Sunday, November 09, 2008

It occurs to me that I am probably dehydrated. I forget to drink water all the time, and I was discussing this with a friend the other day as if it were no big deal, one of those funny, quirky things I do, and she said to me, “You do realize that your body is full of toxins. Your kidneys probably hate you right now.” And now I can’t stop thinking about my poor little kidneys, just trying to do their job filtering out all the crap in my body, but they can’t because my blood has turned to sludge and I still keep forgetting to drink more water. They must feel like the orphan Cosette from Les Miserables. No one loves them anymore, and they just keep on trying to do their work at the inn, but the innkeepers always forget to feed them and give them medicine when they’re sick, so they just end up withering into this sad little waif child with stringy hair and smelly clothes.

I’m so busy all the time trying to keep up with the house, homework, the kids, etc., that the very last thing I think about is taking care of myself. It reminds me of a passage from Anne Lamott’s memoir, Operating Instructions. She’s talking about the free time she has when her newborn baby is sleeping, and she says: “I start to think about the millions of things I could do around the house or at my desk, and I decide on just one thing that could really make a difference in the quality of our life, and then I usually end up thinking, Gee, that sounds like a lot of work for a woman who hasn’t brushed her teeth in three days.”

Sometimes I feel like my life now is sort of like a newborn baby. Everything is immediate and erratic, I don’t sleep very well because of the sudden deluge of new fears and worries, and by the time I’ve finished doing all of the little things needed to make it through the day, it’s bedtime and I haven’t even made a dent in the giant list of important matters I’ve set aside to deal with later. I know it’s so important to care for myself every day, because if I’m not healthy I can’t do any of this, but it’s so hard sometimes. I usually mope about the fact that I’m doing it all on my own, but that’s getting a little less validation these days because I’ve realized that I am completely unwilling to let people help me. I have this marvelous babysitter who watches the girls one night a week, and since there’s usually a giant pile of laundry that I haven’t gotten to, she folds all of it while the kids eat dinner. While I am so full of relief that it’s been done, I’m also completely flooded with shame because I failed to get it done on my own. And clearly, that makes me a terrible person. It’s hard for me to keep from hiding the laundry every week so I can trick her into thinking I’m on top of things.

Taking care of myself and asking for help are two of the hardest things I can think of to do. It’s a fun little leftover of old wounds. They’ve healed by now, but there’s still some pretty nasty scars that have yet to fade. Like everything else, I’m working on it. And like everything else, I’ll eventually figure it out. But I’m starting to wonder if this figuring-things-out part would go a whole lot faster if I would just stop being such a stubborn little snot about everything. Maybe drinking more water and letting people help are the keys to some sort of spiritual fast-track. Maybe that’s doing things the easy way, instead of the self-sacrificing, barely-inching-forward, mind-numbingly tortuous way.

I’ll think about it, but the babysitter is coming tomorrow so first I have to figure out where to hide all these clothes.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

As I was pulling into my driveway this afternoon, a kid was walking past my house on his way home from school. He must have been about fourteen or so… old enough to mow my lawn, but still young enough to think that $20 is a decent amount of money. I rolled down my window and called him over. I told him I lived here with my kids, that I was too busy to get yard work done on my own, and asked if he wanted the job. He said sure, gave me his number, and asked how old my kids were.

“Four and six,” I told him.

“Oh,” he said. “I was hoping for someone around my age.”

This upset me. I was not aware that I looked old enough to have a fourteen year old child. And now I can’t stop thinking about it. Was it the scarf? I’ve been really into scarves lately, but I never considered the possibility that a scarf could age me ten years. I certainly feel old, but until this afternoon I thought I had a pretty good handle on the mid-twenties appearance thing. I mean, you can’t tell from looking at me that I’m no longer able to stay up past midnight without feeling like a corpse the next day. …Can you? I’m still young enough to believe that waking up before 8:00 in the morning should be religiously avoided and that if you leave your dirty laundry in the bin long enough, there’s a possibility that someone else will show up and wash it for you. I’m incapable of remembering to send thank you notes and I seem to be unable to properly RSVP, which I choose attribute to the recklessness of my youth rather than some deeper character flaw. I’m still a rosebud, dammit! I haven’t even blossomed yet, let alone begun to wilt!

I seriously considered firing this impertinent young man, but then I remembered that I hadn’t even hired him yet and that if I burned this bridge I would end up having to mow my lawn by myself. So I just smiled and told him that we have a trampoline he can use anytime and that I’d call him before Saturday about the yard work. And now I’m going to go drown my sorrows in a nice hot cup of tea with honey, and sip it slowly while I elevate my feet to keep my ankles from swelling. Maybe I can even catch an episode of Matlock on the telly tonight, although I may not have time since my bridge group will be here bright and early tomorrow morning and I have to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Gotta give these old bones a rest…

Monday, October 13, 2008

It’s almost bath time and both girls are completely naked, tearing around the living room, shrieking. Suddenly, Babs (six years old) stops in her tracks and sniffs the air. Attempting an English accent, she says to her little sister,”Your butt stinks. My butt smells lovely!” Then she plants her hands on her bony, naked hips and stalks out of the room.

This one wasn’t in “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” And I’m not sure why, because it’s moments like this that makes having kids totally frickin’ awesome.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

When I am upset about something, I mess with my face. I don’t know why, but emotional distress always creates in me a compulsive need to unclog pores and rid myself of unwanted hairs. First, I cry. And then I climb up on the counter and perch with my feet in the sink and my face bent close to the mirror, examining every inch of my face and poking and prodding at myself until my vision blurs and my knees ache from being bent so long at such an awkward angle. When I’m done I look truly horrid. I’m pink and blotchy, with swollen lumps on my forehead and raw, angry skin where some of my eyebrows used to be. But I always feel better. Cleansed, somehow. Renewed. It’s quite an invasive way of dealing with my emotions, but hey. It works. Let’s not mess with a good thing, here.

So I was sitting in my bathroom sink this evening (one guess how my day went), frantically plucking and plucking at my eyebrows, and I started wondering how many other girls were in their bathrooms doing the very same thing I was doing. It’s a constant battle, being a woman. The body nature gives us is never quite right. There’s always something to be tweezed and lotioned and painted. Imagine the staggering number of hours we put into toning down our mammal-selves in the attempt to turn our bodies into a magazine photo. I’m sure it translates into years; years and years of women’s lives spent hunched over counters staring into mirrors.

Why do we do it? It’s certainly not fun. And I’ve got to be among a very small minority of women who find it therapeutic. I think it’s because we want to be accepted. We want the instinctive response to our physical appearance to be, “Oh, yes. She looks like one of us. She may stay.” And if we’re allowed to stay, then maybe, just maybe, we will someday feel loved.

In certain parts of India, a conversation begins with a slight bow, palms pressed together, and speaking the word namaste. Namaste is a Sanskrit word that literally means, “I bow to you.” But when used in this way, to greet another human, the meaning is spiritual. You are saying that your divine self recognizes and honors the divinity within the other. How beautiful that is, how full of love! How different things would be if we took all of that fear-based energy that drives us to force a change upon our physical bodies in order to look “acceptable”, and focused that energy instead on the cultivation of the divinity within us. I believe that our spirits, our divine selves, are so utterly beautiful that the most expensive clothes and perfectly applied makeup can’t even hold a candle to it. Nothing about our outward appearance- this imperfect, impermanent body we have- can come close to expressing the truly perfect beauty of who we really are.

I may not give up my occasional sink-squatting therapy sessions, but I hope that I can practice this philosophy of namaste more often in my life. I won’t bow to you, and I won’t say the word out loud, but the next time we meet my spiritual self will be looking beyond your glossy, magazine photo-exterior and honoring the beautiful divinity that I see in you

Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Hinayana path, the “Lesser Vehicle”- known as the elementary path or the narrow path- is based on discipline, the first requirement for the development of freedom. And this path disciplines not only mind, through the practice of meditation but also speech and physical behavior. Discipline of this sort is quite different from laying down a moral code of law or moralizing in the sense of “sin” and “virtue”; it concerns acting properly, acting truly, acting thoroughly, acting according to the law of what is. So we must see this concept of discipline, or sila paramita, clearly. It becomes the basis of everything. It is, one might say, the narrow path, which is in itself a kind of simplicity. For instance, if there was only one little track through a mountain pass and the rest of the terrain was completely overgrown with trees and bushes and so on, then we would have no difficulty at all in deciding which way to go. If there is only one track, either you go on or you turn back. The whole thing is simplified into one event, or one continuity. Therefore discipline does not limit our activities by declaring that such-and-such a thing is against the divine law or is immoral; it is just that there is only one way of true simplicity ahead of us. Fundamentally, discipline comes down to the shamatha practice of developing awareness, through which one merely sees what is. Every moment is now, and one acts through the experience of the present moment.

~ Chogyam Trungpa, “Meditation in Action”

This concept gives me so much peace.

If I can accept this point of view and put it into practice in my life, everything changes. Because I believe what the author is saying- there is only one true path in my life. I believe that when we’re born into this world, we each arrive at the beginning of the path that we are given, which is unique to us. Our lives are continual steps along the path, sometimes forward, sometimes going back. Some of the time we stumble along, tripping over our own feet and all the while complaining about what a difficult road it is we’re traveling on. There have been times when I have plopped down in the middle of the path and just sat there, stubbornly refusing to move in any direction. I have been so obstinate; I have fought against this path that is my life, always wanting a different route. Always wanting to be anywhere but right where I was. And because of that, I have spent my life filled with frustration, anger, jealousy, hopelessness, and regret.

But over the last few weeks, something has been shifting inside of me. I have been flooded with clarity and awareness. This is a huge, huge change, because my entire life has been one big murky pond of confusion. To feel like I finally have a bit of understanding is incredible. So what I am trying to do now is slow down. Breathe. Open up my eyes and experience my life for what it is in this moment, and let my feet follow this one true path that is laid out before me. They already know the way. They’ve been following it since the day I was born. But for the first time, I’m gratefully letting myself be guided, instead of being unwillingly dragged along. And every step is a different kind of beautiful.