You Just Wait

I get a kick out of my son. He hates it when I do that — when I giggle at him as he behaves like a kid behaves. It’s a hoot and a joy watching this boy evolve and expand and blossom into the person he is. I love that element of surprise. What’s next?

I know, I know. “The fun has just begun,” you seasoned parents say.

“You just wait.”

I don’t think I’m going to wait. I’m going to enjoy what’s happening right now. Seems to work better that way. If I enjoy now, and the things he does that happen in it, well, I’m sure the future will take care of itself. Adventure? Most likely. Misery? Only if I let it be misery. Not that there won’t be times when I think misery is upon me, but I have control over whether or not I’m going to let the teabag of misery steep until the tea is barely drinkable.

I sat in my green recliner and watched the boy as he got ready for school. He’s not ready to inhabit his own bedroom upstairs — at night — far, far away from the presence of Mom, who serves as a stable force in the face of the apparitions that threaten to materialize out of the darkness or jump out of closets or hide around corners or peer from behind chests of drawers.

I remember when I was a kid, lying on my bed before fading off to sleep, deliberately making sure my arm was not hanging down the side of the bed, lest a witch reach out from the dust-bunny nether regions underneath and grab it. I don’t think I’d pondered what would happen after the claw grabbed my arm. It was just the idea of it. I knew there was no witch. But unconsciously I’d rather have tied my arm to the bedpost than have something to be scared about. It was the fear of fear, more than it was the avoidance of evil witches. And so it is with Benjamin. One day, he’ll stake his claim to his own private space. He’ll up and say, “Mom, I’m going to sleep upstairs.” Maybe not every night, at first. But it will happen just as naturally as so many things happen in his life, without the need for extreme parental policing of the growing-up process.

So, as I sat in my recliner, I watched as he pulled a shirt out of the chest of drawers I’ve stashed in a convenient corner of the dining room — an alternative to the laundry basket that was the centerpiece for an array of clothes randomly piled around it. I advised him for the umpteenth time to close the drawers. He stuffed his shirts (now you know where the term “stuffed shirt” comes from) back into the drawer and closed it. I snickered.

“Stoooop!” he ordered.

“I just think you’re cute.”

He carried his clothes into the living room, which was in full view of the chair where I was sitting in the corner of my dining room.

“Go away!” He wanted to change his clothes, and he didn’t want me to watch and laugh.

“OK. I’ll pretend I’m not here.” I laughed at my own joke and the absurdity of it.

“Stoooop!”

I got up and left him to his task, still snorting at the idea of pretending I wasn’t there.

“Stop that!”

I have days when the chaos and randomness gets on my nerves. But I really like the days when I see the whimsy of it. In the cache of memories I’ll have as I look back on these times, I’ll find the day when wet clothes of neighbor kids spun in the dryer after the water balloon experiment. The boys hopped around my house wearing long underwear, chosen from an array I threw in a pile for their choosing. The long john pants on short John kept falling down. We all giggled at the lacy V collar with the little flower at the point — Jake’s outfit. Queen Kelly reigned over her royal realm as the hem of my chenille bathrobe dragged along the floor beneath her.

I’ll remember how I sent the kids home when I caught them graffiti-ing the sidewalk with the spray paint I’d foolishly placed in the pile of junk I’d arranged by the curb for the city clean-up. I thank my lucky stars they had just gotten started. (What is it with kids and paint, anyway?)

I’ll remember the day I drove to Walmart to pick the kids up after they’d walked there to buy Pokemon cards. They raced to the car dragging with them a child’s basketball hoop, a dirty, matted stuffed dog about the size of your garden variety farm pet, and a container of sidewalk chalk (what a wonderful alternative to paint!), all carefully chosen from yards along the way (for the city-wide pickup), temporarily stored in front of the Hy-Vee grocery store.

I’ll remember looking around the crafts section at Walmart for a nose. Yes, a nose. For the dog they’d picked up from someone’s yard. I was going to wash the poor critter, but it needed a nose, to prevent the stuffing in the head from coming out of the hole where the original schnozz used to be. Unfortunately, Walmart did not have a nose.

I’ll remember picking up a baby bed mattress from a curbside junk pile to serve as a cheap alternative to a trampoline, thus preserving what’s left of the bed that Benjamin will one day sleep in again.

And the memories just keep on comin’.

The fun of the now is what makes them great memories. Re-runs, played on the TV screens of the mind. Artworks, rendered on the canvas of the heart. The feelings of them, preserved from the past and played forward into the future, ever available in the now. Shaping the sculpture of life, carving out perfection.

Meanwhile, I’m putting the spray paint cans where they can’t be reached. I’m not convinced the kids are ready yet to say, “I think I’m going to leave these cans alone.” In this case, I’ll wait.

Thoughts on Love

This is a beautiful perspective on soul mates and love. There are just times when it’s said so well I can’t add a thing to it.

It was written by Dov Baron, whose other insights can be found at http://www.dovbaron.com/category/relationship

Enjoy. — Mary Jo

Beloved Soulmate
—————————-
At one time or another we have all feared love, bolting the door and refusing to let it in.

There have been times when we have craved love and when a thin malnourished version of itself sneaks in through the back door we hold on too tight.

Fearing love and craving love are two sides of the same coin…

Both can have us holding on to someone or something so desperately that we squeeze all the life out of it.

When you learn to love yourself you will embrace love, even knowing that its encounter may wound you. For love itself cannot wound; only the illusion of love paid for with currency of self respect leaves us wounded and emotionally bankrupt. From this bankruptcy of the heart many try to quit, swearing off love, rather than swearing off the illusions placed upon it.

There are also those who have been wounded and they learn; they know these are not the wounds of the weak; these are the wounds that empower us to return to a deeper place of love. For the potion with which we bathe and heal the wounds of love’s encounters is a rich distillation of self and mutual respect.

Only by learning to love yourself can you truly recognize love when it arrives at your door. However, without knowing and embracing self respect, true love will remain hidden from you as the greatest mystery of life.

To know love, we must take a chance at love. Love is the baptism that has and that can, if we let it, cleanse the heart, soul and mind of all its illusions. However, what the mind and body combined call love can also be the author of illusion.

To truly know the depth of this life we must be willing to engage in the adventure of a lifetime, knowing that love has the power to crush us under foot and at the same time raise us on the wings of angels to the heights we could have only dreamed.

Love is the rain that falls on the dry seed of our soul; it fertilizes and nourishes that which has lain dormant in the desert of fear. Through love we learn to question our limitations so as to express our soul’s purpose.

To truly love we must rid ourselves of the fears that keep us silent and lazy.

We must never settle for a mere scent or flavour of love; we must not settle for the idea of love. For the true heart, the true soul has both patience and courage, for they know love is the holy grail we all seek, if only secretly.

So have patience, because waiting for love gives you the time to earn the gift of true self love without which you would never know that depth that is a soul love shared.

To find, recognize and embrace your beloved you must become the beloved.

To become the beloved you must be able to be-loved. So let love in through the front door, by first remembering that you are a gift from God whose worthiness of love is inherent, for at your essence, love is what you are.

Live and love with courage, Dov…

I Couldn’t Have Said It Better

I received this inspiring newsletter in my email today. It might seem to go against everything we have been taught — perhaps not on purpose, but just by osmosis and, well, it’s kind of what everyone thinks. What everyone does. We all seem to want to rail at the injustice and fight it. The perspective I’m sharing here goes in the opposite direction, and requires a little bit of effort (at least for me it does!). I’ve enjoyed railing, on some level. But it hasn’t gotten me anything but more to get teed off about.

So I’m trying something new.

When they speak of intention, basically, they are speaking about what you desire. Like things you might pray about, if you are a praying person. Things you might wish for, if you are a wishing person. Things that are the opposite of the things that you don’t like. Because when you don’t like something, it’s because there’s something that you actually really like and want.

When they use the word “manifest,” they mean that the stuff you want really shows up. If you want joy, it comes. If you want a nice vacation, it finds its way to you. If you want a better job, or some extra funds, or a better relationship, it shows up. It means that YOU deliberately choose what you want to have happen in your life and YOU have the power to bring it about. That’s manifesting. Seems a bit pie-in-the-sky. Most of us think that pie-in-the-sky (not sure how pie in the sky is really all that great — I’d rather have pie-in-my-mouth) is just not possible. But why do we want it in the first place? Why DO we have desires? Is it all some cosmic joke that the things that feel good to us feel good? Have you ever considered that the stuff that feels good might just be YOU guiding YOU to better things, instead of you deceiving yourself so that you will just be disappointed?

So. This newsletter I’m copying and pasting here, below, talks about this. Think about it. Give it a try for a while, whenever you think about it. Even if it’s just one little thing, or two. I’ll try it, too.

What could possibly go wrong? Let’s change our worlds together by visualizing it as everything we want it to be!

My Intention for today is:

I Intend that I am holding a vision in my mind of my Intentions having already manifested.

Where Did the Time Go?

It’s beenawhile since my last post — how the great whitewater of life flows… and let me tell you, the rocks that come along…

Wait a minute. It’s time to put this all into perspective.

I’m learning to shift my attention. As I understand the Law of Attraction, what I pay attention to is what’s going to happen, over and over again. That’s a very simplified description — there’s a lot more to it than that. But sometimes it comes down to HOW I look at things and, yes, WHAT I look at, what I pay attention to, what I chatter about in my head, what I gripe about, what I obsess about, what I fight.

So on Saturday, on a long weekend with kids — what I have come to call the perpetual party at my house — I was not feeling real welcoming of every little imp that set foot inside my door. It would seem logical if I simply said, “Sorry, the house will be empty of anyone but you and me, Son,” but I knew that whether imps were here, or chimps were here, or elephants were here (well, maybe that’s an exaggeration), or none of them was here, I’d still kinda feel not real lovely. Not horrible, but just not lovely. I’ve had horrible, and this wasn’t it.

But nevertheless, it certainly added to my “lovely” perspective about things.

Here’s the scene. Imagine yourself in it.

You’re sitting in a chair, reading. You have a house to straighten up, but the book beckons. Just plain SITTING beckons. After a long time of having a hard time sitting without feeling like you must get up and DO, DO, DO and not sit until you have gotten it all DONE, you have finally learned that it’s NEVER going to get done, so why are you spending half your life doing things that are never going to get done, and then regret that you didn’t spend more time DOING the things you would have done when you got all the things you didn’t want to do, DONE?

So you’re sitting there. Reading. Spongebob chattering on the TV with no one watching. Furnace kicking on and off during an early spring chill, you covered in a blanket.

Your darling blond son comes downstairs from where he’s been playing with three of his friends. (Upstairs: his room and the room north of it, a nice, big area at the top of the stairs — a kids’ playground that, you’ve decided, is not going to be a decorator’s haven, simply due to the existence of CHILDREN that frequent it. No use fighting what can’t be controlled. Too much pain, agony, energy. Life is supposed to be fun.)

He says, with enthusiasm only a kid can exude, “MOM! LOOK! We’re PAINTING!”

He’s wearing tight blue gloves. You don’t have any blue gloves. Not bright, shiny, medium-with-a-hint-of-green blue…WAIT! Those aren’t gloves, that’s PAINT!

Ohhhkaaaaaay…

“WHAT are you guys DOING?”

“We’re splatter painting, Mom! Come look!”

“Where?”

“On some cardboard, come look!”

Up the stairs you go.

In a nice little collection, on top of something — a set of plastic drawers, maybe — you don’t really notice — of paint bottles. Tie-dye paint. Acrylic crafter’s paint. A lovely little artistic palette of spontaneity.

There’s the cardboard, duct-taped to the wall. A work of art, due for transport to the Smithsonian Institute. Or maybe it’s a mental institute for mad parents.

After a lecture on ASKING before one uses one’s parent’s prized possessions (not just for the benefit of the Son, but the Friends), you really try to pay ATTENTION to the fact that the paint is on the CARDBOARD only.

Soon thereafter, as you are going from one place to another in the house, trying to regain your sense of equilibrium and sanity in your lovely haven you call a home, your son bounces up to you and says, “Mom, can we splatter paint the walls?”

“NO!” The word thunders across the house creating a rumble that rivals the feeling that one gets when standing near railroad tracks.

“Pleeeeease? Can we? Can we? Pleeeeease? Aww, come on, Mom!”

Now, you consider yourself a rather creative soul. You really are not a huge fan of the flat brown paint that covers the walls and ceilings in both rooms up there. You’ve thought of painting it anyway. And, on some level, you think how much fun it would be to splash paint on walls and express oneself artistically (almost) at will. Might even look kinda cool. Especially if you happen to be a kid.

But NOT TODAY!

“No! Maybe some other time. We’ll talk about it later.”

You don’t realize that somewhere inside a 9-year-old’s mind, the 5-position switch: (“NO – “MAYBE” – “WE’LL SEE” – “DISCUSS” – AND “YES”) skips from the “NO” setting to the “YES” setting. Like when you turn a switch too far ’cause you were in a hurry and used too much force.

(I think you know where I’m going with this.)

And so, after some puttering around, shoving kitchen dishes from one counter to another, filling the sink with dishwater, adding dish soap, and then going back to the chair, you have now migrated to the living room.

“Mom! This is great! Come here and see!”

What NOW?

You make your way up the stairs. “See what we did, Mom?”

There, on the wall where the cardboard used to be, is a larger work of art. On the walls are hand prints in browns and blues. Color, color — aimed at the wall, for sure — after all, these aren’t two-year-olds who have no aim at all. Nevertheless, there are stockinged feet, and paint that disobeys the laws of intention, and the collateral damage that comes from the strike in a war on plainness in a child’s playroom.

Like the mattress of the bed he doesn’t sleep in.

And it is the paint on the mattress that escalates a different kind of war that has nothing to do with paint.

Then there is another lecture, with gulps of breath and hands on face and rubbing forehead: “What did I do wrong? How did it all come to this?”

There comes a bucket of water and rags.

There comes the announcement that, after the pizza is eaten, everyone goes home.

It’s not real pretty, but to be honest, it’s not that ugly.

Because:

1. Things are things. In my house, I decided that long ago. This is the advantage to having things that don’t cost a lot. Things that can be covered, things that can be replaced, and things that are not as important as those who use the things.

2. It’s upstairs. No one has to come upstairs. The ceilings, the walls, the floor can all be repainted.

3. It’s a mattress. It can be covered with a mattress pad and a sheet.

4. Is having a stroke a better option than being upset, then just letting go? I don’t think so.

5. I can deal with it later. There is always later.

6. The kids are here. They are not in a shelter, or on the streets, or out throwing bottles, vandalizing, getting vandalized, bullying, or getting bullied.

They are kids, living spontaneously, in the moment. Not something I do very well.

The biggest trick for me is to learn how to find the balance between letting kids be in control of my home, or me taking back that control in a way that leaves us all feeling pretty good about things. Having fun without destruction and disrespect. Being kids without being berserk. Respecting boundaries, without setting up prison walls. Being firmly loved into lessons, rather than punished into rebellion.

Actually, it’s pretty much about me feeling good about how it all comes down — and knowing that as I choose how that’s going to happen, they will feel good, too. I am not a dictator. But I also have the right to ask that I, and my house, and my possessions, be treated with respect, while also holding an attitude of, “Things are going to happen, kids will be kids, and it’s the joys and love in life that are most important of all.”

They will learn all of the rest, because they are good teachers.