"Don't Try So Hard"

Is it a requirement that all children who become older siblings go through a regressive phase that includes talking babytalk, crawling, wanting to drink from bottles and eat from babyfood jars and, in some cases, breastfeed? And furthermore, is it a requirement that their parents find this phase cloying at best and mysteriously irritating? I say "mysterious" because when I chunk it down, nothing Elle is doing right now is not cute, including her high squeaky "I-am-just-a-baby" voice. And yet every parent I know cannot stand when their child acts younger than he or she is and in fact often snaps at said child, losing the desirable parental cool we all aspire to. Also, the babytalk the child uses is not real babytalk but some proximation of it. For instance: "goo goo ga ga." I notice real babies don't actually say "goo goo ga ga" as such.

I am trying again to meditate properly. I go in and out of this attempt. My mind hates to stay still. I am an inveterate planner, which serves me well in a way. I have been known to get a lot done because I am good at filling all the cracks and crevices of my day. When I find myself with a spare five minutes, I love to fill it with a phone call to a friend I've been hoping to catch up with, or I sponge off the counter which always needs a cleaning. At some point I internalized both the phrase about the devil liking idle hands and also "Don't just sit there; do something!" When I started meditating, I was told to reverse that last directive: "Don't just do something; sit there." I find the latter much more challenging.

Our minister Stephen Philbrick wrote a poem which he often recites as a kind of benediction, especially on communion Sundays.

The space between stars, where noise goes to die;
And the space between atoms,
Where the charges thin out;
These are places too.
The moment in the movement of the soul
When it all seems to stop, seized up.
This is true too...
"Not a thing" is something. After the end
And before the beginning
Is time, too.
Let it alone, don't try so hard.
This is God, too.
All of you is.

This coming Tuesday, June 16, our town of Northampton is about to vote on whether or not to override the budget. Because of the catastrophe that is the US economy, Massachusetts has slashed its budgets and towns like ours are scrambling to make ends meet. The vote's in a week. The override would put a million dollars into the school system, and that alone is enough for me to be for it. The rumor is that if the override doesn't pass, my daughter's first grade class will have 35 kids in it. The increase in our property tax comes out to something like $62 per $100,000 worth of property value per year. To me, this is a no-brainer. Moreover, an override very similar to this lost by one vote in 2003. Guess who was too busy to go to the polls that day.

So we have a big sign on our lawn and Tom's been making calls trying to get out the vote. I have no idea what the chances are, but it's been interesting to see how my mind reacts to this whole issue. Of course, what comes up are some of my primal fears. I was raised in the religion of higher education: to believe that all of society's problems could be solved if only we could imbue our children with information and the skills to acquire it, we would make better choices which would lead to fewer wars, better stewardship of the planet, eradication of poverty and support of NPR. I still believe this. But I also know that it's not that simple and that people who don't agree with me are not the enemy. And yet, when someone close to us called today to question why we are for the override, I found myself yelping in the background (Tom was on the phone) things like, "Our kids won't have music, art or PE! Our kids have to bring their own paperclips!" And then trembling with rage when he hung up the phone on the caller.

This behavior kind of goes against my desire to be a compassionate person.

Sometimes when Elle is being a baby, I lose my patience and say, "Too bad you're just a little baby. Only big girls get to _________ (watch TV/eat cookies/ride their trikes, etc.)" And it works; she suddenly becomes a big girl and uses her proverbial words. But I'm not crazy about my behavior in this situation, clever and manipulative though I think I am. If I took the long view, I'd see that she's acting out beautifully. If I weren't in such a hurry, I'd just let her prolong her babyhood and be amused at her recreation of that time, goo goo ga ga's and all.

I hate the idea of her going to a school with 35 kids in her class. I hate that I can't give her what my parents gave me: a school rich (literally) with music, drama, art and athletics. I most of all hate that she might suffer the way I did; that kids might tease her, call her names, ignore her, not recognize her brilliance and beauty and specialness. But of course they will, no matter where she goes: that's part of the walk of childhood. I don't know a single person who didn't experience some kind of social pain at some point in childhood. Mine wasn't the worst, but it was enough to scar me.

But who's to say I am not better off with those scars?

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's where the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen

And where is God except in the suffering? I was listening to a Speaking of Faith interview with Thich Nhat Hanh, one of my favorite bodhitsattvas. He was talking about how the lotus flower needs mud to grow in. "Not marble," he said in his French Vietnamese accented gentle voice.

It's like growing lotus flowers. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. You have to grow them on the mud. Without mud, you cannot have a lotus flower. Without suffering, you have no ways in order to learn how to be understanding and compassionate. That's why my definition of the kingdom of God is not a place where suffering is not, where there is no suffering…

Ms. Tippett: The kingdom of God?

Brother Thây: Yeah, because I could not like to go to a place where there is no suffering. I could not like to send my children to a place where there is no suffering because, in such a place, they have no way to learn how to be understanding and compassionate. And the kingdom of God is a place where there is understanding and compassion, and, therefore, suffering should exist.

"Don't try so hard," Stephen's poem reminds me. Tom had our friend Mike Biegner set it up, printed it out and framed for my birthday last week, and I have been savoring it ever since. My practice so far, in my 43rd year, is to honor the margins by giving myself and my family more of them. Rather than scheduling myself down to the minute, I am trying to leave a half hour, an hour, a few days, a few weeks between activities. I am living in those in between spaces, and––who knew?––it turns out, in the end that there's a lot of life there. Maybe even more life than in those blocks in bright colors on my gmail calendar.

Writer Unblocked

Half-screened porch. Once it's completely screened, I will be able to write our book.

… "Lie down
in the word-hoard, burrow
the coil and gleam
of your furrowed brain.

Compose in darkness.
Expect aurora borealis
in the long foray
but no cascade of light.

Keep your eye clear
as the bleb of the icicle,
trust the feel of what nubbed treasure
your hands have known."



Seamus Heaney, "North"

"A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."-Thomas Mann

I am trying to write a book. I have written three books already, and published two of them, so I was under the mistaken assumption that it would be easy for me to write another book.

Not so fast, lady.

My friend Nalini Jones, a wonderful writer whose book of short stories What You Call Winter practically oozes grace and depth of character, told me years ago that whenever she had to write, whenever she had a deadline, her husband would come home to an exceptionally clean house.

So for the past two-and-a-half months, I've been cleaning my house, making long to-do lists of projects I should have done last September, gotten excited about crafting little teeny tiny knitted-and-then-felted pick necklaces (which, I decided after several cups of extra strong green tea, were going to make Katryna and me MILLIONAIRES!),

Soon-to-be, pre-felted pick necklace which will make us rich.

Also, I sorted about thirty-five hundred loads of laundry, flossed my teeth too enthusiastically and fantasized about how I could only really write the book I'm supposed to write if my husband would locate and put up the screens on our porch.





In short, I did all the things I tell my clients not to do.

I've been in a kind of a rut. Not the regular kind of rut where you feel stuck and sad and frustrated and it's raining and muddy and your car won't move even when four large humans come to push it out. My rut is comfy, in a way. But I've dug it for myself with phrases that I repeat, like: "I am so exhausted!" "I am so busy I haven't had time to wash my hair!" "We are just in survival mode, that's all there is to it." And my favorite: "there are just too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them."

But there was something I really wanted to do, and that was sit down and write this book about how anyone's family can be musical if given just a few ingredients and a dose of permission. Katryna and I have been talking about this book for years now on our drives to and from our gigs. We even have all sorts of wonderful outside supporters encouraging us and cheering us on. It's the best gift our grown-ups gave us, and now that we are grown-ups (really, we are), we want to pass it on. So why was I trolling felting sites on the internet and buying yarn to make an all-purpose summertime tote bag instead of working on our outline?

There are lots of good answers to that question, actually. I'm a firm believer in letting the muse have its way before it gets down to business. Think Pat Morita in The Karate Kid making Ralph Macchio paint his fence. But I'm also a believer in bum glue: that at some point you just have to show up with your laptop and sit until something comes out.

I read an article in the New York Times last week that enhanced the process of my liberation. The article was about the newest trend in parenting, which the writer called "slow parenting." It cited a book by Tom Hodgkinson called “The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids” and it featured a cover — parents lounging with martinis as their small child mixes up their drinks. "Pay attention to your own needs," writes Hodgekinson, "back off on your children and everyone will be happier and better adjusted."

Don't worry--Elle and Jay won't be mixing our drinks for us. And don't worry is actually the point--it may well be that the worst thing you can do for your kid is worry. At any rate, something from my coach training snapped into place after I read this article. It was a long-forgotten, or perhaps long-ignored voice in my head: the voice that questions. "Is it true?" the voice asks when I take as fact what Martha Beck calls a "limiting belief." What if, I suddenly thought, my idea that every time Elle or Jay cries it's my fault, that I am doing something wrong as a parent, what if that thought is not true? What if they're just in a bad mood? And more importantly, what if all that's required is a small shift, a small adjustment in my behavior--not a giving-up-my career adjustment, not a quit-my-yoga-class adjustment, but a two minute cuddle and kiss and be-present-in-my-body adjustment?

As I wrote in the last post, my back is much better, due in fact to an adjustment--a tiny one at that. And it seems to continue to be better as I do my simple exercises (imperfectly) and notice when I am hunching. Course corrections, I remember from my few times on a sailboat, are minute but they have huge consequences for the direction the ship takes.

It's all about the breath. I've heard that for the past twelve years, but it wasn't until recently that I've taken that in and lived it, the way Helen Keller finally got "water" at the end of The Miracle Worker. When I get shaken up by all the events and people in my life that conspire to shake me up (it's their job, after all--every moment is my perfect teacher), my first task is to get back in my body, and the easiest way for me to do that is to come back to the breath.

I turned 42 on Tuesday. I'd planned a kick-ass day. I'd scheduled a session with a Martha Beck life coach––for me. I'd scheduled a Dr. Hauschka facial (I adore them and am an ambassador for their products.) I'd told Tom that all I wanted from him was to take the afternoon off so we could bum around town together. I'd invited my sister and her family for BYO take-out dinner. So when I woke up that morning, I was already in a good place. But in my first moments of being awake, I set this intention: may I take whatever happens as the way it's supposed to be and fit myself to it rather than trying to get it to conform to my hopes and expectations.

So when Elle hopped into bed with us and immediately started kicking and pouting instead of cuddling and kissing, instead of thinking, "She hates me! I'm a terrible mom! She needs more attention! She needs less attention! My day is ruined!" I smiled and thought, "She's three. She's fine. Her mood will pass." And it did. Five minutes later, she was cuddling on my lap cooing, "My baby Mommy! I love my baby Mommy!"

"Everything passes, and the problem is already solved."

"Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-doing." This last from the Tao te Ching and from my new life coach Terry DeMeo who royally kicked my butt on Tuesday morning. I told her how hopelessly busy I was and instead of sympathizing and shaking her head with wonder at my multitasking fantabulousness, she said, "Oh, really. And who is making you be so busy?" She got me to see that my dread of the feeling of being busy was much worse that the actual moment-to-moment reality of my life. She also reminded me that, as Mark Twain said, " I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." In other words, it's my thoughts that are keeping me in this rut.

All this is to say, for the moment, my little vehicle is back on track. I have the proposal almost finished, and feel as though someone came in and cleaned my windows. I can see clearly now, the smog has gone, and I can't believe this is my life.

The Essential Twenty-First Century Mom Conflict

Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Is it just me, or is everyone having the same fantasy? I find myself saying to myself several times a day, “Oh, that’s okay; when Barack Obama is president, that’ll be solved.” "That" being everything from the ever-sinking Dow to our high health insurance premiums to the mice who have taken up residence in our cupboards to my daughter’s continuing refusal to become potty trained. Now and then I remember that Obama is just a guy, albeit a smart and attractive and charismatic one, and that he probably can’t wave his hand and produce miracles, but I think it’s probably good for my nervous system to pretend he can right now.

A friend of mine sent me two articles today that stirred up my Time, Money, Calories matrix and left me panting for breath. One article was from the magazine Brain, Child and the other was her response to it. The Brain Child article is called "Eco-Housewives" and tells of a woman named Shannon Hayes who is writing a book tentatively titled Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity form a Consumer Culture. It sounded right up my alley—a sort of Annie Leonard "Story of Stuff" homesteady fantasy, and with trepidation, I started to read my friend’s response to it. My friend, the mother of three and a brilliant professional writer and card carrying feminist, took offense at the suggestion that “eco-moms” were somehow more enlightened and evolved than those who, as she does, shop at ShopRite and occasionally accept plastic bags when they forget their canvas ones. My friend raised the question “what is enough?” which to me is at the root of what I keep thinking of as the essential Twenty-First Century Mom Conflict.

What is enough? My friend was clearly disturbed and, by her own admission, thrown on the defensive by Hayes’s embrace of a completely consumer-free lifestyle: no TV, all local organic cuisine, no presents at Christmas, etc. Hayes’s stance didn’t bother me in the least: I admire her; occasionally want to follow that path; don’t (I have many an eco-sin); and figure it’s good enough that I use cloth diapers and make my own wipes and drive a biodiesel (which may or may not be an eco-sin, but that's a topic for a different post). It’s about batting averages, I figure, and I am grateful to the Hayeses of the world for allowing me to have lower ones.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own areas of defensiveness. I get defensive around moms who spend most of their day actually doing something that can be perceived as “playing” with their kids. I am pretty good at making up stories, but oddly terrible at engaging with my daughter around her stuffed animals or dolls. This is especially odd as that was exactly the kind of play I did as a child. The other day when I was lamenting my lack of talent and interest in imaginative play, my husband said, “You don’t like to play with her that way because you brought that part of you along with you. Now you play by writing novels and songs, and you can’t go back.”

Maybe so, but I still feel like a rotten parent when I see someone else–– a babysitter, another parent, my husband–– animating one of her dolls and getting her to giggle and shriek with joy. I have friends who get defensive––in fact, go on the offense––when it comes to a career they may have left behind. These moms speak with passion about selfishness and priorities and deathbed regrets.

Whatever. Motherhood, career, good stewardship of the planet, It's impossible to do it all. I give up. Also, I give up on trying to be enlightened. The High Priests of the Present Moment may now come and officially excommunicate me. I’ve been trying so hard to live in the Now so as not miss a single thing my darling children do or say that I think I’m seriously in danger of losing my sense of humor forever. I wish today, with all my heart, that my friend and I (and all the Shannon Hayeses of the world) could just relax and enjoy our few moments here, even if that means we are zoning out and watching Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central; EVEN if that means we are sitting around the kitchen table judging our other mom friends for watching Comedy Central. Either way, at least we will have a few precious moments for ourselves, even if they are self-righteous ones.

Today I let my daughter cry in her crib for five minutes after I put her down for her nap, and yes, I felt terrible, and yes, it was the absolute best choice I could make given how exhausted I was and how my son needed his diaper changed. Then I noticed that she stopped crying, sung herself the ABC song and fell asleep. When she woke, she was in a great mood.

“I say 'hostibal,' mama, and you say ‘hospital.’ Isn’t that funny, mama?”

I picked her up and snuggled her. “I’m sorry you were sad before your nap,” I said.

“I not sad now,” she replied. “Talk about the bear and the scary boy, okay Mama? That’s a good idea, right Mama?” and she hugged and kissed me, and perhaps I was forgiven, but at any rate, her innate, instinctive kindness allowed me to forgive myself. In this, as in all things parental, the kids are the best teachers of all.

Homemade Diaper Wipes

When I made the decision to use cloth diapers, I consulted my friend Carol on the ins and outs of the diaper pail, how many cycles should they be washed, and other sundry matters. She happened to mention her friend Frances who, she said, made her own wipes.

My eyebrows flew up in amazement. "Her own wipes!"
"Yeah," said Carol. "She's really hard core."

I figured that particular hard-coreness would never strike me. Wipes didn't even seem that bad for the environment, especially the brand I used: Seventh Generation, which is basically an unbleached kleenex with some eco-friendly suds soaked in.

It wasn't the eco-aspect that got me after living for two months with two kids in diapers. It was the cost. We were going through two or three packs at week, and at $5 a pack, that's nothing to sneeze at, so to speak.

So I went online and made my own formula, out of olive oil, baby shampoo and water:
1 cup water
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp baby shampoo

I put the formula into three squirt bottles--one for each diaper changing station. Best of all, I turned all my stained infant clothes, my puked on-and-inadvertently-dyed-pink-from-being-in-the-wrong-load tee shirts into nice long wipes. Now, instead of using five or six wipes per poopy situation, I use just one long soft rag. The new formula works much better than the wipes--it's more like a sponge bath than a toilet paper attack--and my kids prefer it two to nothing.

And we're saving $60 a month. Though I still use wipes in my diaper bag, and I have not yet instructed my babysitters to follow my suit. I'm not that hard core.

How to Heal Stinky Carpets

This from the brilliant novelist Melissa Miller:

Hi Nerissa,

I thought of an idea for the How To Be An Adult site ... I have carpets in our bedrooms and they have fallen prey to both the kids and dogs in the urine department. I hate the stuff that they sell for such odors and don't think they're good for my family or pets to breathe, or for the environment. What I found works like a charm is to sop up the wetness, clean the area with a good cleanser (I use the new green series by Clorox or something by Seventh Gen.) and let it dry ... then the piece de resistance is plain old baking soda. I sprinkle it over the stinky spot and brush it deep into the fibers with a hand broom. Let it sit for the day and then vacuum it up! This also works for every day kinds of pet odors in carpets ... vacuum the carpet, shake the soda all over it, brush it into the fibres, let it set and then vacuum it up!

Nerissa says: the wonders of baking soda! We keep countless boxes of it in our pantry and in all our bathrooms. Combined with vinegar, it is a powerful, earth-friendly all purpose cleaner.

Dead Car Battery Question

In some cars, you can charge a cell phone whether or not the car is running. My question is: does that in anyway hurt the car? My husband and I are in disagreement about this.

Unbelievably Good Mock Sushi Salad

I haven't had real sushi in over 10 years as I don't eat sugar, and sushi has sugar in the seasoning for the rice. Also, it is ill-advised* for pregnant women to eat sushi, so there are multiple reasons why, when Tom and I go out for Japanese, I abstain from what was once my obsession. But pregnancy cravings are pregnancy cravings. Today, I marched into my local food co-op, set down an avocado, a cucumber and some organic nori sheets on the belt and got creative in the kitchen.

Ingredients

-nori sheets
-one can crabmeat (the fake crabmeat, which most California rolls use, have sugar in them, so if you don't have a problem with sugar, you can substitute this.)
-6 oz cooked brown rice with a little rice vinegar shaken over
-1/4 avocado, thinly sliced
-3/4 cucumber, thinly sliced
-2 tbsp Annie's Organic Shiitake Dressing (optional; again, if you don't have a problem with sugar, go online and find a recipe for sushi rice and follow that)
-powdered wasabi (or real, if you can get it)
-tamari or soy sauce
-caviar (I didn't have this, but a girl can dream)

You might also want a bamboo sushi roller, though I don't have one and did just fine making little cones with my piece of nori.

Assemble your ingredients. The rice should be cool and easy to work with. You can either toss all the ingredients together to make a non-traditional Japanesish salad, or attempt a more roll-like creation. Either way:

-hold a sheet of nori over a gas flame or a candle very briefly. The sheet should turn from black to green.
-wet the powdered wasabi to create a paste. Leave for 10 minutes.

Then, if attempting rolls:
-lay the sheet down on the bamboo roller. Put a layer of rice on it in a square, leaving a margin of about an inch all around
-in the middle of the sheet, make a vertical line of crabmeat.
-next to the crabmeat, a vertical line of avocado
-and a vertical line of cucumber
-and a vertical line of caviar
-roll up the roll and seal the nori (wet the inside and outside edges of the nori to make a seal)
-with a VERY sharp knife, cut the roll into four-six equal parts. You may need to wet and dry the knife blade between each cut.
-with chopsticks or your hand, dip your sushi into a little dish with some tamari/soy and wasabi

OR what I did:
-cut your sheet of nori into quarters
-fold one quarter into a cone
-with a spoon (or chopsticks if you are very skillful) fill your cone with the sushi salad
-dip into the wasabi/soy mixture and enjoy!
-keep making cones till you are satiated or the sushi salad is gone, whichever comes first.

*perhaps falsely, but that's another story--see Trevor Corson's wonderful essay here: