Snow Days

Ah, snow days.

We've read every board book in our house.  We've pushed shapes through the shape sorter approximately 174 times.  We've made multiple pots of homemade chicken soup.  We made playdough.  We fingerpainted, and have the carpet stains to prove it.  We have run through the "Baby Music" playlist to the point that Hannah is beginning to know songs by heart.  I took naps.  A walk around the block was the outing for the day for several days in a row.

As a working mom, I delight in extra time with my babe.  If I had my way, though, our extra time would be spent out with friends, at the park, at the Zoo, or using our new membership to the Children's Museum.  We would not be stuck in our one bedroom apartment the whole time.

But I'm glad we were.  I believe boredom, stir-craziness, cabin fever or whatever name you give it is a spiritual challenge, a purgatory of sorts.  Hannah caught me on several occasions sneaking computer time, or making a phone call, or in some way taking my attention off of her.  She is a toddler, and she let me know exactly how she felt about it.  Her leg pulling and protests were like an alarm bell, warning me of two things: 1) I'm letting something I long for - more time with Hannah - pass me by and 2) I can do those things later. 

The antsy-ness I feel when cooped up for days is a testament to my usually frantic nature.  I multitask at a frequency that far exceeds anything that could be considered normal throughout each moment of each day of my normal week.  On the weekends, when the weather is not making national news, I'm out and about doing something every second that I can.  There is always a shape to the day, somewhere to be, something to do.

The shapelessness of the past week has helped me to see how addicted I am to doing, ironic when my ongoing goal is to focus on being.  When I'm really crawling out of my skin to get out and do something, and yet I'm held down in a shapeless day, I see something about my nature that I don't particularly like.  It's the same thing I see when I'm in savasana at the end of yoga class and my thoughts get frantic and racing.  It's a horns-locked struggle against the present moment, that elusive place I both yearn for and run from.

Today I went to yoga, sweet relief from cabin fever.  Hannah and I went to the library, the grocery store and to get a copy of her birth certificate.  It was nice to be out of the house, yes, but I found myself quickly yearning for the warmth and comfort of home as an antidote to the busyness - and currently, the knee deep slush - of the city.



I've had a few moments this week when I've given into "boredom" and brought myself fully into the present, to the delight of my little one.  Having my face painted with flour, or singing Ring Around the Rosie with a tambourine on my hip, falling into a giggling heap with Hannah at the end of the song, I saw something in myself that I do like.  I believe we can make each moment, no matter where we are or what is happening, as peaceful, rich and joyful as we choose to.

Monday morning will come, and with it, a return to a challenging, rewarding and tiring routine.  I hope that I can find the shapelessness, presence and stillness of a snow day when it feels like life is moving way too fast.

Truth

Disclaimer: Not a lot of humor and brevity to be found in this post.  I'm venting.

I had a good day, at the end of a good week.  I even took it in stride when, on Tuesday, I had 25 superintendents parade through my classroom to gather fodder for discussion about the "problem of practice" of 9th grade engagement.  They spent about 20 minutes in my classroom in two groups of 12-13, outnumbering the 11 students that were there that day.  Super authentic.  NOW they can claim to understand my students, our school, my teaching, me.

These suits visited a class that has grown tremendously since September.  A group of students who I couldn't seem to get more than 15 minutes of meaningful academic work out of has slowly transformed into a group of still imperfect young people who are learning how to talk academically, be serious about school, and collaborate with each other to enhance their learning.  The original group has lost three students - one to jail, one to a group home transfer, one to getting shipped home to Texas, and grown by 3 - one of whom was missing that day because he's recently become homeless.  These students' ethnic backgrounds bring the corners of the earth together.  Some are learning English or coping with learning disabilities.  All are navigating adolescence.  Then there's their teacher - I'm in my 6th year of teaching and have learned a few tricks by now.  I'm raising a one-year-old and working full-time.  Despite my dedication to my students, my being highly qualified and proven effective, I have been surplused twice.  Nothing to make you feel appreciated like being stamped as "overflow."  What I'm trying to say is, it's complicated.

They managed to make the sweeping judgment that my teaching "isn't rigorous enough" because I didn't explicitly say in the time they were in the room WHY we were reading the book we were discussing.  Nevermind that it was printed in plain ink on the unit plan they had in their hands.  One student had his hood up, prior to sharing a personal connection with the novel about his experience of racism as a black male.  That was part of their evidence of "lack of rigor."  As was my allowing a student who is going to be receiving special ed services due to his speech impediment to pass on contributing to the discussion.  He finally feels safe speaking in front of our class - I thought 13 old, white strangers with clipboards might be a little bit of a jump. 

Here's the thing - I love my work.  I love interacting with young adults during their transition to adulthood.  I love it when it's clear they are learning, and I love seeing their ability to produce really good work.  I love working with smart, funny, creative colleagues.  I love getting to talk about literature and words, teaching kids to write.  I work in a progressive school with a wonderfully supportive principal, but no place in the public school system is completely immune to bureaucratic bullshit.  I got my dose this week, it took the wind out of my sails, and now I think I'll just go crawl in bed.

Maybe someday I'll start my own school.  No superintendents allowed.

The deep soul needs only chocolate can fill...

I ended today by giving up.  In a most calm and measured way, I consumed a third of my daily caloric intake in chocolate, without guilt.

A major focus in all aspects of life for me right now is mindfulness, but I know when to say when.

Let me start by saying that I cannot imagine why a mother would willingly give up nursing just as her baby ventures into toddlerhood.   Nursing a toddler is, in so many ways, helping me keep my sanity.  Hannah is a happy, sweet little girl, but she's still a toddler.  And a strong-willed, curious one at that.  By virture of her age, she is highly emotional and mostly irrational.  Her wonderful little body is suddenly capable of so much, and she has discovered that she can move about in the world and discover it for herself.  She now has preferences and has figured out how to make them known.  In other words, she is discovering - and guarding - her power.

In everything, I am trying to be mindful of giving her the gift of her own sovereignty, letting her be autonomous and independent.  This does not mean total permissiveness, but it does mean that my convenience and my notion of how things "should" be in the current moment don't come first.  Letting her be a child comes first.

But to everything there is a limit.  We have to get in the car in the morning to make it to work and daycare on time.  After a half hour of waving at people in the parking lot from the backseat of our car, we come dangerously close to a) hitting rush hour and b) being forced once again to get expensive takeout for dinner.  It's time to go home.

Oh, the sounds she can now make in protest!  I am in awe of her strength, and her ability to buck and wriggle out of my grasp as I try to put her in her carseat.  I can't help but feel a little awful when I literally have to wrestle and then pin her in for the journey.  

So now we're home, dinner is in progress, and rather than play happily with the myriad toys available to her, my curious little explorer prefers the spice cabinet and will not stop whining and pulling on my leg until she is up on the counter sorting out bottles of thyme, oregano and basil, handing them to me like a dutiful little sous chef.  During a brief interlude on the floor, she dumps out the dog's water all over the floor.  Content only to play with her sippy cups if they're full of water AND uncovered, she drenches herself and the counter. 

This after 34 miles of commuting in the rain, with 8 hours of fun with teenagers, otherwise known as hormones and clothes.

So in these moments when Hannah is taking a turn for the mischevious, it is a type of salvation to be able drop what I'm doing, freeze time, and nurse her for a few moments.  These moments get sweeter the older she gets.  What used to be a physical necessity now is not.  I believe nursing now meets a need in her soul, a need to feel nurtured and comforted and held.  Of course there are other ways to do this, and when a mom stops nursing is a choice only she can make.  But it is like hitting an invisible reset button in the moments when I am most at risk of losing my sanity.

So once the little one is in bed and I have a few moments to myself, like an idiot I start cleaning, which somehow led to a private little temper tantrum in which I hurled my makeshift sewing basket off of it's shelf as if it were the source of all my stress.  Shortly after the sewing basket incident, in a moment of kindness to myself, I said "I need chocolate and to write."

Out came the creme de menthe fudge and the laptop.  A fringe benefit of nursing?  Losing weight while eating fudge.  Hard to argue with the awesomeness of that! 

Maybe tomorrow mindfulness will look a little more yogic -- maybe I'll do some pranayama in the bathtub by candlelight or something.  For tonight, that fudge was just right.