Putting on my Oxygen Mask

I heard this quotation applied to motherhood and life in general long ago, but never has it seemed more fitting for me.  Between laundry, dishes, preparing food, etc., there really doesn't seem to be any time for self care.  There are times when it is like I have taken on another child.   Here is one example.  My dad will sit down and Akasha will run over yelling, "I was going to sit there!!!"  Really?  This is the kind of thing she does with her brother!  

Or it will look like this in the space of a minute:  "Can you make me some fried eggs?" "Can you read this thing on my computer?"  "Do you know where my coffee cup is?"  "Can you throw the ball for me?"  (OK that last one was just implied by the dog, not spoken lol.)  I just try to remember to say yes. But not in that bad way of overextending myself (most of the time).  I learned a little mental trick from a friend years ago.  Saying yes doesn't have to mean that exact second.  If I say "in a few minutes", it might be met with the dreaded, "No, noooooooooooooooooooooow."  When I say yes, people tend to go back to what they were doing and I can take a few minutes to JUST BREATHE. 

This is about the extent of my self care these days - stopping to breathe and doing a little bit of writing.  I know I need to work on it, but one step at a time.  I don't always say yes, and I am finding myself becoming more and more short tempered, impatient and generally abandoning many of my parenting standards.  So I know something needs to shift.  I am not sure what that will look like now, but knowing it is half the battle, right?  

Zen and the Art of Repetition

I realized very early in my time here I was going to be doing alot of repetitive listening and answering. Like many people with dementia, my dad will often ask me the same question over and over.  Instead of letting this irritate me, I decided to think it through from a zen perspective.  What is it about repetition that bothers most people?  He says something, I listen, I respond.  Would it not be annoying if he had asked something else, if it prompted a different response?  They are just words after all.  I got to thinking if I could just be in the moment and pretend like it was the first time he asked, it wouldn't bother me.  Hey, guess what?  There's that mindfulness thing again!

So I did what I do and went looking for quotations.  It has become a fun sort of break while thinking about different topics.  The above one is a zen classic.  I could get into some pretty dark humor regarding my situation, but I think I am not going to go there! The interesting thing that came out of this exercise is that I stumbled on some images related to chanting.  That really got me thinking - chanting is a spiritual process, and it is essentially the repetition of the same thing over and over.  Hmmmm....

What if we could think of repeating ourselves as a gift?  If all life is sacred, if we are all divine, then maybe all our sounds can be the name of spirit. Why not?  It is all perspective.  My dad probably asks me what day it is on an average of about 30 times per day.  Maybe I will try saying the word each time with reverence.  The day of the week is the perfect place to start.

 Don't get me wrong, I am not always patient about this.  In fact I tend to write about the things I am most struggling with, trying to see things in a fresh light.  Things with a one word answer are the easiest for me.  The things that require a longer answer or when the first answer leads to another question can start to wear on me.  I am OK most of the time, but sometimes I am in the middle of talking to the kids or some other situation when I can't answer him immediately.  I have a general rule of thumb if he asks a more complicated question around 5 times in about an hour, I will get out a paper and sharpie and write a single explanation for him to look at.  Usually the topic will be something about his health condition or why he is seeing a certain doctor.

It is a dance, as usual, around what is my highest ideal and what is possible in any given moment.  The dance of the sandwich generation.  Hey, I want that to be my logo - a dancing sandwich!  Wait, I guess I am what goes in the middle - maybe a dancing tomato slice, or piece of lettuce lol!  OK, I am losing it.  Signing off with this helpful advice:

Homeless Panic

Pretty much looks like a home, right?  That's even my van in the driveway to prove it!  And yet, I had a moment of “freak out” during my first week at my dad’s house, having to do with the sense of being “homeless”.  Sure, it wasn't rational, but there it is. The thought that really set this whole thing off was picturing Ron back in OR, moving into a small apartment near his work, which triggered me to feel like we had nowhere to go back to if living with my dad didn’t work out for some reason.  Irrational again, really.  Our family has stayed in smaller hotel rooms than Ron’s current apartment.  I would not want us all to have to live there very long, but we wouldn’t be HOMELESS.

I think the more important question is: why doesn’t this feel like a home to me?  There are a couple things (and probably more I am not fully conscious of) that play into this issue.  

The first one is pretty simple.  I don’t *want* this to be my home.  I don’t like this city.  Ron hates it even more than I do.  It’s hot, it’s dry, there is an overwhelming lack of things for kids to do, it is overwhelmingly populated with conservative types, and there is not another unschooling family for miles.  Just a couple examples - there is not a single public year round pool anywhere nearby and the closest miniature golf is about 45 minutes away.  Ron’s dislike is compounded by knowing it would be 99% likely that he would end up with a job in LA, which would mean long and bumper to bumper commutes if he were to relocate here.  Not much in life he dislikes more.  Besides, he already has an amazing job in Oregon he loves.

The deeper issues have to do with a brief time in my life I lived here, after a particularly sad break up.  I had been living out of state, so I really needed a bit of time to find a job and place to live when I got back.  Just proceeding the move, I had been engaged and thought I had the perfect relationship, only to have the guy end it out of the blue (or at least so it seemed to me.)  I felt like a complete idiot and failure,  and was totally questioning my ability to read people.  And going to live with my parents?  Wow, double failure.  It shouldn’t seem that way, being with family, but that is a huge message in our culture.  Value independence over all! 

So yeah, subconsciously I think being here brings back a lot of memories of feeling like a failure. 

Which leads me to ask, what makes a  house a home?

When you look up the definition of "home", the number one line simply reads: the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household. Welp, already I guess I have an issue with that one, because this isn't permanent.  Ah, the feeling of impermanence, that could definitely be part of the mix.  And it also happens to be one of the essential doctrines of Buddhism.  Something worth exploring more methinks….

When I searched for images of "home definition, the most common thing you see is some version of this:

A place were one lives - I am OK with that. Together as a family - check, at least partially.  When a part of your family is missing, does it still count?  Affection, joy and happiness?  Sometimes, but asking myself this also highlights just how much lack of joy and happiness I have been experiencing in my head.  Refuge, resting place, security, protection?  I guess, I mean it is a roof over my head and the place I sleep.  Where friendships flourish?  Ha!  Have to laugh at that one.  I guess I could be out looking for new friendships in this area, but I don’t really have the time and feel sortof "why bother" if we are planning to be gone by the end of summer.  And the closest friendships I do have aren't being helped by long distance That bad attitude is all on me I guess.

This was by far my favorite definition:

Now that sounds like my home.  :) 

But all this aside, I think I would be happier and healthier if I do consider this my home.  So what does that mean for me?  Being with my family is uppermost of course, but after that it is about STUFF.  Not the most enlightened way of thinking I will freely admit, but such is my nature.  I am a visual person and like seeing things around me that represent what is important and meaningful to me, that represent who I am.  I also like things to be arranged in a pleasing way.  If you know me these days, you will probably find that hard to believe lol.  Most of my spaces look anything but pleasing due to being buried in chaos.  As it so happens, I am also OK with letting that go in favor of other priorities, but it is always in the back of my mind, and I know I feel happier in an environment I like looking at.  So maybe that should be a much higher priority.  I do the best I can.  As long as I have a few small spaces I can look at and feel connected to, I feel like I can maintain my sanity. 

When I first got here, I planned to have one altar area in the bedroom, but I soon found out I had brought way too many things.  What a surprise, not.  This discovery actually turned out to be sort of a good thing, because it has inspired me to work my things into other areas of the house.  I feel good about this, like I am making the whole house my home instead of just one small space.  I don’t think we will be here long term, but in the meantime, it is worth it. 
For example…

Many images of the divine mother energy. 

Which left me with this in the bedroom:

(the boas are leftover from Sarah lol)

Still a bit cluttered for my taste, but it will do.  So…  home sweet home, for now at least.  I think this reflection is part of mindfulness for me as well.  Be present in the moment.  If I see my body as my home, then anywhere I happen to be is home.  I can create a beautiful altar in my mind’s eye.  But how often do I have the luxury to sit in meditation?  Ha!   I do much better with the mindfulness of being present with daily tasks.  And having lovely things to rest my eyes on for a moment here and there enriches that practice.  OK, I am in danger of jumping into a whole new subject here, so I need to wrap it up…

As I come to a close with this subject, I would like to commit to expanding the process I use for moving meditation.  Instead of only, “Now I am putting a plate in the dishwasher, now I am putting a bowl in the dishwasher,”etc., start to include, “Now I am looking at the Om chime in the window”.  Pause, “Now I am taking a deep breath.”  Continue. 
Or…  to be continued….

Phone camera would not focus on this in the window, so I moved it to the wall to get this nice clear shot.  :)

Balance Can Kiss My Ass

 

Plans have changed and we are postponing our drive a week.  Long story, but at least I feel like I can take a few moments to do some writing.  A few weeks ago, I took some time for myself and had a session with the lovely Sharon Ann Rose from Ministry of the Mother, and so much came out of it I have been wanting to write about.  I think I will start with what came to me about the concept of balance.  I chose the photo above because that elephant looks pretty damn uncomfortable.  I have written glowingly about balance in the past, and probably will in the future, but at the moment, balance can kiss my ass.  Or at least certain ways of looking at it.  Bear with me.

When I started the session, I was really honest about how it had been hard for me to stop packing and even show up.  But I did.  So that is what we started exploring first.  Why did I come?  What was I there for?  Sharon is very gifted at taking people on spur of the moment guided journeys that are somehow always the perfect thing, celebrating the essence of each person, right where they are in that moment.  So where was I?  I do not switch gears well, at all.  My husband calls me a “creature of singular focus”.   It is nearly impossible for me to go from packing mode to chilling with my husband or self care or really pretty much anything that doesn’t involve getting things into boxes.   At one point during the meditation, I asked myself what I needed, and my first thought was balance.  This word has come up a lot for me in my spiritual practice as something I want to cultivate.  It seems like I always have some project going on, whether I am organizing an event or working on a family photo book or searching for quotations to match with my daughter’s photography or starting a new blog.  I tend to make these projects a higher priority than many other things in my life, and the first thing to go is usually self care.  I frequently go through mental gymnastics about how I can somehow manage my time to DOITALL – time with my husband, time with my kids, make homemade food, keep the house clean, pursue my own passions, and um, take a shower now and then.   During that meditation, I had an “aha”.  There were several different aspects to it, which my overtired brain can’t seem to narrate together, so I am just going to list them.

1. So what if I am a creature of singular focus?  Sharon has this way of framing everything in a beautiful light, and that is where I am right now, so maybe I was there to get reminded that was OK.   More than OK even.  So what if I suck at self care in general?  If I choose to play a game with my kid instead of taking a shower, so be it.  I long ago realized I was going to have let go of certain things and decide on priorities because I really do know I can’t doitall.   And I don’t cross the line into a place where I would become resentful.  I do just enough little things for myself, like lighting candles and listening to music I love while packing, to maintain my sanity.

2.  I had been making an assumption that what I needed was the opposite of singular focus, which I was perceiving to be balance.  But no, what I need is self acceptance of where I am in the moment and SLOWING DOWN.  (The session actually happened before my last post, which helps to put that in even more perspective. )

3. The way I had been looking at balance was really pretty sucky, because I was feeling it as yet another task in a manner of speaking.  It was like I was putting pressure on myself to figure out the best way to balance everything, and in the process just setting myself up for another thing to beat myself up for not doing well enough.  Like I said, kiss my ass.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have nothing against the word balance and see how it can be a powerful philosophical concept to strive for.  But in that moment, I realized I was looking at it in a really unhealthy way.  What I need right now is a fat dose of mindfulness.  So that is what I have been trying to strive for, and mostly failing in recent days to be honest, but at least I am trying. 

And if you know me, you will also know I just can’t leave a topic alone without going and looking at quotations, because I am pretty much a quotation geek, and they often inspire me to think about things a different way.  So you can imagine how floored I was to come across this little gem:

OK, so maybe balance doesn't have to kiss my ass after all.  This is just what I was getting at in number 1 above!  I had never seen balance framed quite like this before.  This kind of balance I can get down with.  Now if I can just remember the key is to truly enjoy the choices and not feel guilty about the thing you decided NOT to do!!!  I think I am going to copy this onto some paper and tape it to the wall as I finish my packing.  AND keep trying to remember to slow down.  Always I need the slowing down. 

“I am putting this pony in a box, I am putting this sauce pan in a box, I am putting this pair of shoes in a box…”.  Yeah.  

Slow Down Mama!

Something very cool happened to me the other day, and I wanted to write it down someplace so I don’t forget it.  Then I realized, oh yeah, I have a blog now lol.  And this story even fits the subject….  I was getting my day started and being oh so busy as usual.  It bugs me to have my hair down when I am trying to be really productive, so I was looking for a hair tie or clip.  I took one look in a place I thought I had left some, but I didn’t see any there.  So my thinking went something like this: “Oh jeez, really?  Well I don’t have time to slow down and go hunting for hair things.  I am just going to keep working.”  Sure enough, that set me up for getting into one of those places where I was starting to feel frantic and like, “Oh my god I am never going to get all this packing done and all this food cooked andandand”.  So I took a deep breath and thought to myself, “OK, this isn’t helping, let’s get back to a focus of what is right in front of me and choose ONE thing to work on RIGHT NOW.” So I decided to start unloading the dishwasher and try to think about JUST that.  It is mindfulness technique I have used in the past, and I really like it.  If I am having an especially anxious day, I will literally take it to the level of saying to myself, “Now I am putting this fork away, now I am putting this plate away,” etc.  I guess this time all I needed was a small shift, because the moment I bent over slightly and reached out to open the dishwasher, a hair tie literally fell on to the back of my hand!  I was like, “Um, OK, thanks universe.  Lock this into memory!”   

That is all for now.  SO many posts rattling around in my head but feel like I am down to the wire with packing.  Hopefully I will get at least one more done before heading to CA.  in more mundane news, Ron got approved for an apartment near his new job, so that is one thing settled.  We plan to leave for CA with a Uhaul trailer on February 28.  This is really happening folks!