slowing down

The past year has been a wonderful one for me, but at the same time, the last three months since I went back to work have been incredibly stressful. I have spent most of the days exhausted, constantly apologizing to the people I love the most for being so grouchy, so irrational, so irritable all the time.

I know that this is all normal. This is life for a working mother. I know that it's supposed to get better with time. But throughout the fall as I got deeper and deeper into it, my heart began screaming at me that this is not the life I want. We didn't have a child so that we could turn her over to someone else to raise for us. I missed her so desperately, and I especially missed something I am just beginning to understand: mothering. So in 2010 that won't be my life anymore. I am going to slow down - way down.

The experiment starts next week. I am going to be a part-time worker. And I'll have four wonderful days a week at home with the Little Pea. We have found an amazing nanny for the other days, and my mom is also going to take on some child care.

I don't kid myself that starting next week, I'll get back all the time I miss so much for knitting yoga, meditation, reading, writing, designing and having lots of grown-up time alone with HWWLLB. But maybe I'll get just a little of that back, and boy will I be grateful for whatever moments I do get.

Mostly what I'll get is to be with our little girl more than I'm at work. She'll get to be with me more than with child care providers. Maybe I'll be the one who hears her say "mama" for the first time.

The challenge is going to be staying slowed down. Resisting the urge to cram twice as many chores, projects and commitments into my life since I'm technically working less.

I know that a lot of you have been through all this, and made lots of different decisions for yourself and your families, and I respect all of you and your choices very much. I am so curious about how other moms and dads have been able to resist the busy-ness in order to just be with your children and be their mom (or dad). Do you take them along and integrate them into your work or projects? Do you carve out sacred time with them when nothing else is allowed to interrupt? Do you just wing it and hope for the best?

In the end, I guess what I need to slow down for the most is to find out who I am now. I know that I'm not the same person I was a year ago at this time. I can see that there are lots of things I have taken on - but what I really wonder about is what do I have to just let go of, and leave behind?

tape recorder

End of the year, end of the decade. As a fast-forward-moving, future-oriented sort of person, I'm caught off-guard by all the backwards-looking at the end of the year. It's always a wonderful surprise for me to find that other people have actually been reflecting on this for a while, and have ideas to share (Top 100 songs of the year?! Wow, who knew?!?).

And this year, not only do we get to hear everyone's top 100 ___ of the year, but of the whole crazy decade. So many sappy-memory moments to enjoy.

I would like to start a tape recorder right now to catch it all, like in middle school when I had a boom box that had a radio and a tape player in it, and you could record your favorite DJ on the radio all evening while you waited for him to play the song you requested, and maybe, just maybe he would even play your whiny middle-school voice trying to sound cool and older while asking him to play it.

Or maybe I'll write down all the lists of Top 100 books and movies and everything else, and glue them into my journal and decorate the page with little colored-pencil doodles (That just sounds middle school - in actuality I do that sort of thing with some frequency as an adult).

So what are the "Top __" lists you're loving right now? These are my favorites:

The 2009 Pulitzer prizes for fiction (my reading list for the next month or two)
The WXPN Year in Review - Top 100 Songs and Top 10 Albums from my favorite radio station
Your Worst Shot 2009 Flickr group (so many of these are better than my best shots - *sigh*).
Grist's Top Green Stories of the '00s

Now I'm off to scarf down some more of my Dad's amazing Christmas cookies while I try to resurrect one of my Top Abandoned Knitting Projects of the Decade, a lovely half-finished Minimalist Cardigan. I hope you're having a great end-of-the-decade, too!

early morning

It's early. Sunrise is still a little ways off, and I am sipping a cup of tea at the kitchen table, enjoying some quiet.

I have lost a lot of free time: time for yoga, time for knitting, time for reading long beautiful novels. But this is one kind of time that I have gained: very quiet time, alone, with a warm cup of tea and a cat beside me. There is a little warm spot on my neck where a baby was recently curled, and I am looking forward to sunrise, when she really wakes up, and I will pick her up and bring her to look again at the Christmas tree, and she will be delighted, all over again.

It is very peaceful.

If I had worries, they would fill this space.

Instead, I look at my list of to-do's, and notice that one of them says, "relax." I decide to do that one.

I sip my tea, poke about in my knitting basket a bit, and hear a little voice waking up down the hallway. Another morning, just beginning.

holiday fantasies

This is me every year at the holidays: longing for more.

(Acutally, right after this photo was taken, I gorged myself on pie... but let's don't disrupt the theme I've got going here).

Every year I bemoan the too-few hours in the day, as I wish I had more time to decorate the house, bake treats, make gifts, send greetings... and every year I get to do some of it, and at least savor the fantasy of all the other fun things I meant to do.

This year, I'm starting to realize that my holiday crafting and nesting will consist of little more than the savored fantasy. My first Christmas as a full-time working mama with a little baby at home...

Don't get me wrong, I am very excited about the first Christmas with the Little Pea. I can't wait to sing carols with her and snuggle together by the fire on Christmas morning, give her her very first Christmas present, and watch her be spoiled to death by our family. In fact, as I write this I'm getting even more excited about it!

But this will be the first Christmas in a long time - maybe since I was the Little Pea's age - that my family members won't be getting gifts made by me. I am trying like heck to finish a pair of socks that I started last April, and I have every intention of making a gift for the Little Pea, but I think that's going to be the sum of it. *sigh* So sad!

But all the same, I want you to know that even though I probably won't send you a hand-made card this year, I am thinking of you. Imagine that we got together and baked cookies on a cold, blustery December afternoon and drank spiced cider and danced around to goofy Christmas music. I am savoring the memories of many blustery December afternoons making little gifts with friends, and the evenings squirreled away in a coffee shop somewhere on December 23rd trying like heck to finish a way-too-ambitious gift in time.

I hope you get to make some of those memories this year! I'll try not to drool (better go eat some of that pie).

thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

In honor of my favorite holiday, I wanted to share this poem with you.

Wild Geese
by Wendell Berry

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over the fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

I hope that you enjoy a feast of gratitude today.

starting fresh

Time to cultivate this feeling again.

It always feels so good to put a tough time behind me and start anew.

October is usually my favorite month, because of the wonderful weather, the colors, the crisp air and the chance to wear sweaters and scarves again. Our anniversary is in October, and the annual family camping trip.

But I've been anticipating October all year with some trepidation, because this year it was the month that I went back to work.

And it went pretty well, it really did. The Little Pea seems to be adjusting well, and HWWLLB is doing great as a stay-at-home-dad. Everything was in great shape at work when I got back there, and I seem to be getting back into the swing of things fairly well. But oh my goodness, the time.

I'll always think of this October as the month that I ran to get everywhere. Once I started back at work I didn't cook a meal, do a load of laundry that wasn't baby clothes, write a blog post (as you may have noticed) or go anywhere other than work and our house (and the family camping trip - I've almost recovered from that). I did eat three meals a day, sleep decently, enjoy time with the Little Pea and meet the deadlines I had to hit at work (just barely). HWWLLB and I even spent a little quality time together on our anniversary. But I have never tried so hard to keep it together - and I did keep it together - at such an incredibly bare-bones level. Holy moly. Is this the rest of my life?

I hope not.

Keeping it together is better than not, for sure, and I know that there are going to be times when I just can't keep it together anymore and just fall apart. But I need some free time back. This weekend I decided to help that along by clearing away some mental clutter and finishing a few projects that have been lying around.

Saturday I pulled out a stack of almost-finished knitted things that had been languishing for months. I sewed on buttons, sewed in tags, blocked and finished and put them away in the drawers (or gift bags) where they belong. Now Little Pea has a couple of spanky new sweaters to wear - just in time for some cool damp weather - and believe it or not, the sloth is almost done! I've finally finished all the knitting, and this weekend I pieced it together and felted it. I still have some finishing work to do, including some fancy needle-felting, but it's almost there! I can't wait to show it to you.

That was Saturday. Sunday is going to be the day for tidying. Our house is definitely showing the battle scars of the past month, and in particular my little areas are just atrocious. There isn't one more bare surface available for piling things on, and it's gnawing at my sanity. So today is the day to deconstruct piles, pay bills, recycle junk, do laundry, take things to the dry cleaner, and tie up all the other itty-bitty loose ends that have turned into such a snarl in my space. The perfect activity for a gray, rainy November Sunday (particularly if some knitting works its way into all that).

Nothing like a fresh start to another month - let this one be just a little less hectic than the last. Just a little?

twilight

Twilight is so beautiful. The light and fading golden color make it my favorite time of day.



Last night I was trying to capture the way these flowers were glowing, reflecting the last of the waning light in our front yard as the day turned to evening.

This is also the twilight of my maternity leave - the last few days at home with Little Pea, with nothing to do but play and take care of her. As with the end of the day, this seems to be the sweetest time I have ever known. Everything seems golden, more beautiful and poignant than I have ever seen it.

Of course, nothing is changing. I will still be her mama, and we'll still take walks together and play with toys and nurse quietly (and sometimes noisily) in the rocking chair. I'll still squeeze in a row or two of knitting here and there whenever I can. But of course, I'll be shoe-horning all this wonder and beauty into the fragmented bits of time before and after work. And I have a feeling that these too-fast golden hours are going to fly by all the more quickly now.

This week Little Pea and I took our last trip together to the Wednesday afternoon farmer's market. We bought veggies and bread, and visited with our downtown friends and farmers. I found myself really strolling, walking slower than normal to just soak up as much of it as I could. I pushed the idea of time from my mind altogether and just enjoyed the moments as we had them. It felt so good to take things in more completely - the smiles of the people there, the thoughts and ideas shared in conversations with friends, the simple colors and shapes of the vegetables.

Being in the moment, letting go of a hurry to a goal or destination, is a lesson that the Little Pea teaches me over and over. I am so grateful for the chance to practice, every day, that this time at home with her has given me. I hope I can cultivate it in my hurry-hurry work life as well - even when I want to hurry home to her.