The only thing I really did today was to try to pay attention. It seems like such a simple thing, but is much harder than it sounds...

Here is my son in a purple beret. Way back in the distant past there is a purple beret memory that used to make me cringe. Now, when I contrast it with this photo, it just makes me giggle.

The Thing About Stuff

We had a tea party in the tub today, bubbles and all. We had a little table upon which Sam poured out from his pink plastic Beauty and the Beast teapot and we pretended to eat plastic cookies.

"This is a lovely tea party, Clarabelle," I said. "Thank you for inviting me."

"You're welcome, Goofy," says Clarabelle, "I'm glad you're here." And Clarabelle the Cow (who appears regularly on the Micky Mouse Clubhouse, where we got this grand idea to have a tea party in a bubble bath) hands me a little pink cup of tepid water and insists that I actually drink it. So I do.

The thing about cheap plastic toys and unlimited TV and reveling in all the other insane riches this consumer culture has to offer is this: This moment is lovely, and it has made our day--so much so that we do it twice. That we could probably have accomplished similar results without the cheap plastic table, chairs and teaset is true, but that little teapot fit perfectly in Sam's hand and he poured easily into the little cups. He so thoroughly enjoyed himself that I can no longer find it in me to believe that we should feel bad about this.

We have stuff, lots of stuff. We bought it all secondhand and paid next to nothing for it, but it's mostly crazy not very functional junk and there is a lot of it, so much that sometimes we trip over it--especially my one legged husband who has to be very careful moving around at night when he can't see what all might be lying in his path (so distressing to take a step in the dark and land upon plastic hippo that says 'Wow, I'm very hippo stream', whatever the hell that means).

And sometimes the stuff makes me crazy and threatens to take over our home and I wonder if I'm making a horrible mistake and leading my son down that road--you know that road, the one that leads to hell and is paved with good intentions...

But when my son turns to me and says, 'I wish I had wings so I could fly', I rummage in the closet and come out with a pair of nylon butterfly wings just his size and we go out into the wind and he flies. And when he says 'I wish I had a hat like the Masked Retriever', I rummage through our hat collection and our dressup box and outfit him in perfect style. And when he wants to build a house for even the tallest of his dinosaurs, we have enough megablocks to do it.

I know that many people believe it's good for a child not to always get what he wants, and Sam doesn't. It does happen now and then that I just don't have or can't make the props for what he wants to do and he is totally OK with that. Because the stuff isn't the central focus of our lives, it's what the stuff helps us achieve.

A good friend of mine, who has always been very minimalist in terms of spending and acquiring, told me not too long ago that she had realized it wasn't such a bad thing to have money, to save money. Money, she essentially said, empowers us to get where we want to go. But stuff, she remains convinced, is very Bad.

Me, I don't see the difference. These things, money, toys, butterfly wings, are all a means to an end. Acquiring, having, using these things doesn't in itself create a need for more things or perpetuate the cycle of self medication through consumption. What creates the need for more things is the feeling of lack, the feeling of emptiness resulting from chronic emotional and/or material deprivation.

The trinkets and treasures we drag home from town are not the end of our story as consumers. We build worlds with them, create stories, learn about how things work, live vicariously, live large, revel in the feeling of endless possiblity. There is nothing we can not do! But it is not the stuff that gives us this feeling. The stuff supports us in the things we want to accomplish, and having it at hand frees us to broaden the scope of what we can do. Having experienced that kind of freedom to create, to be, to live, to learn, to build, to grow, nurtures a sense of confidence rather than a feeling of need.

And when my son told me that he wished he were a fairy like Tinkerbell, it just so happened that I had a sparkly Tinkerbell costume set aside for just such a possibility. And out into the desert he went, with his magic fairy wand that makes a sparkly sound when you push the pink plastic button, and his green winged fairy dress. And for him it was a real experience of fairyhood. He could have done it without the dress, and even without the wand--but why? Why not live in a world full of sparkle and wonder and possibility?

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Other Things We Did Today

Threw stuffed animals at each other (we have at on of these, too, for just this purpose--very helpful for releasing feelings of aggression and restlessness).

Threw rocks in the desert. Climbed hills and slid down them.

Read books.

Made a pizza!!

Watched Micky Mouse Clubhouse.

Played kickball in the kitchen.

Cleaned house with Theresa in the morning, messed it up again in the afternoon.

This Day

"Jim! Jim! How are you this day?" Sam shouts, as he runs barefoot down the steps and into the driveway to greet his best friend. Jim swoops him up in a hug and they laugh together.

"How am I this day?" Jim repeats the question, charmed by it. "I'm good this day, really good," he answers.

This day. I like those words, I like them very much. This day is, after all, all that really exists.

Within this day I am tired, sluggish, bland, and so glad it is a Jim day. Sam takes His Jim by the hand and runs away with him to the back yard, where they spend an hour throwing dinosaurs into the wading pool and then into the swing. After lunch, when they invite me to watch, I am astounded at Sam's accuracy of aim.

On days like this, when I am so very tired, I often feel the weight of my own failure. But not this day. This day I remember the Art of Allowing. This day I remember to simply be--tired or not tired I just am what I am. I remember that I don't have to create a constant flow of interesting activity for Sam. I don't even have to get up out of bed. If I am OK--if I just am wherever I am, Sam is generally OK, too.

In the afternoon we read from a fun dragon finger puppet book we found at the thrift store. I make voices for the two headed dragon, who asks Sam to hop like a kangaroo and clap like a seal. And he does, and he falls in love with this dragon and spends what seems like an eternity talking to it, showing it all the things he can do with animal sounds and movements (so many!), jumping in and out of the book, tickling the dragon, kissing it and saying how happy he is to meet him this day.

This day I rest from lunch until dinner and Sam and I cook together, and even when he breaks down in tears because he can't get all the corn into the pot, and would rather do what I'm doing, which is tending to a pan of boiling hot oil that I don't feel he's ready to approach, we are OK. And beyond that, as the lovely Josha Grant points out, it is not even necessary to be OK. It is only necessary to be.

To be in this day.

And in the evening as we take our sunset walk in the desert, Sam is Mr. Scrooge and I am Jacob Marley. Sam walks into the warm evening wearing a t-shirt, no bottoms or shoes, a black tophat and a glittery batton for a cane and I pretend to drag my chains along with me. We talk about what the chains symbolize but mostly Sam would rather whack things with his stick--we look for bits of old tin and rocks to whack. And we smell the flowers, those few determined golden blossoms sprouting up out of the crusty desert floor. They smell of suntan lotion and remind me of miracles and I love them.

And as this day ends, we walk home together, Sam and me, Scrooge and Marley, hand in hand under the fading evening sun. Both tired now, we kiss the daddy good night, snuggle into our bed and fall asleep together, unwashed, uncombed, undefined, undetermined, unschooled, unchained, uninterested in all the many things we 'should' have done.

Because, after all, this is the day the lord hath made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it.

Of Pompoms And Other Elusive Riches

I am sifting through a bag of brightly colored pom poms, gathering a little assortment for Sam to float in the moat of glue swirling across the paper in front of him. Glue is something he has only recently discovered and he is especially pleased with the squeezing out part.

This bag of pompoms in my hand is large and full, and I paid maybe a quarter for it at a yard sale. But still I pick through it, taking out a stingy handful and putting away the rest. And as I tuck it back in the sparklies drawer, I become suddenly aware of my own ungenerousness. In this simple act of witholding, I am struck by the very ungenerous nature of my relationship to the world in general. Mostly, I go buzzing along on autopilot, keeping so many things out of arms reach from everyone, anyone in my path, that I don't even realize I do it. I withhold thoughts, energetic connection, affection, conversation, little colored pompoms. And I suppose it's because my default setting is that there will never be enough--that if I use up this whatever it is, I will never have more.

In the best of times now I understand that whatever I need will come to hand in the moment that I need it. But so often these responses, this habitual hoarding, is beyond conscious thought.

Today I have been stingy with my Self. It is one of those days in which I feel like I am a swimming pool from which all of the water has drained away. What's left is a hard bottom covered with dirt and old leaves. And if you try to jump in, you will crack your head because I have nothing left in me to cushion your fall. So I keep myself bent inward and I vibrate outward a palpable warning that the pool is closed today.

But Sam doesn't do closed. If mama is at the bottom, he will jump in, jump on, jump over. And if he cracks his head on my hard edge, that crack is mine to fix and so I will, because that's what mothers do. Even in that moment when it feels like there is nothing left, the mother's heart always has something stored away somewhere, something unexpectedly, perfectly enough for whatever task is at hand. And I am slowly coming to have faith in this simple fact. But sometimes everything inside me screams for solitude and it is hard to hear any other thought over the screaming.

For so long before Sam was born I lived in what now seems like a hermetically sealed bag, never really making contact with the outside world. My favorite vacation was to go into the desert for weeks at a time and revel in not speaking to another soul. I have never, ever even attempted to be present with another human being day in and day out, be responsible to and for that person, always be aware of his thoughts, bodily functions, needs, wants, bumps and scrapes. I wasn't even aware of those things for myself in the times before motherhood and there are days when I am completely overwhelmed by this, when the energy and dedication it takes to simply remain present is enormous. I don't know how other women do this so easily, how it comes to them so naturally. But I see that it does, that it can, that it will in its own time.

So I put the bag of pompoms back on the table, open the sparklies drawer all the way and start pulling things out. I find a little tupperware tub of odds and ends, saved from the fairies I made while waiting for Sam to emerge, and begin again to pick out a stingy handful. Then I catch myself and set the tub next to the vast spread of his glue smeared paper.

He reaches for the tub, picks it up, dumps the whole thing in the middle of that glue, smushes it around with his hand and declares it done.

And that is, in fact, how it's done.

The Perfect Nap

I am waking up from a nap all on my own. I am aware of the perfect weight of the blanket that covers me, enough to feel how impossibly soft it is, enough to keep off the chill of the swamp cooler, not enough to smother me. I notice how comfortable is the pillow where my head is resting, and the bed that holds my body. I feel the bliss of a sweet, uninterrupted, perfectly timed 20 minute sleep cycle. In those 20 minutes, alone by myself with no one to wake me before I am ready, so much has been accomplished. I feel restored. Over the hum of the cooler I hear shrieking and laughter now and then from the back yard, where Sam is chasing His Jim around with a hose. My heart feels full with love and gratitude for their presence in my life and, just for this moment, their absence from this room. The more awake I become, the more aware I am of the dull ache of a full bladder wanting my attention and I know this moment is coming to an end, but it is a time of perfect bliss, gratitude and clarity and I want to remember it.

A nap. There is nothing in the world like a well slept, happily woken from nap.

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Things We Did Today:

Spent an hour or so putting on and taking off animal costumes and pretending to be animals (well, Sam put on the costumes, they are much too small for me!)

Did our new amazing wooden animal jigsaw puzzle over and over.

Sam played with His Jim outside and then got Jim to play Play Doh while they waited for their lunch. Later Sam and I spent a good long time at the table, making Play Doh bugs for Malthasar, the villain in Arthur and the Invisibles. Sam noticed that he liked to eat bugs and, in his new life as Princess Selenia, Sam seemed to feel it would be nice to offer Malthasar some bugs. As the colors mixed and smudged into one another, I felt myself finally relaxing about that. Contrary to the belief I've been holding since I was a kid, the world is full of Play Doh and if we mix this up, dry it out, stomp on it, ruin it, grind it into the carpet, there is plenty more where that came from--we can buy it, we can make it, it will be there if we want it. And Sam really doesn't care what color it is, he just loves it. And now, finally, so do I.

Jumped on the Daddy's bed and made him wake up and play for a while, which Sam loves.

Read books.

Watched movies.

Lived our lives together as a family.

Swimming in Low Water

We're sitting under a big shade tree, having a picnic on an old blanket, listening to a flock of geese honking nearby. It's a lovely, lovely moment in time. Sam is sitting across from me eating his Burger King macaroni and cheese with gusto. The wind is blowing soft, the air is just right--not too hot, not too cold. And Sam has fries, and an apple juice box.

There is a pile of wonderful old Sam size books sitting next to us on the blanket, and a box of 50 fabulous old patterns that I just bought, along with the books, for $4. The thought of this wonderful little haul fills me with glee.

When we're done eating we lean our backs against the tree and read together until Sam sits up and says the geese are calling him. We follow them to the duck pond where we search for turtles and his old friend the red fish who rolls and dips under the water. But today the water is filled with corpses floating belly up, dead fish with blank eyes staring.

Sam is fascinated by this. The fish have succumbed to oxygen deprivation, says the landscaper, whom Sam describes as a 'young man' (let's ask that young man, he says, astounding me). While the level of the pond sunk during a recent construction process, the fish swam in water that was more like mud, and could not fill their fish lungs with what they needed to survive. We walk around and around the pond, Sam and me, counting the dead fish and talking about death.

The ducks and geese speak to Sam as we pass by them and he interprets for me, which I appreciate. In fact, I appreciate everything about this child. I appreciate his exhuberance, his spirit, his sense of humor, his very being.

And later at home, when he runs out of the bathtub with a headful of shampoo and refuses to return for a rinse, I forget for a while how much I appreciate his spirit. I forget myself, who I am, and where I truly come from in the times when the water in my own pond sinks low and I become mired in the mud of my own hormones. And only after I've snapped and seen the light dim in my son's eyes do I remember that who I am is not this story, not this body, not these hormones.

Who I am is a child of god, an extension of the source of everything, an embodiment of love. Who I am, stripped of the stories, the weight, the external blathering and dithering, is everything--the dead fish in the pond, the fiery sun in the sky, the great heart in my child, the dull ache in my head, the joy, the misery, the dark, the light.

I noticed, as we were walking around that pond, that I thought perhaps I should feel more sadness of revulsion over the many dead fish. But I couldn't muster it. Following Sam's lead, I felt only curiosity and a sense of rightness in the universe. Though these moments for now are only moments and fade into foolish temper tantrums (mine, not my child's--he never has temper tantrums), they begin to stretch themselves longer and longer, as if they were hands reaching, one to the other. And when those hands finally clasp and hold fast, they will contain me safe in the knowledge of how well and fine is this earth and everything upon it, whatever it looks like, whatever it feels like, however low the water sinks.

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Other Things We Did Today:

Sam fell asleep in the kid car cart at Albertson's!

We spent an hour playing with Diane at the clubhouse.

Sam actually wandered into the toy room by himself at the thrift store. He hasn't done this since he was not quite two and disappeared while we were playing hide and seek in the round clothes racks at the Salvation Army in Reno (I thought I would die of panic, it was the most horrible five minutes of my entire life, they shut down the whole store and the manager found him cadging cookies in the employee break room). This surprised me and made me feel hopeful for a future in which he might once again be OK without me right exactly next to him. I didn't say anything about it, just followed him in there and played for a while.

We watched Arthur and the Invisibles, Sam's first real action movie. He loved it, and now he is Princess Selenia and I am Arthur, and Daddy is the King.

We had shrimp salad sandwhiches for dinner, another thing I've been wanting for a long time but hadn't ever even thought about just making. Found everything I needed at Albertson's, even the croissants, and used the leftover shrimp from the tempura. It was very tasty.

Things We Did Today:

Went to the museum, where Sam took especial interest in the mammoth bones, though he has seen them many times before. We walked around and around and around the display case cataloging the different bones and matching them to parts of his body. And later, while we sat on the floor of the post office waiting for Jennifer to return from her lunch break, he was able to list all those bones from memory for his Auntie Suzi, who just happened to come for her mail at the same time we did.

We counted out the donations in the Fire District jars at the store and the restaurant in Shoshone. Sam tasted Tobasco at the restaurant--what a great face he made! Luckily it was only a tiny dab.

We sat in the back yard at sunset and Sam swung and I pushed while we recounted the story lines from all of our favorite episodes of the Backyardigans, and there are MANY!

We made our own shrimp tempura for dinner and it was delicious and Sam actually ate some of it and declared it tasty and delicious. This was such a triumph for me! I've been wanting shrimp tempura for years but there are no Japanese restaurants near here. I found a box of tempura batter mix while Sam and I were cruising Albertsons in their snazzy kid car carts, and I thought, WOW, I could just MAKE some! Who knew you could just cook your own tasty food? What a world, what an amazing, fantastic world.

We talked about why I am so cranky every 24 days and how it's about an imbalance in my body and not about anything Sam is actually doing, even if I snap at him about doing this or that. I don't know if he really understands this, I can only pray that if we keep talking about it what will stick with him is this, rather than that awful moment when I snap and raise my voice. And I pray, too, to achieve the balance that will allow me to be with these mood swings in a more peaceful way so that they don't affect my son. Or at least to nurture his own sense of empowerment and self, as well as this bond between us so that he is strong enough to withstand these rocky bits, and that he is strong and confident enough not to be pulled under by my raging current.

Oh, and we had cookies and macaroni and cheese for lunch. Te he!

To Comb or Not to Comb...

Sam is sleeping, sprawled out with his incredibly long body flung across the middle of the bed. He hasn't brushed his teeth, or taken a bath, or even washed his hands. And certainly has not brushed his hair. I save all these grooming rituals for the evening, in the time before sleep when he begins to move a little slower and may be more agreeable. But mostly he rejects all attempts at making him look civilized. And this night he has fallen asleep unexpectedly early, which gives me hope that he will rise early and we might get back to a sleep schedule that allows us to get out of the house before the scorching hour out here in the desert.

There are nights, like this one, when I feel as though I am truly making peace with my son's grubby fingernails and unkempt hair. I don't want to live a life with him that is based on me forcing him to submit his body to these grooming rituals that make no sense to him. I won't hold him down for any reason, it's simply not worth the feeling of rage that surfaces when he struggles, and he struggles mightily. He is a little lion of a person with a ferocious will, and I will do everything I can to nurture that strength of mind.

I don't know where that rage comes from inside me, but it comes rushing up, floods me, takes me over, if ever I lay a hand on him in any kind of restraining way when he is trying to escape my ministrations. I have learned to respect his no when he says no, and for that, I have learned, too, to appreciate this rage for the gift it has given me. For if I felt calm and patient through this sort of thing, perhaps I might have become comfortable holding him down, forcing him to do these things which are really all about my own comfort (because it's embarrassing for people to see his hair such a mess, but I really can't find any true way that it's bad for him, I really can't).

But, says the little voice in my head, what about his teeth, what about cavities? What about the tangles in his hair? What about the dirt under his fingernails?

Well, what about them? I have decided to make a tremendous leap of faith and believe in the notion that a grubby but joyful childhood will give my son so much more of what he needs to succeed as a human being than a clean but coerced existence. Sometimes this is a commitment I remake daily, or even several times a day, because there is a lifetime of conditioning in my thought process about dirt and cleanliness and freedom and joy. And I realize that I always believed keeping a child scrupulously clean was how you showed you loved him. And I have come to understand that it's true, this IS one way I could show the rest of the world, whose standards are quite different from my own, that I love my kid. But it's not how I show this to my son.

And the rage, well, I have begun to do some thinking about where it comes from and I don't much like the answers. These are thoughts I would rather just not have. But in this life as a mother, in this life lived in partnership with my child and my husband, I can no longer afford to keep that little stash of things I just don't think about. Because in this life we are living, there is nowhere for me to hide and when I'm pushed up against something I didn't want to deal with, I respond like any cornered animal.

And what I want is to live large and free in a round world without corners. And this world must be of my own making and so I will shine a light on the old dark corners of my mind, the place where the worst memories, the most reactive feelings, the dysfunctional default behaviors are stored. I will unpack them and release them and smooth the corners round until all that is inside me flows like water in a continuous circle of love.

Things We Did Today...

Had a tea party (Sam poured out from his Noah's Ark teapot.)

Painted pictures (they are so lovely!!! One is a glittery blue ocean where the mermaids live.)

Invented a new way to play golf with his Sam size golf set

Went for a run up and down the driveway

Sam visited in the back yard with His Jim

Made dirt soup in the wading pool

Ate lots of good food

Read books

Watched Movies

Laughed

Cried

Snuggled

Did NOT brush out teeth or comb our hair (well, I did after he went to sleep)