Playing big and taking up room

Maddy and Cate, 2008

I've learned a lot over the years, listening in on Maddy's violin lessons. It turns out that there are a lot of life lessons that can be extrapolated from learning an instrument from a patient, wise teacher--even vicariously, while sitting observing from an old scratchy sofa. I could go on and on about all the little epiphanies I had sitting there in Cate's studio: about focusing on just one thing to improve at a time, about relaxing and sinking in, about slowing down, about patience with the process, about form and function. Cate was pretty much my Mr. Miyagi.

One day as I was watching, Cate asked, "Maddy, do you consider yourself to be someone who holds pieces of herself back & tries to take up less room? Or do you think of yourself as someone who opens up and shares and isn't afraid to take up space?"

"Well...both, I guess." (Which is true...she does both. Maybe we all do.)

"Hmm. Right now your violin is asking you to open up more.  To be bigger.  To take up space. To share more of what you're feeling through your music.  It's a great invitation!  Can you do it?"

Meanwhile, I'm over on the scratchy sofa, inspired and inwardly nodding my head and saying "Yes, I can, Cate. I will play bigger.  I will share. I will take up space."  

My life asks that of me, too, and it's scary.  I'll admit it, I'm a walking contradiction.  I want to rise to the challenge that opportunities bring.  But I also crave staying well within my comfort zone. Preferably with pajamas on. It's easy to play small, stay quiet, let someone else step up to do what needs to be done. Pieces of this Marianne Williamson quote have been rattling around my brain so I had to go look it up again. I'll bet you know the one:

"Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

I do not have this down at all. One of my new year's resolutions this year was to stop for a moment when I had a "somebody really should" thought (you know the kind? "Somebody really should __________ (pick up that litter; host a neighborhood block party; start a family newsletter; get a thank you gift for that teacher, etc.) and be the somebody who does it. I've pretty much failed that one so far!  But. I really do believe that playing big(ger), showing up, shining out, and really occupying our space is a gift to our kids as well as ourselves. It's the permission slip for our kids to do the same in their lives.

Thanks, Cate. Six years later and I'm still practicing.

p.s. Last year this clip from a poetry slam competition was going around. Did you see it? Lily speaks powerfully of observing her family tendency toward shrinking women: “She wanes while my father waxes. I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking... I have been taught accommodation...[My brother has] been taught to grow out, I have been taught to grow in.”

Reading the yield signs

Since I've gone back to school--or back to dissertation, I guess--there's been this constant, nagging nudge that haunts me through the day: you should be reading something academic, should be writing, could be researching. While, sure, it's helpful to be motivated to work, I've noticed the constant internal preoccupation ends up robbing me of enjoying other good things in my life, including being present and attentive with my family. 

This week it feels like everything I see/read/think has been urging me to snap out of it already. To show up, slow down, and pay attention. 

photo origin unknown

There was that post On Slowness I read that referenced an art history professor who requires her students to look at a painting for three hours before writing about it. Despite initial grumbling, the students come away "repeatedly astonished by the potentials this process unlocked." She proposes that such deep attention and patience needs to be structured by teachers & professors (and, I would add, parents) since it's not cultivated "in the wild" anymore.   I loved that. And also: when was the last time I looked at something for three hours?

. . . 

A book I was reading ended with this quote: "I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big successes. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human pride" (William James) 

. . . 

Finally, the ever-fantastic Billy Collins just released a new book of poems and this one captures this well:

AIMLESS LOVE

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

 - Billy Collins

Okay, universe. Aye-aye. Message received. (Of course, the irony is that I'm writing this as my kids get ready to head to bed and G just got home from a business trip...so I'll sign off now.)

---

- A transcript of Billy Collins's recent conversation with Diane Rehm. 
 - A copy of Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems would make a great gift, by the way.
 - G and I went to the movie About Time last weekend. It's funny and sweet and sentimental (some might find it overly so but not me! bring on the sentiment!) and I came away inspired to relish & fall in love with the wonderfully mundane moments that make up our lives. The music was really good, too, so I made a playlist.   This song is especially lovely. And this one. 

This water lives in Mombasa

My brother Matt gave me this vintage edition of Out of Africa for Christmas one year. I love everything about it: the graphic cover, the rough edges of the uneven paper, the library smell. The inside page says it's a Modern Library edition from 1952; there's even an old, folded up portrait of Isak Dinesen from a 1950s magazine tucked in the back pages. 

I came home from my hike/walk today and got the book out, searching for a line that had been running through my mind all morning. Scanning through, I saw that I had marked a different passage about an orphaned pet antelope they had on the farm.  It could easily be speaking to me, or you, or one of our children:

"Oh, Lulu," I thought, "I know that you are marvellously strong and that you can leap higher than your own height. You are furious with us now, you wish that we were all dead, and indeed we should be so if you could be bothered to kill us [note: well, maybe not that killing part...].  But the trouble is not, as you think now, that we have put up obstacles too high for you to jump, and how could we possibly do that, you great leaper?  It is that we have put up no obstacles at all.  The great strength is in you, Lulu, and the obstacles are within you as well, and the thing is, that the fullness of time has not yet come." (p. 72)

A great thought--but it wasn't the one on repeat in my brain. No, that line (it turns out) is in the movie version. In this scene, Karen Blixen is trying to establish the farm in the wild hills of Africa, to grow coffee and dam up the river to suit her needs.  Her head servant Farah shakes his head and warns Karen "this water lives in Mombasa, Msahib." (Later when the water breaks its banks, she concedes the point: "Let it go, let it go. This water lives in Mombasa anyway.")

Oh, I can relate to both of these dueling passages.  Yes, there are some things that, like Lulu the antelope, we have the strength and wherewithal to leap over and conquer. Go for it, great leapers!  

And yet, I think there also some things--in our kids, in our family life, in ourselves--that really can't be forced by our wills to be something else, not for long. Some things live in Mombasa, returning to their own courses despite attempts to change and control. 

So why was I thinking of this line today on my hike? It's that I keep trying to change, prod, mold, and whittle this body into something that, I've come to realize, it just doesn't seem to want to be.  Yes, I will be healthy, I will be strong, I will be happy with myself & keep working hard for the joy of it.  But my curves, my shape? They just might live in Mombasa, Msahib. 

(See also: some of my children and the state of their bedrooms. Mombasa.)

Climbed a mountain and I turned around

How to Climb a Mountain

Make no mistake. This will be an exercise in staying vertical. 
 Yes, there will be a view, later, a wide swath of open sky,
 but in the meantime: tree and stone. If you're lucky, a hawk will
 coast overhead, scanning the forest floor. If you're lucky,
 a set of wildflowers will keep you cheerful. Mostly, though,
 a steady sweat, your heart fluttering indelicately, a solid ache
 perforating your calves. This is called work, what you will come to know,
 eventually and simply, as movement, as all the evidence you need to make
 your way. Forget where you were. That story is no longer true.
 Level your gaze to the trail you're on, and even the dark won't stop you.

Maya Stein

 . . .

Over the last few months I've fallen in love with hiking. Who knew? I love the solitary climb, the burn as I push myself up the hill, the crunch of gravel underfoot. My barnacled thoughts loosen as I go and I can leave my unnecessary, unhelpful worries up on the trail as an offering at the altar of the day. Up there at the peak of a strenuous climb I feel clearer, my brain scrubbed clean, ready for what matters. 

Another truth follows, though: then I come down.  

Ugh. Yes, sometimes the summit clarity stays with me and holds me over until next time. But often the buzz wears off quickly. After recently launching Lauren on her mission--the latest big figurative mountain I climbed--I've been feeling it this week, the inevitable, predictable post-summit valley. (As I did after our moves. And when L. left for university the first time. And after the holidays every year. And after back-to-school rush. And after the thrill of a fun vacation.) The thing about launching is--if you do it right, then they're gone. (Come on, sing with me now...climbed a mountain and I turned around...then the landside brought me down.  I'm pretty much the poster girl for that song these days. That and the Fiddler on the Roof song about sunrises and sunsets.)

Then I remember this wisdom, discovered a couple of years ago and put to good use ever since:

"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know"  (Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue).

I'm still figuring out what that means for me, exactly, and how to conduct myself in the valleys. Remembering and knowing is a good start. And new mountains. But first I think I'll take a long bath and indulge in some cinema therapy.

Here's to you and your mountains--to the grit and vistas and the descent and even the occasional landslides.

. . . 

p.s. Speaking of hiking:  In praise of America's parklands and encouraging Congress take a hike.

Thought for the day

I'm actually running around NYC today with Maddie, soaking up our last days together before she leaves for college. In light of this activity, today's entry is more like a "thought" rather than a full-blown post. Hope that's okay. (That's what comes of being your own boss!) 

A year or so ago I gave a speech to a group of women from my church. I can't even remember the exact topic now, but it was along the lines of  "being patient" with oneself. It was about the complexity of women's lives and our worries. It was about how such complexities makes us less sure of who we are and where we are going. And really? More uncertainty increases our competitiveness and decreases our generosity WITH EACH OTHER.

And somewhere I found this gem of a quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh that rattles around to the front of my brain from time to time: 

Woman today is still searching. We are aware of our hunger and needs, but still ignorant of what will satisfy them. With our garnered free time, we are more apt to drain our creative springs than to refill them. With our pitchers in hand we attempt to water a field, instead of a garden. We throw ourselves indiscriminately into committees and causes. Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions. 

I included the photo of the bunny napkin because I'm not at all certain that such endeavors (for me) are not more about distraction than FEEDING MY SPIRIT. And it's not that I don't enjoy a properly folded napkin. I do.  I'm just giving some thought to my figurative garden, and whether I'm watering it or letting the scorching sun dry and wither the blossoms. 

That's all. (Picture me waving at you from Central Park.) 

Let freedom ring

Sometimes it takes me a while, but eventually I get down to the business of making lemonade out of my pile of lemons. And by lemons, I mean my kids growing up and leaving home. (I could also mention here that our AC went out over the weekend, but that would be WAY off topic.) So, my kids are living their lives far away from the family home, and while I intend to mentally sustain them by worrying incessantly and continually directing good will to their part of the universe (and sending copious care packages), I figure I best get on with the process of living. 

The other day, when I was supposed to be working, I started thinking about how I need a really good farmer's market. Fresh produce. YES! Fresh, home-grown produce is just the ticket. (And no, I don't get a whole lot accomplished.) I did what any other procrastinating, bereaved woman would do -- I started googling 'farmer's market' + Houston. A pretty decent list popped up. None of the recommendations were too close to me, but, "Hey!" I thought to myself, "I have a car and no one needing a nap time." And then, THEN, this tiny sliver of light entered my consciousness. I stayed really still because mostly my consciousness has been filled with a) I'm eating too many carbs. b) How long can I put off the camp laundry? or c) I feel anxious about everything, and I can calm myself by eating carbs. Do you know what that tiny sliver of light was? The dawning realization that I can do things I want to do. Weird, huh?

This may be too much personal information for you, but let me just lay it out there for you. I went away to college when I was 18. I married (an awesome dude) at 19. I graduated from college at 21. I had my first child at 22. I had my second child at 23 (call me focused). I had my third child at 26, and my fourth at 29. Needless to say, there are no crazy, youthful days of yore. There are so many other really cool things in my past, but the time and freedom and resources to look around at the world at be amazed? Not so much.

So, maybe somewhere in all of this ending there will be some beginnings. Like me and the farmer's market. I'm making a list.  

• Exercise more. I'm considering being one of those really ripped Grandma's. [Note to self: stop with the carbs already.]
• Work. Aside from teaching as part of my graduate school responsibilities, I've never really worked outside of the home. But I still want my summers off -- just sayin'. 
• Read more. The other day I came home from the store to an empty house. The girls were at work, and Parker was at his cousin's. I looked to the right -- a pile of unfolded laundry. I looked to the left -- 27 glasses on the kitchen counter. But right in front? A good book I wanted to finish. And NO ONE WAS AROUND! So I plopped myself down on the couch and read. It was pretty heavenly. 
• Car. I've always bought the traditional family car -- to haul my kids around. But with only two kids at home next year? I'm thinking this! Booyah!
• Kayaking. Sterling recently added two kayaks to our hoarder-garage. Early morning kayaking? Bring it on.
• Travel. Now that our kids are older (and there are less of them), it is pretty easy to just drop and go. Sterling and I have committed to no more gift giving for birthdays and anniversaries. We want experiences instead. Look for the two shaky old people on the slopes. That's us! 

And really, I'm just getting started. I've always joked about moving East, wearing Birkenstocks, and throwing pottery. But now? Not so much with the joking. 

Also? Raising goats. It's just a thought. 

The scales of our belonging

Last week after I wrote about my Erikson epiphany, Kristine left a fantastic quote in the comments that has been on my mind ever since. It addresses that same idea that Erikson captured: that parenting is a transformative experience and, as our kids start growing up and we have time and space to look around a bit more, we're increasingly primed for generativity, creativity, and giving back to the world more widely.

Since you might have missed the quote, imbedded as it is in the comments, I wanted to pass it along (edited a bit for brevity; see the whole quote here in the comments):​

​A Mother and Child with its Head in her Lap, Pieter de Hooch

"As mothers, as fathers, we have at our disposal a wonderful time of rehearsal. We may set aside our interests time and again; we may practice watching the interests of others. But if that sacrificial love starts with our children, and stops there, we will have lost our opportunity to fulfill Christ's commandment, and so have everything that He has promised. Christ's commandment is that we love, not just our children, but one another!

​"...This is the best news of all, because, mothers and fathers, when our time has come, when, having fulfilled the duties of our state of life we are free to address ourselves to the needs of the world, when it comes time to love one another as Jesus loved us, we already know how! We have already learned! How to teach, how to feed, how to tend, how to heal, how to care, how to love. But it is different with us this time, because we act not out of duty. This time, in addition to knowing how to love, we also know why.​

"...Having practiced our scales, played the daily exercises of love for our children, the scales of our belonging, now we come to the concerto. Now the music begins. Having loved our own, we now can love the world. Now we rise to the task for which parenting prepared us...because although we lost ourselves in our mothering, God remembered us, and brought us forward, and made us new."​

- Reverend Canon Susan Harriss, Mother's Day sermon

It's a reminder I needed--that, in all the mundane and profound daily sacrifices that parenthood requires, we also launch ourselves.​