So, a bit more on becoming. What I hold to be true is that becoming a mom has us become more of who we are as women, as human beings, as leaders and colleagues, as wives and contributors in all sorts of ways; where we have been blocked; where we have been freed, where I haven’t even named it or where it feels unnameable. I have also recently learned that a core precept of Judaism - “I am that I am” - is really about becoming, that God was considered the God of Becoming- "I shall be that I shall be." As a Jew, also for me a practicing of becoming, not one of just belonging without question or agitation even, I feel this deeply. Being Jewish is also about who we be by what we do in the world - Tikkun Olam - it is our responsibility to repair the fissure in the world's core with our goodness, generosity with love. This is where we become, by being more of who we already are, at least who we aspire to be.
A dear friend reminded me this weekend that this isn't about anything to acquire or change. It is rather about what is already there, already HERE inside me, inside each of us. It is more a matter of the way we fertilize and till the soil, water it, give it the sunlight to grow. Yes, it isn't a from-to proposition, but rather a be-do-know one. I become by being, doing from there, knowing deeply that this is "me," even if, as Buddhists would suggest the "I" continues to be a swinging door.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
"Now, we don't have children, we parent."
"Now, we don't have children, we parent."
David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
Ben and I were on route late Friday, June 27th for a long overdue visit with friends in Tahoe. Stopped at Starbucks for our late evening drivetime adult sippee cups, as our friend Ailish calls them. Mine a chai. His a big ol' java. (I still say National, not Reagan Airport. I don't use the Starbucks code. It is a large cup of jo to me. Some small effort at being a citizen and not a faithful consumer of consumerism. Perhaps I am just a prudish Henry Higgins of the day -- "Why CAN'T the Americans?!!?....)
Waiting for our brews to come steaming from behind the reliable silver machinery, I opened randomly to a page in Sheff's book sitting atop the shelf and my eyes first settled on this quote. Parenting as a verb. Parenting as a way of life. Like our careers. We don't have jobs now, as perhaps our grandparents and parents did, we "career" and we set intention about how our contributions look and what we give and get from them. We create paths, we create new forms and we share them with others. So, to choose to have a child is in a new paradigm as well. We dont simply to add the being to our existing life, or "have" it. Parenting now has us. Parenting is a transformation from one form to another. And, there is much more room to fail, or believe that our acts have fundamentally failed our children. Maybe because we believe our parents did - leaving us a world with a whole lot more to be fixed to support life for the next generations. Maybe because we take greater responsibility for the act. Likely because we view the world from a narrow and class-based view in which collected research and resources give us room to worry about the organic mattress with no fire retardants or the new blue carpet that won't off-gas in our new baby's lungs. Likely a new becoming for us all as we find our way in an out of the aisles of Babies R' Us and Earth Mama websites, where we notice, yet again, who is and isn't shopping those same aisles. I feel deeply as I become parent the ways in which we are so far apart - separated by class, race, history and education - and the ways in which we all share the same aspirations for ourselves and for loving our children well. All of us parenting our way into the future, one small choice at a time.
David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
Ben and I were on route late Friday, June 27th for a long overdue visit with friends in Tahoe. Stopped at Starbucks for our late evening drivetime adult sippee cups, as our friend Ailish calls them. Mine a chai. His a big ol' java. (I still say National, not Reagan Airport. I don't use the Starbucks code. It is a large cup of jo to me. Some small effort at being a citizen and not a faithful consumer of consumerism. Perhaps I am just a prudish Henry Higgins of the day -- "Why CAN'T the Americans?!!?....)
Waiting for our brews to come steaming from behind the reliable silver machinery, I opened randomly to a page in Sheff's book sitting atop the shelf and my eyes first settled on this quote. Parenting as a verb. Parenting as a way of life. Like our careers. We don't have jobs now, as perhaps our grandparents and parents did, we "career" and we set intention about how our contributions look and what we give and get from them. We create paths, we create new forms and we share them with others. So, to choose to have a child is in a new paradigm as well. We dont simply to add the being to our existing life, or "have" it. Parenting now has us. Parenting is a transformation from one form to another. And, there is much more room to fail, or believe that our acts have fundamentally failed our children. Maybe because we believe our parents did - leaving us a world with a whole lot more to be fixed to support life for the next generations. Maybe because we take greater responsibility for the act. Likely because we view the world from a narrow and class-based view in which collected research and resources give us room to worry about the organic mattress with no fire retardants or the new blue carpet that won't off-gas in our new baby's lungs. Likely a new becoming for us all as we find our way in an out of the aisles of Babies R' Us and Earth Mama websites, where we notice, yet again, who is and isn't shopping those same aisles. I feel deeply as I become parent the ways in which we are so far apart - separated by class, race, history and education - and the ways in which we all share the same aspirations for ourselves and for loving our children well. All of us parenting our way into the future, one small choice at a time.
Falling into the hole alone. Climbing out supported.
The week just before Memorial Day weekend. 2008. A good 8 weeks ago now. (Everything counted in weeks now. Time extends just as my belly does, day by day to week by week, small, big changes.) Realizing - again - as I reflect on my experience throughout the pregnancy how much this baby is changing me. No, not changing ME. It is how I am choosing to BE changed by this being inside, to allow myself to be turned inside out and outside in. Or so I can reflect on it now when the growing pains aren't so acute or as unfamiliar. Time has new architecture these days. So does the terrain of the earth below my feet.
When the emotions have my full and rapturous attention, as they did this particular weekend, the ground is subject to tremors, to gaping holes opening where none existed before. My emotions dig them, deeper and deeper sometimes. I feel vulnerable, afraid I will diminish slowly and steadily as this little being keeps eating the food I ingest, tumbling around from the glucose in a summer white peach, jolted by sips of black tea I ingest when the fatigue is too much. I am most afraid of being insignificant, another woman felled by motherhood, trapped in a deep, dark hole where I am reduced to the next dirty diaper change and the elusive search for the most ecologically sound diaper choice, and where I feel like the resources that have served me my whole life long can't lead to the way out.
Grip of fear. The hold opens wide. Glimmer of awareness. Maybe I will climb out this time. Grip of fear. The hole deepens. Glimmer of awareness. I see help....No, again in the hole, falling, feels like falling.
The voices of the past are loud and insistent. "You couldn't even complete all these projects before you got pregnant. What makes you think you have any hope of it now? You have such potential...shame about having to put all of your aspirations aside for the next 20 or so years. When you moved to Calfornia, you already took the 'off-ramp,' to this backwater town, now you are REALLY off the professional highway. Yeah, might as well have the kids now...not like you were doing much anyway. " In the hole, I begin to believe these voices, hearing no others, feeling only a deep chill to my bones as I stand immobile, listening and waiting for light or some other sound or something. There is choice here too - I get to believe that I am alone here, that it is all on my shoulders and stored up in that being in my belly. Yes, this is another voice of fear. But, this time it is interrupted.
It is interrupted by my husband's voice, reminding me who I am. And it takes a few days for me to stop letting the fear tell me it is my voice, to stop listening to it that way. But, along this path climbing out, I begin to see just how many others are there - with ropes and pulleys and cheers and messages that tell me that I will never be stuck.
Since then something shifted, I have been climbing steadily, up to heights where I can no longer see even the outline of the hole. This blog is a solid walking stick. By looking at its contours and smelling the pungent earth, the hole begins to close.
I don't doubt there are others, sometimes places I need to fall to get to somewhere new. I have fallen since, and the ropes and pulleys have been there. I also no longer doubt that I have the strength inside and the support outside to get there.
When the emotions have my full and rapturous attention, as they did this particular weekend, the ground is subject to tremors, to gaping holes opening where none existed before. My emotions dig them, deeper and deeper sometimes. I feel vulnerable, afraid I will diminish slowly and steadily as this little being keeps eating the food I ingest, tumbling around from the glucose in a summer white peach, jolted by sips of black tea I ingest when the fatigue is too much. I am most afraid of being insignificant, another woman felled by motherhood, trapped in a deep, dark hole where I am reduced to the next dirty diaper change and the elusive search for the most ecologically sound diaper choice, and where I feel like the resources that have served me my whole life long can't lead to the way out.
Grip of fear. The hold opens wide. Glimmer of awareness. Maybe I will climb out this time. Grip of fear. The hole deepens. Glimmer of awareness. I see help....No, again in the hole, falling, feels like falling.
The voices of the past are loud and insistent. "You couldn't even complete all these projects before you got pregnant. What makes you think you have any hope of it now? You have such potential...shame about having to put all of your aspirations aside for the next 20 or so years. When you moved to Calfornia, you already took the 'off-ramp,' to this backwater town, now you are REALLY off the professional highway. Yeah, might as well have the kids now...not like you were doing much anyway. " In the hole, I begin to believe these voices, hearing no others, feeling only a deep chill to my bones as I stand immobile, listening and waiting for light or some other sound or something. There is choice here too - I get to believe that I am alone here, that it is all on my shoulders and stored up in that being in my belly. Yes, this is another voice of fear. But, this time it is interrupted.
It is interrupted by my husband's voice, reminding me who I am. And it takes a few days for me to stop letting the fear tell me it is my voice, to stop listening to it that way. But, along this path climbing out, I begin to see just how many others are there - with ropes and pulleys and cheers and messages that tell me that I will never be stuck.
Since then something shifted, I have been climbing steadily, up to heights where I can no longer see even the outline of the hole. This blog is a solid walking stick. By looking at its contours and smelling the pungent earth, the hole begins to close.
I don't doubt there are others, sometimes places I need to fall to get to somewhere new. I have fallen since, and the ropes and pulleys have been there. I also no longer doubt that I have the strength inside and the support outside to get there.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
On becoming
"To change or to grow to be; change or develop into by growth."
I looked up the definition of what it is to become. I felt this word roiling around in my gut - like the baby somersaulting and spinning inside my now stretched out belly. Like the perfect name my husband Ben and I will land on... soon, soon. The word called out to me some weeks ago, an opportunity to move into a new home -- where being Mom and being Me co-exist, negotiating chores, conversing over dinner as the day turns to night in brilliant hues. Becoming. So simple. Not so easy.
It begins with awareness, but if it stops there, it is just a nice day's outing and nothing new is really discovered, no new path is dug. This blog is a space to step into all of these new forms and to honor the old - less than a year ago, i became partner and wife to Ben, months later, from married to pregnant, now nearly no longer pregnant, but Mom, a form that is yet without clear lines. I can't see her --- yet. She hasn't arrived - yet. How will i welcome her when i don't always want her to show up. Will she step - hard - on "my" toes? Will she take over and raid my closet and call herself Mikaela? Yes, she will. I admire, love and fear her - the Mom that I am in the act of becoming.
Becoming is first a choice to step into who I am, who I perhaps have even been, but never embraced as me. I can't yet see distinguish the form, the outline and pulse and flesh of this new body.
I looked up the definition of what it is to become. I felt this word roiling around in my gut - like the baby somersaulting and spinning inside my now stretched out belly. Like the perfect name my husband Ben and I will land on... soon, soon. The word called out to me some weeks ago, an opportunity to move into a new home -- where being Mom and being Me co-exist, negotiating chores, conversing over dinner as the day turns to night in brilliant hues. Becoming. So simple. Not so easy.
It begins with awareness, but if it stops there, it is just a nice day's outing and nothing new is really discovered, no new path is dug. This blog is a space to step into all of these new forms and to honor the old - less than a year ago, i became partner and wife to Ben, months later, from married to pregnant, now nearly no longer pregnant, but Mom, a form that is yet without clear lines. I can't see her --- yet. She hasn't arrived - yet. How will i welcome her when i don't always want her to show up. Will she step - hard - on "my" toes? Will she take over and raid my closet and call herself Mikaela? Yes, she will. I admire, love and fear her - the Mom that I am in the act of becoming.
Becoming is first a choice to step into who I am, who I perhaps have even been, but never embraced as me. I can't yet see distinguish the form, the outline and pulse and flesh of this new body.
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