Not perfect, but whole

I'm not even going to delve into the matter of today being May 1 and I'm in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. That seems as wrong as the fact that there are only five weeks of school left. 

It really does take my breath away that summer break is nigh. Didn't my baby just start kindergarten? And soon my big boy will enter 4th grade and approach a double-digit age?

I chose not to think of those things this week, although they flitted through my attention when my eyes wandered to my calendar and reminders for camp payments rolled in. Instead I focused on being present with myself and those around me; my boys and friends, classmates and pets. 

Recently, I spoke to a very neat woman, wise and kind. She radiated serenity, a quality in others I am always drawn to like a moth to the brightest light. I want to know that secret, I want to understand the peace in this woman's face. So I talked to her for as long as she let me.

She told me about the importance of knowing ourselves deeply. That knowledge, and the acceptance of it, pads our hearts and souls. It nourishes us and is also protective, especially in our relationships with others both known and not. 

"When we know ourselves, Emily, we cannot be manipulated, for we are already whole. We don't have to spend energy defending ourselves against unknowns [unknown attacks], because we are already aware of our attributes."

Our conversation reminded me of an Adult Development class I took in grad school. Drawing on psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's six stages of moral development, our professor, Robert Kegan, argued that the highest stage of adult development was at the point an individual could see him/herself as the subject and any given other as the object. Intimacy and deep connection are infinitely possible, but the Self is not enmeshed with the Other.

Put differently, the Self's identity is not dependent on the relationship with the Other. Rather the Self as an independent entity can approach and relate to and with another without worry that the Self will be lost or subsumed. 

The point is this: it is wise to make all effort to truly understand the essence of who we are. Then, faults can be addressed and worked on, strengths can be honed, real acceptance can be found. In the process, an authentic sense of self emerges and can be carried into relationships.

I think it's those sorts of selves that I find so appealing. People who recognize what is awesome about themselves and what is less optimal and who embrace it all in an accepting hug. They work to be just who they are but in a responsible way, fine-tuning internally as they go.

They are not perfect, but they're whole. And outwards from that core radiates pure light.

This week, I wrote a lot. I spent hours on the couch. I felt utterly alive and yet lazy too, as if this life of fitting words this way and that were but a puzzle of leisure I've not earned. And yet, something is different, and I wonder if it's growth. The very sort that might just radiate light.

An honest take on current events

What is happening in this country? Why are we allowing ourselves to devolve into craven, feckless idiots with no eyes turned toward the future? 

1. Look at Baltimore, and the tragic, though in my opinion the rage is totally understandable, reaction to yet another killing by the police.

Freddie Gray, a young, asthmatic black man chased by the police for as yet unknown reasons, is said to have been having trouble breathing when first pinned down. He also had a leg injury or sustained one during the pursuit. Yet he was put in leg irons, placed in a police van, not buckled into his seat, and by the time he arrived at the station, he had a severe spinal cord injury, a crushed voice box and was unable to talk, walk or breathe. No, it does not appear that any one police officer used excessive force, but the police van in which Gray rode was driven by officers familiar with the "rough ride" concept, a way of driving that results in passenger injury. 

The Baltimore police department has acknowledged that Gray was not given medical attention in a timely manner "multiple times" during the course of his time with them. It is clear that Gray died from the spinal injury he suffered while in the van. So, do the math. Either he was beaten or driven to death and the police are culpable. 

We just watched, literally, Walter Scott be gunned down. He was unarmed and running away.
We've buried Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old, shot to death in a park while playing with a toy gun.
We've buried Eric Garner, the Staten Island man choked to death for selling cigarettes on a street corner.
We've had to watch as a 73-year-old insurance executive moonlighting as a reserve deputy shoots a man, Eric Harris, to death when he mistakes his gun for his Taser. As Harris lay dying, the other cops cuffed him anyway; when Harris said "I'm losing my breath," a cop replied, "*(&(^ your breath."

This egregious, dismissive violence is almost too much to bear. Except bearing it as a stunned observer is easy when you consider the families and communities and senses of self and identity torn apart by these killings. Imagine what they are going through. How they must feel.

Not all those killed were law-abiding citizens, but none deserved to be murdered at the hands of rabid, ill-trained gun-slingers.

We have got to deal with racism, police misconduct and utterly wrong-headed gun laws.

2. Look at Kansas, as it pushes ever backwards in time and civilization. Women's rights to decide what THEY do with and within their OWN bodies are being taken from them at an increasingly vociferous rate and using a disgusting, dramatic marketing campaign. Stupid Brownback, already a titan of failed tax policy, has renamed Dilation & Curettage, dismemberment abortion. And, because he's so keen on celebrating his ban against it, he's taken to a publicity tour of Kansas, reenacting the bill's signing in three different high schools with giant posters of fetuses behind him. Terrifically appropriate, yes?

I happen to be pro-choice, and though I wish everyone were, I'm certainly not into taking away your right to not be. That's what pisses me off about these stringent, ideological bills; they take away the rights of many on behalf of the beliefs of not as many. 
*See also, terrible inaction on behalf of climate change because of lobbyists and their ilk.

3. Let me also issue a brief statement against the recent spate of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who believe they cannot sit next to a woman who is not their wife on airplanes; men who have refused to sit down unless the women are assigned new seats.
Men, this is YOUR issue, your very narrow and strictly-defined religious prohibition. YOU go find a new seat. 

We're not hearing each other, seeing each other, sitting next to each other for pete's sakes. We're running pell-mell into partisan, one-dimensional silos; we're moving further and further apart, away from science and fact and modernity, and the outcomes aren't looking good.

4. Nepal. I am just stunned by what a tragic disaster the earthquake and its many aftershocks continue to be. Send prayers and vibes and money, whatever you can. 

Separating the curds from the whey

This morning, I logged into a private Facebook group and found my first free-write prompt. I'll be doing this every weekday for the next fortnight, and I'm burning with anticipation. I've cleared much of my calendar during this time, so that I can fully immerse myself in this small group session entitled Blossom. 

The name seems so apropos of everything right now. Of the determined flowers budding and blooming despite an elusive spring. Of the clouds of pet hair swirling at my ankles no matter how often I vacuum, winter coats shedding away in preparation of warmer temperatures to come. Of the bubbles of promise I see atop many a vista and even in the challenges that motherhood so often pitches forward.

This time of year is so busy. School is starting to draw to a close -just over a month left!- and it seems we've been celebrating something for weeks now and have weeks of the same ahead. Celebrations are the best sort of living, so I certainly don't begrudge any of that happy goodness, but they do keep the dance card full.

In such a whirlwind, I feel indulgent taking -making!- this time for a pursuit without an end goal, and yet, maybe that's all the more reason to simply say yes to an opportunity that spoke deeply to my soul.

Yesterday, on the way home from the boys' swimming lessons, we tried to visit a farmers market off our usual course. We were foiled from every angle- no parking, a bathroom emergency, two broken ATMs. I gave up and drove us home in a frustrated snit, irritated that something the boys both wanted to do with me was being snatched from reach.

But once home, Jack decided he'd rather go on a bike ride with Tom, and Tom had just gone to the ATM so could give me some money, and Oliver said he really wanted to go back to the farmers market. So we all did all that, each what we wanted, and it was wonderful.

As Oliver and I approached an impressive cheese stall, he said, in between giant bites of croissant, "Let's get a weally stinky cheese here!" Everyone around us smiled and softened, warmed by a little boy loudly crying out for a relatively unusual six-year-old's snack.

I burst with pride, and we tasted with abandon, ultimately buying four hunks of lusciousness with varying degrees of stink.

Last night, I grated some atop a bowl of sauteed greens, warm tomatoes and roasted asparagus just grown and picked at a friend's parents' farm (A of the tubs of tomatoes last summer fame). A and her husband came for dinner Friday night, to talk tomato canning (because how better to deal with a billion pounds of freshly-picked tomatoes) and catch up, and brought with them said asparagus. 

We shared a meal, some wine, stories and tips. I served dessert, her husband the next day left a shade-loving plant on our porch because I'd mentioned our yard was not on the receiving end of rays.

Kindness and connection blossom and spread in the friendliest sort of viral ways. In unexpected ways and in unexpected places. Especially if you let them.

beauty and growth in unexpected places