Running towards not from
My daily meditation is sometimes eclipsed by daily life. And so it is. Namaste.
I’m getting on a plane this week and I don’t even know where I’m going, if that indicates the pulse of my life at this moment. I’m caught in a spate of abundance – investigative work that is overflowing, my Transracial Parenting work that is on the ascend, motherhood that is without end. I wrote my friend and said I’d like to be somewhere between ensuring Tin does not chew with his mouth open and being able to laugh at his silliness despite it interfering with my agenda. I’m nowhere near where I need to be on motherhood. I have no earthly idea if I will ever get to the point of just being in the moment, enjoying his spirit for who he is, without the overarching need I feel to educate, discipline and guide him.
Stella is incontinent. How did we get here? A puppy never made any sense, but then she came along and she fit so perfectly into my heart. There she was and there it was and there was no turning back. And now I wipe up the puddles of pee everywhere in this house and try to figure out how we got here, and I marvel at how opening your heart is messy and ridiculous and makes no LOGICAL sense whatsoever.
I have no time is my mantra. No time for what? For everything. I have no time for “everything” to be included in my life. I need to prioritize but what gets thrown out and what gets to stay in? These are questions I don’t have time to answer as I juggle and hustle my way through my fifties. A mother told me the other night as we were at a Shakshuka dinner demonstration at the synagogue, “How am I? I’m 43 with a two year old and a two and a half month old.” I cocked my eye at her, “I’m 55 with a five year old and an incontinent 8 month old puppy.” “You win,” she said effortlessly. She knows a WINNER when she sees one.
The Sunday New York Times has not been cracked. The meditation reminders have been deleted. The trip is this week and I don’t know where I’m headed but it’s business or so I think. Tin got bathed last night despite a full day of pancakes in the rabbi’s sukkah, Sunday school, naked sandpile diving with his friend, and Shakshuka dinner. He got a bath! I marvel at that because at 8PM, way passed his bedtime, I was running a warm bubble bath and he said, “I don’t want a bath.” And I said, “God, I do!” A warm, bubble bath run for me by someone who loves me and despite being dog-tired is thinking of my needs, not theirs. This my dears, must be a fantasy.
I want a life that I’m not running away from, only running towards. I think sometimes I have cultivated just that very thing, and poof, it can get lopsided when I’m over scheduled, under loved, and dog tired.
