07-02T16:46:00.001-07:00

It's likely that I'll blog again, because I just can't be expected to shut up. If you want to be on an e-mail list to recieve notification about the next blog of undetermined subject, please send me your email address at susan.i.hillman@gmail.com.

Love,
Susie

The End?

2007-07-01T20:53:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed that I rarely post anymore?

I can't help it. I come, I sit, I type; nothing gets posted. I do my yoga stuff and think about how to incorporate that into the blog. I avoid meditating and think how to make that amusing for the blog. I realize that after coming up from the depths of a major depression, I am more inclined to focus on things like creating a persona for this blog.

I don't want to create a persona. I am so done with creating a persona. Those damn personae and ideas about who I am and viewing myself through the eyes of other people were part of the problem to begin with. I set out to let go of a lot of my conceptions about myself. While traveling down that immensely liberating path, I find myself back at some old habits of mind.

This is actually a sign of better health. If there were a hierarchy of neuroses like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, worrying about maintaining a personality is up there past things like being afraid to leave the house. But another sign of health is that my answer now to the question, "Who am I?" is a benevolent, slightly exasperated, "Oh, Honey. Are we here again?"And after chasing my tail for awhile, I start walking again.

I think it would be easier for me to keep walking if I didn't have the self-referential blog reflex happening so often.

Plus. The original idea was to explore all of this stuff in the context of parenting and depression. I can say with certainty that I am not depressed. Also, that I have no interest in writing a parenting blog. I just feel done.

Readers, thank you for reading and commenting. Really. Thank you.

In gratitude,

Susie

Interruptions

2007-06-12T17:19:00.000-07:00

This whole blog should be about the stories that happen when I'm trying to write the stories. Because here we are, with post number three that is more or less a memo asking you to stay tuned for real content. I'm working on something really deep and spiritual about living a slow and quiet life. But all this stuff keeps happening, like:

1. Mother-in-law visit.
2. Photographers here to photograph my kitchen because they think it would look cool in some magazine about storage. (Did I not do a good job on the storage, heh?) There are opened black umbrellas on stands and stacks of white plates that aren't mine and someone drew pretend kid drawings on my chalkboard refrigerator. There's an assistant getting waters for people. I feel like I'm on a movie set, but it's my kitchen and I need to make sandwiches for my kids.
3. Not that I'm complaining. How cool is this?
4. Mother-in-law wandering around house in shorty bathrobe while stylist and photo people show up with equipment and props. Kids unwilling to get dressed or wipe the maple syrup off their faces. Me braless in white tee-shirt trying to answer the door and hold back the dog. Mentally calculating how many minutes I have to finish cleaning up the kitchen, de-slime myself, apply yoga clothing, and make it to a class. And get Audrey's nasty pull-up off her body, even though she's running screaming through the house that she's not ready.

Those are just some of today's excuses. Yesterday's are a different story.

But, really, I'm working on it. Deep thoughts about the slow lane. The contemplative life.

I wonder if I can fit that in before the kids' bedtime.

Empty

2007-05-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

Spring brought with it an urge to spank my house into shape. For me the urge itself was a relief. I had become comfortable with clutter and disarray after my breakdown. I'd had to be. There was a time when I couldn't do anything about it because I was in bed crying, and after that was a time when I taught myself to let go of general housewifery in order to stop yelling about the shit all over the kitchen counter and kicking shoes against walls because some asshole left them in my path.

All of this was wonderful and instructive, but as of this spring, I couldn't contain myself anymore. I really needed to reorder the linen closet. I really needed to plant flowers and herbs and I really needed to dig compost into all the planting beds.

This kind of work required my strong back, but it also required trips to big-box stores, and it required substantial mental energy spent on the merits of bamboo storage bins and a complete inventory of the house in order to figure out where in the hell to put the dog food bin so we can use the shoe cubby for shoes. Etcetera.

This can be sort of fun. What household manager hasn't experienced the breathless rush of possibility upon entering a place like The Container Store? Alas, all problems are not solved in one four-hour block while the kids are at home with the sitter. I learned for the hundredth time that this sort of organizational and freshening campaign requires merchandise that must be measured, scrutinized, paid for, experimented with, and, about 50% of the time, returned. Which necessitates more car trips.

But I was into it. I solved the kitchen command center problem. I solved the toy storage problem. I amended the soil in my yard and planted dozens of new plants. I bought a big-girl bed for Audrey, and moderately-priced bedding from a giant chain store. (I wanted to splurge on cool stuff from Habitat but it turns out that these groovy modern bedding design houses don't make their groovy stuff in twin size. Probably they figure no sane person would spend that kind of money on a kid's duvet cover.) I still have not solved the shoe cubby problem.

But that's fine because I'm all emptied out now. I can't spend another moment in one of those stores. I can't spend another drop of brainpower on what color towels to get for the bathroom. I don't want to buy anything or fix anything or make anything happen. I just want to sit in the sun and read novels. I want to primp the flowers with Jonah, and have evening picnics on the front lawn, and, in a larger sense, tend what I have created.

Now, as I try over and over to write, I keep hearing the voice of writing-guru Natalie Goldberg in my head: "Sometimes, you're empty."

Sometimes you're empty. There's a new thing to observe. What is it like when I am basically done creating for the moment? What is it like when striving has ceased? There's nothing to work out. Things are proceeding as they're going to proceed. I can sit on my deck and look at the orange nemesia that I planted in pots last month radiate color and warmth. A breeze will cause the blossoms to tremble, exposing their pink undersides. My black dog will streak across the yard and stop short at the cedar tree while a squirrel scratches up the trunk and chatters in victory.

This is all punctuated by my children demanding a graham cracker and insisting I decide a disagreement over who has the rights to the squirt bottle. But that's fine.

This is just being. It's okay not to be trying to make something out of nothing. If memory serves, Natalie Goldberg also says that when you are empty, you are supposed to lie around and watch the grass grow for awhile. Doing nothing is a great opportunity for spiritual practice, as well as a time for recharging. So I needn't feel guilty.

Plus, we all know it won't last.

Yoga at Shows

2007-05-13T19:34:00.000-07:00

I am a useful person to go to rock shows with. Not only will I drink too much and amuse you, but if you get fatigued by all the standing around, I know Things to make you feel better.

At Silversun Pickups, I did a maneuver on my friend Sara that made her go slack and groan. I stood behind her, bent my knees, grasped the sides of her ribcage, and used my powerful mama arms and legs to lift her spine and decompress her lower back. She did actually groan. Later, when she complained again about her back (because we're getting too old to stand around for hours on end waiting for silly bands to finish whatever they are doing backstage before coming out), I placed my hands on her upper buttocks and squeezed the flesh in toward her sacrum. We've known each other for approximately 57 years, so she didn't mind me touching her butt. Her face brightened. "I feel so much better!" she said.

I learned all this at my prenatal yoga training. I love knowing that I can make someone feel better. Plus, I can make myself feel better.

At The Long Winters, my lower back was killing me. I'd been to the above-mentioned show the night before, and had just done two days of more yoga training. As my great-grandparents used to say, I was tard. I turned to my husband, who is tall and strong and tolerant, and said, "Remember when I was in labor and I hung on you during contractions? Let's do that now." He assumed the position. I faced him, threaded my arms underneath his armpits and up around his shoulders, then let my body hang. I buried my face in his stomach. He stood there and allowed it. Afterwards, a couple about our age snuck sly glances at us. The woman laughed in what appeared to be a knowing way. I bet she was either a mom and knew what I was doing, or she thought I was a tard. I didn't care either way because now I felt much less cranky.

I promise never to do any of this to you unless you ask. You may have to put up with me disappearing into a forward bend every now and then. If I'm there and then suddenly I'm not, just look down. If you are feeling generous, please pull my shirt down over my butt crack. Thanks.

Dinner Conversation

2007-05-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

Me: "Hey, guys, how about some sliced apples with cinnamon?"

Audrey: "Yeah!"

Jonah: "Mumble mumble mumble."

Me: "What was that, Jonah?"

Jonah: "Mom, I'm not really in the mood for things with cinnamon."

Me: "Ok, so do you want apple without cinnamon?"

[silence]

Me: "Jonah?"

Jonah: "Just bacon."

Audrey: "I don't want bacon!"

Medication, for Better or for Worse

2007-05-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

So the Wellbutrin causes my brain to melt when I ingest mere drops of alcohol, a fact I've detailed in a previous post. I find myself slurring and talking about things I ordinarily would keep to myself. This is annoying.

It's annoying because pre-Wellbutrin I'd been having fun playing with awareness about verbal restraint. Awareness of where my energy goes via the hot air I produce leads me to tone down general verbal incontinence. It means before I speak, I flash on my motivation. This is very instructive.

(My yoga teacher talks about leaking prana, which means wasted energy, and a person can really leak a lot of prana shooting the bull about things that are of absolutely no consequence to anyone. This doesn't mean that I only talk about Important Things. I don't have anything against people who only talk about Important Things, I just don't want to hang out with them.)

Before I added this new drug to my regimen, I usually had the presence of mind to observe my motivation for talking at some point during a day. Sadly, the Wellbutrin turned out to be a verbal diuretic. Talk about leaks. Recently I have found myself going on and on about Martha Stewart, the failed Seattle Commons of ten years ago and how stupid the failure was because look what's happened to South Lake Union anyway, and, the other night at a small dinner party, towels.

I didn't start it. The hostess did. I mentioned, while helping place cloth napkins on the table, how a little girl we had over for a play date recently told me that cloth was best because paper kills the environment. My hostess friend looked at me with a wrinkled expression.

"I don't know," she said. "With all the laundry I do, it hardly seems that way."

I gave her a "yeah, well, who knows?" kind of shrug. She pressed further. "What's your system for towels and napkins?"

Because I have one, I told her. She led me into the bathroom to show me the new bamboo-fiber washcloths she had purchased, ostensibly to offset the environmental damage she was causing by washing all linen items after only one use. We proceeded to stand in the bathroom and discuss our towel-use habits at length. And our bathing habits. At a certain point I flashed on conversations I have had while stoned. I thought, this feels like I'm stoned. Am I stoned? Where's my margarita?

Next day, while filling my pill-dispenser for the week, I cut all the Wellbutrins in half. Soon I'll be Wellbutrin-free.

Will this be better or worse?

The Downfall of Broadway and Pine

2007-04-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

Sometimes after the parent-baby class I take Audrey to, a few other moms and I invade a small grungy pizza joint around the corner with our strollers and small children. We did this today, and since Audrey was clinging to her pizza when it was time to go, I let her walk out of the place holding her food.

While we meandered up Pine Street at a very slow pace to our parking spot where the meter had expired ten minutes ago, Audrey stopped to pick up a flattened, chewed-on red straw off the sidewalk. I batted it out of her hand. "Ick," I said.

Normally, of course, I would direct her to the nearest trash receptacle and give her a big high five for cleaning up. But she was holding food, so my first concern was about cross-contamination. Further complicating matters, no trash receptacle immediately presented itself. From experience I knew that it would take a day and a half to find one at the rate we were going. So I, extremely dutiful citzen though I usually am, left the straw and kept walking.

"There's a trash can right here," I heard a voice behind me say. I turned to see a man bend down to pick up the offending straw.

"Oh, I didn't drop that...she picked it up..." I started.

"Yeah, and I saw you take it right out of her hand and drop it on the ground again." To further prove his point, which must be that people like me are a tragic drain on the patience of others, he bent down and picked up another peice of random garbage (with which I'd had no dealings)and stalked around the corner to deposit it appropriately. "You should show her where the trash can is so she knows where to put her pizza crust when she's done with that," he bitched, sashaying past us in a huff.

I stared at the back of his plaid wool blazer.

How could I explain that we would never waste good pizza crust?

Every Moment is a Transition

2007-04-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

Those of you who know me know that I am not a happy housewife or a contented stay-at-home-mom (SAHM). Since I don't earn much money and I have two children, I really should be those things, but alas, my DNA, or inbred bad temperament, or something, prevents me.

Since admitting all of this two years ago and taking steps to remedy the situation, I have come to the point of being spoiled by adequate childcare. This means that when confronted with extended periods of responsibility for my children and dinner and laundry and the dog and all of that, my initial reaction is to try to get out of it.

This isn't something I'm proud of, or like to broadcast. But since you already know about my psychiatric medications and my drinking habits, why should I leave this out? One of my goals for this blog is to tell the truth about what happens to one's mind in mental breakdown/motherhood mode. I tend to identify rather well with Heather Armstrong's version of SAHM, which is Shit-Ass-Ho-Motherfucker.

Still, I often regret that I can't deal with domestic life in a more balanced, grateful, accepting way. Because in a global way, I feel deep gratitude for my life. If someone asked me to close my eyes and think of a time when I was happiest, I would say, "Now." And all of my jaw-flapping about practicing being present, and practicing non-attachment, and accepting the moment for what it is is totally sincere. It's just impossible to follow at home.

Or almost impossible. I am discovering a new way to practice non-attachment with the children. I tell myself that I am not in a hurry. And I practice not being in a hurry. When I am in a hurry, I am trying to escape the moment. The moment can be excruciating to stand, when Audrey needs to re-buckle her car seat after vacating it, or when Jonah sings songs while staring at the ceiling with his underwear halfway down his skinny legs and growls at me when I try to hurry him along so we can make it to preschool on time. During these moments, I would like nothing more than to be transported elsewhere.

Pema Chodron says most of our behavior is about running away from a feeling we can't abide. And yes, it's true, I hate feeling impatient and hurried and exasperated by my children. They don't seem to understand that the world is going to end if we don't follow our plans. I want it to be over. I don't want to be held captive by the dawdling and pointless resistance of these little people while I endeavor to get on with the day. The waiting and the dealing with petty problems en route to the front steps is hella boring. What am I supposed to do with my mind during these times?

I started to ask myself what would happen if I pretended the world wouldn't end if we were five minutes late. If Jonah went to school with no underwear once or twice. If the children brushed their teeth a couple hours after breakfast instead of the instant they swallowed their last bite of waffle. What would it be like if these transitions between events were the events themselves? If it was all one big event, or all one big transition?

In a Zen way, I could say that all moments are equally important, and equally unimportant.

Playing with this idea has been a tremendous relief for me, and for my kids. For one thing, it gives me something to do with my mind. And for another, it's having a good effect on the kids. Two nights ago, Jonah said to me, "Mom, you're not yelling anymore."

I looked up from my dinner and smiled. "You're right. I'm not. I'm really glad you noticed."

"Yeah," he said. "I think you're learning how not to yell."

I think I'll always be learning how not to yell. But that's okay, because I'm not in a hurry.

The Drugs Don't Work (They Just Make You Worse)

2007-04-19T21:37:00.000-07:00

There's a lot to write about. Two things are stopping me. These are:

1. My beloved has had surgery on his knee and is being utterly useless as he recovers. He feels really badly about it. Every time I bring him a tray of food he apologizes for his uselessness. I keep telling him it's okay, but I really have to go back downstairs now. "Are you mad?" he asks. "Of course not," I say. It's just that I'm simultaneously assembling French toast, bacon and strawberry smoothies while supervising the mud-making and rhododendron blossom harvest that's happening in the backyard. Gotta run.

2. The new drugs. They've sapped my desire to stay awake. The world feels muffled. I can't remember conversations. I can't even tell jokes properly. This is much worse than being somewhat reduced in the area of my intimate life. Now I'm reduced in all of my life.

As I write this, my two year old is sitting on the potty and insisting that while she has been there for 30 minutes, she still needs to go. It's after ten. I have read many books, settled a couple squabbles over toys, filled two humidifiers, sung about ten songs, rocked both kids in the rocking chair, argued about whether Audrey gets another drink of water, and now I am spent.

Will I ever get to go to bed tonight? Will Audrey ever get off the potty?

Beer Night

2007-04-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

"As soon as I'm a mom, I'm going to be drinking every day." -from hilarious new comedy, Notes from the Underbelly

My friend G and I get together once in awhile for adult conversation away from our four loud children. This usually involves me walking to her house, picking her up just in time for her to miss putting her children to bed, and the two of us walking to a nearby drinking establishment. We call this "Beer Night." The fact that we typically order foofy cocktails and dessert is irrelevant. G is a known lightweight and never drinks more than one beverage. I am a known lush with a sensitive stomach, so I keep it to two.

This Friday, while sunk into an Ultrasuede lounge chair at Liberty, I continued to drink. And drink. They were playing the Pixies and Al Green, for God's Sake, how could I possibly leave? Plus, we were getting into the juicy details of why it is deadly to belong to a social group of women, and how long we dated our husbands before certain relationship milestones were achieved, and other such topics that we mothers rarely have the opportunity to discuss in any depth due to noisiness of the children.

By the time I had reached the bottom of my third Sidecar, I slurred that I hadn't better drink anymore. G was on her fifteenth glass of water. She was ready to go home and probably ready to stop hearing me talk about whatever the hell I was talking about. We parted outside the bar, and, because I had been drinking, I walked over to QFC and bought a pack of American Spirit lights. While walking the ten or so blocks home, in the dark, and smoking one cigarette after another, I began to feel completely bludgeoned by drink. Naturally, I whipped out my cellphone and called a few friends. (One should never, never do this.)

Upon reaching my house, I stripped off my shoes and earrings and handbag and whatever else was on my body, trudged upstairs, and collapsed on the bed.

"Oh, Honey, you don't look good," said my beautiful and saintly husband.

"Yeah, I'n rilly fffucked," I mumbled. "Can I haff a towl a barff on?"

He ministered to me with water ("I need a sippy! I can siddpup. Can I haff a sippy?"), and a towel, and he lay beside me on the bed, chuckling and clucking.

"You're really attractive like this," he joked. I didn't even have the coordination to flip him off. I just had to take it.

I awoke to a rainy morning and a colossal headache. The alarm was going off. I had to get up and take Audrey to The Little Gym. I could not believe this was expected of me. But Matt, well, he was lucky enough to tear some ligament in his knee a few weeks back and so has to be excused form such duties. So I fucking went, in sweats and ponytail and hollow eyes, and took every opportunity to lie down on a soft mat. I began to develop a new understanding of why my parents never did anything like this with me. They were always hungover.

So, I've apologized to G, and the friends I called, and I hope I will remember all of this the next time I'm tempted to drink too much. Clearly my new meds have lowered my tolerance. Not such a bad thing, since I shouldn't really be drinking anyway. Too much alcoholism in my family, plus I'm a depressive, plus I have to get up in the morning and be on my game for the kids. Plus I learned some scary statistics from a psychiatrist I saw over the summer.

More on that later. For now, I must play with Jonah who is whining to be played with (he wears on me like a chronic disease), and shower and serve a nice brunch to my step mom and half brother.

Happy Spring.

Yoga in California

2007-04-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

I'm standing on a wood floor under a peaked two-story ceiling. Sunlight is pouring into the room through six high, curved, Spanish-Colonial windows. Five professional yoga teachers and I have our mats positioned like the petals of a daisy. We stand facing into the center of the daisy, brains frantically working to make sense of what our teacher has just shouted at us to do. We are meant to take turns leading each other in a mini prenatal class. As students, we pretend to be pregnant and have some pregnancy ailment. Our teacher, Stephanie Keach, rings a bell. I spring into action like a dithering turtle.

"Ok," I say, frowning over my photocopied chart of prenatal poses and their possible modifications and adjustments. "Uh, so, we all have high blood pressure, right?" My my five phony, pregnant, pre-eclampsic students nod. "OK, let's stand in tadasana." Then I get all Aunusara-yoga on their asses, and start asking them to scoop their tailbones and spiral their thighs inward. "Keep your butt fluffy, though," I add. A few students smile, a few wrinkle their brows. I lead them into Warrior I. They sink into their bent front legs, and raise their hands high overhead like goddesses. Then I go around, and one by one, manually turn their upper arms inward to broaden their shoulders, then grasp the sides of their ribs and muscle their upper bodies up out of their lower backs. One by one, they groan. These are good groans. Thank you groans. I feel a great rush of satisfaction. I lead them into triangle pose, then rush to each student to do other adjustments. The bell rings, and my eight minute teaching session is up. Everyone bends over a scrap of paper and scribbles out an evaluation of my teaching. Now it's time for the woman next to me to practice her stuff.

She only adjusts a few people at a time. Mentally, I slap my forehead. Duh. Rushing around trying to adjust each student is silly. This is what caused me such anxiety when I taught creative writing to seventh graders. Attending to one while the others wait causes everyone to be irritated. Especially if they are seven months pregnant and hanging out in downward-facing dog until the next instruction.

OK, good, so I'm learning about teaching. Here are some other things the faux p.g. "students" have to say about my teaching:

"Nice and gentle, very joyful spirit." "No overall structure." "Good, strong, confident touch." "Perhaps you could guide us into poses more." These comments all make me grin.

After class, I tuck my rolled mat under my arm and walk to Cantwell's market to see about dinner. This is Santa Barbara, so the deli offerings include quesadillas stuffed with roasted eggplant and fresh basil. (California has a way of turning any food into something totally wrong but delicious. BBQ chicken pizza started here, as did sushi rolls that appropriate mayonnaise and avocado.) I get the quesadilla, a carton of roasted vegetables, and a large bottle of Fat Tire Ale. I walk back to the little B&B cottage I'm lodging in for the weekend, spread my foodstuffs out on a wrought-iron table on the patio, and have myself a little party for one. I feel relieved to have completed my first official yoga teacher training. I feel relieved to be alone in the garden of blooming red bouganvilla and heady jasmine. Alone in the fading sunshine. Wearing only a t-shirt in March.

I miss the children with all my internal organs, but not my brain. My brain is enjoying all this space, this blue sky, this nothing to do. It doesn't matter that I've got a long way to go as a teacher. It doesn't matter that my clothing is strewn about the cottage and I have to get up really early to board a plane and I don't yet know where to catch the bus to the airport. I slip off my shoes under the table and feel the rough stone of the patio under my bare feet. What a lovely place. The potted tea rose on the table rests in a tiny, white tart dish. There is a bit of rust forming on the table. A nippy ocean breeze sweeps through the courtyard.

It's the most perfect moment.

Lost in Transition

2007-03-23T10:23:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest with you all. I've been trying hard to write something. I wrote a funny and offensive piece about practicing Kegels with two girlfriends in a crowded bar. Then I wrote something sincere about the way we think other people see us. I may still publish them, if I can find a point to them besides an effort to display my cleverness and sincerity.

But I found during my last breakdown that the best way back to a clear mind is to call bullshit on the bullshit.

Here's the straight shit:

1. All I can think about is the stuff that I hate, the people I hate, the life I hate.
2. I haven't showered in three days.
3. I look like a haggard single mom on food stamps (bless their hearts).
4. I feel like a haggard single mom on food stamps.
5. I drink too much.
6. General restlessness threatens to swallow my soul.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

My shrink asked me if this happens every spring. I looked up last year's journal. Here's what I found:

Things I am tired of [March 18, 2006]:

*Writing bullshit that never sees the light of day
*Melancholia
*Demanding children
*Never eating an entire meal in one sitting
*Being tired
*Being confused
*Being worn out
*Disliking myself
*Being sick
*Myself; I am desperately tired of myself and all my repetitious thoughts. I’ve thought about offing myself or becoming an alcoholic out of sheer boredom.
*Being required to care
*Being mad at my mother
*Despairing about my father
*Feeling empty, alone, and broken
*Laundry
*Dishes
*Clothing
*Makeup
*Grooming
*Entertaining children

Thereafter, things got much, much better. But now:

Things I am really tired of and/or scare the crap out of me [March 18, 2007]:

*Hanging out at the Science Center with kids and other tired, unwashed, rumpled, bored parents who also don't want to be there
*Answering to a child's comment or question every ten to 30 seconds
*Watching myself age rapidly
*Never sitting down for more than one minute at a time during a meal
*Never reading a book for more than ten minutes at a time
*Being interrupted constantly, no matter what I'm doing, be it reading, writing, sleeping, eating, taking a shower, going to the bathroom

So it's the usual stuff, more or less. Apparently motherhood, like depression, cannot be cured, only managed. How I've managed over the past year is I dropped a lot of useless ideas about parenting and hired a lot more childcare. What's not listed in the second excerpt is my prevailing sense of unease and boredom and loneliness. It would be there, but I got interrupted to make someone a sandwich.

(A new twist on the "things I hate" list is my terror of aging and old people. To wit: I went to a dance performance last week and was disturbed by the sea of white and grey heads all around me. All these soft-bellied old people clutching their tickets, fretting over finding the right seats, looking irritated beyond comprehension when someone needed to get past them after they'd sat down. During the performance, in the middle of one particularly quiet, erotic solo, a baldy near me turned around to hiss at the fellow behind him to stop kicking his chair. "Eh?" the fellow said. "I said, would you please stop kicking my chair!" The entire audience, probably even the dancer, heard this. Lord, smite me with a bolt of lightning if my life ever comes to this! I thought.)

So, I arrive again at the manic-depressive state of melancholia and restlessness. I shall endeavor to enjoy my mercurial mood, or at the very least, learn to ride it. Sit in the nice little yoga space I've made for myself downstairs, close my eyes, and do nothing about it. To do nothing about it is to triumph. To see this period as a shift and a transition rather than a crisis requiring divorce or grad school or some other thing that will make the feeling go away, that's the real practice. I'm lost in this mish mash. There's no other way for me to be right now.

The Path of the Medicated Warrior

2007-03-11T22:02:00.000-07:00

I waited exactly 14 days. Then, on Friday, I gobbled a 40 milligram dose of citalopram.

I realized that while it was a worthy goal not to say "fuck," or "fucking" around the children anymore, the fact that I was increasingly compelled to do so reminded me for the millionth time that depression is not a matter of self-control.

I spoke to Dr. Clark on the phone.

"How are you doing on this dosage?" she asked.

"Crying all the time, lots of outbursts, feeling like I want to rip off my own skin," I said.

"Mm-hm," she said. "Any thoughts of suicide?"

Only once, while rocking back and forth on the floor at my friend's house, with my forehead pressed to my knees, but it was nothing. "No," I said.

She prescribed Wellbutrin in addition to my regular dose of Celexa. How this is supposed to help with what the medical professionals call "sexual side-effects" is unclear to me. I think it's unclear to the medical professionals, too. But whatever. I'm game.

Maybe if I was single and 23 the decision between being semi-orgasmic or crazy wouldn't be quite the no-brainer it is now. It's fine to be nightmare in your 20's. Some fellas even dig it. But now when I go off the rails it truly dampens my husband's spirit. And damn, I've got kids to raise now. I've got important shit to do, too, like enjoy vacations in Mexico and do half-moon pose without a block and post pictures on MySpace. (Not to mention teach pregnant ladies how to relax when they feel like cows, and contribute to the good of humanity, and basically be a bright star whenever possible.) I don't have the space to wander in those woods anymore. I'm intimately familiar with them, and they never lead anywhere.

I'm back on the path of wellness.

Day 11

2007-03-06T14:14:00.000-08:00

This, my friends, is what I've been doing a lot of lately. It's quiet, it's meditative, and it burns off my abundant aggression. I can go from utter self-loathing and fury to an open heart and humility. In one hour. Even if I don't stay in that state of grace for very long, my soul gets a taste of what this feels like. And so does my brain.

I want my brain to be ingrained with this state, the memory of it to be permanently scarred into the tissue. I need something to remember, to go back to. I reach points where it seems the only logical thing to do is run away from home or become a tremendous alcoholic. That's when it's time to go back to the mat.

My teacher said once, a long time ago, that no matter what confined state you're in, mental, emotional or physical, do what you can to sense one sliver of ease, one iota of space to move into. Feel for the merest opening. Then move into it. Then see if you can sense a little more space, a little more ease. Relax into that. And on and on.

This is what I do in my yoga practice, especially when my brain is roiling about. I honestly don't know what I'd do with myself if I didn't have my practice to come back to, to pour my zappy, disjointed, animal energy into. I can depend on my practice to deliver me, for a few minutes on the very worst day at least, from blind wildness.

At 20 mg. of citalopram, life is more vivid. I can cry again. I feel low moods and irritation more acutely. I can't really say if pleasure is more pleasurable, or if highs feel higher now. The circumstances of my life over the past couple of weeks have been such that I haven't had the chance to feel those things. But I'm crossing my fingers.

(And my knees, ankles, wrists and elbows.)

Day Six on Reduced Meds

2007-02-28T22:49:00.000-08:00

I'm all fire and love for humanity in the morning. By late afternoon, I want to tear off my own skin.

The experts agree one should give the brain two weeks to adjust to any changes in these kinds of medications. So I must wait before drawing any conclusions. And then, if I'm still a loon, I should get rolfed or acupunctured or massaged on a regular basis. I'll do anything.

I guess if the rolfing and Chinese medicine don't help, I'll have to experiment with some drug cocktails. Hate to think I' might have to be on this stuff forever.

The very worst thing about not being emotionally stable is how I relate to my kids. I truly lose interest in them. That causes them to run at me full-force with body slams and frog leaps, and otherwise make sure my attention is on them. They sense when I am slipping away from them. Their desperation sends me further underground.

Maybe I'm just not the maternal type.

How to Be Complicit in Someone's Death

2007-02-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

"So how's Grandma doing?" I asked my mom over the phone.

She sighed. "Well, she won't use her walker, and she's back up to smoking a pack and a half a day."

"Unbelievable."

"Yeah, I know. I get so furious at her every time I bring her cigarettes over to her house that I just want to throw them at her."

Mm-hm. I suppose not buying them for her in the first place would be out of the question.

Day One of Reduced Meds

2007-02-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

This morning I shook five pills out of a bottle onto my black granite kitchen counter top and proceeded to slice each one in half with a table knife.

"I'm tired of being stupid," I explained to Matt. I covered the knife and pill with a hand to prevent post-chop scatter. Chop. 40 mgs became 20. I sprinkled the tiny half pills into the compartments of my weekly pill dispenser. I have to use this thing that is usually reserved for people with dementia because the pills make me stupid.

Well, to be fair to the drugs, "stupid" is probably an exaggeration. Forgetful is more like it, and flaky, and, oh yeah, unable to achieve certain states that one expects to enjoy with one's partner. One can only put up with these things for so long.

My doctor gave me the okay to taper down. 20 mgs for 2 weeks, maybe a month, then down to 10. Then see how I'm doing. Presumably, if I find myself screaming at the children or hiding in the guest room to sob, I'll be upping the dose. But I am willing to experiment now. I want all of my faculties again.

It's possible that I have worn new paths in my brain deep enough that my thoughts follow the new patterns by habit. The last time I went off meds, I did just fine for five years.

It could happen again.

This is the Way it Goes

2007-02-14T21:49:00.000-08:00

It was a week of extremes: kids dripping green snot, Audrey up 5-6 times per night, sitter on reduced schedule, Nana busy with bridge and whatnot, umpteen hours of yoga training for me, and, oh, yes, Valentine's Day (a holiday that is rotten to the core and only fun for little kids). Plus, Jonah was anticipating our trip to CA by asking every few seconds, "How many days now until we go on the airplane?"

But the really crazy thing was that my grandmother entered the hospital. She was doing so poorly that my mother was inspired to call me and tell me if I wanted to see Grandma again, now was the time.

After hanging up the phone, I walked up two flights of stairs to the attic, where Jonah and Matt sat playing with a train set.

"I have to go to Centralia tomorrow," I said. "My grandma is not well. My mom said I better go."

I wanted to say, "She's dying," but since Jonah was present, I refrained. Instead, I tried to make the gravity of the situation clear in my hushed and steady delivery.

"Oh, no, is she dying?" he asked.

"Great Grandma Lorraine is dying?" asked Jonah.

My eyes popped out of my head as I gave Matt a look that spoke volumes about his honed skills of subtlety and my opinion about that.

Matt cringed and said, "Jesus...I'm sorry."

"She's pretty sick," I said, kneeling down in front of Jonah.

"Is she sick from smoking?"

Matt and I exchanged incredulous glances. "Yes," I admitted. I didn't know for sure if that was true, but one can surmise that fluid in the lungs and a failing heart weren't brought on by a lifetime of healthy living. It's no wonder Jonah picked up on this, since my mom bitches constantly about my grandma's smoking and I bitch constantly about her smoking. He's asked a lot of questions about it, such as the great and obvious question of all time: "Why do they do it if it's going to make them sick?"

I still haven't figured out a way to explain in clear terms that we grownups are bonkers.

Enlightenment Not Guaranteed

2007-02-11T17:41:00.000-08:00

So I spend 13 hours this weekend at a yoga immersion at my sweet, beloved studio with all of my sweet, beloved teachers. I sit on a wood floor in a cross-legged position for long stretches and learn about sanskrit, yoga history, why we chant, and how to sequence a practice. Combined, I do 3-4 hours of asana and meditation and breathing exercises. Leaving class today, the last day of this session, my husband calls to tell me I need to go pick up Jonah from Nana's house because he forgot to leave the car seat with her last night when he dropped him off. So I drive through Husky basketball traffic from Capitol Hill to the U Village area. I play "I'm Not Ready to Make Nice" by the Dixie Chicks about three times during this trip, singing at the top of my lungs as if I were performing in an arena packed with screaming fans. I glance in my mirror at the car behind me. It's Meg, one of my teachers, and she is watching me and smiling really big.

When I get home with Jonah, I open a bag of chips and begin sorting through the mail I have ignored for two days. Audrey, the napless wonder, is racing around the house like the Energizer Bunny, cackling and knocking shit off surfaces. Jonah keeps demanding paper clips to unclog his glitter pens. Matt is asking me if I will bake the chicken that's been loitering in the fridge for days. The due date on it has passed. I think about this for one second, then wash the thing and rip out its innards. I open a piece of mail that tells me I am naughty for not responding by mail to the summons I got two weeks ago to be on a grand jury, every other Wednesday and Thursday, not to exceed 18 months. I fill out the form. Matt is talking to me about another form I need to fill out, something about voter registration for some election in March. I don't know whether this will be a local school bond vote or the presidential primaries. Matt and I get into an argument about why I always put these things off, when all it takes is a signature and a stamp, yadda yadda yadda. I go out and harvest the last of the dying parsley. I chop parsley and rosemary and thyme and garlic. My step mom calls. I crack a bottle of Stella. Step mom invites me over for dinner next week. I politely decline because next week is a nightmare.

I grab my beer, tell Matt I need a few minutes of downtime while the chicken roasts, and immediately come up here to the attic, light a cigarette and swill my beer.

I wait for enlightenment.

Give Up

2007-02-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

Last night, Matt and I went to a rock club to see Dan Savage read from The Commitment and Neal Pollack read from Alternadad. Alternadad is a book in which Pollack writes of his angst about losing street cred now that he's a parent. Apparently, he grew up in a suburb with nerdy, stable parents who drank highballs at cocktail hour and played golf on the weekends. He couldn't fathom what a "cool" parent would look like, so he assumed there was no such thing. This was a problem when it came time for him, a self-proclaimed hipster, to become a dad. How was he going to pull it off?

(I can tell him all about cool parents. You know, the ones who let you drink tumblers of champagne on New Year's Eve and hold your hair back for you later when you vomit? Sooo cool. The ones who smoke so much pot they can't remember why you shouldn't? The ones who are so open about sex that you have to hear about it all the livelong day? Oooh, yes. Growing up with cool parents was grrrrrreat! It was so great that most of my life I never wanted to have children.

Not that I'm bitter. Because of my parents, I got my binge-drinking out of the way before I left high school and delayed having sex because I was terrified of getting knocked up young like my mom. So how could I complain?)

I empathize with old Neal. I have expended a great amount of energy on the same question (which may have been more ridiculous on my part due to my lack of actual coolness). It's a common concern.

I remember a woman in my graduate program telling me, wistfully, that she envied the moms who dressed in stretch pants and Keds. She herself cut her own hair, shopped in thrift stores, and made a personality trait out of her super-alternativeness. She was also, at the time, the mother of a small toddler, and pregnant.

"Wouldn't it be nice to just not care anymore?" she said as we drove past one such unhip, uncaring mom pushing a stroller up East John Street. Inwardly, I sort of rolled my eyes at her hipster snobbery. I mean, God, if you have to try that hard to be cool, then aren't you really trying too hard?

(I understood the larger concept, though. I was battling my own issues about becoming a teacher and having to buckle down in grad school. I couldn't even smoke pot anymore, because it was too expensive and it made me too stupid in class the next day. While my friends went to noisy rock shows and my roommate drank $50 bottles of wine, I was reading Piaget, writing papers about multiculturalism, and shopping for my bananas on sale at Safeway.)

Last night, my one question for Neal Pollack was, how do you know when you are just trying too hard and it's time to quit? Sean Nelson, the MC for the evening, beat me to it. During the post-book-reading Nelson/Pollack tete-a-tete, he asked Pollack a related question: Is it even possible to stay cool once you become a parent?

"At a certain point," Pollack admitted, "you just have to throw up your hands."

"And drive the Passat wagon? Metaphorically?" said Sean.

"Not even metaphorically," said Pollack.

Soon the standing crowd of people near the bar turned their attentions to each other. Poor Pollack stood onstage, eyes afire at the crowd's impudence, and interrupted his own story about a holier-than-thou vegetarian mom he and his kid encountered at the LA aquarium to shout, "Hey! Do you guys just want to drink?"

I felt for him. We were in a club, and a band was about to come onstage, and there were alcoholic beverages to imbibe and cute people to look at, and suddenly the whole parenting discussion just wasn't that funny or interesting anymore. And Pollack became just…a dad. Who was coming to realize it was time to get off the stage.

I guess that pretty much answered my question.

So you think you're doing better?

2007-01-31T12:44:00.000-08:00

I am doing better. I am doing so much better that I am actually considering a professional commitment. In light of this consideration, I went to a prenatal yoga class with my friend Robin the other night to observe and pick the teacher's brain. When she started correcting my postures, I had an interesting new experience.

I say "interesting" because that is the nonjudgmental word I use to remark on a sudden emotional jumps in yoga practice. Such as, "Hmm, it's interesting that my teacher is asking us to stay in chatturanga for this long. It's interesting that I just thought of my teacher as a bitch." That kind of thing. It helps me not get mad at myself for having a response, so I can just have the response and then move on with my life. It also helps me not grasp at positive feelings, like, "I feel so strong and awesome right now! There are rays shooting out of my body! I can conquer the world!" So that has to fall under the category of "interesting," too. Whatever it is, it is temporary and I don't have to do anything about it.

Anyway, so I'm in this class with a bunch pregnant ladies. I'm there to observe them and the teacher. I'm doing a totally half-assed yoga practice while craning my neck to watch all the mamas do their pigeon-prep poses or what have you. And, to be honest, I am feeling arrogant. I mean, come on, with all the training I've been doing, this has got to be a piece of cake, right?

"Susie, is it?" says the teacher, coming across the wood floor toward me. I am on my mat with my shoulders and feet on the floor in bridge pose. She kneels down to grasp my ankles. "Move your feet more parallel and a little farther away from your hips," she says, manually placing my body into the correct position. I allow this, while thinking, "You can't tell me what to do! You're not my real teacher!" I lift my hips higher. I squeeze my butt really hard, which you just aren't supposed to do, to get my hips up really high, to prove that I know what I am doing. Then I feel icky. I think, wow, she must think I'm a total nimrod and probably shouldn't be a prenatal yoga instructor after all. Why do I think I could be a teacher? I'm not really that good…

Etcetera, etcetera.

I haven't worried much about how "good" I am for a very long time. I started yoga with the knowledge that I was uncoordinated and hopelessly high strung, and never thought too much about getting "good." And my big life practice over the past year has been to let go of measuring myself against other people at all. (A lifelong practice, but you have to start somewhere.)

Now that I'm in the process of becoming a teacher, of putting myself in a position to be judged, serious doubts are coming up. Do I really want to have to judge myself? Isn't this process against the whole reason why I practice yoga?

Maybe. I guess I will find out. In the meantime, what if I could really encourage an open heart toward myself? My practice is, if nothing else, totally sincere, and I do believe I've had incredible training from my beloved teacher. Can I remember that I want to teach yoga to pregnant ladies for the same reason I lead new parent support groups? That it's not about being an expert, but being a good shepherd and a supportive presence? Can I continue to retrain my brain this way, and really cultivate fearlessness?

Hell, maybe if I can learn that a little more, I can go off drugs. Wouldn't life really be an adventure then?