Rutabagas and Turnips (this is the punchline).

Rutabagas or "begies" as Grandma Mim calls them are one of the most ridiculous sounding vegetables in existence.  Turnips aren't any more sophisticated.

Sometimes I forget that the great thing about having children is having fun with them. I wrote a parenting curriculum for a company that wanted to teach Peace to young children and their parents.  The CEO of the company reminded me that when I wrote the curriculum, I needed to remember to encourage parents to have fun with their children.  

I was an amazing after-school director, the children thought I was so fun and funny and I brought a breath of fresh air to their troubled East Harlem lives.

As a parent, I had put such pressure on myself to raise a well-behaved child, that I had forgotten that a sense of humor is one of the most valuable qualities of a self-composed person.

By the time Edie was about 9 months old, "fun" was not in my vocabulary.  I had endured 4 months of colic, 9 months of sleep training a very determined  baby with  a babysitter who undermined every step of our progress, and teething that brought about hours of inconsolable crying.  

I had lost the thread until my friend Sparka came to visit us around this time and she got such joy out of little Edie, that she reminded me of this sage advice.  Children are fun and you should enjoy them, because the times that are fun will be very short.  

I was raised in a household of funny people, and although I think of myself as humorous, I am often so uptight, that there is nothing funny about me.  I have been described as intense, dry, serious, focused, but not usually as "fun".  

Every time I try to tell a joke, my audience is left scratching their heads while I chuckle to myself.  

Recently, my husband has been trying to help me with the set-up.  The beauty of children is that they don't generally require the set-up.  I think that is always why I made such a charming caregiver.  Children always found my crazy punchlines to be so crazy that it made them laugh. 

We had such a difficult couple of tense days, the children and I, that it was a joy to finally sit down and read Happy Baby Words together.  This is one of those object identification DK books that my daughter is past, so in order to make it fun to read, we just replace random words with either Rutabaga or Turnip.  Then we laugh ourselves into hilarity. 

There, I did it, I started out with the punchline and you had no idea where this post was going, but in the end, seeing a little girl in a book playing with rutabagas instead of blocks or a child 'turninping' instead of crawling, can lighten the night of tension between a three year old and her mom.  Who cares about the set-up.  

I Want to be a Daddy

For a few charming weeks it was, "we are both mommies" after our week from hell, it is now, "I am a daddy".
Gender awareness is creeping in.  Edie talks a lot about her imaginary brother.  She has dreams about being a boy and making daddy cry.  (Not sure what that's about).  She is becoming acutely aware of gender differences in spite of our post-feminist world.  Even though mommy and daddy both work, there are some obvious differences.  For one, Daddy is ALWAYS working.  He is all full of fun and laughs for a half hour and then, "Sweetie, I have to work".  

Edie is always pulling out her computer or e-mailing people from "Keviemetal Corf", saying "I have to work".

He gets the short end of the stick most of the time, he gets kicked out of the room, he doesn't get to read stories.  He can't nurse the little one and mommy is the preferred word in the middle of an emotional crisis.  It isn't exactly ego-inflating to be the Daddy.  

They say that moms do 20% more work regardless of who brings home the tempeh bacon.  I don't knock my husband, because he works EXCESSIVELY to keep us afloat, but if I were a child seeing that mommy gets to do the laundry and the dishes and she is the short-tempered one who puts me to bed every night, I'd want to be a daddy too.

I Scream, You Scream, We all scream for Caffeine!

Every empire usually falls because of some vice.  The financial institutions  fell because of greed.  Corporate America, the same.  My fall this week was because of the greed over one lousy cup of coffee.  For Edie, it was a fascination with public potties and souvenier pennies.   

Friday was the culmination of a week of screaming.  After three days of non-stop screaming, I thought it would be nice to drive to the house during nap time on Friday.  I thought we might be over the hump.  

At school all week, they have been talking about being 'big kids' and learning to use the potty, saying good-bye to pacifiers and bottles and such.  Edie had so many potty accidents that they changed her clothes and shoes at least three times every day.  Apparently one of the other children was so traumatized by the Go, Potty, Go video that she cried all through her nap.  

I should have known better than to be sweet talked into picking her up from school before nap.

Every thing was jolly and fun in the car, until Edie announced in the middle of a huge traffic jam on the Major Deegan that she had to use the potty.  The next bathroom is at 233rd street after all of the traffic at the GWB exit.  I figured she would end up going in her diaper, but the video had such a profound affect on her, that she held it.

We finally got to 233rd street and she 'made a big one' in the potty at the gas station.  Thus begins the fascination with public restrooms.  No sooner were we on the highway again that she needed to go to the potty at the coffeeshop.  I was exhausted and longed for a coffee myself. Lately Edie has been pretending to be a mommy, "mommies drink lots of coffee"

We stopped at the next rest stop and used their potty.  We watched a little boy make a smooshed penny in the machine and against my better judgement, I plunked down 51 cents to make a Statue of Liberty id.  After all, we had been reading all of these books about New York and I thought it would be educational.  Admiring our new penny, I ordered my coffee and hoped to hit the road again, nap time had now come and gone.  She asked for another penny, and I said no. She started screaming at the top of her lungs threw herself on the floor.  I carried her out of the rest stop kicking and screaming with Roxy hanging off of the other arm, everyone staring at us with their lofty opinions on parenting.

She had time-out in the car and screamed for another 20 minutes.  Even though she wasn't done, I decided it was time to go.  Not I, nor any strongman,  could have gotten that howling Banshee into her car seat.  I got so mad that  I decided to drive off with her standing in the back seat.  I peeled away so loudly that we turned the head of just the strongman I could have used to help me.

My judgement got the best of me as I jerked to a stop 100 feet later and as I was getting out of the car I saw my beautiful soy latte splash down the side of the car and onto the street.  Damn the caffeine and public potty vice!

Structure? What Structure?

I had a reallly challenging week this week.  It was my daughter's first full week of school after having most of the summer off.  We had our apartment re-done and are essentially camping out on the floor with a few beds, no toys, no computer and no furniture.  Kevin stayed at the house upstate to meet some deadlines, so I was at home with the girls alone.  Three year old's need structure. Everyone tells me that our daughter in particular needs structure.  

Our lives are the definition of un-structured.  Kevin is a free-lancer, which means that he usually gets a call at 4 o'clock with some impossible deadline which takes him out of commission for days and nights.  We make plans to do all sorts of things then have to cancel at the last minute.  My job is different every day and I have to be flexible to meet my deadlines.  I get countless calls at the last minute, demanding my presence at a school and I have to jump.  Kevin and I handle all of this with relish and flow.  After all, the alternative is, well, an 8 to 6 job in an office.  

A three year old handles this by screaming and pushing us away.  When we arrived home from the swings on Thursday, my daughter began screaming at the top of her lungs.  I put her in the time out chair and she screamed and kicked even louder.  When she screams, the little one starts screaming.  When the little one screams, she screams even louder.  If your apartment has no rugs or furniture, screams can be heard all the way on the first floor.  

I am not proud of the effect that three nights of three hours of screaming had on me.  On the third night, I broke down and cried, sobbing, air gulping cries, sitting on the floor, while my daughter looked on in awe.  She asked me why I was crying and I said, I just don't know what to do when someone screams at me.  When I finally calmed down, she said that she didn't want me to cry anymore and we laid down to read books and got silly and kissed each other.  After she went to sleep, I cried some more and called my parents a very candid parent friend. After a good cry with them, I was ready to face the world again the next day.

The Bad Seed

One of my favorite horror movies is the Bad Seed. It was obviously written by a mother who has a daughter similar to mine. The reports from school are that they wish every one of the children was as great as our daughter. "You are such a nice mommy, you are the best mommy" They have never seen a tantrum or any other kind of bad or questionable behavior from our child. "You are such a nice mommy, so pretty, you are the best mommy". She never throws a tantrum, she always puts everything away when asked. "You are such a nice mommy, you are the best mommy in the whole world". When I pick her up, it's a different story. She will begin to scream at the top of her lungs if I do any thing wrong. Whenever I try to express how much difficulty I am having with the tantrums, no one can believe me. "You are such a nice mommy, so pretty, you are the best mother". I ask for advice on how to help me deal with the issues I have with my daughter and they say, she is an angel, they wish all of the children could be like her. "You are such a nice mommy". When they find me floating in a pool, it will be obvious that it must have been because I am so unstable and delusional.

Out of the Frying Pan, In to Parenting

One of my favorite yogi stories is the one about the sage who goes to meditate in a cave for 15 years in order to abolish anger.  After he feels that he has successfully abolished anger, he triumphantly takes a walk to the village market.  After a few minutes of being yelled at by the hawkers, and jostled by hurried shoppers, he explodes with anger and indignation.  They say that the best place to learn a yoga practice is in the city in a householder's life.   I will amend that by saying that one of the best places to learn a yoga practice is as a mother.

Everyone gets the lessons they need in order to evolve.  For some, it is simply finding a work/family balance in their lives.  Others have repressed a great deal more and need more extreme lessons.  Obviously, I am in need of some extreme lessons.  

I always thought of myself being fairly even-tempered.  Stressed, okay, sensitive, maybe, but calm in most states of crisis.  After all, I counseled people with abuse issues without reacting to some of the incredibly difficult things they shared with me.  

I imagined that as a Mom, I would be a total cucumber, able to deal with a lot of stress, and still be loving and understanding.  

When our first daughter was born, she had colic, crying uncontrollably, not just for a few hours in the evenings like the books talk about, but screaming all the time she was awake, for four and a half months.  We had a fabulous babysitter named Rana who would come over for a few hours every afternoon.  Despite being only 19, she would sit with my inconsolable daughter on her lap and coo "Pretty blue eyes don't cry"!  She had a magical effect on my daughter and her being there had a magical effect on me, because I was able to leave the house for a few hours and have my own time.  

I thought the colic had steeled me for any challenges that would be presented to me. I was wrong.   My daughter and I are so similar in so many ways, so sensitive and needy that I am pushed to my limits almost daily.  The challenge with a sensitive child is whenever my nerves are split, she reacts by acting up even more.  If I were indeed calm and collected, she would stay calm herself.  

I am not calm and collected.  I was childless for 37 years, I could do whatever I wanted to do and whatever I needed to do, whenever I wanted.  I could sleep in, I could go for days without eating or taking care of anyone, I could take ten day meditation retreats. I could abolish anger in the little cave of my existence.  If someone made me angry, I could just break up with them or stop calling them.  You can't do that with your children if you want to grow spiritually.

 The problem with wanting to grow spiritually, is that you ask for the most extreme circumstances in life to help you to grow.  You can't just react to difficult situations and say, "oh well, we just don't get along".  You actually have to observe, analyze and make changes.  

When you get pregnant, the midwife does not sit you down and tell you that now you are entering the marketplace and that every little bit of your evolution will be put to test.  To credit my midwife, she did tell me this in the hospital before we took our daughter home.  

My daughters have strong personalities, they offer to me every day the most extreme circumstances to help me work on myself.  They make it clear that I am now responsible for the spiritual, emotional and physical growth of all three of us.

As much as I embrace the journey, I long for that cave of ignorance where I lacked responsibility.  The main character in Eat, Pray, Love  and countless parents have walked away from this, either physically or psychologically.  I am, however, bound to my practice and the sankalpa which goes with giving birth.  If I don't evolve, my daughters will find themselves carrying on my samskaras and the liberation they assumed in being born into a yogi family will be in vain.  

Undoing Fear and Loathing

When I found out that I was pregnant with a girl, I cried.  
I didn't want to have a girl.  Girls hate their mothers.  
I wouldn't be able to screw up a boy.  Girls are so complicated.  
They hate their mothers and are embarrassed by them when they become teenagers.  What would I do with a girl?  I don't know anything about being a girl, much less how to talk to a girl about being a girl.  Now I have two.  I have tried to get to the root of the mother issue and I have not quite figured it out.   The root is fear and it is a rotten one. 

Once I was an adult, my mother told me  that she was afraid of me when I was a child.  She was 23 when I was born, she was poor and living in the dreary city of Boston and she said she just didn't know what to do with me, so she kind of left me alone.  I can't really get much more out of her than that.  Our family doesn't talk favorably to each others' faces.  They just pass along cryptic messages, like telling my husband that they knew I was special and unique.  They didn't really show me those feelings. 

I am deducing that my daughters are 'special' in the same way.  There is nothing scarier than looking at someone and seeing your own reflection.

I am also afraid of my daughters.  I am afraid that we will not be close, that I will screw them up and that they will have the same hollowness that I feel about femininity and love and accomplishment.  I am afraid that I won't respond in a loving way to the clinging they feel towards me.  I am afraid that I won't be there for them and that they won't know how much I love them.  I am afraid that they won't be able to handle life and one will become despondent or addicted or broken.  I am afraid that these years will slip away because of all of these fears.  

It is all of this fear that will be their un-doing.  

I know from my yoga practice that fear is essentially not knowing your own limitations.  Not knowing your limitless nature from an experiential level.  

I want to be perfect somehow and give my daughters what I  did not have.  I put a lot of pressure on myself, and often cannot distinguish between the necessary lessons for growth and the absolute fun of being in a family.   That is not knowing my limitless nature.  I operate under the misperception that I do not have enough love to go around. 

My daughters feel my tension.  As all children feel tension.  Whenever I am strained at the thought of not being enough or of following some rule, or afraid or responding to one and making the other one feel less special, they act out.  I see myself re-creating the tension.  I don't have clear boundaries.  The real key is to know and establish the limitations of time and space and be free with your love.  

My new experience of unconditional love is that I have married someone who, although also sometimes afraid of me, will work with me to grow. I am allowed to push the limits of love and work with him to feel complete. I want to be able to directly model this way of being to my daughters, but  that requires letting go of fear and accepting the truth that it is inevitable, you will make mistakes, but if you do it with love and humor, you will triumph.  

My daughters will have a safe space to triumph over fear, that is my commitment. 

One step forward, two steps back

Forget everything I said about sleep training and potty training.  

When they are teething, all bets are off with the sleep training.

When they are potty training, accidents happen, sometimes five times a day.

Thank god for Orajel and washing machines.

All I can do is hold it together is say, "it's okay, honey, accidents happen to everyone".

Utopia in the time out chair

We like to impose limitations on ourselves.  When I was in college, I was taking a course on utopias.  What I found most interesting about utopias was that people don't really want utopias as much as they think.  A society starts out as a utopia, then a governing body forms, rules are put into motion.  The original ideals around which  the utopia was formed blur and it becomes a society not dissimilar to the society they were trying to escape.  They want to be told what to do.  They want to know the lines between right and wrong.  The idea of complete freedom from authority is ultimately too scary. 

 I went to school in Spain and studied and wrote all about anarchy.  I read Marx and Lenin and the anarchist manifestos that came out of the Spanish Civil War.  After all, anarchy was successful briefly in Barcelona.  

As we began to impose the timeout chair, something very interesting occurred, Edie will sit in timeout, as though physically bound, screaming and crying, without moving out of her chair.  There is no safety belt or other apparatus to keep her in her chair, yet she doesn't move out of it.  This phenomena serves to reinforce not only my philosophical college belief that people want rules, but it tells me that children want boundaries.  They want someone to define right and wrong for them.   It is as painful for parents as any other training can be.  But with each of these things, the promise of a self-composed person who can make good choices for themselves and their interactions with others makes it work.  As I watch the emotions appear in the little god filled beings that we call two year olds, I understand how scary it must be.  We always de-brief after an out of control emotional outburst and each timeout gets briefer and briefer. 

There is still the utopian stronghold that fantasizes that the undeveloped mind with raging emotions can somehow make the right choices without any guidelines.  I have witnessed those children, pouring paint on sofas, drawing all over their toys,  hitting and biting, and creating little Lord of the Flies communities inside of their households. Anarchy only works if it is self-rule for one little self.

The Common Enemy

Everyone has to make a 9/11 homage post.  A lot of children were created that night all over the world.  A lot of children lost their parents. 

In America, we were so focused on our personal enemies previous to an attack on our home soil.  After 9/11, the enemies remained the same. When you have children, the question of enemies becomes so much more palpable.  We teach our children about compassion and pain and fear. But how do we put into words our common enemies?   When I taught yoga classes in September of 2001, I felt like all of the teachings were being questioned.  I wasn't sure if talking about the war in the Bhagavad Gita was even useful to those who were feeling the direct effects of the war against people they knew.  I kept asking myself the same question. 

Who is the enemy?

In Buddhism, we are taught that life is suffering.  Suffering leads people to do all sorts of grotesque stuff.  There are heinous acts of violence every day in so many countries. 

Who is the common enemy?  Mother Nature? The hurricanes and monsoons and tsunamis?  Al Quaida?  Robert Mugabi? The child sex trade?   Food that is heated over 110 degrees and no longer alive?  Mosquitoes? The Patriot Act?  Politicians?  Fundamentalist religions?  Self-deprecation? Cancer? Alcoholism? When we would ask our meditation teacher what to do about this seemingly out of control world, he would say, "Do your inner work".

 A friend of mine adopted a young girl from an orphanage in Cambodia.  

this little girl had seen so many awful things in the first two years of her life.  She has been living in the US with her new parents for three years now and has turned the focus of her suffering to her own life.  She is now obsessed, as many five year-old girls,  with the right shoes and pants that she wants to wear every day.  What can her parents teach her from the ashes that she arose from?  Do your inner work.  They cannot force upon her the memories  of her life and suffering.  Her suffering is immediate and as superficial as it may seem, it is real.  It is not only a function of the society she lives in, but of the inner human struggle.  

When I was traveling in college I changed my major from art to education, because I wanted to directly affect the lives of others.  When I threw myself into saving abused children and their families, I learned this;  I can't save anyone,  I can only show them the tools and how to use them.   They have to take the steps out of their own suffering.  It is possible that art could have been just as effective as education. 

There is a way out of suffering. 

Our biggest enemy is our inability to move out of our own suffering and see the real power that we have to elicit change in the world.

With each freedom comes more responsibility

I always tell new yoga students, "you really shouldn't start this practice, your life is going to get so difficult as you look your shit straight in the face, remaining in the bliss of ignorance is inviting.  But there really  is no other choice, you can't turn back, and it is the most liberating hell that you will ever find yourself in".

We are potty training and sleep training at the same time.  

The sleep training is essentially getting your child to learn how to sleep without your assistance.  It is wrought with controversy amongst all parents.  

There are countless books about to train or not to train and most of these books spend the forward taking pot shots at the other's methods.  

They say things like, "some people think that a baby is just an inconvenience and should be trained in a cruel way like a puppy through crying it out until becoming emotionally insecure for the rest of their lives".  

The other side says "some people think that a baby should be carried around and coddled until they cannot do anything without the parent around, until becoming emotionally insecure for the rest of their lives."

 I met a couple in our neighborhood and mentioned that we had an eight month old,  they said, "oh, we've heard her screaming"  I said that we were sleep training her.  The woman looked at me and smugly said, "you mean you are trying to put her on a schedule and make her sleep at specific times".   I said, "No, I am teaching her how to fall asleep without my intervention".  The man looked wistfully from his wife to his two kids and said, "Wow, maybe WE should have done that".  I guess we won't be fast friends.

We know couples who never sleep without their children, who are getting up all night until their children are well into their elementary years and have no time away from them.  My husband stays up all night almost every night, but he does it to draw.  If he could nurse the baby, I would let her stay up all night with him.  

There is no right answer, but as someone who needs to function on a fairly articulate level during the day, I need to sleep at night and I need a few hours away from my children during weekend nap time.  My children have not proven to be easy cases.  I will tell the story of the older one some other time.

When you sleep train, the horrible screaming is enough to make you want to give up the promised freedom of a good night's sleep and everything that comes with it.  Roxy went from 27 minutes of gut wrenching cries three times a day to 1 minute in the course of two weeks.  With that new freedom of her sleeping alone comes the responsibility of doing something constructive with that time.  

On the potty training side, there is no controversy around to train or not to train. Potty trained means no more driving straight through from city to country as diapers are gleefully soiled.  It means illegal freeway pit stops within 500 feet of the last rest stop.   It means now that book time, which always lasts waayy too long, now ends with, "I have to go to the potty"  Inevitably there are songs to compose and toilet paper to be examined and overall stalling in the bathroom.  

But having two independent girls as they face the world, priceless.

Shaucha-Cleanliness or how not to trip all over toys

Before I became a parent, I had a lot of ideas about what I didn't want for our children.  My biggest pet peeve?  Toys all over the house.  Now I may be lumped with all of the fifties moms but I loved the horror story one of my friends told about how her mom would throw away any toys that they left lying about when they went to bed.  For her it was traumatic, for me, it sounded therapeutic.  There is nothing like the silent pain of a small wheel jamming your tender foot in the middle of the night.  If I become sleep deprived enough, I will be an insomniac who rents a big dumpster and just keeps throwing things away. 

 One of my favorite how to parenting books is called "Confessions of a Slacker Mom"  In the book, she tells tender stories of her very practical mom who only saved a few things from her children and kept them in her bathroom drawer.   

 Now, I am very sentimental about the few things that I still have from when I was little, each year we made Christmas ornaments and my mom saved them for us, I have the baby clothes that were just mine, not hand-me downs,  and I put my daughters in them, I have the cool cardboard box haunted house that I made, and I haul out my childhood easter decorations every year, but there are only a few very special things.  They mean a lot to me.  

There are so few toys that remain current and so many children have too many toys.  Having a room, or worse, a house full of toys just doesn't work for me.  

As the little one outgrows things, I give them away.   The nagging question for me however, is how do we maintain the special nature of toys without being overly attached.  For my friend whose mother threw things out, and I, who had mostly hand-me-downs, I think that the lack of new things created a hoarding tendency in us.  I shamefully collect all sorts of things and try to fill my psychological 'not enough' with a physical 'enough'.  

 Recently when we were trying to get our older daughter to share with the baby she declared, "But I don't have enough toys to share."  Where did she get this idea?  

How do I teach my children that what we have is enough?  I want them to equate that being enough is having enough.  As we start to give toys away, I am trying to build a direct relationship to giving a lot as a way of being enough.  

Some friends of mine have close relationships with orphanages all over the world.  As we dedicate toys for those children, so we dedicate space in our own hearts and on our toy shelves.  A clear toy shelf makes a clear heart.

F-bombs, or, what comes out of the mouths of babes

When Edie was just beginning to speak a lot, around eighteen months, her stroller fell over and she uttered a very cute, "Damn it"!  A few months later something happened and she said "Jesus"!  Every little nuance of your speech is parroted by the little darlings.  

When I was growing up we had a big doggy bank and every time someone in the house cursed, they had to put a quarter in the bank.  Well, children go through a stage when they delight in finding everything wrong that others do and pointing it our.  My parents were eventually emptying out their pockets in an effort to keep up with the rules they made about cursing and they were paying for it-big time. 

 Their biggest mistake was that the "curse jar" was also the vacation fund.  We ended up taking an amazing family vacation to Hawaii.  

After that, we were nearing the teenage years and managed to get a rise out of our parents as often as possible and once again, they were emptying out their pockets.  The next time we emptied out the doggy bank and came up with a big fund,  my parents took a trip to Europe with the money-without us.  So much for Pavlovian doggy banks.

Mantra

Mantra literally means calming the mind.  A mantra is generally used to re-direct the thoughts from disturbing to higher minded thoughts.  

Here are some tantrum inducing mantras that my two year old has started with.  "Mommy, say 'you don't know what to do with me'!"  Tonight's was the most disturbing yet.  "Mommy, say 'what is wrong with me'."  Oh no, what is wrong with you?  Nothing, dear, you are perfect.  "No, say, 'what is wrong with me'!"  She broke down in tears over this one, because she wanted me to say it and I just couldn't do it consciously. 

I must be saying it to her, but I can't think of when.  I am racking my brains while she is hysterical over what is wrong with her and I can't think of when I have said this to her.  Then she shoves Roxy and Roxy almost falls over onto her head and I said it, "What is wrong with you"?  My mantra that I got from my parents was, "You need to do more".  "We need to get something done".  "there isn't time for doing anything fun, we have so much on our list that needs to get done".  

My parents were visiting recently for over two weeks and we kept trying to take them out to do something enjoyable.  They kept saying that we have too much to get done.  I am trying to erase my old mantras with things like, "I Love You"!  "You are amazing"!  There is a lot of un-doing to be done.  

What is wrong with me?

70 square feet and a mule

When the slaves were freed, they got 40 acres and a mule.  When we were freed of the tyranny of suburbia, we each got 70 square feet and a 9 square foot work area.  

We just had our apartment painted.  The apartment that I moved into 22 years ago as a single punk rocker in Manhattan.  It has gone though many permutations.  Now we are four.  Our entire living space is less than 300 square feet, and even double that space sounds like luxury living.  

Sometimes I think, "oh God, we have so much stuff".  For four people in a tiny space we are doing pretty well.  We took out all of the furniture and now I don't want to move anything back. I fantasize about getting a HUGE 700 square foot apartment.  

When we went to visit some of our New Yorker friends who moved to a large victorian in Raleigh/Durham, Todd would introduce several of the huge empty rooms by saying,  'we're not sure what to do with this room yet'.  In my brother's house, they have a "bonus room" that is over 700 square feet.  There are two dining rooms, a living room for adults and one for children.    

My brother's family each have 1600 square feet to call their own if they divide their house up between the four of them.  When his children came to visit, I had planned a hilarious routine in which I would open the door from the bedroom to the living room and say 'this is our den.', then open the door to the bedroom again and say, 'this is our other bedroom.', I would repeat this routine several times and thought I would get a big laugh out of them, needless to say they were unimpressed.  In spite of the fact that they each have space which is equal to more than 5 of our apartments, his children didn't even notice or comment on our amazing ability to crowd into our tiny space. 

I suppose the lesson isn't in the non-coveting of space, but rather the non-coveting of my attachment to our lack of space.

War Stories

Recently I talked to someone who invited everyone in her family to the birth, I mean to the actual birth in the birthing room.  

Like, brothers and father in-laws, and ...?  When I read Spiritual Midwifery, there were countless warnings that if anyone made you feel slightly uncomfortable, don't invite them.  Okay, as long as my husband didn't look "down there" he could be in the room, but brother and father in-law, no way!!!!!!!  

I had heard the story of a yogi that was completely silent during her labor,  I was determined to try something like this for my second birth experience.  After all, I am a yogi, I should be able to endure in silence.  

I shared this story with my midwife after enduring 3 hours of excruciating back labor (I had a bruise on my sacrum after).  She said that the only silent labor she attended was eerie and the woman had previously given birth in foxholes during the Vietnam War.  After that, I let loose... I was using very colorful language with each contraction, then I remembered the story Ram Das told about his stroke.  He had spent over thirty years chanting mantras and at the crucial moment, when he could have been dying, he said "oh shit"! 

 The yogis say that your last thought as you pass from one world to the next becomes the theme of your existence.  I certainly didn't want my daughter to become obsessed with the word I was uttering.  I changed to a really long FuOoooooMMMMMM.   At least my daughter will now be capable of changing in mid-stream from F@*# to OMMMMM