Final Release

"Consider the lilies" is the only biblical command I have ever obeyed. --Emily Dickinson

So, through this all I may have sounded like a neurotic mess. Perhaps. My total perspective vortex swirls with my inability to see things in their context, ie. I tend to magnify the little things out of proportion and hang onto them them longer than is good.

So what next?

What comes after release?

Embrace.

Embrace those I love, the life we have chosen, the path we are happily stomping and dancing on.

Take it slow.

Consider the lilies. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin.... (Matthew 28).

That same section of verse also talks about how you cannot serve two masters and love them both. Indeed. Mine are clear. My family and my career. I realize that I've craved an external label to give me self worth: architectural historian, curator, professor.....and somehow forgotten the simple but powerful: mother, wife, sister, friend. A job does not define who I am, I do. Love does.

That's why I love the Harry Potter series so much: love defines the hero, is his super power that defeats all evil. In the end his simple act of fretting over his young child's worries, his fatherhood, demonstrates the subtle and powerful ways love manifests. Some people hated that ending, while I saw it as a shining tribute to the entire series. They don't say what career he ended up in, just that he is father and husband and friend. Those are the roles that matter in the end.

So for me, I need to embrace my life and not cringe away from it, not hold myself to impossible standards, and just like the lilies.....in all weather, dance and play and grow.

Here's to 2008 and all the wonders it holds!

Release: Part 6, The House

This one is really tied up in Identity too. For the past 9 years I've called myself the Mistress of Hatton House. The house restoration was my thesis and the reason I went to graduate school, the reason for my involvement in the local movement and government. It has been the only thing I talked about, my ice breaker, my lecture topic, my example.......my portfolio for assessment.

I am releasing all of that into the hands of strangers? Preparing my house for sale has been a heartbreaking, gut wrenching process and one I wonder if that inner ego of mine isn't sabotaging the effort. The house is mine, so shall another be. I do not belong to the house. It is a large gracious house, but a needy mistress in constant need of attention and care.

Since moving here, my non-fiction prose abilities have flourished but my poetry all but disappeared. I stopped painting, drawing, and colouring. All creative resources I had mentally and physically went into the house. My thesis was completed but the manuscript was not: it is stalled out and I know why. It's a long, hard goodbye. A novel, one chapter from completion.

Something changed when Lil'Bug came into our lives. The new form of our family became our story. What a grand adventure! I realized that the life we had been living was in no small part tied to my childhood hurt......thoughts went swirling- the happy part was on a farm. I loved living on a farm! Driving to a rural campus over landscape that touched these memories, that's when the dreaming began. Then I whispered it to husband. That whisper took hold of us and it is what we are actively working towards. It will be easier to say goodbye once we are closer to that goal, I imagine. Part of me will always be the Mistress of Hatton House......

Release: Part 5, Trust/Gentleness

I've been reading over at Happy and Free almost every morning. Stephanie has been writing these lovely posts about the parenting aspects of the unschooled and she is articulating something that has been swirling in my mind the last year or so. Everyone chooses what works for them and their families. I am on a quest to find what works for me and my family.

I want to be a gentle parent. I did not grow up with that. Sometimes I am worried that I will go too far in the direction away from that, that I will miss gentle and become negligent. I don't want that either. I have a deep respect for my child as an individual that began before she was born: I used to say, "I can't wait to meet her!" It's true. Everyday I wake up and I can't wait to get to know her better. I don't want to hurt her or her spirit so I have chosen not to use physical discipline.

I do get frustrated. Frustration is not working for me. The problem as I am coming to see it though is that my voice does not have to be elevated in volume to be "yelling". I tried something else. It worked much better, but I am worried over it too. I calmly said, "I am angry about what you are doing and this is why." I worry that in not portraying anger that I seemed like a robot.

It comes down to this metaphor: I never learned how to cook. In fact I was taught how to cook wrong on purpose so a very un-confident person could always upstage me and "save" the meal. That is not right to do to a child since cooking food is a life skill, and much intuitive. Parenting is like that for me too- everything I was taught and raised with was wrong. Not different- wrong. I know this, I know much of my intuition comes from this place. I knew this before we decided to have children and I was working on it then. I had to work on it in our marriage and as a person too. So when I welcomed my little one, I was much healed. I needed to read parenting books, try things out, and live it differently.

Lil'Bug is three years old. I've been reading about others who have children this age and are struggling with willfulness, disobedience, and other issues. I see manifestations of these things and I understand them to be a breakdown of communication. Lil'Bug doesn't disobey because usually when I've asked her to do something, I've asked and she sees it as a choice. Her stubbornness is usually a difference in how the situation is viewed. How would I deal with these situations if she was another adult? Sometimes the things parents do to children are humiliating and we would never consider doing them to a peer. We would never pick up and forcibly remove a peer from a situation, or pinch, or hit. Why? They would get physical right back. But we do this to children, why wouldn't they fight back sooner than later? Why do we as adults need to exert power over children and make them do things? Perhaps we do not trust ourselves? Perhaps it is easier to play the, "I'm bigger than you," card. Do we remove them to save ourselves embarrassment during a fit or to find a quiet place for resolution or spare them humiliation? (Removing from danger, not included.) Sometimes resolution is best found in the loud and noisy place, but easier removed.

So, I need to release myself from this bond of mistrust in myself as a parent. Breathe gentleness.

Release: Part 4, Baby Anxieties

I suffered postpardum depression with Lil'Bug, though I did not acknowledge it at the time. I was overwhelmed and unsure and nothing I did or wanted to do seemed to work: the sling I bought, breastfeeding, just holding her or sleeping. It was hard. It never got easier. I was given a sling that fit me, I learned to breastfeed her, and we slowly discovered how to live with each other. It was not the Pottery Barn fantasy I was sold.

Even though things got better, I was relieved to go back to work, to hand her over, to have a big long break to get back to myself and who I was before. And oh the guilt. It was fine for a while, but then life started happening. Everything unraveled quite rapidly. Babysitter quit, family was stressed, baby needed me, my studies were more intense. At that point Lil'Bug was 9 months old. I made a choice to be her mother more so than I was doing. I walked away from the me me me.

I won't get a 9 month break with 8 hour gaps of no kid time to figure things out this time. If I had PPD then, what will happen now? This time I will have Lil'Bug running at full speed too, it will be summer, Dearest Husband will still have to work and travel, we might move soon after........the anxiety mounts.

But why? Those can be seen as positives too. I shall release the anxieties for what they are. Then, in June, I will release the joy from my body and hold her in my arms.

Lil'Bug can share our joy and help. I know how to breastfeed, I have a sling that fits, I know how to change a diaper and bathe and dress a baby (right, did not know before Lil'Bug.....), I have a friend network of other mothers AND I have no marketed disillusions like before. There will be poop, sleepless nights, more poop, gross stuff, and......I had to work through it with Lil'Bug to learn this.

I will love and cherish everyone of those fleeting moments as they come.