Little Love Song to my Firstborn, Now Four.

Little wildflower blooming in the desert. Little drop of honey. Little chickadee singing in the lilac. Little egg still warm in the hand. Little strawberry with cream. Little smiling moon. Little dawn light on the mountain. Little arms around my neck. Little first rain of the year.

Little one, watching you grow into yourself is like watching a flower open, and open, and open again. Each petal unfurling brings us closer to the grace that is our lives, that spiral of love with no beginning and no end. Oh little sweet, how big you really are.

Happy birthday, my heart.

May all good things be yours.

March 11~Head, Heart, and Hands

Thinking:: a great deal about the new cooperative garden being created at the place where we already belong to a goat milking and chicken co-op. I am so excited that I’ve been making excel spreadsheets of seed starting calendars and a rotation for succession planting. As I plan the garden on paper, I am reminded of how other big dreams need to begin with a long gestation and a fair amount of thought. It’s happening in my journal, during conversations on the phone, at power lunches with other mamas with grand visions. Time alone will tell how much of this will flower and what the harvest might be.

Feeling:: full of love for a dear friend who passed away after a life filled with beauty and heart and hope. It is amazing how grief and gratitude can be two sides of the same coin. Feeling grateful for the drip drip of a recent snow melting into our rain barrels, and the hose channeling runoff  to the fruit trees. Feeling happy to be recovered from a day of flu, and also happy to have had a day of rest in which all I did was look deliriously at my children with delight and amazement. Feeling like it’s fine to accept the controlled mess that fills our home. It is a sign of life and joy and creativity. That we live here.

Doing:: deep cleaning, gathering with friends, visiting our favorite wetlands, singing spring songs, planning a birthday party, swapping meals, washing spring greens, and as ever, trying not to do too much of anything at all.

What are your head, heart, and hands up to? Please do tell!

Head, Heart, and Hands

Thinking about creativity, the mother’s journey, and the deep need each of us has for a sense of purpose. I’ve been really enjoying the audio interviews at the MAPP gathering that speak so wholeheartedly to this.

Feeling the rising energy of spring. Warm days and a little moisture make me wonder if it’s time to plant. Too early yet for the garden, so I turn my attention inwards. What is it in me that wants to be nurtured into being? Okay, is that too hokey? How about this: I’m feeling really satisfied by the time alone I nabbed to get some ideas manifested. The sap is running, friends.

Doing the usual: walks on the ridge and along the river, keeping house, tending children, writing in the quiet space of naptime. Also, neglecting my spring house cleaning to give some long overdue love to Old Recipe, and experiencing a bit of awe for all the things I’ve written here, all the people I have connected with through this space, and the way this journal is a record of my need to live mindfully and from the heart.

Grateful for all of you who join me here, for friends that inspire and motivate (especially you, Erin, for letting me copycat your beautiful Seeds and Stones), for my ability to both surrender and strive, for the full water tanks that are nurturing our garden, for the borrowed computer (thanks, ma!) that allowed me to spruce up this here Recipe Book in hours instead of days, for the snowpack in our mountains, for my family, for my life.

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If you are reading this as an email, do come see the changes. And I’d love to hear from you: Which of my categories represents best to you what Old Recipe is about, so I can order the list more meaningfully. You can read descriptions of each here.

Ski Date Love Song

Sometimes, the snow comes.

And the kids are sick.

And Grandma and Grandpa want to be with them.

Sometimes we are let loose, my love and I.

The land shimmers in it’s snow blanket, fresh and airy.

Shifting clouds, filtered light.

Everything is gliding motion.

Forest and snow.

Well worn trail, well-known love.

Skis and you.

Gliding along we go.

Waldorf 101: Notes from Parent Night

Here are some impressions and notes from a parent night at  Cora’s preschool this month. Yes, I’m the dork that takes notes at parent night. What can I say, I’ve been studying Waldorf early years stuff so intensely on my own, and finding such wisdom and inspiration in it, and also so much to be baffled by, that it is a huge relief to just sit back and have someone (our dear, wise teacher) who has been doing it for years give the straight dope. It went something like this:

In early childhood, two pairs of things are most important for educating the child.

The first pair is Rhythm and Repetition. These are the primary tools for teaching children under seven. I love to think of rhythm as pattern. The repeated rituals and acts of daily life that connect us to ourselves and the larger world.

The second pair is Imagination and Imitation. Healthy play springs from what children have seen and experienced, the impressions they take in from the world around them.

Our work as parents is to be worthy of this imitation, to be the best role models we can be. This is where parenting becomes a spiritual act, as we tend to our inner self in order to embody beauty, goodness, and truth. We can do this in part through our own self-education, by asking ourselves what we are doing to grow alongside our child. I can honestly say that I got hooked on Waldorf the moment I realized the extent to which it hinged on my own inner work.

The gestures of gratitude and thankfulness are the well from which all of this—rhythm, imitation, imagination—springs. The virtue of gratitude is instilled in the first 7 years of life, and lays the foundation for the later development of love and duty. Our expressions of gratitude in daily life at home are deeply nurturing to our young children. And ourselves.

That’s the gist of it, folks. Short, sweet, simple. And kind of deep, if you think about it.

I think whether you are into Waldorf or not, there’s a good chance this will seem like common sense. It’s kind of natural and intuitive for us to strive towards this in our mothering, isn’t it?

One Year Later: Remembering Birth

One year ago, around today, I was getting ready to have my second baby. Oh, I’d been waiting and waiting and waiting. Wanting that birth to come more than anything. And you know what? It just wasn’t coming.

My due date came and went. Then two more weeks passed by. I did everything I knew how, but my cervix was unbudging.

Acupuncture three times a week and hardly even a braxton hicks. In New Mexico, 42 weeks is as far as you can go and still have a homebirth. Oh, how I wanted a homebirth. Specifically, a homebirth after cesarean. Oh, how I grieved when I had to let go of that. And oh, how scared I was that another hospital birth would mean another cesarean.

My midwife called our local hospital and was told they wouldn’t induce me for a VBAC. It would pretty much be an automatic cesarean. So she called this Doc in Albuquerque who is known for delivering breech babies and other old school things. He said come on down. I was so happy for the glimmer of hope he offered. And so scared. Could I really be going to be induced again? The same procedure that had ended so disastrously last time?

 My dear friend had wise words for me then, about how this was not the same road leading to the same place I’d already been. She said, sometimes life gives us experiences that are remarkably like things we have been challenged by before, only we get to meet them with fresh wisdom and strength. I began to see this journey as one of healing as well as a birth. Whatever lay before me, I would rise to meet it as a love warrior, with an open and courageous heart.

Nevertheless, I whined to the doc, “My cervix is unpoenable!” He looked like a scruffy gnome with his long hair and beard and Navajo bolo. He was unphased. “It might take a few days, but I see no  hurry,” he said. And that was when I knew we were going to be okay (I wasn’t paying attention to the three days part).

It helped me to see myself not as a victim of pitocin, having an especially painful labor due to pharmaceutical augmentation. Instead, I just reminded myself I was in labor. This was my labor. Mine. And nobody said labor was easy (okay, maybe those hypnobirthing people do, but I wasn’t there for easy, I was there to have a baby!).

I stood swaying on my feet, leaning against a hospital table, moaning like a howler monkey. For oh, about 18 hours. Doctor checked me and said “Great news! You’re 3 cm!” And I did celebrate, just a little. After all, my cervix had never been 3 cm open before! But then I started doing labor math and figured out I had about 40 more hours to go, and began planning my epidural. But hey, if you can get through the first three years of motherhood without tv, then surely you can get through a 26 hour labor without an epidural, right? Not to be blithe about it, though, because I surely did scream for it after they broke my water and things got a-rolling for real.

My husband shooed away the anesthesiologist, pulled me back onto my feet, and we got down to the real work of having a baby. It was at that moment the tide shifted and I knew I was going to have this baby naturally, right there on my two feet. And I was so glad that hypnobirthing never worked for me because this was amazing. And harder than shit. I don’t like to curse, but it’s true. Birth is so hard and so so good.

The nurses kept telling me “You’re having your baby!” And I was like, oh, so that’s what’s happening. Because it just doesn’t seem possible that anyone could feel like that and survive. And to think every person ever to live on this planet was brought into the world in some way resembling this–it just boggles the mind. It felt amazing to be a part of all that. I was having my baby!

Things were cruising now. We were in, swept away and carried by the birth. Through transition, my body pushing of its own accord.

Doc asked, could a few med students come in and watch; they’d never seen a natural birth. Ha, this was not the candle lit water birth I’d dreamed of–this was better. It was my birth! Let them come in, I said. Let the whole world witness my might! My husband held me in a supported squat. The doctor knelt on the floor and delivered her onto blankets.

And so Maida was born.

 My child, bringing you into the world was the first gift you gave me.

My heart is full with you!

Finding Grace, Going Slow

Simple days, as ever.

Re-reading Mitten Strings for God and Simplicity Parenting.

These books just make me feel so good when I choose to forgo the many holiday activities going on, to not go overboard with the homemade gift thing, to not stay up till 3 am making an Advent calendar, to not go to the Holiday Faire, and all the many other things I Just Say No to.

Because that means there is so much left to say Yes to.

Yes to having time. Yes to being with my children, unhurried and unstressed.

Yes to walks in the snow.

Yes to letting things grow in their own way–our traditions as a young family, the beauty and meaning we find in celebrating the seasons and their festivals in the simplest ways.

Yes to creating out of inspiration and because the spirit fills us, not a sense of obligation.

~

 Of all the things I might think up to do, it’s what I feel, the richness within, that is most meaningful.

Things take on a depth and richness when I have time to enter them more fully.

There is a space for creativity to blossom, and to be received in a way that bears fruit.

For me, Advent is a time of quiet, and of making.

Keeping the computer off at night, sitting and entering the deeply creative space of crafting gifts. It reminds me of the girls in their play–intent, absorbed, and ultimately being nourished on the soul level. Finding meaning in our work of play and life.

This is grace.

Oh, there is so much to be grateful for!

Take care, friends. Wishing you slow days and nights, quiet joy, and the peace of stillness. What are you saying no–and yes–to these days?

::

PS Along these lines I was recently inspired by this post on Advent from Renee, and this one on Finding Time from Heather.

Days of Wonder

The glorious days of Autumn have been full in their simple way.

What do you say when old friends ask what you are up to and all you can think of is laundry and roasted chickens and the new bonnet you started knitting, and somehow, it just doesn’t seem like it will translate? I haven’t tried this yet, but next time I might simply say something like “Oh, just keeping the rhythm,” letting the unspoken “of the universe intact” part be merely implied.

To you I can also add that I’ve been occupied with finding balance in this complicated world, returning again and again to center in the midst of plentiful distraction. Finding gratitude for the great struggles I go through in my ongoing “birth pangs” of motherhood. Just as our children experience tension and disequilibrium in their growth, I’ve learned to see my own hard times as a catalyst for wonderful growth. (Thanks to posts like this one at The Parenting Passageway for bringing me back to myself once again!)

Sewing real jersey woolens and making recycled “sweater pants” is a fine way to stretch my fledgling skills as a seamstress. Thanks to Mama Ash Grove for the inspiration. Also, amazingly, I’ve just found my way back to writing after a long rest. I had to completely let go of my expectations of myself, of the half written novel draft started years ago, of the ordinary moments not celebrated in insightful poems. I trusted that for the time being, my creative work was in the mothering, the homemaking, the singing and cooking and knitting and yes, my journal and this blog a bit. I let go of my identity as a “Writer” and embraced my life as a mother and it was a great relief, a weight lifted from my shoulders. Happily, the two are once again converging as I spend all my quiet moments of late pouring out stories of our days, turning them into something artful that feels soulful and satisfying. Another reminder of the importance of how the fallow times inevitably give way to new growth and fecundity. 

See. Everything ripens in it’s time.In the meantime, I’m really working to bring the last light of the season with its brightly glowing trees inside. To light my inner fire, to blaze the spiritual fire that will carry us into the “season of light” coming round Solstice time. And yes, I’ll be singing and cooking and tending my girls as best I can. Learning just how the waist band on long underwear should be shaped, maybe getting a few lines down on paper now and then, learning (again) to say no to too much “fun” away from home, and hopefully putting the garden to bed with a few thick layers of compost and manure and mulch and a planting of winter rye .

In other words, just keeping the rhythm of the universe intact.

As are you, my friends!

Ordering the Stars: Housekeeping Rhythm

A friend of mine shared this story: She read in a book by a Waldorf early years teacher that whenever the children starting getting too wild or disruptive, the teacher slowly and methodically went about putting the room back together. Folding silks, placing dolls in their cradle, stacking bowls in the kitchen. And the children magically settled, finding their center once again. My friend said that when she read this, she realized that it perfectly described her own state of being–when the house is a mess, she feels impatient and irritable. When it has come back together again, she feels peaceful and easy. I couldn’t agree more!

But where is the Waldorf kindergarten teacher coming to my rescue? Why, up on the fridge in a rainbow colored chart, of course.

That’s right, a housekeeping schedule. For a long time, I was consumed with just the basic daily maintenance of our home: dishes three times a day, sweeping, laundry, tidying up the detritus of an active family. I still do those things day in and day out, but each day there is a little something extra that I focus on.

Monday is kitchen day. Aside from giving extra attention to things that pile up during the week, I set the timer for ten minutes and do a single task like clean the fridge or organize a cupboard. Sometimes I mop, or deal with the mess under the sink.

Tuesday is for the living room and entry way. The special focus of this day is “dust and declutter.” I rove around the house with a wet rag and a box, doing just that. I straighten the bookshelves, tame my knitting baskets, put the cds back into orderly piles. Sometimes I sort the hat bags, sometimes I sweep down the cobwebs.

Wednesday is bedrooms. Usually one needs more attention than the  other, so it gets it. More dusting and decluttering, sweeping the rugs, changing the sheets, putting away any clothes that have been piling up (and getting rid of the excess).

Thursday we do the bathrooms. Sinks, toilet, tubs, mop the floor with a wet rag, mirrors, wash towels. This has been majorly helped by having a spray bottle of vinegar solution and box of baking soda in each bathroom. Duh!  I use old cloth diapers for washing everything down with.

Friday is “studio” day. That would be our huge desk on the north wall of our main living space. I enter receipts into our budget, pay bills, tidy and declutter the mess, straighten the bookshelves and the disaster brewing down below where my fabric and sewing gear is stowed.

Over the weekend we do some version of a home blessing–vacuum, empty trash, do what was forgotten during the week, and often some bigger organizational work that involves everybody.  Or sometimes we just let things go, secure in the knowledge that it’s gonna get done soon enough.

:: I work fast and try to get the daily chore done by ten. If it’s not in the stars, it’ll happen for sure next week.

::My three year old helps me work while sister takes her morning nap.

::I love this routine because it tells me when to stop. If it’s time for the park, I stop myself.

::People before things. I am getting better and better at remembering this, at letting the house be messy and not falling apart myself. Strange to actually be embracing disorder, but sometimes that’s how we choose joy.

::Simplicity and de-cluttering are my secret weapons. If I am grumbling over picking up the same toys all the time, I simply move them out of our home or into storage. If my bookshelves are bursting and unsightly, if there are too many cups to wash, if the pen cup is stuffed so full it’s impossible to get a pen in or out–get them outta here!

Our house is not super clean, ever. It is a lively, creative space, with lots happening. Every day, though, we give extra attention to at least one part of it, and this makes the whole place feel loved. It is such a balancing act–embracing the abundant messes of family life, knowing how much to let slide, and when to get things back on track. It is an ongoing evolution–one of growing children, parents, and the space that contains us and our days together.

Ordering the Stars: Home is the Heart

Here is our family’s “mission statement.”

What we strive to practice daily, as best we can.

Whenever there is a lot going on, when life is overly full or times are tense, this is how I find my way back to center.

I’m getting ready to share a bunch of stuff on rhythm and housekeeping and the like, and it’s good to pause and breathe, to give thanks, and to stay connected to what spiritual homemaking is really all about:

Love.

And all her many faces.