Reflections

As most parents often say, having a child brings a lot of laughter and love into your life. (And, often, too, a lot of sleeplessness and exhaustion.) As Cora starts her foray into toddlerhood, I am discovering a new kind of connection to her. Having a baby is very parental; it's very much focused on taking care of and changing and swaddling and rocking and soothing. Having a near-toddler is a new phase, it begins to brush against my own memories of being a wee one, navigating around my home and getting into mischief. It's when memory started. All the little connections started firing away and I began to see the world as something I was a part of, something separate and yet connected, a vast and exciting world of discoveries. Everything is new to Cora! Sometimes I can't get over that. She just keeps growing and stretching, everything is getting bigger--even her little hands and feet are noticeably wider and longer, more able to grip things and walk upon.

Nearly every morning when she wakes up, one of us will get up and bring her into our bed, where I will nurse her back to sleep. She snuggles between us, looking infinitely secure and so small next to her 6'2" dad. This morning I got up for a glass of water, and when I crept back into bed I had one of those moments when it all becomes so clear for the briefest of instants: this is my life. Those two people are my family, the ones I love more than anything else in the whole world, would break to pieces without, wait for at the end of a long day, look for in the mornings, want to hold and squeeze and cuddle. In the quiet of the morning, while light crept through our curtains, I looked at them while total gratitude ran through my veins. This is our life: three linked people--two grown-ups and a little helix of us sleeping softly between.

As I watch Cora grow into her adamant self, I find myself reflecting more on my own childhood. If I stop and ask myself to define the first memories I associate with being a kid, it is so easy--immediately I remember exploring the woodsy acreage on Bainbridge Island, the stomping ground of my first 12 years. We had the immense luck of having a 40-acre, forested backyard owned by a reclusive rich lady who never used her land. I think I spent the majority of my childhood exploring the mossy interior of those woods, making booby traps and keeping a nature log and writing bad poetry. I often set out with my sister or my friends, but what stands out the most are the days when it was just me and my dog Valley, snuffling through the land looking for fairies and gnomes, listening to the birds, making bouquets of trilliums (until I learned, to my horror, that they can take up to 15 years to first produce a flower, and, if you pick the bloom, it can take up to seven years for it to flower again), and feeling the world roll at my feet. These spaces of solitude continue to define happiness for me. I think I have been searching for that place ever since we left. I also remember getting into a lot of mischief with my sister, stealing stuff and making prank calls, trying to smoke tea bags and almost burning down our backyard. And while there are countless memories of adventures with my family, going camping on Orcas Island or Shi Shi beach, walking on rocky beaches, or helping my mom cook in the kitchen, those aren't the times that stand out first and foremost.

All the time and attention that we pour into our children is for the purpose of helping them thrive on their own. We spend their young lives trying to fill them with our love, hope with all our might that they will search for experiences that mirror the love and trust and security we hope they felt as a member of our family. And if they are able to wander into the world by themselves and feel a sense of awe, and give something of themselves that comes from a place of security, then perhaps we can credit ourselves a little bit for that. Or perhaps it is entirely to our children's credit.

I waffle on this point because we all have such different experiences. What breaks one bolsters another. What defines one is only peripheral to another. I mention this because, interestingly, sometimes my most vivid memories of my parents are negative ones. They are the breaks in the fabric of an idyllic existence, ones that began to unravel everything until our perfect home on the island became tattered and worn out, exhausted and dangerous. It has taken 30-plus years to revisit those tough times in my head and look at them with adult eyes, to understand the network of stuff that slowly broke everything down. So I wonder if there is some kind of cadence to it all, a process by which we filter through all the good and all the junk and arrive at a balanced equation that defines us. There was obviously a huge amount of good in my childhood, so many moments that surprise me when I remember them, so much dedication and kindness, so much attention and care. I give my mom and dad great credit for the parents they wanted to be. They put effort into it. I have huge respect for that.

And with the tough stuff, I got perspective. For better or worse, it makes me, me. Admittedly, when I lie on my pillow and look at my slumbering baby and incredible husband, and think about everything around me, from the memories that are so vivid they are like fixtures, to the walls of our house to the food in our refrigerator, I feel...lucky. I remember closing my eyes and wishing wishing wishing.

It is all so deeply personal. That's what I continue to arrive at. We all have our own stories: stories that we tell ourselves, stories that happened to us, stories where we become the heroic protagonists of our own fate--stories that define us in ways that inspire our present and shape our future. And at some level, we can't help comparing ourselves to each other, because that's what we do. As human beings, we look inside and then look out, and somehow place ourselves somewhere on that trajectory. Some people are so fascinated by the similarities and differences that exist between people or countries or solar systems that they make it their life work to analyze them. Some focus on our psychology, studying inner realities and drawing connections to outer experiences. Some, like my husband, are artists, have trained a huge section of their brain to memorize lines and light, shape and form, and they create new worlds for us to enter quietly, helping us play and imagine.

For some reason, I like to tell stories. Was it because my mom used to tell me I was a good writer, would sit with great attention while I read her my stories about squirrels and rabbits in the woods? Is it because I liked the quiet time, or because I have escapist issues, or because I like to study people? When do our dreams begin, and what starts them? What is the energy that draws us to our life work, and what sustains it?

Another Monday

I was sick all day yesterday, so I'm surprised I'm doing as well as I am today. I woke up feeling awful, but after a cup of tea and a couple of Advil I feel a little achy, but fine overall. We went on some errands this morning; I dropped off my computer at work and said hi to some coworkers, and then went grocery shopping. It was nice to see people at work and have such positive feelings overall--both about my experience there, and my conviction that I am doing the right thing right now.

We spent Saturday visiting my mom and dad on the peninsula. Dad and his wife were taking care of their grandchildren for the weekend, and Cora had fun playing with the two older girls. They were incredibly sweet to her, and Cora loved the attention. Then we spent the evening with mom. Mom has been sorting through all our childhood toys and organizing them in little baskets throughout her house. It was great to play with toys that I used to love (all these beautiful wood blocks and ferry boats, wooden cars and rattles and noise makers), and to watch Cora happily playing at her grandma's house. It was a totally nostalgic experience to remember being a little person at my grammy's place, the same house mom is living in now, and to look out the window at the beautiful 180-degree view--Mt. Rainier, Seattle, Puget Sound, the ferry making its lazy path around the island. Mom made us an awesome dinner and we sat around together and just relaxed and ate and talked.

I've decided to submit a story to Glimmer Train. It's a great anthology and I feel goose-bumpy and excited about submitting something to it. And I have been noticing little story-beginnings starting to march into my head--nothing super structured yet, but still. It feels good.

I don't know why it is, but for some reason writing doesn't feel like this big scary thing anymore. It feels like this awesome, tangible activity that I can spend time enjoying. It doesn't need to always be a highly serious act, a thing that requires blood and bone and lost sleep. I feel interested in writing about happy things, moving away a bit from the more morose stories I used to like to write.

I just keep thinking about the importance of dreams, of sticking with what you believe in, of putting energy toward those things that are most important in your life. And on that note, I am going to finish this post with a link to one of the best songs I've ever seen in concert: Bruce Springsteen's Dream Baby Dream. I watched it at the Key Arena in 2005. I think the song lasted about 10 minutes. Everyone was standing and swaying, crying, staring down at the stage totally transfixed. The repetition felt important--like we need to be told at least a hundred times to hold on to our dreams, because they are so easily neglected or lost.

Tea and chocolate...and Friday

I love tea. Earl Grey is my favorite, I'm pretty much addicted to the taste of bergamot. And I recently picked up some Ritter Sport hazelnut chocolate that tastes especially good when paired with a hot cup of tea. It's Friday and we just had an awesome morning with one of my most supportive and sweet friends, and her little daughter. We went to the Seattle Children's Museum and enjoyed all the fun activities there. Cora took a nap this morning and is sleeping again now...She seems super tired after this long week of activities and sleep disturbances while I try to figure out her schedule.

Tea and chocolate. Yum. I love that Cora is fast asleep, growing her brain and her body while I decay mine slowly with sugar and caffeine. I have enjoyed a complicated struggle with caffeine, and wish right now that I was drinking full-strength coffee and buzzing about with a million fresh ideas, instead of soaking up whatever small strain of caffeine is left in my decaffeinated tea, and waiting for it to give my brain a midday boost.

I'm looking forward to the weekend and a few good adventures. Cora spent 10 minutes kissing and waving goodbye to her Dada this morning, and I know she will be all abuzz with excitement when he comes home tonight. She has a different personality with him, gives him tons of wrinkled-nose smiles and giggles, and joyfully watches him perform silly antics for her. This morning we waved frantically at him through the living room window while he did a dance on the sidewalk, kicking up his feet and clicking them together, then spinning around in fabulous ballet form. And then she just quietly settled down and started playing with her animal flash cards and books while I did the dishes. She loves to come in to the kitchen and hang on my leg and then take small journeys to the cupboards and shelves, rummage about the drawer with all the metal lids, and then head back for another leg snuggle.

I have been thinking about my MFA program, and voice and character development and all the writerly things that we studied and thought about intensely for two years. It is so much easier to write about little Cora, a tangible little character in my house who wanders around and laughs and cries and waves and kisses. But I am excited to start writing short stories about quirky characters' lives and adventures. It occurs to me that I should know my fictitious characters as well as I know Cora; I should imagine what they were like as children, the environment where they grew up...it's important, it's formative. It sticks with us. It's something I've thought about loosely before, but it honestly hasn't struck me with such force until now. What I am thinking is that I had better be in love with my characters enough to write about them. Even if I hate what they stand for, I should love them as human beings enough to write carefully about them, to research their first words and first crushes, elementary and high school memories.

A short one

Yesterday Cora and I had one of those days I know I will remember forever. We went to the arboretum and walked through the linked meadows and trails above the visitor's center. Brightly colored leaves littered the ground, and there were still enough of them in the trees to make everything look decorated for a party. It is so odd to have a walking child. Even though she still looks like a zombie, she is able to navigate around quite well. We jumped in piles of leaves and felt all the textured tree trunks and branches. We found a huge cedar tree and ducked under its bower of branches, studying a squirrel while it zipped and bounced above us. My favorite part of the day was when I put her on my shoulders and we ran down a hill to this beautiful yellow tree that literally looked dazzling in the distance. We raced across the meadow and she laughed the whole time. I held her lengthwise in my arms under the tree so she could look up at the contrast of yellow against blue sky, and we spun around while she just giggled and giggled. I swear, I don't mean to sound overly dramatic, but when I looked down at her lovely upturned face staring up at her new world, grinning ear to ear with five and a half new teeth peeking through, I found myself moved to tears. I was looking at everything through her eyes. It is like watching a door slowly open and seeing your child peer around it, starting their journey into childhood.

When we first found out I was pregnant, I took two tests consecutively. I felt like my heart was going to burst through my chest with excitement. We had to meet a friend for lunch out in Tacoma, a long drive from our house, and we held hands a lot of the way. I looked out the window and imagined this new life inside. I remember that I suddenly felt as if everything that I was looking at, our little baby was seeing, too. I felt like an important filter, as if I needed to record everything around me more carefully, more accurately. And then I remember this precise moment when I switched over from being myself to imagining that I was my child all grown up, sitting in the passenger seat listening to melancholy music on a Sunday. I will never be able to see everything exactly as Cora does. I can only imagine the wonder she must feel as her life unfolds before her a day at a time. I hope she will always have quiet days in meadows, will sit for long moments in the grass, a little pinprick in the middle of a frenetic world, while she pauses and thinks how big the sky is, how blue and how wide and how open.

All sorts of small changes

Before I decided to quit my job, I had accepted a promotion that would have involved more hours. In order to make it all work out in my head, I had decided that we needed support. At the risk of sounding like I think pampering is just a way of life, I still feel like I need to outline the extent of what this change would have involved. We were going to have a full-time nanny. I was also thinking it would be awesome if the nanny would be willing to prepare dinner once in awhile, and clean up after Cora. Now, of course, the goal of having a nanny was not to have additional household help, it was that Cora would get undivided attention. That said, it started to sound pretty tempting to have someone organize our disastrous cupboards and vacuum once in awhile, even do dishes and laundry. So I realized that in order to save our relationship with said nanny, we would need to hire housecleaning help. And, because our yard is in total disarray--leaves everywhere, weeds overtaking all beds--I thought, well, we should hire someone to help with that, too. In my mind, it was the only way to keep sanity alive in a household of two working parents, both of whom would need to work late probably more often than we cared to admit. Suddenly, however, when I listed it out in my head, it started to feel like I was going to farm out all the everyday work tasks of life so that I could sit at a computer and make money. (I know there is a lot more virtue to working full-time than making money, such as building a career, keeping my resume alive, bringing in my own share of the income--but that is for another post on another day). It also began to feel like we should live in an estate, rather than our humble little house.

So, one of the new daily parts of our lives is for me to do all the things I was thinking I would pay someone to do.

I went grocery shopping a couple of days ago and started really trying to find ways to save money. Things are obviously a lot tighter without my income, and I've figured out exactly what we can afford each week. And I know perhaps this might sound odd to some people, but one of my favorite things to do is to go grocery shopping. I love filling my cart with a whole bunch of yumminess, picking out a new sauce or chocolate or wine or microbrew. We go to Trader Joe's at least once a week. When I was shopping at TJ's this last time, I realized that I often gravitate toward more prepared foods than I used to--like frozen cooked chicken and jars of simmer sauce, granola bars and hummus and roast turkey and ice cream. And the cart would literally be filled to the gills with goodness, but I wouldn't know quite what to fix when I got home and it was all unpacked and sitting untidily in our kitchen. Aside from the obvious health benefits of cooking more of our food from scratch, I have been feeling more and more aghast at the final bill and now, of course, is an important time to reign things in.

I grew up in a family that put a huge focus on whole foods, to a neurotic extent. At one point my family's diet/lifestyle was defined as organic, sugar-free, vegan macrobiotic, which, as you might imagine, narrowed things down considerably. I didn't eat meat until I was 22. When we used to go grocery shopping, the really expensive stuff we sprung for were things like imported seaweed, organic aduki beans, almond butter, yeast-free organic bread. And then when I was in college, I lived on a college budget and was literally able to leave the grocery store with enough food for a week for around $25. I actually loved to buy frozen veggies (boring ones, like cut carrots and peas and corn and lima beans) and heat them in the microwave and put salt and pepper on them. Then I started living with my now-husband and discovered how tasteless and limiting my grocery list was, so I started buying a lot more interesting foods and eating out more--and growing to love it. There were weeks when we lived in Pasadena when I'm not sure we cooked at all. Now, I'd like to go back to the source. I want to buy bulk foods and soak and cook beans from scratch, make whole meals out of dry ingredients and marinate poultry for a day before cooking it rather than defrosting it in the microwave before hurriedly serving it up. I want to bake bread and make cookies. Things that take time. This morning I baked a big kabocha squash, a ton of yams, and apples and pears. I made Cora a pot of creamy squash soup and I might try making her some yam and apple cookies.

I am just having layered realizations about how much I have missed out on because of habit or a lack of time or connection to my own life. I like working with food in its original form. I like cooking, I like the way food nourishes beyond nutrition. I like thinking about food in a different way, having the time to do it justice. I close my eyes and can imagine that organic garden behind my dream home on the island. I imagine finishing my work on a new chapter, walking downstairs and putting on my dirty gardening shoes, going outside and loosening the soil around carrots and green beans, trimming tomato plants and picking lettuce, filling a basket with food that I have helped grow and harvest. And I can picture my family eating soup and laughing while they tell silly stories and soak bread in their bowls.

Writing here is like opening a lid slowly on something that has been lying dormant, growing old and stale. Just typing makes me aware of the alchemy of the act, of charged elements mixing around me and starting to shift everything. Small changes feel so big right now.

Yesterday evening we went for a walk around Green Lake. It gets so dark, so early at this time of year--by 4:30 it felt like it was already 8 o'clock. I watched the sky darken and a true twilight set in, the kind I haven't witnessed in forever. Light streaked across the sky and turned violet. Ducks skimmed across the water. All the trees around the lake were ablaze with autumn, reflecting themselves on the shoreline. Cora was asleep on my chest. Her small snores would periodically interrupt the sound of people running by or chatting about their day. I walked past two high school kids singing something about marshmallow pie. Even though Cora was so heavy on my chest, a sleepy 24-pound weight, I felt layers of myself rising up and feeling so light and free. I felt grateful to my core.

Second Day

Napping is still a challenge, it still took way too long. Cora is addicted to bouncing. We have instilled it in her. It's not fair, really, to ask her to quickly banish an addiction that we spent the first 11 months of her life instilling, only to try to rip it out from under her feet because it doesn't really fit anymore. It's like giving someone chocolate or coffee or heroin every afternoon and then saying, "You know, it's not really working for me anymore. I'm going to have to take that away now." I am trying to be very, very patient. It is made more difficult by the fact that I start each nap session with high hopes. I have these lofty "aha!" moments when, literally, I feel my heart leap inside my chest while I watch her eyelids slowly droop and drop. She's falling asleep! It's going to work! She's learning, she's so smart, I am so amazed, I can't wait to go down and write about how amazing she is! Yippee! And then, no, her eyes whip open and she sits up and claps. She knows some sign language, so she'll ask me to change her diaper, and I will, but it will be dry, and she'll wriggle over and try to play with her pink shoes on the changing table. I'll rock her and sway her and she'll push away, so I'll put her back in her crib and she'll stand up and ask for milk. So I try nursing her, and I am sure it will be all she needs to fall asleep. But instead she sits up and asks to read.

I promised I would write about poop, and I shall. I am realizing that Cora seems to have a morning and an afternoon poop. The morning one occurs when she is reading her books by herself, quietly reflecting on Goodnight Moon, and then she comes out to the kitchen where we are preparing breakfast, and asks us to change her diaper. The afternoon one, it seems, happens when she is trying to go down for her nap. Who can go to sleep when they have a poo brewing? So, I am going to give her more time to poop, and I am going to stop trying to put her to sleep so early. Normally she falls asleep at 10, so I thought Noon was a reasonable stretch. It seems she is a 12:30 pooper and a 1:00 sleeper.

See? I am learning about my daughter.

I finished yesterday's post with a reflection on the importance of writing, and on my recent reading of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. When I looked for a link for the book yesterday, I found her web site. Today I started my nap time writing session with her perspective on writing. Here is my favorite excerpt:

"As for discipline – it’s important, but sort of over-rated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. You will make vows: “I’m going to write for an hour every day,” and then you won’t do it. You will think: “I suck, I’m such a failure. I’m washed-up.” Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness (which comes from a place of kind and encouraging and motherly love). The other thing to realize is that all writers think they suck. When I was writing “Eat, Pray, Love”, I had just as a strong a mantra of THIS SUCKS ringing through my head as anyone does when they write anything. But I had a clarion moment of truth during the process of that book. One day, when I was agonizing over how utterly bad my writing felt, I realized: “That’s actually not my problem.” The point I realized was this – I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write. So I put my head down and sweated through it, as per my vows."

She also has some weighty things to say about sending your stuff in for publication, which certainly hit home. Why on earth don't I send something in and just TRY to get it published? I now vow to send something in before the end of 2008. For God's sake, it's really not that hard. I have waaaayyy overblown the whole thing by worrying about it so much. It's a perfectionist thing and also a laziness thing. And, to be fair, also a busy thing. I haven't had the wherewithal to comb through my work and see if there is something worthy of sending out, let alone researching the right publication. And finding stamps, that's always so hard. Uh. But whatever. I am now taking up my own precious time conjecturing about my lack of success instead of reflecting on something more interesting.

I have been thinking a lot about my dreams. Sometimes, the life that I want to lead is so tangible I feel like I can smell it. I think I've been visiting it in my mind since I was a kid, and I've definitely revisited it at least a thousand times since I started working in offices. Every time I made myself focus on an assignment, I would think of this house on an island. It's this totally romantic and amazing place. It's a well-built home in the middle of the forest, near the ocean (you can see the water from the upper attic windows). We designed it ourselves. There are two wings: the sleeping wing and the working wing. The sleeping wing has sloping ceilings with skylights so you can look at the stars at night (and there are so many of them because where we are it is dark, and quiet, and remote). There are huge trees outside, and a tree house tucked away out back where Cora has a whole family of handmade dolls and books and blankets, and her own bed where she takes quiet naps on the weekends. Inside our house there is a huge, open kitchen filled with sturdy appliances and good pots and pans. There is an entire cupboard filled with apples and squash and potatoes and other hardy fruits and vegetables. Everything is recycled or recyclable, no plastic or waste. The kitchen opens into a cozy eating area where there is a huge, oiled wood table with benches and big wooden chairs. Handmade pottery is stacked in an an old, country-style wood cabinet nearby, and there's a big red bowl in the center of the table, overflowing with fresh fruit. On one side of the eating area is a big, old-fashioned wood stove filled with a roaring fire. On the other side is the glass-enclosed garden that sits at the center of our house, and sun and rain pour in and even small birds nest in one of the maples in the spring. Outside it is mossy and verdant and it smells tingly and salty and green, totally overpoweringly filled with life and stillness and birds calling.

And we sit in the working wing, looking out at the ocean rolling in the distance, and I write my stories and my novels and my musings. And people wait for them.

First Day

Today is my first day as a full-time mom. The weather didn't disappoint, it has been one of the most glorious Mondays I can remember. Golden sun; crisp, colorful leaves; blue sky; a hint of warm in the air of an otherwise chilly autumn day. We went for a walk at Green Lake and felt all the tree trunks for their different textures, touched leaves and pine needled branches, barked at all the dogs, and spent long minutes staring at a group of ducks bob and play in a quiet piece of lake surrounded by a grassy knoll. Cora blew kisses at the people she felt needed them, and waved at everyone else.

Nap time is not easy. It took a long time for her to fall asleep today, but that is also because I am trying to find the "right way" to do it. I read her a story, put a blue blanked over her window, put her in her pajamas, read to her, sang to her, rocked her, and put her in her crib. She lay there looking up at me with her finger on her mouth, copying me as I said, "shhhh." I left the room and she hung out in there for awhile, babbling to her doll and her dog. I kept coming in and helping her lie down, and she'd copy my "shhh" and then sit back up. She ended up hanging out in her crib chewing on the rail protector and throwing her socks on the floor. She doesn't know how to lie down and go to sleep on her own, which presents a problem. But every time I try a brief period of letting her cry in her room alone, I feel terrible. It works, but I feel awful, and she seems to feel awful, too. So, the nap thing is a challenge for me. I just don't feel calm about it, don't feel like a baby whisperer of any kind when it comes to Cora's naps. I start getting really frustrated and dazed about the whole thing. It's funny, because she actually sleeps amazingly well at night (I am knocking on wood right now). She goes to sleep around 8:30 and sleeps till 5, then nurses back to sleep until 7 or 8. Whenever we try to get her to take two naps (which is typical for her age), she ends up sleeping about 25 minutes in the morning and then fighting her second nap until she knocks off for another 30-45 minutes. So I'm trying to see if she'll nap longer if she just takes one, long midday nap. Today I finally nursed her to sleep. We'll see how long it lasts this time.

Of course, this whole nap thing is quite a topic for me, because it is during this time of the day that I get to write. Or at least that's how I have it set up in my mind. I think she would actually be OK if I wrote a bit while she was awake, too, especially because she is great at entertaining herself with her books and her toys. But regardless, I do view this window of time as my opportunity to collect myself and refresh, to spend a few minutes just being myself and thinking my own thoughts. Which I do like to do. Which of course is a perfectly reasonable reason why, apparently, it might have made sense for me to continue working--it would seem that I would have had more time to myself, to think my own thoughts and be alone. The thing is, I was reflecting on this today (as I have done for many months prior), and what I want to say this: It just isn't so. It's precisely not true. The jobs I have held are all about deadlines and communication and thinking about other people and their needs. I want to think my own thoughts for awhile, and I want to write my own stuff. Just writing this entry instead of an email about a redesign or a product launch feels so darn good. It feels like my fingers are coming through my brain and plucking out a thought or two, taking them for a brief walk around the block, and then putting them back. It's like giving my brain a treat.

Already I feel better. I was feeling a bit ruffled about the whole nap situation. Feeling a bit "Mom-ish" and annoyed that I had to write a whole paragraph about sleeping issues. Just wait, I'll have a whole paragraph about poop here soon, too. It'll happen.

You know what I was thinking the other day? That reading is therapeutic. That if more people read instead of watched TV, we would have a healthier world. I mean mentally. So much focus is put on the link between TV and obesity, about getting outside and playing soccer instead of watching a show. But just reading a story is so deeply useful on a mental level. It feels like I am giving my head a shot of oxygen, like hanging my thoughts on the clothesline and letting them flap in the wind instead of tossing around spasmodically in the dryer. A large part of my personal transformation of late is due, in large part, to books. A few months ago, I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Eat, Pray, Love," and followed her on a wonderfully quirky journey around the world. It wasn't just that the subject matter was so focused on freedom and inner guidance, but it was because suddenly I watched my thoughts follow along and fill in the spaces with my own imaginings. That's therapy. Reading is more active, brings up memories and thoughts and dreams. Every night now I read before going to sleep, and I think I am sleeping better because of it. I think I am living better, too.

New Phase

I quit my job on Monday. The day after I posted my first entry, actually. I spent last Sunday writing in my journal, writing in my blog, and taking time for myself to reflect and be quiet. It's amazing what happens when you have time to listen to your heart.

Not that it just took an afternoon of journal writing to come to this conclusion. We've been thinking about this option for quite awhile. It just took a long time to decide what to do.

I feel rather embarrassed writing about this topic. We are in a global recession, the economy is reeling from a series of major mistakes, and I am about to wax poetic about how good it feels to follow my heart. I have to begin with saying how grateful I am for the opportunity to consider my options, and to choose between two meaningful realities: working at a great job or staying home and raising our baby and working on my own writing. I know there are people who are battling far more difficult decisions, who work two or three or even four jobs, who have families to care for, and difficulty putting food on the table. But that does not change the reality I find myself in right now, one that allows me to spend time with my daughter and watch her grow, to give her all my love and attention, and to spend my time writing this post instead of hurrying to finish a project, meet a deadline, send an email, or dash to a meeting on the East side.

My heart feels so full with gratitude. I feel as if I am on the cusp of something personally significant. I feel like I have been battling logic versus dreams for a long time--left brain vs. right, the voice that tells me that I should never give up a job that pays almost six figures, that it is nonsense to believe that someday my efforts will lead to publication, that it is wrong to remove myself from a system that our entire economy depends on. And certainly I have been fighting the voice that says being a stay-at-home mom is weak and boring, isolated and indulgent, a sign of being too old-fashioned or domestic, too controlling to share my child with other skilled people. The reality is that I know my daughter would be fine if I didn't spend every day with her. She would thrive and prosper. But I want to be there to see it. Every small thing about her is precious and tiny, a little sprout of life that changes every week in ways that amaze me.

Cora and I were grocery shopping yesterday, and it was nearing the end of the day and her 11-month-old eyes were getting red-rimmed and dark-circled, and her pale little face was sort of peering around the store, trying to take it all in--the people, the noise, the smell of stinky cheese displays and bakery chocolate. She was perched on my hip with her little legs bent tight around my waist and her arm holding on to my shoulder (a pose that I will remember all my life, and will surely cry about when she heads off to her first day of school). We were in the checkout line, finally it was our turn to pay, and our cashier asked us how we were doing. "Oh, just fine, how are you?" I asked. "I'm okay," she said. "It's kinda been a long day." And my little daughter blew her a kiss. Which prompted the cashier to say, "Oh my gosh, a kiss for me?" And Cora blew more kisses, which made the cashier exclaim over and over again that she had just made her day. And Cora just smiled her gummy, 6-toothed, teething smile, and blew more kisses as we said goodbye. And then she hugged me and kissed me on the mouth all the way down the stairs to the car.

I need to firmly believe that mothering is a personal act, and that I will manage to make my mothering experience my own--filled with all my own successes and failures. And while I know that Cora will certainly find things she doesn't like about me and her dad, I just hope that she will still want to come home and spend time with us, will want to bring her friends, and will feel comfortable around us--and maybe even proud. More than anything, I want her to feel respected and loved. It is a huge undertaking to raise a child. They are vulnerable and fragile members of a family that was nearly formed before they arrived. Sometimes I watch Cora interact with us, and it hits me that she has no idea that we used to exist before her.

The Gist of It

My main goals for this blog are to be myself--to not get all caught up in whether I sound interesting or funny or cool. To not over-edit my sentences to the point where I whittle away each word and forget to write a whole paragraph. And to write here often enough that there emerges a story of some kind, some kind of path that seems to be sort of just written word by word, but eventually gets where I want to go. That would be gratifying.

Lately I've been trying to remind myself to take things a day at a time. Day by day, I say to myself when I feel overwhelmed. Or else I'll start humming a St. Francis song, something like, "do your work and do it well, step by step go slowly." It's such an enormous concept. To just focus on the moment at hand, to zone in on the present experience and stop all the muddling about of an over-stimulated, over-tired brain. I think daily life can have a way of making people forget themselves, and that's what I am trying to battle right now. It feels too easy to get up every morning, make my tea, follow the same routine, and march forward to evening time where a good book sits next to my pillow and I read a page or two before my eyes can't stay open any longer.

Dream, imagine, happen. A lot fits in there. It's what I believe--maybe more than I care to admit: That every thought you have starts to gain energy. When you think the same thought over and over, it begins to form its own force field, it starts to have actual mass, it begins to head down its own trajectory. Suddenly there you are. But even if you're an optimist, it's very unlikely you'll pat yourself on the back for having the wherewithal to think a good thought and bring about a happy ending. You'll chalk it up to luck or chance or fate, or you might decide the stars had aligned. But my point is that I believe it is all interconnected, that it's impossible to have a thought and for that thought to not have any impact.

I put the word Dream on my daughter's wall, right above her window looking out on our backyard, and that is the only word I want her to worry about for her entire childhood.

It's so easy to look at your offspring and want to give them the world, to hand them every pearl, to wish for them every inspired moment. It's a lot harder to remember to cast your line into the vast, soupy muck of your own adult experience and believe you can pluck out the thing you've been wanting all your life.