A Summer Collage
childcare changes! parenting circle updates!
Long covid dizziness and lying in bed watching tv with my bub for date night and looking for raspberries in our garden and the relief of not feeling this nagging sense I need to be posting something on instagram and the rich responses to my email about praying, that kind of interaction is the kind I want to be having. Rediscovering plain yogurt with honey and fruit, rewatching grey’s anatomy, how Original BB asks BB Jr if she wants him to make her a car and she says yeah!, listening to Papa and the bbs play legos together, that we’ve gotten to this point, BB Jr can play with little legos. The anticipation of the reliability of childcare with kinder and day care in August (at least before they start getting sick again), the dread feeling like I’m making a mistake sending them away for so much of the day, the thrill of imagining all that time in the house and my office to work, uninterrupted, going to pee or get food without BB Jr crying that I’m leaving again. Making coffee and doing prayers with the kids, lighting the incense, the candle, noticing what I say out loud and what I don’t, longing for all sorts of community I don’t quite feel present or know how to ask for, cultivate, and trying to make up the culture I want in the house in the moment, how far it always feels from what I want or imagine. And yet, watching the kids lying there sleeping, how complete everything feels.
The people the children the children of Gaza the parents the mothers the children running underneath every recognition of blessing in my life, the thing about the draft, was that real, imagining my child being that age, that he could be drafted, the clips from the debate haunting, hovering above, around, a cloud of dust, the true failure, the disgrace of it, moving from foreground to background and back, through the day. My left hip walking up the stairs, my hair getting so long it gets pulled when I sit back in a chair, still not knowing what to eat for lunch, the comfort of cutting a block of feta, peeling cucumbers, zesting lemon. Someone asked what I’m doing this weekend and I say Kyle is installing some shelving in the closets, because this is my middle aged joy of a weekend. Happiness is the relief of date night (aka babysitter night) coming on the evening I needed it most, to just lie there and not do bedtime, eat ice cream with Kyle. The absolute miracle of the kids being old enough to feel relaxed about someone else doing bedtime. Happiness is also saying let’s do prayers to BB Jr and she says, “happy,” because we always start with may beings be happy. Before she could say happy she said “happu.” How Original BB says “guh-xcited” for excited and I never correct him, I never want it to stop and I know it will one day in fact it might have already and I haven’t noticed?
The immensity of the status quo, the pressure to be normal, even after 43 years, I still feel this pull, to do things like others do them. Not even sure what that means, who are the others but it’s there. It’s there and the resistance to it is also there. And then remembering how good it feels when someone else doesn’t follow the rules and how I want to be that for others too, in a circle, the freedom of it.
The smell when the windows are open and waking at 5:30 and it’s already light out, the omnipresence of the light this time of year, it’s a certain kind of comfort, a friend for when we wake that early. The intensity of Original BB’s face when he is doing his sing time and performing on the couch to the music from the cd player, how committed he is, and BB Jr learning to jump, her giggles from it.
There’s always more but that’s enough for now. This summer.
—
PARENTING CIRCLE UPDATE
I won’t be able to offer a live parenting circle this July. My childcare situation has shifted again (beloved caregiver moving away) and it means I will be mostly with my kids this summer. I’m going to send out a recorded offering for you instead, which will be a short lecture on Mercury through the signs in children as it might be supportive for your parenting as I mentioned last note, and a meditation. So you’ll get something that hopefully feels like something nourishing instead of a circle! I’ll send it out on the day of the circle (July 26) to paid subscribers.
All the blessings to you this summer / winter.
!
Sarah