Mother's Day Coming Down

Wow, it seems like every minute of the month of May is booked up for me. My birthday on the 21st, with a party on that day and the day after too maybe, MARY coming to town on Memorial Day (Mmmm's abound) and Enhancing Fertility for Couples this weekend as well as a wedding and Mother's Day at Bookwoman. Whew!

I'm sitting here at the kitchen table, getting ready to go pick up Bodhi from preschool, going over the pieces I've written that I may like to read out loud this weekend. I am crying as I re-read some of these; all of them are from my "Five Minute Mama" experiment, begun two years or so ago, wherein I assign a word a week and we mamas write, without stopping or editing, on that word for five minutes. The pieces are not as good as I had hoped, but this one just touched me so much...I mean, I know intellectually that his babyhood is nearly gone, and that as difficult as it has been, it still grieves me to see it go. It can't be easy for him, either. He still nurses, which is probably not that good for either of us at this point, but I'm not ready to completely let it go. And he's only just beginning to show glimmers of interest in potty training.  So he knows. He knows it's coming. He's two and a half now, and I'm so grateful that he's that and not three.

One insight I've had recently, among many, is that I need to let go of my dreams and desires around being a badass, in-demand yoga teacher. I just cannot commit the time it would take for me to be that right now. When I put time into it, like when I practice or teach or meditate or train, I love it. Don't get me wrong. Practicing yoga, and teaching yoga, is absolutely vital to my existence. I LOVE it. And it's fun, just about the most fun thing I can think of, to be honest. But I really and truly prefer spending my time, my guilt-free, joyous, appreciative, chosen time, with my son. And with my husband. This is very painful for me to admit, but it is true. And I know that I wouldn't have all of that for my family if I didn't put in the time on the mat or in quiet, getting to know myself, first. 

So here's the piece that is making me cry today, written I'm sure before Bodhi was even a year old. Awww...

[hold]

Living on a prayer, holding fast to the center, circling in flight while holding. Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us. Except sometimes they do. I hold my son as though he were a part of me that had always been missing. My life before him shimmers so distantly from the importance, the weight, the depth, the breadth of this moment. The here and now. All in a second's breath. He molds to my form with his, he hold my silver charms in his teeth, holds my hair in his hands, holds my fingers in his sleep, holds onto soft bath towel and avocado and veggie puffs and teething biscuits and drum sticks and prayer bowl and CD cover and ball and spoon and toy hammer and the dog's tail and his very own remote control, all the same, all with equal parts wonder and joy, ownership and knowledge that they may all eventually, some sooner than later, fall from his grasp. It is a lesson, how fleeting, how we hold on. And yet he knows he can hold on to me in order to stand, to reach for what's above him, to comfort and console him, to reassure him when the noises are loud and mysterious, or a stranger wants his attention. I can only hope to hold him in the deepest stillness, teach him the value of resting there while the world spins out of control around us, teach myself the great lesson in letting go, loosening the hold, closing the eyes, and trusting the wind for once, to navigate the rough terrain of the heart and time.