Dear Reader:

Tonight is one of those nights when I am fairly sure that single parenting ranks up there with air traffic control and disaster relief as the world's most emotionally stressful gig.   I'm sure that there are others that are able to do it with more grace and patience than I, and there have been times when I have done it with more patience and grace than I am doing now, but holy hell.  IT IS HARD.  Mt. Everest hard.

I totally lost it tonight.   I have been painstakingly rebuilding the emotional floor underneath myself lately (I love the "emotional floor" analogy from the Parker Palmer essay that I shared in my last blog post).  I've been getting one section of the floor under control with subfloor, etc., but then a big pipe will burst and flood that section again and I have to start all over.   Sigh.   Tonight was a deluge.   There is no grief more poignant than when my unmoored emotions start to affect my relationships with my kids.  Ugh.   I am still trying to navigate a lifetime of repressing my emotions to please other people.   Sometimes, they just spill out.   I have to remind myself that it's OK for my kids to see me this way.   They will have to see a bit of the dark to appreciate how I can step out of that into the light.  They need to see that so that they know that they can do it, too.   But, I don't ever, ever want to burden them with my issues.   It's just so hard to know where the line is between being real and authentic with them and laying too much on them... My tender little boy told me, crying, that when I am sad, he gets sad, too.   That sobered me up instantly, I will tell you.   How did I get so lucky as to have that sweet child be at the center of my life?   And, my willful girl was screaming and crying and kicking, and it was too much for me.   But, I was finally able (after losing it) to find the ability to just be with her again.   She was closing those eyes ever so slowly and I whispered - "I am here with you.   I am here with you."  She let out a sigh with one of her arms wrapped up in mine and said "I know.  I know."   Presence.   If only for that minute.   But, we had it.   I love that girl with a fierce love.

Tonight, I just wanted some time to myself.   Time where I wouldn't have to think.   No thinking.  I want to be thoughtless.   Vacant.   Just imagining myself like that makes me wistful.   But, alas, my need for alone time and my children's ability to allow me to have it often do not mix.   When I am working, there is a balance.   This is the first summer where I have had no childcare except for the occasional babysitter and the various morning or afternoon camps.   I now realize that I cannot do this again.   I will have to have some regular options of daily care next summer.   That doesn't mean that I can't take days or weeks when I do not utilize it.   But, I'll have to do it.   And, I am going to have to take myself on an overnight stay somewhere soon, without kids, before school starts in earnest.   Mama needs to take care of herself.   Sometimes, I am SO HARD on myself.   I know this.   My friends know this.   I can be downright mean and judgmental to myself.   I need treat myself with kid gloves for a while.   I need to take care.

There was a moment earlier this evening, though, when I was sitting in the car listening to James Taylor (James, you may save me yet).   The kids had run into the house.   I turned the music and the car off and opened the door and swung my legs out and just noticed.   Noticed.  The sounds. The light.  The breeze.  The tiny inchworm swinging hypnotically on a thread hanging from the branch in front of me:

That little inch worm looks almost spectral, doesn't it?   Anyway, I watched the worm sway back and forth and heard the birds and the cars and the dog barking next door and just relaxed into the moment.  I felt as though I wasn't separated from this world (which is how I've felt a lot lately).   I was a part of it.    It was a part of me.   Relief.    And, I thought, again, of this famous (for good reason) Mary Oliver poem:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

It seemed to me that my complete understanding of this poem waited until today.   That's a small miracle and a gift that today brought me, I think.   That word "meanwhile"....   Always and always underneath every grief and sadness and stressor and and weariness, there is a constant "meanwhile," dear reader.   That "meanwhile" understands that you have your despair, but it is not swayed by it.   It is the world offering itself to you constantly.   It is the thing that announces your place in the family of things.    I think that maybe mindfulness is focusing on that "meanwhile."   I don't have to be good to tap into it.   I just have to allow myself to love.   I just have to be kind enough to myself to let my body love what it loves.    Not my mind.   My body.   It's my body that is connected to the family of things.   I am alive.   No matter how lonely, I am part of the family of things.

Ah, tomorrow is a new day.   I'll get back to work on that flooring.   I think I'm going to put in hardwood.   It lasts longer.  

My modest goals for the month of August are to a) get out in the world and walk for an hour a day and b) start building a 30 minute meditation practice before I go to bed each night.   I believe this will help me focus on not being swayed by the professional and personal waves too much.  Steady at the helm.   That's my goal.   I am optimistic.

Thanks for reading.