Monday
Had three minutes of perfection this afternoon: the kids were all playing (mostly outside), the laundry was off the line and folded, the soup was simmering on the stove, and I picked up the front section of today’s paper and read for a few minutes on the back porch. Three minutes. Not bad.
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After supper, the kids styled each others’ hair. I especially enjoyed CJ’s wings, as frothed-up by AppleApple (he, in turn, brushed her hair so that it covered her face), and my heart was touched by Albus fussing with Fooey’s hair: “It looks better when it goes like this,” [fuss, fuss, fuss]. “Don’t worry,” I told Fooey, who said she didn’t like how it scratched her cheeks, “hairdressers always like styling your hair all crazy, and then you can just go home and stick it back behind your ears like usual.” “Okay, I’m home now!”
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CJ is just at such a stage. It’s so emphatic. There’s no mistaking it. He has certain postures, this slump of the shoulders he does when his feelings are hurt, which might just turn into a whirling blithering rage as he stamps across the floor, growling and whacking anything in his way. I enforced a time-out today for throwing. In the midst of his tantrums, he likes to grab any object handy and fling it. Let’s see whether we can break him of that. On the potty front, we’re having some luck with new training pants (thank you, kind lenders of new training pants!). He doesn’t like being wet. The disposable pull-ups are worse than useless since they actually hold more than a cloth diaper. But the training pants don’t hold much. “I want to pee on the pot,” he declared all day, usually arriving to tell me this after the fact; but I appreciated the sentiment. I’m feeling no sense of urgency, and continue to feel encouraged by his progress. He’s getting it, just at his own pace. This morning, his friend of the almost-identical-age was over, and the two of them had a blast in the backyard. They both found hockey sticks and soccer balls and set about playing “Hockeyball!” As they called it. “Hockeyball!” I kicked a soccer ball around, too, and every time I hoofed it into the net (which felt pretty awesome, I must say; stress release? that feeling of being a kid again?), CJ’s friend would throw his hands into the air and shout: “Yay! We win!”
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It was a day of full-on mothering and calm. I can only manage these days because I know there’s more going on later in the week (ie. some hours to work and to be alone); but because Monday is a unique day in a week of busyness and a variety, it’s somehow easier to let myself relax and enjoy the calm, quiet, mothering-ness of it, without wishing I were doing something else, or feeling too bored. All I have to do is make supper, hang laundry, and hang out with small children (oh, and a few other chores along the way). So I get to do things like … kick a soccer ball, meet Kevin and co. for a business lunch, walk to the pick up the kids from school, let CJ walk all the home, read the newspaper for three minutes in the sunshine, play guitar to the boys before bed, sing Fooey a lullaby while stroking her cheek and sensing her drift into sleep …
Just another Monday. Praise be.
Photo Day
It was 70s day at school on Thursday. We struggled to think of what to advise the kids to wear. Albus went with tie-dye and jean shorts. AppleApple wore beads in her hair and a long skirt. (Fooey is still wearing her pjs because she doesn’t go to school on Thursdays. But she loves a good photo op.) The kids wondered what was going on in the 70s, and the only thing I could come up with was the oil shortage and lineups at gas stations, which is why Albus has a sad face. He’s sad about the high gas prices. I suck. What exactly happened in the 70s? All of my instincts seemed to suggest more 60s-style symbols: beads, peace signs, protests, drugs (didn’t mention those, of course), um, Led Zeppelin, they were 70s, right? Bell bottoms. Fondue. Help me out here.
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Yesterday it was so warm here. After supper we migrated outside and played till bedtime. I don’t usually indulge in nature photos, but could not resist. The colours are such a relief to the winterized eyeballs. Such pleasure to discover Yellow and Blue and Orange in our own backyard. The play went on and on. Kevin kicked a soccer ball. Hammocks. Scooters. Push-toys. Balls. Balancing acts.
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Today it cooled off again, but we had a picnic on the front porch anyway. The kids had the day off school. We shopped for picnic supplies while starving, never a good call, and bought quite a lot of packaged food. AppleApple was particularly disturbed by our choices. We bought kiwis from Italy in a large plastic container, for example. Fooey and CJ had never even seen a kiwi before, because I hadn’t bought them for years. We bought those little over-packaged Baby Bell cheeses. We bought yogurt drinks in single containers. The garbage! The waste! I have become so unused to it that it felt … obscene, actually.
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I can’t bake bread or cookies this weekend. Our oven is on the fritz and won’t be repaired till Monday at the earliest. I upheld the stereotype of the ignorant little woman today while on the phone with the repair company. I could not, for the life of me, find the model and serial numbers anywhere on the stove. I essentially took the stove apart searching for it, while the fellow on the other end gave directions, and Albus helpfully rolled on the floor and begged for a snack. It was all for naught. I never did find the apparently quite obviously placed sticker with that info. Turned out I didn’t need to anyway, as the stove is under warranty and they already have the information on file. At one point, I actually said, “Well, my husband is out of town right now and …” “And when’s hubby coming home?” he asked. I was in a pretty bad mood by the time I hung up. I might have snapped at Albus: “Open your own bleeping banana,” or something in that vein. But the truth is, I know virtually nothing about the stove or about how it works or even where we keep the manual. So the stereotype is sadly accurate. I just don’t want it to be. But then again, I’m not that interested in stoves. So, there’s that. Before I started talking to the repair fellow, I’d been feeling pretty chuffed that I’d found the brand-name on the front …
Good, Better, Best
Could I have used the word “practice” just a few more times in that last post? Still, I’m sticking with the general theory, maybe just need to find a different word for “the practice,” ie. the noun.
One more tiny addition to the theory … with practice, there’s an expectation that you improve. That’s not always the case, though, is it. Sometimes, instead, all you figure out is what does or does not interest you. We’ll all always be better at practicing what interests us. That’s why it’s good to try things out. Because you never know till you do it. Interests change.
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PS That’s a totally random recent photo of AppleApple’s hair. I took the picture in order to convince her that it did, in fact, require tending. Whenever I mention picking out her hair (we don’t brush those curls, we pick them), she goes into spasms: “Who cares what my hair looks like? I don’t care! Why do you care?” And I say, okay, why do I care? And sometimes we decide that it’s fine as is, and we neither of us will be overly vain or focused on appearances. And other times … well, I resort to desperate measures. Because it turns out that I do care that she not enter the world looking like the neglected homeless child of a crazy woman. And even she had to admit, upon viewing this photo, that something needed to be done.
Practice
Thought of the day: everything that we do is what we are choosing (consciously or otherwise) to practice. Today I practiced conversation and empathy. I practiced internet surfing and self-distraction. I practiced cooking (hey–all the practice is paying off; I’m getting pretty good at it). I practiced meditation while hanging laundry. I practiced patience and kindness. I practiced sitting in a hallway outside my kids’ music lessons and enjoying time with my two-year-old (also getting pretty good at that). I practiced yoga, and breathing.
How powerful it is to commit to something and to practice it. Think of the depth that is possible within long-term practice. The idea of practice is often boring, repetitive; but in reality, each time is different, and interesting for its own unique set of circumstances. Each practice is a moment, and deliberate practice has the potential to be so satisfying, knowing that you’re digging yourself deeper into an experience and a process. Knowing that even if you’re at a plateau or slipped a bit backwards, it’s okay. It’s just where you’re at in the practice, and practice itself will take you somewhere else. Long-term practice of anything brings greater freedom. You know yourself within the practice so very well, and you know where you can push harder, or bend, or take a risk, or jump, or laugh, or cry; or you know to hold back just for now and not be so hard on yourself.
Tomorrow, I commit to practicing writing. Oh, and the cooking some more. Dish washing. Laundry. Can’t get enough of that laundry practice. (Though, in truth, I’m not much good at laundry, just at practicing it. Sometimes that’s okay too.)
Tap Tap
Wow. Serious lack of time and energy has lead to a serious lack of writing or creating. I need a kick in the pants to send me back to the keyboard for some tap tap tapping. I almost feel afraid to start up work again. A sense of temporary paralysis. Deep breath.
This morning I spoke to a creative writing class at a local high school, feeling ever so slightly like an impostor. Or maybe just feeling seriously elderly. When I told the young man who led me to the classroom when I’d graduated, it blew his mind. Yes, it probably was long before he was born. How the heck old am I, again?
I like talking to teenagers. It’s like searching for clues to my near-future (Albus is already almost nine).
And upon reflection, the class’s question and answer session got me thinking about the writing I’ve done during this (almost) decade of declaring myself a writer. It’s been a split identity, with mother coming out on top almost always. When I think of the concentration and focus that writing demands of me, I’m glad I’ve chosen mother more often than writer, or been willing to let writer slip to the margins where I tap tap tap only when the occasion arises (or, more precisely, when I make time for the occasion). Yes, it means forfeiting the bigger projects that require more than three hours at a stretch of devoted focus. But less doesn’t mean nothing. It just means a smaller scale and scaled down expectations. The kids grow. They don’t appear to be slowing down on that front. This season will spin away from me and I won’t forget (I don’t think) how to dream and be brave between now and then. Meantime, tap tap, I’ll try, again, this week. Hopefully back to normal writing hours as of Wednesday.
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Food made me happy this weekend. Three bags of spring greens arrived on Friday evening, and I made salad with pecans and apples and maple syrup dressing, and two spinach quiches. Used up the half-bag of mouldering carrots discovered (with some horror) in the cold cellar on Saturday, by making a giant pot of carrot soup of Sunday. I also had fun with phyllo pastry for Saturday’s supper: homemade samosas with dahl, and an apple streudel for dessert. That may not be how one spells streudel. The spellchecker on this computer doesn’t like any permutation my brain suggests.
I am cooking up pasta sauce for supper right this very second (tomatoes frozen last summer; I still have enough to take us through to the coming tomato season). It’s dentist day after school, so supper needs to be ready to set on the table when we arrive home from that outing of fun and joy. This is the all the writing I’m going to get done today.
Tap tap. That’s okay.