I’m back.
I did write while I was away
but was so overwhelmed with travel, moving house, and children’s birthday
parties that nothing made it to my blog. I don’t want you to feel like we’re
strangers now and I offer the peace pipe below as a small slice of my past
couple of months. Please know that you were missed:
16 August 2012
My experience so far is that
moving house is hard when you’re caring for a very small child. In fact this is
my experience at this very moment, or up until five minutes ago when I put my
small child to bed. Now I’m eating chocolate and trying to untangle my feelings
through writing. The other option was drink an entire bottle of wine. I feel
I’ve made the mature choice. If I’m to be truly authentic here, I should tell
you that if I’m able to complete this post I’ll have the bottle of wine anyway.
My phone just ding-a-linged.
A text from my husband who’s working late tonight. Not only is my phone in the
bedroom with the small sleeping child, the text from my husband contains a request
to do yet another thing before the end of the day.
Just uncorked the wine.
I need to take a photo of
Lennon for his daily blog. I knew I needed to do this even before my husband
texted, but today has been so joyless, I decided to not engage in the hopeful
act of photography, out of sheer protest. Several camera perfect moments
floated in front of me today and while I did feel a little guilty for not
capturing them, I reminded myself that we’re in wartime: allen wrench calluses on
my hands and piles of card board--I simply can’t be bothered. But now, my husband
has taken time out of his twelve-hour workday to remind me to take a photo. It’s
time for me to enter the calm eye of the storm, get a hold of my damn self, and
snap a bloody picture already. I stumble over a poorly placed box full of heavy
books to get to the camera and snap a sloppy photo of my sleeping child.
Back to the wine. Pouring
myself another glass, in fact. These two glasses will probably mean that I’ll
not sleep well enough tonight. They’ll likely ensure that I’ll have an
annoyingly foggy headed day tomorrow, frustrated with my sleepiness, the
mountain of boxes, and all that God forsaken fiberboard furniture I have to put
together.
…………
But listen to this:
“The essence of life
is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter.
Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you
have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100 percent healthy. From an awakened
perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is
death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is
something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the
rough spots and imperfections into a nice smooth ride. To be fully alive, fully
human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” –Pema
Chodron
…………
So much of the pain I’ve
felt this week has come about because of rough spots and imperfections, annihilation
of routines, disruption of peace. I almost started crying in IKEA Tuesday over
counter tops. I’d like to be someone who views change and challenge with a
spirit of adventure. In those moments, I want to think: “what can I learn here?”
Currently, fuzzy brained panic is prevailing. There’s also the concern of being
too fastidious in my pursuit of laidback-ness, where ‘allowing for messy’ becomes
yet another thing with a deadline.
Just finished the
chocolate. Sipping the wine.
I can feel myself tense as
I hear the noises from the street. Our old apartment was in a Hof and though we
had little sunlight, we had near to no noise. Here, I’m very aware that I live
in an urban environment. Just had to put Lennon back to sleep. When I come back
to my wine, a fly is perched on the edge of my glass.
Chaos. Mess. Drunken, messy
chaos: I will try to enjoy you.
No. No try.
I will enjoy {whispered as
she jumps from nest}
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