rose colored glasses

Hello world.
here we are in January, and I am sitting at my desk having just cleaned the living room as much as I could in one hour.
One hour to take the tree down and vacuum the billion needles from the carpet, to push back, pile up, drag, dust, and make a dent in the squalor that just happens, magically, when I am not constantly tending.

It is rather horrifying how fast things turn to shit, and also just what "clean" looks like now-- proving, truly, that everything is relative.

I was so wanting to "finish" the job, but the job, I think (I know), is unfinishable.

This is about progress, and then holding it or returning to it, or something. But this is not, apparently, about truly cleaning or truly finishing.

So, fueled by warmed up tea and honeyed up toast, here I am. Needing to return to workwork but after a truly aggravating day yesterday work-wise where I discovered that the website I am working on looks like shit too, not even in a living room way, well.
today will be about starting over.
But. Not quite yet.


I wanted to say that
Little miss Della is a fierce companion, and she is every bit the mini teenager with stubborn righteousness that is both fabulous and maddening and
oh
she is so tender.

I know my tenderness and am surprised by my fierceness.
I know her fierceness and am surprised by her tenderness.

this is about staying open to what is, not what I think I know, or what I want or wanted for me or for anyone... this is about this moment. this joy. this fierce tenderness and tender fierceness. this is about a million kinds of love. this is about taking notice of what is working with such intense gratitude. this is about taking notice of the ordinary moments that are truly extraordinary.  this is about reveling, it really is.

I posted the following images on facebook but realize that my incremental updates have been there of late... but I am pulling back from that particular soul sucking vortex, not completely because apparently I am addicted to seeing other people's lives through rose colored glasses... but pulling back, yes, to better appreciate and revel in my own fabulous imperfect reality.
So I will leave with you a few things that make me very very very very very happy-- no rose colored glasses necessary.

Best. dad. ever.

rocked

today is my last day with a 2 year old.
how is that possible? truly... astonishing.

I was thinking back to before, as if it is a different lifetime. Standing at the fridge with the vials of liquid gold. Hoping for the best with each stinging injection, each stylized ritual.
There was a rhythm to it. The cycles, I mean.
And now, it is all downhill wild rush of in-the-moment-ness, yes with moments of foreshadowing and some of nostalgia.
Was she ever little? She is so big now.
Was I ever not this person? This one, this tired one with the biggest most filled and overflowing heart? This one, struggling and blessed, competent, incompetent, flailing, tender?
This one who is loving more and more and more and realizing, bone deep, that love has NOTHING to do with ease, and everything to do with mystery.

I hate when folks talk about marriage being work
and parenting being work
and work work work
hard hard hard
i thought, great, thanks for that. welcome! I wanted to hear, welcome to the best things ever!

and it is the best thing ever,
but to be honest, a lot of it is hard. hard hard. hard because there has never been a me doing this before, parenting this amazing child, learning these things in these moments.
i am humbled and awed and feel as if there is KNOWING that is just over there, that if I could just reach out and touch it, I could socket into a river of knowing, a river of ease, a river of being able to go with the flow of this without so much internal struggle and doubt.

it is the hardest most wonderful thing I have ever done, have ever had done to me, have ever taken part in doing.
there is no ease in this.
there are easy moments, moments that feel like silk, calm water under calm sky.
gentle.

but most of this truly is a mad rush.
a mad rush flying by in a twirly skirt wearing wings
or flashing impatience
or laughing hard enough to reach the very core of the earth and the heavens above.
my earth is being rocked, people. In every moment.

I am learning by the moment, learning how to be(more) centered in the storm, how to create safety, when to walk away, how to get down on my knees, hold my arms out, and welcome a sad being close, when no magic can happen but everything is magical that is happening...
I am learning to hold on and let go of ideas of plans of expectations of self judgement...
I am learning and relearning and relearning.
I am in need of a well to recharge and want quite desperately to build a tiny reserve so my patience does not end like a cliff dive onto rocks bristled with barnacles.
it runs out. just. like. that. and I suddenly hate the way my voice sounds, my chest feels, my face feels, my eyes, my mouth, as if I have been hijacked.
I am learning to get up, or go inwards. I am trying to learn to shut my mouth. Breathe.

but the thing I am learning most is how rarely I give my full attention.
and this may be the saddest thing.
the phone, email, internet, connection with things *out there*, pull at me all the time. I don't want to miss out, and in so doing I am missing out
on this
this miraculous now.

so my intention truly is to spend more time present. even if it is in one minute increments.
the space of 10 breaths.
focus, singularly, as singularly as possible on this amazing person.

I know this is about me me me and you want to know about Della Della Della and that will come, I promise.

20 days

Transitions are not my strong point.

It's been 20 days since my last post.

I cannot tell you how lonely I feel for this blog, and this community. I just somehow cannot quite give myself permission to log on and write with so many other things that need to be done. Even though this feeds my soul, grounds me, reminds me of me. I need to remember to choose to do it anyway.

The house short sale is moving ahead: closing in 27 days.

The new apartment is a smelly blank slate, and my heart is aching as I face leaving this funky place that is so very effortlessly me. I did not have to create it, it just was. Making the apartment feel like home will take time, effort, and an open heart. I know it will be "fine", but the contrast with this place of light and air and woods and wildflowers is almost too much. I need to think of it all differently. The most important bottom line is this: I am trading this place for freedom.

There is so much to do. And trying to "do" in the swampyard of such heavy emotions? Well...

yeah.

Della is doing wonderfully except for her first barfing last night. I sat there, baby on lap, surprisingly hot barf cupped in my hands and made the choice to dump it on the floor rather than the rug. All elements of this new life.

Did I tell you I fell with Della a few weeks ago? I fell hard and fast against the wall and doorway while she slept in my arms. She stayed sleeping, and in that moment, I felt like maybe I was not a poser.

Motherhood after infertility is rife with the weirdest acute feelings of otherness, of somehow being an outsider in the world of mothers. I do not feel part of that group at all. I feel different. A weird cocktail of shame or embarrassment... Is it because I am so much older? Or because somehow it came so hard? I don't know. I do know this-- I've been too scared to even try to find a local tribe. This weekend my sister came (praise the god-goddess-all-that-is) and brought me reminders of the important things that are not things at all. We went to the lake, wallowed and breathed in fresh cooler air after a week of roasting. I ran into a beautiful woman who was in my birthing class who was there with her partner and their baby girl, born three weeks before Della. Her baby's name rhymes with Della's and we laughed. We're the only two from the class who had girls.

I looked into this woman's eyes, and felt a wave of longing and loneliness I had been ignoring: This want, so badly, to be part of a community in the real world.

In this time of so many transitions, I have really tucked in tightly, and it is hard to imagine opening up-- this vulnerability comes up with such a rush of sadness/otherness. I swear.

Anyway, in spite of me, after she got home she wrote and reached out. I hope to have the guts to meet.

I've always had fantasies about waking up and being able to:

play piano

understand linear equations

whatever

I want to know but always balk at the effort and process it takes to learn, knowing I need to be willing to be really bad at the thing I want to become good at.

I want to have community. I don't want to have to build it. I don't want to be bad at it. I don't want to fail and try again. I just want to be able to lean back into it like a big comfortable chair.

So, anyway, wow. Guess I hit on a nerve there.

Nerves.

Mine.

Anyway, I must get back to work. Sunlight is making the garden look insanely beautiful- coneflower, brown eyed susan's, purple spikey things, hosta blooms that are visited by hummingbirds...daisies as tall as I am. Lush, lovely....

Ok, really, back to work. Signing off with a lovely photo of Della a few weeks back at 8 months.

gaga, enoughness, and being a rock star

Kymberli from I'm a smart one (she's worth reading no matter what!)- had a recent entry that my newly up and working internet allowed me to stumble across just now. With her permission, I wanted to include some of it here-- yes, it is about Lady Gaga, and it is TOTALLY WORTH READING.

Last weekend I sat down to watch HBO's premiere of Gaga's Monster Ball Tour,intending to only watch the first ten or so minutes, just long enough to self-righteously slap myself on the back for proving, once again, that I am sooo not a follower. But within the first five minutes, I found myself transfixed by the sight of her crying, her emotions just as bare as her naked, pre-Maybellined face. She was backstage preparing for the show -- the sold-out crowd at Madison Square Gardens already beginning to scream for her -- and she unexpectedly erupted into tears when someone asked how she felt about that night's upcoming performance. I expected some Miss-America-just-got-crowned type of crap, but what came out was anything but. She explained that sometimes she still feels like the loser, off-beat girl in high school, the one who no one understood and whose personality was so oddly shaped that it didn't fit into any typical niche, thereby making her the brunt of relentless teasing. Now that she's who she is, she fears that she'll be a disappointment, that she'll let everyone down for not being good enough. In blistering vulnerability, she explained about how she still feels like she's fighting against years of trying to prove that she's bigger than people's misunderstanding.

So there I found myself, feeling like an ass for being one of Them, and I watched the entire concert. I latched onto every lyric, was dazzled by the dance and the screaming and the story, and reflected the entire time on how if she, whose greatness and relevance is validated every day by record-breaking and fans and awards, can still somehow find moments of feeling less and unworthy of who she is, then I cannot feel wrong for sometimes feeling judged and unworthy and unproven. We all have our moments, whether short or long in duration, where we feel lost, broken, destroyed, or sometimes all three at once. "...I have to pick my shit up and tell myself I'm a rock star...," she said.