~un-family~family FUN

Ok now, continuing on the family theme, we spent this memorial holiday weekend with members of our unschooling family. Saturday, we went to a sort of new-home celebration, bar-b-que with great friend/family. While the adults visited and prepared food, the children indulged in some serious swimming in the hot tub. These are the same folks we had over for super-bowl partying and whom we egg-spressed our Easter creativity with. Hours of family fun and learning and sharing. Lots of love and acceptance. So easy to be with them.

The thing about choosing to let all things; people, circumstances, situations, etc., be exactly as they are, resisting not what is but channeling that creative nature (that might be used up trying to be right or better or some competitive score), is that there is so much fresh, alive interest and ideas to share and learn about and try.

~In the family way~

This morning I have been thinking about my recent visit to Georgia where the luxury of doing nothing took the lead in guiding the day’s events. Lyn and I spent marvelous one on one time, uninterrupted by necessities… delicious... Lyn is the best. She really is an exceptional woman. She owns her own mind. I love it. She is open and generous and available and present. We spent exquisite hours of lavishly sharing our ideas and experience and insights and questions, luxuriously basking in each others minds. I feel expanded and alive with newness and fresh perspective as a result. Simply, as good as it gets. Thank you, Lyn.

I also had a rare chance to be invited into the mind-life of sixteen year old Kendall. She is beautiful young woman living the critical day to day, social life of the teenage world. What I found delightful was that as significant as this all was, she was yet exploring her inner world as she goes, and being willing to share it. I wonder how many teenagers do this sort of inner accounting, while they’re caught up in surviving with style and a semblance of dignity while levying for status and position. ~Few.

The teenage time-period, is a critical passage in life in which relationships with peers permeates all the choices we make. And the how well we do that often defines who we enter adulthood as. It is delightful to see such inquisitiveness and personal resolve at such a formative age. What a privilege to share. Thank you, Kendall.

The standard operating procedure in this family is one of ease and contentment; the kind that comes with harmony determined in advance.

Sometimes when you’re around a family, there is a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) sense of separate interests bumping up against each other, almost as if their union had been accidental, or at least incidental as each person was hitting the grind of making a daily life for themselves. (You know, kind of like companies you’ve worked for).

It made me think about what family is. So I consult the online authority and got these (plus too many more/same). Family is defined as:

 a social unit living together; "he moved his family to Virginia"; "It was a good Christian household"; "I waited until the whole house was asleep"; "the teacher asked how many people made up his home"

 primary social group; parents and children; "he wanted to have a good job before starting a family"

 people descended from a common ancestor; "his family has lived in Massachusetts since the Mayflower"

 class: a collection of things sharing a common attribute; "there are two classes of detergents"

 an association of people who share common beliefs or activities; "the message was addressed not just to employees but to every member of the company family"; "the church welcomed new members into its fellowship"

 (biology) a taxonomic group containing one or more genera; "sharks belong to the fish family"

 kin: a person having kinship with another or others; "he's kin"; "he's family"

 syndicate: a loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Here’s what I’m thinking about family. Family is really a decision, (preferably a deliberate decision), for membership with a set of ideas and values, and not necessarily people per se. That set of values and ideas then create their own moral code, which then attracts its members.

Sure when we’re growing up, it seems that our family is what we’re born into. And without running off into a track of metaphysical philosophy, let’s say for discussion purposes, that we are, just a defined, born to a set of genetic characteristics and tendencies that make up our ‘family’.

Does that define us? How much? What portion of ‘family’ do we assign excuses for our lack of deliberate decision making about who we are, what our values are, what we stand for. It’s said that an unexamined life is a life not worth living (or something like that).

How deliberately are we about looking deeply into what we were ‘born into’ and choosing into what we feel is worthy of defining and/or assisting us?

I am a twin. I don’t know for sure what that means. Growing up it meant a certain kind of attention, a reference point to a specific and maybe special group membership. I was always aware that this was some kind of elusive idea that seemed to almost float around aimlessly until someone needed it to handle, I don’t know, slotting positions, I guess. But it’s not like there was a secret society that met once a month after mid-night in some covert location. There wasn’t really a group, just a feeling. Here’s what I learned it means for me. Looking deep within the construct and identity label of twin-ness, I came to understand that there was a kind of inner intimacy I learned and accepted as a twin that is core to who I am. I call it my womb-mate technology. It is an easy, natural part of my experience with others to sort of mind-meld with them so to speak … I found that I can know others quickly and well. It’s like an innate inclusion technique. I love them within this inclusion-meld, quite naturally accepting a certain wholeness and holographic connectedness. I’m sure this isn’t unique to me or twin-ness; it’s just how I wired it up. I felt this characteristic of mine, brought to my career as a counselor, a sort of cliff-note knowing that allowed me to feel at home, in-family with clients. And I did, developing a new definition of family.

Actually, much of how I viewed family and what it meant to me, I carefully held up to the light of discernment. Much of it was revamped at this time. I sort of let the old, blood-related definition of family die in my mind; letting go of taking anything about family for granted and started with a level of innate respect for each person alive, having a unique contribution to my being as a whole. Family became an idea, and entity of union that one must chose for oneself by careful invitation.

Today I feel that each of my relationships is a deliberate invitation to be in-family with me just as I am; raw and true and skinned, sometimes scared and sometimes wise, but always in the inquiry of life we share together.

And you know what; I choose my blood-family after all. We each bring to the table a unique and powerful inner journey, which when shared, increases my sense of who I am. Which in turn, encourages me to continue to uncover potentials I left in childhood, but can use now with daring and trust.

~and the prestigious 'Mommy" award goes to the birthday girl...~

In forty-nine years of living this so-called life, I feel I am just beginning to really recognize the truly valuable and distinguish it from the simulated mimicry the ego mind busily bombards the thought-field with. Today is my birthday. In moments like now, I can only see the student in me.

It has taken nearly half a century to get there~ to the beginning of living. I spent the youngish-half of my adulthood teaching what I didn’t know, until I learned I didn’t know, and then realized that was square one: the only place from which I had a chance at any wisdom at all.

Motherhood is the course the universe offers for the souls who have a tendency to under-value and over-think themselves.

Here’ the story of motherhood curriculum in action…

It was coming up on sunrise, following another night rocking and nursing and comforting my infant son Lucas. I was simply cradling and nursing; tracing his perfect little features with my fingertips, memorizing each detail, overwhelmed with perfection and love, indelibly imprinting it in my mind.

I remember noticing in my peripheral vision that the sun was coming up over the mountain in the east. A new day dawning, as too, was a fresh view of my Self and motherhood, in a single miracle of total acceptance and gratitude. I was vaguely aware I was inside a miracle; part of something grand and infinite, resting in a sense of timeless now-ness, completeness.

I watched his tiny fingers reaching, touching, exploring their source of nurturing, cradled in love; as in my heart-mind with its tiny fingers explored the possibilities of endless Source… I was in awe. Still am. Never understood how someone as bent on a ‘get-it-right’ life, could still for moment and experience ‘enough’ in full-blown gratitude…

I can’t tell you how much, when I began my ‘spiritual journey’, I would draw from these miracle moments of nursing and awakening~ to give hope when I felt hopeless~ to surrender when the war-against myself was too much~ when the meaning of gratitude eluded me.

My birthday and Mother’s Day always fall right next to each other, if not on the same day. Duh! God-clue that motherhood’s my curriculum and paves the path to heaven…

«Inspired by motherhood.»

One can't really tell the story about motherhood until one knows it intimately; till there was no way separate out the mother and the child; the devotee and mentor, the lover and the friend… These labels, so apparently significant as individual titles of perhaps great epics in their own right prior to the immersion in motherhood, now meld together in a single life-giving meaning: Love.

The story tells itself, living in the memory-hearts of mother and children. With each uncontrolled outburst of laughter, tears, anger, and forgiveness, in the twinkling eye of inside jokes and the present awareness of unrelenting acceptance… Love.

Motherhood is the fast-tack to humility… and humanity. I think we can all agree on that.

My story of motherhood has its own unique signature, texture, colors, and materials. Yet placed within the great tapestry, we blend, beautify, bless and complete each other. With out my mother’s love before mine and the constant golden umbilical cord that threads together the continuity that love is life, each story of mother and child, is alone and crumbles.

We are part of the greatest love story ever written, living out the new discovery of life and meaning, generation after generation. It begs the question, “How many rounds do you suppose it will take till we can accept without reservation that the learning of our mother and hers before her and so on, precisioned birthing us into who we are in this world, and then perhaps not waist our precious mom-moments on reinventing the mom wheel?“ Just asking.

Ya know, at my age, the memory of resisting my mother and all she stood for and the way she did it, is very vague in my mind. It's like a story told by someone else, not lived by me. Perhaps that is the gift of forgiveness, motherhood and gratitude; the edges smooth over and only warm fuzzies seem real. Or it’s the some-timers…. I don’t know.

What I know is that I thought I knew what love was, in the sense of loving unconditionally, till I was up with my newborn for the millionth night in a row, and even as I doggedly, could not remember my own name, I realized there was no place, in no situation I would rather be, than in that moment, loving and comforting~ being with this child.

The lesson (for those of us who are poor learner and wheel re-inventors) is not without repetition opportunities; ‘important’ phone calls interrupted by skinned knees and “I love you, mommies”, deciphering the secret code behind the relentless questions, to find my child had discovered something they liked about themselves, they didn’t know how to champion~ being their champion~ and sometimes keeping their secret, the moments when you poignantly
realize that you don’t need anything about this child to be different than it is, or to change in anyway for you to love without reservation…

This is the stuff we live for ~completion~ Love received by being given fully…

~Ummm~ the joys of motherhood ~Yummy~

~There's a mom somewhere in there~

All the ideas I came into motherhood with, have, one by one left the nest. Reality ushered in a different scope, one that required humility to participate. I remember when Randi (grown up in pic) was a baby; when a cold virus collapsed the roof on me as a mom… Oh, god, the crying of the helpless~ (Yeah, I’m talking about me here) It’s such a painful, hopeless feeling, forcing me to do what I was sure I would never do, (self proclaimed atheist at the time) to eek out that beckoning prayer (“God, have mercy and take over”) while dialing the phone for my own mother.

Yes, you guess it. She knew exactly what to do. (She must have got the manual with her babies).

Being a mother teaches me who I am undercover, forcing me to interpret and respond from a place of love to situations where only fear seems available to me. I am astonished by the miracle I witness…

I just spent a grown-up-girl week with my sister Lyn in her yummy Lyn world of wisdom and freedom, motherhood and family, meaningful conversation on walks and sit-ins and movies and teenagers. (more about this visit with pics later)

She sent this marvelous presentation which I have posted below for you to share with me. From a mother’s stand point, it’s absolutely complete… enjoy…

From Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author:

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in

disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three

almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three

people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid

of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell

vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor

blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors

closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip

up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.

Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at

its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible

except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me

now. Pene lope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on

sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood

education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and

Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But

I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like

memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on

the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they

taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then

becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that

it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds

well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a

stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his

sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on

his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time

my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of

research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-

shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you

must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I

remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful

books on child development, in which he describes three different

sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-

quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there

something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong

with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically

challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China . Next year he

goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes

were made. T hey have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When- Mom-

Did Hall of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad

language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The

times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover.

The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling

out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I

responded, "What did you get wrong?". (She insisted I include that.)

The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and

then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all

insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons

for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while

doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly

clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs.

There is one picture of the three of them , sitting in the grass on a

quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and

1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about,

and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing:

dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little

more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and

what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought

someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now

I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they

demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The

books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I

was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound

up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more

than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books

never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.