Kitchen or the Egg

It’s our daughter Quinn’s 4th birthday today.  I felt drawn to some certain meditation but I wasn’t clear on what it was, and my regular meditations didn’t seem to fit this morning.

I sat for a while, eventually found myself traveling inward, through the umbilical cord of time.  I encountered some dark and some light, both opportunities for wisdom.  My next step was to draw some cards from Gentle Wisdom of the Faerie Realms.

I posed my question for the cards around parenting, specifically Quinn since it was her birthday, but it felt larger than that.  I asked for support to consider when I reflect on my past, present, and future around parenting.  I especially struggle with expression of anger.  I am away from the parent I wish to be when I am tired, overwhelmed, or feeling threatened.  I’m increasingly aware of the support I need during those times, and I’m seeing some healing for myself in this area.

Card 1 (past): Innocence

Card 2 (present): History

Card 3 (future): Strength

Before reading the interpretive book, I sat to relate and receive each of these concepts on my own.  Reflecting on the term Innocence lightened me when thinking about mistakes I’ve made in past parenting.  It took away some of the charge of the mistakes, helped me to remember there was more going on at any given moment than I am choosing to remember when I focus on the mistakes.  History felt like a huge permission to draw from past experiences while living in the present.  Like it matters.  So often I try to “be present” and feel awkward about where to hold history with that approach.  Drawing that card felt like it goes together in a way I seem to want to embrace naturally but keep pushing away.  Strength seemed a little heavy but true as I look to the future.  To admit that I need strength, then to explore ways I can become stronger.

Here’s what the accompanying text read:

Card 1 (past): Innocence — Open your eyes to your unique beauty.  The closed eyes of naivete lead to victimization.  Open your eyes. Innocence is regained through seeing the truth.  If you find the innocence in yourself and others, you will be able to forgive.

Card 2 (present): History — Your past leads you into your future.  Look to your past to learn, but keep moving into your future where you will bloom and flourish with what you have learned from your history.

Card 3 (future): Use all of your gifts and skills to propel yourself.  If you are stuck or are not moving, try something new — be creative! Life supports you to fly, to express yourself and your true nature.

Then I felt led to read some Tagore.  The quote we used for Quinn’s birth announcement was from this Indian poet: “You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed.”  This morning, I opened the book and felt led to read this exact piece.  This is precisely where I’m at when I get angry.  Precisely.  I’m so grateful to see some of these feelings expressed in such a powerful way.

The Rain Has Held Back for Days
The rain has held back for days and days,
my God, in my arid heart.
The horizon is fiercely naked –
not the thinnest cover of a soft cloud,
not the vaguest hint of a distant cool shower.
Send thy angry storm, dark with death,
if it is thy wish, and with lashes of lightning
startle the sky from end to end.
But call back, my lord,
call back this pervading silent heat,
still and keen and cruel,
burning the heart with dire despair.
Let the cloud of grace bend low from above
like the tearful look of the mother on the day of
the father’s wrath.
~ Rabindranath Tagore

I’ve typed all of this up to give to my best friend who is a tremendous artist.  I’m going to ask her to make pictures with the text so that I can hang them in our house as supports to help guide me when I am angry.  This feels like the most luscious gift to myself, a gift inspired by Quinn’s birthday, which is ultimately a gift to our entire family.

Finally, I tell it to her every year, here it is again for anyone else who’d like to remember along with us: Quinner’s birth story.

I’ve got a new way to drive, now.  I ride in peace.  I no longer use my phone in the car while I’m driving.

As a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom and the owner of a small business, I find it easiest to make phone calls from my car when I’m out with my children because of the span of uninterrupted time it enables me to have a conversation.  From making appointments to catching up with my husband, family, friends, and clients, I do a lot of talking in the car while the kids look out the window at the scenery, read, watch videos, or sleep.  I have always used my hands-free Bluetooth earpiece since it became the law in New York State where I live, so I felt “safe” doing it.

I’d heard about Oprah’s phone show from other episodes where she’d mentioned it, and I was moved by her mentions of the No Phone pledge.  Just hearing about the pledge alone led me to think about my phone use in surprisingly personal ways.

First, how would I feel if I were in my children’s place?  What if I were dependent on someone else to drive me around every day, anywhere I needed to go, but as soon as we got in the car, that person got on the phone?  The perception of that sudden “wall” from being able to talk or connect with the person in the car seems so alienating to me.

And what about my children riding in someone else’s vehicle?  I would be *livid* if someone else were texting or talking while driving my kids somewhere.  So what makes me think I’m any less vulnerable behind the wheel?  Why would I do it?  Most of the people I know have young children riding with them.  We’re *already* distracted drivers!  We don’t need any help doing *more* behind the wheel.

In a subsequent show, Oprah said something like, “I remember what we used to do in the car before cells phones and texting – we used to have time to ourselves, we used to think about things.”  I loved that.  I crave time to just think about things. And here I was, giving that away, letting the rest of the world into my car while I was driving.

So I stopped doing it.

Not making phone calls in the car while driving has been a difficult transition for me.  I keep thinking of people I’d like to talk to, or tasks I’d like to accomplish, and I’m concerned I’ll forget to take care of them if I wait.  But after a while, I feel more relaxed while I’m driving.  I definitely feel more present with my children.

Yesterday, I slipped and I talked on the phone with a friend in my car on my way down the driveway.  I continued driving down my road a few hundred feet and I finally told her I had to hang up, that I’d decided to stop talking on my phone in the car.  She said, “Oh, me too!  Is that the Oprah pledge?”  I felt so encouraged that she’d heard of it and was doing it, too.  So I’m writing this in hopes that others will join us.  Sometimes if I know someone who’s doing it, it makes it easier for me to make the change.

I told my children that I’d give them $1 each time I ever break my pledge, (they loved that!) and I’m giving them their dollars for yesterday’s slip-up.  Ali Wentworth said on Oprah that she told her kids they could yell as loud as they want to if she talks on her phone in the car.

I finally watched Oprah’s actual phone show this morning.  It was a tough one to get through, but I’m grateful for her outreach about this topic and for the families who shared their experiences of losing loved ones through these 100% preventable accidents. I also appreciated learning about some of the science behind what happens during distracted driving.  I didn’t know that the field of view literally shrinks when we are distracted, that we lose peripheral vision.  And we don’t see everything in front of us – we lose lots of details compared to non-distracted driving.  As one victim’s family member expressed, it’s not about where your hands are, it’s where your brain is.

Many of my 30+ year old friends tell me they don’t text while driving and they complain about people who do.  But most of my friends and family talk on the phone while driving, just like I did for years.  People distinguish between texting and hands-free talking, as if distracted driving doesn’t affect them.  Yes, texting while driving is dangerous and it’s stupid.  But the accidents aren’t just from texting!  We’re talking  *Distracted Driving* including hands-free headsets like my beloved Bluetooth, as well as texting. One nine-year old girl was killed on her bikeride home from school, only 15 pedals away from her house.  The driver of the 5,000 lb. SUV was distracted by her phone call and just didn’t see her.  Sometimes the calls that end lives are very brief, like the one the driver was on when he missed the light, that killed a mother/grandmother.

Here’s the link with all of the resources I mentioned, including the No Phone Pledge, the full episode about this deadly habit, and testimonials from the people who lost loved ones in the “After The Show” segment:  http://www.oprah.com/showinfo/Americas-New-Deadly-Obsession

“Just driving” is a new way to drive (more like an old way to drive…), and I love it.  It took me a few days to get used to it, but I love it.  I’ll never have to explain to someone that my driver error stemmed from cell phone use.  Join me, and you’ll never have to say it either.  I’m sharing the pledge with my family, friends, babysitters, and children’s instructors, as well as on-line on Facebook, Twitter, and our website, HudsonValleyParents.com and my friend’s website HudsonValleyHomeschoolers.com.

Thank you for reading my story, sharing it, and helping to make the world better in such a simple, loving way.  Ride in peace.

I had just written this as my New Year’s Day Facebook status: Harnessing this tremendous New Year’s energy surge of openness, possibility, and hope. Bonne Annee, tout le monde!

Then I lifted my fingers off of the keyboard and got up to go for my run I’d been procrastinating “just to check Facebook, first” and Declan said, “Mom, can you help me?”

I hear this pretty regularly, and there was no urgency to this particular request, but I went right into the kitchen. Huge spill of water all over everything all over the kitchen table (covered with craft supplies that had just been put away the day before, only to be reopened ten minutes later) and the floor.

Declan was worried he would lose all of his new “Magic Marbles” (plastic beads that expand into cool gel blobs in a tank of water) and was standing there, trying to keep them from rolling onto the floor. The first thing out of my mouth was kind of a mean, irritated, “Get a towel!” Then, in kind of a huge-overblown-life-lesson kind of way, with a tinge of sarcasm, “The first thing we do in a huge crisis like this is get a towel.”

As I left the room to get a large towel, I thought, wow, did you *just* write that whole thing about openness, possibility, and hope? Got nothing nice to say right now? Then clam it.

Returned to the scene of our mini-flood, wondering how so much water could come out of such a small vessel, and he and I worked around each other, Declan scooping up gel marbles, me sopping up endless streams of water. Then I tried again something new I’ve done when I get angry. I wondered what else I could “see” about the situation. I saw in myself this massive irritation, like a personal affront, that just as I was about to go for a run, I had to clean up this crazy mixed-media mess. Fine, you’re angry. Moving on…..

And I suddenly saw this amazing little boy who loves his new Magic Marbles so much.

I saw my son assume total responsibility for them, carefully scooping up each blobby bead, one at a time.

I saw my memory of how he bought them with his own money last night, so excited.

I saw his total focus on the task.

And then….
I saw that this had been an accident.
I knew that going in, but suddenly I saw it for what it was. Just an accident he asked for a hand with in cleaning up.
And I saw the gift in watching him in this way, something I would have missed were it not for this spill.

As I put away the craft supplies that survived, threw out the ones that didn’t make it, I realized that I was now seeing a clean kitchen table, something I really wanted to do before he started doing his Magic Marbles on it, but didn’t.

I saw the clear space between us, too. How he was so animated about his other grow-creatures project in the other jar, and how he felt free to guess with me what the next encapsulated bug would turn into. He knew I wasn’t angry, I was just loving him and wiping up the water. Which I then saw as what it was available to be all along – an act of love.

I felt so good about this, and thought, I have to share this story. Then Quinn came in and said, “MOM CAN YOU GET MY DOLLY DRESSED? RIGHT NOW!”

I just breathed. And I realized a little more.
Just take it down a notch. We’re not going for perfect parent. We’re not going for “never yells” right now. We’re just taking it down a notch. That I can do.