Category Archives: Humanities

Just Today

In just this day, Claire added more words: hammer, pliers, wrench (from her chunky puzzle), happy, crying, climbing, sad. I’m actually awed. I don’t know what is “normal” or “average” for a 14-month-old in terms of language development (articulation and comprehension), but I’m just impressed at how each day she increases her understanding of the world.

Art Every Day Month – Day 7

I traced my hand. I tried not to over-think what to do with it. I wanted contrast and boldness. The result brought to mind a mandala.

Representing the universe itself, a mandala is both the microcosm and the macrocosm, and we are all part of its intricate design. The mandala is more than an image seen with our eyes; it is an actual moment in time. It can be can be used as a vehicle to explore art, science, religion and life itself. The mandala contains an encyclopedia of the finite and a road map to infinity.

Carl Jung said that a mandala symbolizes “a safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness.” It is “a synthesis of distinctive elements in a unified scheme representing the basic nature of existence.” Jung used the mandala for his own personal growth and wrote about his experiences.

It is said by Tibetan Buddhists that a mandala consists of five “excellencies”: The teacher • The message • The audience • The site • The time

An audience or “viewer” is necessary to create a mandala. Where there is no you, there is no mandala. (from: You Are the Eyes of the World, by Longchenpa, translated by Lipman and Peterson).

—The Mandala Project

I have a world in my hand. So do you.

<mandala - art every day month 08 - day 7

“World In Hand” / 7×10″ sketch paper with ink and marker

A Long Day

I sit at the dining table, just having put Claire to bed at 7:45 p.m. Husband is out seeing a movie with a friend; he deserves an occasional fun outing too. The challenge has been that last week I started doing something different with Claire’s schedule, and today I’ve decided it probably isn’t working out.

Before last week, our routine was thus:

Wake at 5:45 or 6:00 a.m., have a bottle
Play until sleepy around 7:30-8:00 a.m., go down for a nap
Up around 9:00 or 9:30 a.m., eat breakfast, play or go out
Bottle at 11-ish, play, then a second nap around 12:30
Up at 1:30 or 2:00, lunch, more play
Another nap around 3:30 or 4:00 sometimes
Dinner at 5:30, play, Husband home for dinner at 6:30
Play, bath, bed at 7:45 or 8:00

Last week I began trying:
Wake at 5:45 or 6:00 a.m., have a bottle
Back to sleep in the crib until she wakes at 8:00 or 8:30
Breakfast at 9:00
Bottle at 11:30
Nap at 1:00
Lunch at 2:00, bottle later, then dinner
Up until 7:45 or 8:00

Even though she is getting the same number of hours of sleep, I noticed with the new schedule she is cranky, more tearful, and tired. She seems to need a nap at 10 or so, but she won’t fall asleep. She has a mid-day long nap, but then ends up exhausted, clingy, and whiny in late afternoon; however, she won’t nap then either. So it makes for many many hours between sleep periods where she is just not her best self.

Tomorrow I’ll return to the former schedule and observe how this works over the next week. My hope is that she regains her cheerful balance. I think she simply needs more frequent, if shorter, naps.

I wish I had more to say, but at this time of day I’m lucky if I can form a thought at all! A novel and bed await.
—

Next on my to-read list (once I can get a copy from the library): The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage

Brain Food And Entertainment

In between shopping for a new car seat, providing the usual care for Claire, doing laundry, buying groceries, vacuuming and mopping, watering outdoor plants, and making lemon buttermilk pies for a potluck, I’ve been squeezing in another book. The library books are momentarily set aside so I can complete a book I started months ago, Oil! by Upton Sinclair. I am now fascinated by the story (as relevant today as it was at first publication in 1927) and the history lesson embedded in the plot. The reason I had put it aside was that Sinclair uses two devices I found intrusive to my attention — the second person point of view and a liberal application of exclamation points. The story finally drew me in enough that I was able to let go of the distractions.

Tide Change

My energy seems to have returned, which makes me feel cheerier and optimistic. This shift occurred over the weekend when I got some time to myself.

A Guatemalan friend recommended some authors to me, so on Thursday I dove into Antigua and My Life Before, by Marcela Serrano. I finished yesterday completely satisfied with the encounter. I have not read much in recent months. In part this is because in recent years I turned to non-fiction more often, and I find I can’t sustain my attention on it now. Slipping into another reality via a good story is what I need. The next book is The Bejeweled Boy by Miguel Angel Asturias. My friend also encouraged me to try Gabriel Garcia Marquez again; I had tried to read One Hundred Years of Solitude several times but it did not engage me. She has suggested I try Love in the Time of Cholera, so this is on my list to borrow from my beautiful local library.

In addition to reading, I was able to go out shopping to use a gift card I’d won at a social event. It was at Lakeshore Learning, so it was still oriented toward my child, but I love to look at educational games and teaching supplies, and I had fun there. And I took a relaxing soak yesterday evening. These moments rejuvenated me.

I have another reason to feel happy as well. My parents have booked a plane flight to visit us in October! We are thrilled and excited they are making the long journey from Syracuse, especially because they are in their mid-70s and travel is not so easy for them (and many others) any more. They will get to meet their granddaughter in person! We have a busy season coming up; visitors are coming in August, September, and October, and then holiday season begins. Every day I pay attention — as often as I can — because so much happens, and Claire is changing so fast. I try to embrace and yet not cling.

Oh Little One: Four Haiku

Oh Little One: Four Haiku

That brave little neck,
the stem of a sunflower;
your brain is blooming.
—–
Your luscious curved cheek
is a small apple that begs
for tender kisses.
—–
The tree sapling back
nourishes roots and branches;
may it grow mighty.
—–
Hands touch but don’t clutch
like curious mice seeking
their fortune in cheese.

–Kathryn Harper

she loves books

How I love her!

Small Lessons

If I knitted something with a complicated pattern, where I constantly had to be counting rows and stitches, I often made a mistake the moment my mind began to wander. Sometimes I would rip out rows to correct the problem, sometimes not, but I began to appreciate these mistakes as small lessons in mindfulness or humility and as expressions of the spirit or soul of the knitting, which seemed to exist apart from me, the knitter. My experience of knitting was enriched the more I knew of spiritual matters, and vice versa. And I found that once I could accept my lack of perfection in both areas with humor and grace, the whole business of knitting, as well as of living, became far more pleasurable to me.

–Susan Gordon Lydon, The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice

The Hazards of Motherhood

I have found the past few days challenging. Claire, I think, is teething (I know, it’s ongoing). She has a third tooth breaking through on top, and I think a feel a fourth just under the gum. She’s quickly tired and more fussy, and exceptionally clingy with me. Part of the challenge is the emotional drain, especially since her ego and will are strengthening; as I’ve said before, I can see the toddler in her. I can see how the clash of wills will arise. The other part of the challenge is that she’s getting physically bigger, stronger, and heavier. My arms have been getting stronger, but they do feel the strain. So does my back.

Then there’s the other hazard of motherhood: the chink in the armor that exposes the heart. On NPR this morning I heard a snippet from Story Corps. It was a mother recalling the time when her 10-year old son, who went to watch a sunset from a street corner, was killed by a reckless driver. As she described what she did and felt as she became aware that her son was the focus of the accident scene, and as she described how surprised she was that she survived the loss (because she felt the grief so terribly), and as she described the kind of kid he was, my heart broke and tears poured out. I was sitting on the floor with Claire playing and there was no guard, no warning. I scooped her up and hugged her.

Forget the concept of the “chink in the armor”; there is no armor at all. I just manage, most of the time, to ignore this fact by redirecting my thoughts whenever I’m tempted to think about what it would feel like if something bad happened to Claire or if I lost her. Motherhood is a practice of denial — denial of the ego, of the temptation to torture oneself with terrible fantasies. But first you must be in the vulnerable place of exposure. I wasn’t able to conceive this until I arrived at motherhood.

Relevance

This post has been updated with an extra link.

I’m not writing as much these days. Never in my life have I been so spent by the day’s end. Mothering has brought into focus for me what is real and what matters. It burns off all that is extraneous. Being used so completely simplifies my options. I must choose what matters, what merits my precious little free time and energy.

But it’s not just how I spend my free time. This has affected my thinking as well. Once upon a time I would ponder past experiences and relationships. I felt compelled to think about why certain relationships I’m in have unfolded the way they have. I psychoanalyzed. I looked for meaning. I rehashed the past — the injustices done, the abuse experienced, the chances lost.

One day I was in the shower and I began to think of a family member with whom I’m estranged. As I waded into my thoughts I had a realization: none of this matters now. The circumstances of how it came to be don’t matter to Claire. She is not me. The pain I experienced growing up and in my early adult life will not be her pain. In order to give her a free life, her own life, I must release my past so I don’t confuse her life with mine. It doesn’t matter anymore if so-and-so treated me badly, and it doesn’t matter how his life experiences shaped him so that he treated me thusly. It doesn’t matter if someone else’s relationship affected me immensely growing up. What matters is how Husband and I relate to one another as spouses and parents. What matters is how I respond to the challenges Claire will face, and how I help her to navigate them. What matters is being here now, keeping company with my daughter as she encounters life. This requires letting go of the past, returning constantly to what’s in front of me. With regard to the broken relationship, I can either attempt to reconnect with this person or I can drop it. Life is too precious to waste on ruminating about it.

I used to need to tell my story. And sure, someday maybe I will. But I’ve got something so much more important and fulfilling to attend to: my life, and my daughter.

Basically, Karen wrote about this last week and then again today; she says it so much better than I.

So, you wonder, what do I do with my free time? After chores (laundry, cleaning, prepping Claire’s food, putting away toys, etc.) I’ve been knitting. I read when I can focus mentally. I doodle. I try to make art. I get a good night’s sleep. I’ve been thinking about writing this post for several weeks, and tonight I forced myself to do it. The more aware Claire becomes, the less important blogging and the Internet is to me. I’ll still be around. Just a little more scarce.
—-
My first mother’s day was sweet. I received snail mail cards, e-cards, phone calls, gifts. Husband cooked a steak dinner for me with corn on the cob and macaroni and cheese. Since Claire now naps in her crib, I got a chance to go knit with my friends who own a yarn shop. And then I had a nap!

A Marvelous Moment, A Good Question

Patry Francis, who is recovering from cancer, encountered “perfect joy.” Read all about it and then ponder the question she poses at the end.

The only disagreement I have is with the idea of “having it.” I think this may not be possible. Life is ever-changing, and we are inconsistent. I think the real accomplishment is in recognizing when we encounter happiness and savoring it, and likewise when we recognize we are gripping negativity and letting go as soon as we know this. This happens daily for me. I dare say that becoming a mother has awakened me to my habits of negativity, and now I practice with more awareness. Any time I have a negative thought, a judgment — any time I feel tempted to dwell in and spew this — I look at my child and realize I have a choice. Actually, I not only have a choice — I have a responsibility to let go of the negative in order to become receptive to joy.

I may update this post later with my answer to Patry’s question.

This Is News?

Compassion can be learned in much the same way as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport, U.S. researchers said.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing compassion meditation.

–United Press International, Study: Compassion can be learned

The article is short; for more details, click the link.