Tired

I didn't go surfing this morning. And I didn't go to yoga class before I didn't go surfing. I stayed in bed while Brian took Ashton to the park to practice Kung Fu. I slept in.

Because I was tired.

Every night I put my kids to bed. And every night, around four a.m., Ashton crawls into my bed and kicks me. It's not an aggressive kind of kicking, just a continual thrusting motion with his legs. He also grabs at my breasts and generally gets all over, under and to the side of me. Trinity sometimes gets in bed with us too. She doesn't kick. But she scratches and it makes a hollow fingernails-on-a-drum-head sound that is maddening.

One thing I've noticed about mothers is that we often feel tired but don't understand why. And then we feel guilty because we don't feel like doing the things we told people we would do. Or  because we have a hard time getting going in the morning. Or because it took us two hours to get the kids out of the house and into the car, when it shouldn't have been such a big deal.

But those nearly invisible sources of exhaustion add up and whittle away at our energy levels and our executive functions.

So I slept in this morning and enjoyed the sensation of being touched by no one, kicked by no one, and interrupted by no one. Even with the giant pee stain Ashton left in my mattress after wetting the bed at 5 this morning.

Smack Down

There's been a lot to write about lately: which, perversely, has made me hesitant to write at all. After all, how could I get it all down?

• There was the day when it was sunny and hot in Culver City, but surprisingly cool and foggy at the beach.
• There was the day when I figured out I needed to lean more weight on my front leg in order to balance better on my board.  
• And then the day when I remembered  to stay in a squat in order to keep my center of gravity low. 
• After catching my best wave ever, I turned around and saw, in the distance, the smiley face on a bright yellow para-sail looking straight at me.
• There have been countless skull-vibrating tantrums from my three year old.
• And seemingly endless fits of  bloody itching and scratching from my eight year old.
• Two of my good friends are currently dismantling their marriage bonds.
• And I keep noticing the five pounds I want to lose.
• So I've been crying a lot.
• Which has made me very grateful for love. 
• The kind of love that isn't based on how much I've accomplished,  proven or impressed. That isn't based on how much I'm worth, how much I weigh or how well I'm doing. But the kind of love that decides, simply, to love. No matter what.  
• Even when I'm down.

In Case I'd Forgotten...It Takes a Village

This week, my friend Grant's family was in town from Kansas City to celebrate his college graduation. On Monday, they invited us to spend the day on the beach. While other family members kept an eye on the older kids, Grant's Mom Connie volunteered to look after Ashton while I hit the waves.

It was a beautiful day - sunny and warm. The waves were not big, but they were big enough. There was a strong rip current, but otherwise conditions were perfect.

Even though I could see that Connie was a watchful grandma, I kept checking on her and Ashton from my location in the water. Due to Ashton's new red hat, they were easy to spot.

As I watched them, it occurred to me that it was due to Connie that I was surfing. And it occurred to me that, as a mother, it is only due to other people that I am able to do anything. And that is because, as a mother, I am not only responsible for myself but for other people as well.

And because I am responsible for those others, I am essentially, no longer an individual. I may inhabit one body, but I am no longer "one."

So much of my conflict as a parent has stemmed from my insistence that I am still an individual. So much of the conflict I think so many parents experience stems from the fact that our society, our culture, expects all people - each of whom inhabits only one body - to be an individual when, in fact, many of us are not. When in fact, none of us are, though for some of us - estranged from family, estranged from community, "single", childless -  it may be easier to deny.

The  realization that a statement like "we are all one" is neither metaphor, nor abstract ideal, has, frankly, blown my mind. Previously, I'd thought it was something a person "gets" when on acid, or ecstasy, or once they have achieved enlightenment. It was never something I thought I'd grasp from simply standing in chest high waves on Venice Beach.

What Surfing's Had Me Think About

Writing this blog for over a year has inspired me to know other mothers who have committed themselves to pursuing their own athletic dreams –  amateur or Olympian. Over the past few months, I’ve interviewed several such moms and started work on a book exploring the ways which such women have found to simultaneously pursue their passions and serve their families. But the more I've explored these women's experiences, the more convinced I’ve become that the very structure in which families exist is unstable,  unsustainable and just plain unfair.  

That structure, of course, being the nuclear family.

In my interviews, again and again, I’m reminded that family life, as it is lived by the vast majority of people in our country, seems to be a zero sum game - when one parent gains, another loses. If Dad plays golf, mom stays with the kids. If Mom surfs, Dad’s on house arrest. If a kid has an activity, one parent has to drive and then spend an hour or so sitting in a studio or on the bleachers.

The nuclear family – it’s clearly a game of winners and losers.

For women, the majority of whom are either inherently or culturally inclined to care for others, the thought that our pleasures come at the expense of the people we love can seem unbearable. In my case, it causes me to cut short my runs and my surf sessions. In other cases, a woman may not do anything she loves to begin with. Or when she does, she may do so overcome with a sense of doubt and guilt that diminishes what would otherwise be a purely joyful experience.

On the one hand, at times I imagine this is a small problem to have. So what if the average mainstream American middle class mom has no time to have fun? 

On the other hand, I believe that the more time a person spends in flow, experiencing authentic joy, the more he or she can give to the world at large. Conversely, the diminishment of joy leads to a diminishment of inner resources and to an experience of scarcity that is at the root of so much addiction, despair and general dysfunction. And let me just say it - so much divorce.

Over the years, we've heard much about the collapse of the nuclear family - as if  that's a bad thing - as if the shattered nuclear family is responsible for so much that is wrong with our otherwise healthy and wholesome country. But what if this model was not effective to begin with?

If the nuclear family was a product created by a manufacturer, it would have been discontinued a long time ago, recalled due to the many hazards it presents  the consumer – among them isolation,  stress, divorce, infidelity, child abuse and depression.

This week I’m reading an incredible book: "Half the Sky", by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It is reminding me that there is so much work to be done all over the world and that it is a crime that so many American families should be so drained by just getting by that they, that we,  are too overwhelmed and stressed to effectively help those who are so less fortunate than we are.

But if the nuclear family is not the way for us to live, then what is?

Behind Every Great Woman...

I love this picture of wetsuited siblings at the edge of the surf with their boogie boards.

Speaking of pictures...

Instead of surfing this weekend, I took a trip to Encinitas with my friend and photographer Jessica, to shoot some photos of fellow mom-surfer Jamie G. and her family -- at home and on the beach.

Not too long ago, I interviewed Jamie about her life as a surfer and how she manages to pursue something she loves while also handling the responsibilities and stresses of having a family.

What we witnessed during our shoot was something that keeps coming up, again and again, in the lives of mother/athletes --- significant support on the homefront.

Not that a woman can't pursue the life she loves without support at home. She certainly can. But when she does, pursuing her passion can become an additional source of stress rather than a source of pure joy.

Every step of my surfing and writing adventure has benefitted from the support I've gotten from my husband and friends. Two weeks ago, when I was able to get the support of a women's surfing community, my joy increased tenfold.

The more deeply I delve into the lives of women performing remarkable feats of athleticism, elite and amateur, the more conscious I am of this: no one does it on their own.

Behind every great woman, therefore, is not simply another woman, or a man, but a village.
It's a cliche for a reason. It's true.



 

Do Unto Others

I woke up this morning to learn that big wave surfer Sion Milosky had drowned up north at  Mavericks.

A couple of weeks ago I had an idea at the water's edge. Was the ocean like me? I thought. A mother who loves all her children, but nonetheless has her good days and her bad? Who has days when she feels generous and others when she doesn't want to be asked for one more thing?

That day I thought I'd start treating the ocean the way I'd like to be treated. Maybe a strange idea. Maybe not. But there it was - my own version of neoprene clad goddess worship. And since then I've been talking to the water the way I wish my family talked to me; what do you have to tell me today? what can I do to please you? how can  I thank you?

Today I arrived at the water's edge and found it colder than usual, rougher and deeper too. The white water kept coming,  and getting past the impact zone was a struggle. I tried to catch a wave and, for the first time, experienced being held down by successive waves. After getting knocked down a second time, I stepped back and started talking: do you not want me here today? should I get out? are you not in the mood?

She just boiled and boiled and I related it to my son wanting to nurse, or my husband wanting to have sex, when I've got other things on my mind, other things to do, and a whole world inside me they can't imagine. So I stepped back farther - like I wish they would on those kind of days. Because I know how I can snap when I don't want to be bothered.

I watched other surfers struggle where I had struggled. Get knocked down where I'd been knocked down. Finally I watched a lifeguard help drag lifeguard station 20 a couple of yards away from the water. With this storm coming and the current budget crisis, he told me, they can't afford to lose the station to a surge.

Today was definitely a day to respect your mother.

Sunday with the Surf Chicks

Brian took Trinity camping in Joshua Tree for the weekend, leaving me and Ashton to our own devices. Yesterday was a slow bore that ended with ice cream for dinner. Consequently, the little man was bouncing off the walls at what should have been his bed time. Determined that it would NOT be the case again, I promised I'd wear him out today. So I took him to the beach to hang with some surfer chics.

I'd run into Amanda Schmitz, the organizer of the 310 Surf Chics, a couple of weeks ago and it had been so nice to see her I thought that, even if I didn't get to surf, it would be cool to hang out on a Sunday morning with some other surf ladies while babysitting my boy. And for the most part, that's what I did. Ashton's current obsession is ping-pong, so I brought some paddles and an orange ball and we hit it back and forth for more than an hour.

But then, the miraculous, the long-hoped for, the wonderful, happened. One surfer, a mom in her forties,  volunteered to look after Ashton and another surfer volunteered a board. I spent a few minutes on the fence - due to what I think is a pinched nerve in my shoulder - but then realized a little pain was not going to stop me from the surf session I've been dreaming of for almost a year.

You know, the one in which the surfing village gets together to support this mom to get in the water - even when she has her kids with her. Yeah, that dream.

It came true today.

I haven't yelled a single time this week...

This morning I found out my mother-in-law was giving a talk at her church before she kicks off her walk-for-peace across the country on Tuesday. I found out as I was about to walk out the door to go surfing. My board was already on the wagon.

I gave my sister-in-law a ride to the church and as she got out, she said something to the effect of 'If you change your mind, you should come to the talk. It'd make her real happy."

"It'd make her real happy."

Ouch. Potential Kryptonite to me, who has spent years prioritizing everyone else's "real happy" at the cost of  my own.

It wasn't an easy call. Doris is going to be walking for seven months. I won't have many chances to see her between now and September. I hadn't gone surfing in two weeks and was thrilled I'd finally made the opportunity to go this morning. Doris would have been "real happy" and maybe people would have said nice things about me for having made the sacrifice.

I had been tired and cranky at breakfast. The day was cold. It had taken a seemingly colossal amount of energy to get me almost out the door when I got the call. It would have been an easy out.

But I couldn't.

Even though the water was stormy and the waves crappy, the ocean was calling me and I heeded the call. Even though I didn't catch a thing, I played and played and played. And I'm really glad I did.

The Stranglehold, Part 2

While my dilemma is not an uncommon one for mothers, the only people who offered advice were men, single women, or grandmas whose kids are long out of the house: suggesting to me that while solutions were right under my nose, something about being a mother was preventing me (and other women) from being able to see them, act on them, or accept what they are.

What is this something that prevents me and so many mothers from believing that they can pursue joy free from the strangleholds of domestic life?

I believe it is an impossible, internally imposed, standard of motherly conduct that precludes the common sense actions we need to take care of our own well-being. (A standard which men don’t share, and of which single women may not yet be aware.) To make an analogy, we  impose on ourselves the maternal equivalent of a 38D bust, a 24 inch waist and the body mass index of a supermodel.  In other words, we've got the maternal equivalent of eating disorder.

Having sat with this for a few days, on Sunday afternoon I grabbed a page from the green kitchen pad and wrote was for me a new manifesto of healthy mothering:  

• I will never yell again.
• Nothing is "that" important.
• I am no longer responsible for everyone’s feelings - or their futures.
• I will only say things once.
• The children clean up with their parents.
• Hungry children must ask nicely for food or go to their rooms until they can.

While I didn’t follow the advice of my readers to the letter, what I got in spirit was the belief that something new was possible. And what I got in reality was something yet to be tried and a whole new frontier for this mother/athlete/surfer.

Hitting the Wall

It was a rainy day and Trinity and I watched 180 Degrees South. A really good documentary that just brought home how stuck I've been feeling the last week.

Here's how it goes  - Life is going along and I get an idea. It's a good idea and it excites me.

Life gets really good.

Having such a good life gives me more ideas, excites and inspires me, and I start doing more stuff.

But maybe I don't have enough room in my life for more good stuff, just enough room for a little good stuff and the rest of the room is for the kind of draggy everyday stuff I was trying to escape in the first place.

But I'm really inspired now and I just want to do this great stuff I've started - in this case, the surfing and the book featuring other moms doing sports. But there's still all the old stuff to do: breakfast, lunch, dinner, dishes, laundry, potty training, homeschooling, trips to the park, and the stuff I really hate - trying to get my kids to do things they don't want to do.

So here's the $64,000 question: how to do the stuff that excites and energizes me while still having all that stuff taken care of, but not having to do it myself?

THIS IS THE QUESTION! Isn't it?

Just. Be quiet. And I'll stay in bed.

 
So far, I've discerned that mastering my surfing is largely a matter of mastering my parenting: which is to say, my life in general.  Surfing well and often, in this case, demands I overcome a combination of weak boundaries with the kids and a degree of tending to my own well-being that is not as strong as it could be. 

For instance...

Like many human beings, I like to stay in bed until the last possible moment. Given the right motivation, however, I am capable of early-rising. I’ve worked on enough film shoots to know that, after maybe thirty minutes, getting up at four or five can seem enough like having gotten up at eight or nine - especially after some breakfast and a nice espresso. So one of my goals as a newbie surfer has been to get up for that early morning “dawn patrol” surf session before the kids get up and Brian goes to work.

There’s only one problem... 

While I spent the summer attempting to wean Ashton and train him to sleep in his own bed,  I stopped at the insistence of my frustrated and sleep-deprived husband. Consequently, Ashton still sleeps with me and, as soon as I get out of bed, follows me wherever I go - shrieking and demanding milk and more cuddles. Demanding ME. 

He’s the opposite of an alarm clock. He’s like a siren demanding I stay in bed - a siren I am rarely able to resist. Sometimes I do get up to do early morning yoga but, nine times out of ten, he comes into the living room and climbs on my down-dogging legs. 

This is a challenge I believe few non-mom yogis, and few non-mom surfers, share. Challenges like these are the secret tests of motherhood that most women probably don't expect before they go ahead and have kids. I surely didn't.

It. Working.

Sometimes it all comes together. The childcare. The weather. The tide. The gear. Today was one of those days.

Some new homeschool friends invited us for a play date at Santa Monica's Muscle Beach and I brought my board - just in case there'd be enough moms to look after the rascally Davis children while I caught some waves.  There were only our two families, but the mom (named Haven, just like Brian's grandfather) generously offered to look after them while I went out.

The sun was blinding, the water relatively warm. The waves, small and strong at first, got bigger and more predictable while I was there. And there was only one other surfer. I basically got hammered, but I had fun. And after I remembered some of what I've learned in the last few months, I got hammered less badly.

So much went through my mind while I was out in the water. How I've learned from surfing to look straight ahead of me instead of down all the time. How many people have guiltily shared their fears of waves and water since I started telling people I surf. How pulling my wetsuit down over my booties is preferable to pulling the tops of my booties up over my wetsuit.

And how maybe things aren't as bad, hard, tough, and painful as I've always thought they had to be. Especially now with my new super-duper short haircut that I absolutely love.

Mom on Board

I didn't expect it, but I made it to the beach this afternoon, just in time to be blinded by the setting sun as I paddled out into the waves. I couldn't see a thing, the light was so bright and no amount of squinting made it better.

It was the first time I really didn't enjoy myself. The water seemed colder than ever before - even with my booties - even though it had been in the seventies and eighties all weekend. And I felt so out of shape, I could barely paddle through the sets rolling in at 4:30 p.m.

Enthusiasm was barely present. Ashton had thrown a fit on my way out the door and insisted on coming with me. Trinity, who'd just started squeezing the lemons she'd picked from our tree, had a fit because that meant she had to come too. She bitched. He whined.

I scowled.

"Not a very zen return to the ocean," I thought as the whole family drove to the beach.

But the absence of enthusiasm was an interesting thing. In a way I'd never experienced before, I was just there. Just in the ocean.  Just being blinded by the sun. Just being annoyed. Just getting hammered by the waves. Just surfing.

And that was just it. Even though there was no epiphany, no revelation, no release from all suffering, I can honestly say - even with the cold, the glare, the bad waves and the bad kids - surfing is better than not surfing. And that's all there is to it.

Me. Not Surfing.

A combination of rainy weather and illness has reminded me why I started surfing in the first place.  Dreading the daily monotony of meals, dressing and undressing kids, baths and more meals, I'm feeling cranky, cantankerous and resentful - like a house slave, basically

Almost all the mothers I know rely heavily on either alcohol, marijuana or separation/divorce to get some space and sanity for themselves away from their maternal responsibilities. Alcohol and marijuana are not good friends of mine and though I was tempted to blame my marriage last year when I realized my life  wasn't giving me the juice, I like my husband. It's not his fault.

I got along in life semi-okay before I ever started surfing. But I didn't have two kids back then. With two kids it's both a necessity and sometimes seemingly an impossibility. Still, it's the kind of impossibility I relish: more than, say, I'd relish the impossibility of three kids. 

What stumps me is that  some women enjoy having lots of kids, noise and chaos around them. But I am not like this.

It may be another week or so  before I get back in the water, weather permitting. In the meantime, last night I ordered a bunch of stuff on Amazon to get me excited: a "Yoga for Surfers" DVD, Gerry Lopez's book "Surf is Where You Find It" and Jamal Yogis's "Saltwater Buddha."

Me. Not Surfing. Just a case of temporary insanity.

Surfing with Family is a Mixed Bag

My seven year old daughter has a skin condition. It makes things painful for her that are not painful for other people. It makes things frightening for her that are not frightening for other people. Like sand. Like sun. Like the beach.

As excited as I was to finally have a dual family surf session, during which I would watch the kids while my friend G surfed, and he would watch them while I surfed - Trinity was...unexcited. Full of dread. Overcome with anxiety. Miserable.

I soldiered forward. On my back, a bulging pack full of diapers, wipes and assorted child needs. Over my shoulder, a pouch full of snacks. From one arm hung an unwieldy beach bag holding water bottles, towels and a wetsuit. Under the other, a large blue surfboard. Big Mama Wave.  The triumph was carrying all this baggage while safely directing the children across the road, across the bike path and towards the water.

The defeat? Trinity wouldn't step off the boardwalk onto the sand.

The triumph? I set us up on the beach without losing it.

The defeat? Trinity still wouldn't step off the boardwalk onto the sand.

The triumph? Ultimately, I carried her, legs wrapped tightly around my waist, to a cool spot beneath a lifeguard station.

The defeat? No sitting beneath lifeguard stations.

And on and on and on.


The ultimate triumph? Family surfing day happened.  I paddled out, enjoyed the gentle rise and fall of the waves, caught a few, wiped out a few. Got wet, got cool, got healed.

I've been trying hard lately: to breathe deep, to stay calm, to not lose it. After surfing, I don't even have to try.

It was low tide by the time I made it to the water. G said it was hardly worth going out. I disagree.

Rained Out on a Beautiful Day

I was awakened in the middle of the night, which was really early morning, by an unrecognizable sound. It was so battering, clattering and loud, I thought someone, or something, was beating rhythmically on tin drums.  And it made me mad.

Because I'm a mother who's a surfer, I've made the promise that I will never knowingly endanger myself to surf. Which means being strict about not surfing after any goddamned rainstorms because of the sickly toxic urban runoff on my local beach.

So I took it personally, okay?

How could it not have rained for so damned long and now that I care, now that I've actually started to dread rain - which I used to love so much - can a rainstorm come - in the middle of the night, between two perfectly sunny days - and rain out my surf plans?

For crying out loud.  Or, as my friend Tom in Chicago used to say, "Krikey!"

What with the husband needing space and lots of time to work things out, the two year old needing to nurse all the freakin' time and sleeping in the holy marital bed, and the older one not wanting to do math and maybe having Celiac disease and itching and sneezing and being sickly with diarrhea almost every single day, surfing is really, really good for my state of mind. When I do it.

In fact, the real wonder is how I went so long not surfing. I must have been crazy.

Heh, heh. Maybe I was.

My husband would not disagree.

Mother/Surfer/Laundress

Saturday afternoon, I left a party mid-swing, picked up my surf gear at home and went to the beach. The conditions were terrible. I arrived at the lowest point of low tide. The water was barely a foot deep for yards, and the waves were but tiny little rippling mounds on the surface.

Feeling philosophical, I channeled my disappointment into a blog entry - which disappeared into the virtual ethers when seemingly both Blogger and my computer crashed. Then I was a little less philosophical. I got less philosophical when I didn't make it to the beach at all on Sunday.

I am becoming a "surfer." When I'm not in the waves, I'm either imagining that I am or planning when I next will be. This is not bad. Happiness is only four miles away on any given morning. That, in itself, is cause for happiness. Because I have so much more genuine happiness occurring, as well as more happiness to look forward to, I am, in general, happier.

And I know for a fact, I would not be homeschooling if I didn't have "Big Mama Wave" in my garage. Life would be too much "them" and not enough "me."

Which brings me to some more observations and questions about balance and other things. In the Surf movie "Sprout," the filmmakers visit board maker Tom Wegener and his family in Australia. Master craftsman Tom met his wife Margie when she was a morning radio DJ. She interviewed him for her station. It was love at first sight. Ten years and two kids later, they're still in love; we see a sweet and affectionate kiss. And then we see Margie - hanging up the laundry. Yes, we do.

Here's the observation: someone has to do the laundry, right?

Here's the question: what if a woman's life is shaped not only by her individual drive to be self-expressed, but by an inevitable, inescapable duty and responsibility towards the continuation of human life on planet earth and this includes - maybe - sometimes - in some situations - a lot of cooking, cleaning and doing laundry?

And there's nothing wrong with that.

Might be self-evident to some people. To me, this comes as a shocking possibility.

Balancing Acts

As of last week, I am officially a home-schooler. Or, as of the moment I returned the call from La Ballona Elementary School and told the secretary that my daughter wouldn't be attending second grade. "Good luck" she said, when I shared my plan. Then I was officially a home-schooler.

Two weeks into being entirely responsible for the education for another human being, I am conscious that the discussion around education in contemporary society is based in anxiety. Anxiety about the future. Anxiety about the fact that the United States/the American Dream is not what it once was. Anxiety about how to survive. About how to live. About what a person needs to thrive. Anxiety about the absences or flaws in one's own life that one doesn't want to pass on to the next generation.

I am guilty of all of this.

I surf many mind-waves in the course of the average day. I take a deep breath and visualize a wave rolling up beneath my board, catching that wave and speeding towards shore with the force of the tide beneath me. During the good moments of teaching, my children are the wave and I can catch their force and ride it, too, in the right direction. Being with children, like being with water, is about being present.

But as a surfing instructor laid it out for me one day; surfing is a balance between surrender and the aggressive attack of something larger and more powerful than one's self. And such it is with children as well.

The unending question then, for both water and little humans, is when to be present and go with the flow and when to bring certainty, force and intention? When do I discipline my daughter to sit up straight, brush her teeth and do the things she doesn't want to do but are important, i.e. math? When do I nurture her inclination to dawdle around tree roots and speak in a quiet voice to insects and fish?

Which will help her more to thrive in an increasingly uncertain world? How do I get this thing to balance?

I Take Requests

A friend recently asked me to recommend some books that had an influence on my spiritual development over the years.

Nothing immediately came to mind, other than the book that is most blowing my mind right now: "Raising your Spirited Child" by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. If you've got a child, or know a child, who seems unusually difficult but is really just extra sensitive, persistent, intense and slow to adapt, this book is for you. It may very well set your spirit at ease, as it has mine, and so, though it is technically a parenting book, it is also certainly a spiritual text.

Otherwise, these items came to mind as having had an early and profound influence on my journey:

"The Seven Story Mountain" by Thomas Merton
A Columbia University student, and carousing literary star in the making, finds the Catholic church and becomes a monk. He even gets a girl pregnant, though he leaves that part out. A compelling story of redemption, I first read this when I a senior in college, kept breaking up with my boyfriend and was longing for a more spiritually authentic life.

"Journey of Awakening: A Meditator's Guidebook" by Ram Dass
There was a time when I didn't know how to meditate, when I didn't even know what meditation was. Amazing! This book was my introduction and a very useful one at that. I gave away my original copy to a friend, but I still remember it fondly. Anything by Ram Dass is entertaining, instructive and profound, whether you're reading his books or listening to him on audiotape. As he would say, he's not a guru, just a very human teacher.


“New Seeds of Contemplation” by Thomas Merton
My copy of this book lacks a front and a back cover. It is underlined and notated like crazy. Each chapter is around ten pages long and gives the reader something to think, pray and wonder about. Chapter headings include "What is contemplation?", "What contemplation is not", "Integrity" and "Faith." This stuff never gets old.

"The Perennial Philosophy" by Aldous Huxley
Huxley compares the words of mystics from the world over, finding commonalities in faith and insight. I read and reread it through college and graduate school and its pages, too, are covered with notations. It’s not an easy read and it surprises me today that I got so much out of it when I was so young. I may have been smarter then than I am now.

"Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said" by Philip K. Dick
For those not familiar with Philip K. Dick's novels, but familiar with the movies inspired by them, these are not action stories. (This is a major pet peeve of mine about which I will say no more right now.) That said, this is a novel about lost identities, lost love, and the mysteries of our shared and un/shared realities.

These five books laid a foundation for the spiritual development of my early-adult years, and I will share many more in the future.  What books/works of art have inspired you over the years, and how did they relate to your circumstances at at the time?

Life in the slow lane

I went out twice this weekend and I can feel the progress being made. On Saturday I was having trouble popping up. Every time I caught a wave, I only made it to my knees. One of my mom/surf companions told me she'd practiced in slow motion til she got it right. On Sunday that's what I did. Took it really slow. Not only did I improve my technique but I realized how habitual it is for me to move quickly and how unnecessary that is. Slowing down caused me to have fun, to laugh more in the water and to have a better time in general.

On the waves isn't the only place I've been slowing down. Since starting to surf, I've also started taking some time during the afternoon to lay on my bed while the kids do something else. I don't read, I don't nap, I just lay there laying there. And then I make it through the day. I haven't had my own personal meltdown in months. I've come close, but there's been no blowing of mom's stack in recent memory. This is particularly impressive considering that, almost exactly a year ago, my temper had gotten so bad I feared I was a danger to my family.

We consulted a family therapist. Before dealing with any family, he said, he had to deal with the mom. After a few weeks, this is basically what he told me:

"You're a mom and nothing you've told me is out of the ordinary for a mom. You're a talented woman, a smart woman, but all you do all day is take care of your family. You need to do more."

And then he asked "If you could be doing anything right now, what would it be?"

And I said "Writing a book."

And he said "Don't come back until you've started writing."

And that was it. I'd been hoping for a more exotic diagnosis than "stay-at-home mom" but there it was. So I started writing.

And surfing.

And sleep training one of my kids for the first time since becoming a parent. Because I can't get up and surf dawn patrol if I have a toddler sleeping next to me, attached at the nipple and hysterically crying the moment I step out of bed, now can I? That would wake everyone up.