Exhaling and Meaning It - Hope for the New Year

I wanted to exhale and be done with 2010. There isn’t a particular event or singular reason for this. I am simply ready for a fresh, new, year. Like all of the other years that have come and gone, 2010 – a year that sped by – was laced with accomplishments and disappointments, discoveries and more loss of innocence. I know that time is constant, but as it passes, it seems to be accelerating.


I was so busy running away from the discomfort of the empty nest, that I actually scored a few points in succeeding. Like everything that you run away from, ‘it’ eventually catches up to you and makes up for lost time.

I don’t lack for having my own high level of creative and academic interests. In addition to my work, I am involved with nature almost to a fault, meaning that when dead birds fall from the sky, turtles burn in the Gulf and oil covered pelicans die before our eyes, I get deeply depressed. I have always relied on my connection with Gaia as a companion to my own support system. Since childhood, I have maintained my balance with her.

Our natural environment was a vital part of and incorporated into our home school curriculum. We lived near the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, where my oldest son worked for some time, meaning that we went to and from the center daily. Our activities involved bird banding, hiking on and around the center and a variety of self designed programs. We conducted aqua labs on the pontoon boat on Squam Lake and participated in workshops about habitats, solved environmental mysteries and were dialed into the vast, active wildlife center.

On our farm, we had laying hens, goats and cute but useless bunnies. I have written about the significance of our farm in several previous blogs. We lived outdoors; we lived hard. From collecting, splitting and stacking firewood and cooking on a kitchen wood cookstove to heating our water and using a clothesline and every possible method to conserve, we enjoyed and carried a sense of pride in our respect for nature.

When life took a dramatic turn, and we found ourselves on a different mountain with a different set of challenges, all of our previous voluntary sacrifices became a necessity. My own life came into sharp focus.

My awareness of the importance of nature always heightens during difficult times. Recently, I actually lived on a pristine lake – a wildlife reserve – for three months completely in the elements. My nature journal, “The Summer on Duncan Lake” will come of it.

When I face uncertainty or hardship, it is always my instinct to go to nature in some manner. I have spent most of my life in or around the woods, on mountain tops for the most part, although now I am deep in the woods surrounded by rivers, lakes and mountains. I’m in a valley this time.

I feel lost when I am not in the woods or at least near the wild. If I am separated from nature too long, I have severe anxiety attacks. One time I had been very ill for a few months. Although I was living on a mountain top at the time - during the phase leading up to our swift and dramatic departure - my mysterious illness had taken a great deal of strength. I went to the ocean. It had been a good year since I had visited my old childhood spot in Maine. When I got out of the car I ran to the beach and dropped down on the sand. I could not move. The sand was cold on my face, because it was May. I could feel and hear the pulse of the waves. I fell asleep and did not wake up for two hours. When I awoke, I felt dazed but renewed. It was as if I had slept for the first time in months.

I spent my summers on the ocean in Maine. I am a Cancer; the moon and ocean is a life force for me, even though I have chosen the woods. I am still always near a body of water; there is a pond, brooks, lakes and rivers all around me.

I had a rule for many years, and that was that we (my children and I) could never wear shoes when we went for a walk, unless it was cold or in a place where the ground was unforgiving. Wet, damp or dry grass, warm smooth rock, sand…they all serve as a healing balm on bare feet.

When life is overwhelming, I immerse myself in nature. I go for a walk, swim in the lake, ocean or river. I sit in the middle of the woods and listen to birds, a trickling brook, wind in the trees and various creatures, or I listen to enchanting nothingness – stillness.

Even when life is great, I need my fix. I don’t use nature to cure all of my ills. I celebrate and honor her as well. I think that is why the four seasons are so appealing to me. By the time I start to tire of one season, the next is born. My biorhythms are in sync with New England changes.

When my daughter decided to be a traveling kid, a certain part of me became helpless and fearful. I wasn’t sure how to process her choice of lifestyle. It was foreign to me. I have been learning to take in the information that I have about her and release it. This has probably been the most difficult aspect of parenting thus far. Raising my young primarily on my own was demanding but not impossible. Having your beautiful and talented young daughter hitchhike and hop on box cars and travel the country seems impossible. Avoiding eye contact with harm’s way seems unattainable.

I have tried giving up the news, even though I usually only watch Link TV’s Democracy Now, Thom Hartman and Grit TV and Free Speech TV, other news trickles in. I hear of death and destruction from fires, tornadoes all in the places where my daughter is traveling on foot. I have reached a point where it would be best for me to wear blinders and earplugs.

That won’t work. Worrying about things that you cannot change is fruitless. I have been working on letting go. Like the waxing and waning moon, I succeed or fail miserably. It is because I am still transitioning from active mother to crone. In our society, that is not as honored as in other, ancient cultures, however, I am committed to accepting and celebrating this phase.

Thanks to Our Mother, I am able to turn to her when I need time to regain my strength and composure; when I need to connect to my realness.

I had no desire to celebrate New Years Eve. I felt that familiar clenched fist inside of my chest; the misery of fear of the unknown. I betrayed myself and secretly watched the weather channel and tried to figure out if the tornadoes were still a threat. I bit my fingernails. I refused to watch the ball at Times Square. I didn’t want to drink champagne. I was clearly bitched up. I wanted assurance that everyone I loved was safe. I wanted to exhale and mean it...to get rid of the remnants of uncertainty that crowded my head like sticky cobwebs that I could not reach with the vacuum.

After making sure it was just another night, I went to sleep. 2011 was going to arrive no matter what. Confetti, horns, drinks and hangovers weren’t going to change anything. I refused to make resolutions. They are like those rote prayers that hit the ceiling and fall on the floor. Like rules, they are made to be broken. We need to be in a constant state of evolving. January 1st should be no different than any other day. Got problems? What’s the date? Are you going to wait until January 1st? No.

I woke up on New Years Day exhausted and with an attitude. I knew that change was imminent, and it just happened to be January 1st. I knew that I would drink a cup of coffee and think about breakfast even though I wasn’t really hungry, at least not for food.

The snow on the ground stuck for the first time this winter. It was warm. The Redpolls descended on the ground under the feeders in a flock of about twenty bringing about the first smile of the year. I was relieved because the birds had been oddly scarce. I walked around to the different windows in the house and tried to assess the snowshoeing situation. There wasn’t enough snow and it was getting soft and mushy. I would just have to walk in my gray and lilac colored boots, which I like because they are warm, fat and kid-like.

I pulled on my green fleece jacket and blue checked scarf and headed out into the woods. Within moments, my head cleared. My breathing was deep and cleansing; the cold sliced through my unwelcomed invisible shield and sharpened my view. My pace picked up as I followed turkey and coyote tracks into the woods and around the pond. I stopped and examined other tracks – wildcat, raccoon and red squirrel. The landscape provided much needed relief as I practically broke into a run from one set of miracles to the next. I took over 30 photographs, careful not to take too many of the same thing, which I tend to do in my excitement.

The language of nature spoke. I was wrapped in an unhealthy cocoon of fear, dread and worry of the unknown. I was deep within the confines of this trap, and my attempt to run and seek comfort had caused me to tumble even deeper into the abyss.

Walking in the woods, again, is like bathing. Last night the fist started clenching in my chest as I read more and more about the dead birds falling from the sky and the dead fish on the riverbanks in Arkansas.

My breathing became shallow as I read the list of the top twenty declining birds; some of my favorites were on there, like the Eastern Meadow Lark, Common Tern and Little Blue Heron. Even though I was slightly afraid, which is what happens when I spiral downward with my thoughts; I made myself stand on the porch in the stillness of the cold, dark, night. The icy wind stung my cheeks and I fought the urge to grab the door handle when I heard a rustle in the trees. Within a few moments, my breathing returned to normal. I could see a few bright stars in between clouds.

I cannot save all of the birds or creatures or even my own flesh and blood. But I can reject owning that which is not mine to own. It serves no purpose. Instead, I have decided that I will continue to maintain my wisdom and offerings to all of those creatures who decide to land on my doorstep. I will sustain and nurture, but will not wilt and die from fear or lack of understanding all that there is.

Brown Eyes to Brown Eyes : Letting Go

Beware of falling into the trap of thinking that these days will last forever, or even longer than you know that they will. We get caught up in the excitement of daily activities and often cannot imagine a very different life.

Let me be more specific. I remember the transitioning of my being and thoughts as they occurred at the moment of the birth of my first child. In many ways, I too was born on that same day. I looked at my beautiful newborn son and thought; I will protect him with my life and make sure that he is happy, healthy and unharmed. It was a time of truly putting someone else before me in a way that I had never experienced. It was the miracle of life.


I looked at him when he slept, when I nursed him and held him close to my heart. He was unmarked, innocent; a new life starting out as a fresh, unmolded piece of clay. I wondered what shape he would take. Being a potter had taken on a clear new meaning.


Sometimes, in the wee morning hours, I would think that we were the only two people on earth who were awake. Being a first time mother, I had not figured out that it was okay if he was awake, that he didn’t necessarily need anything. He wasn’t fussy, just wakeful. Exhausted and hormonally stirred, I mentioned the lack of sleep to my father. He smiled and told me that we were getting to know each other.


I never expected that kind of maternal wisdom from my father, but I got it; a gift that I continue to cherish. From that day on, whenever anyone complains about lack of sleep because of a newborn, I smile and tell them that they are getting to know each other. This way of thinking took away the edge when I sat up at night with my other two newborns. Celebrate.


When I discovered that I was pregnant again, I panicked a bit because I thought it impossible to love another like I did my son. Sixteen months later, I learned another valuable lesson in motherhood; yes, your heart can handle loving another child as you do the first. That was undeniably remarkable to me then. I loved my two sons unconditionally and knew that when my daughter was born two years later that I had the capacity to love yet another child.


I continued to think that I somehow could keep all three of them safe, loved, nurtured and happy. I have no regrets regarding my love for them then and now. Many of our experiences could be taken from the pages of “Little House on the Prairie.” We played music together, had a farm on a pristine mountaintop and I home educated them for many years. I must add that we were not religious fundamentalists hunkered down waiting for the feds with our guns cocked. We were involved in what I term a “Classical Education.”


The days were filled with laughter, learning, music and discovery. I remember thinking that this was my life and I couldn’t picture it any other way. I was too deliriously busy to entertain the thought of an end. There was always tomorrow.


Of course we had some serious obstacles to face together. Our life was far from perfect and we endured certain traumas that many people would not have escaped unharmed. The hardships themselves were not the issue. How we navigated them was what mattered. They were seeds waiting to be found, gathered and planted for a defining and bountiful future. I am pleased with how we conducted ourselves and the bond that we forged between us; a mother and her three children.


Today they are grown. My eldest is in the Navy and will be married within a year, my second son is in the beginning phases of a solid career violinist and my daughter is a Bohemian gypsy whose choices keep me awake every night. All have chosen a very different path in life that suits them. Like all of us, they are the result of their choices and actions.


I was proud of myself when my first son left for college, I told myself (and others) that I did not suffer from the ‘Empty Nest Syndrome’ because I was careful to nurture and cultivate my own interests and passions. Now I see that it was simply untrue. I did not feel the actual impact of loss because the other two were still at home. The nest was not empty.


I thought that there was something wrong with me because I was handling it so well. Of course I felt a sense of loss when he went away, but it wasn’t as intense as I have seen it in other mothers.


Then a few years later my second son went off to music conservatory. At that point I had sold everything that wasn’t nailed down to afford his music training, so I was relieved that he finally made it. We struggled financially right up until the day before he left.


I wasn’t sure how I felt. The empty nest syndrome was starting to peck lightly into my psyche but it was faint and I could ignore it. I thought that it was the perfect time to really focus on my daughter, who was like that person on the end of the ‘crack the whip’ game that we played on the skating rink of my childhood.


She was sixteen-years-old, had her first boyfriend and went to an alternative private day school. I worked four days a week and attended a low residency graduate school. As much as I wanted to have that special mother – daughter time that seemed to fit so perfectly, it simply didn’t happen.


We enjoyed each other when we had the opportunity, but she was entrenched in the teenage social scene and was anything but typical. Being blessed with an extraordinary amount of creativity that oozes out of each pore can often equal being misunderstood.


As appropriate for a natural, healthy teenager, she needed to separate from me to establish her identity and independence. We are so much alike that it is scary to me in a way and then it was frustrating for her. My mother was not an artist; I grew up as the artsy one in an athletic family. I knew what it was like to be misunderstood. But I get my daughter all too well. It was this almost oneness that drove a sort of wedge between us.


Both of us are cellists, writers, painters, melancholics, naturalists and activists. She published her first book when she was seventeen. When reading it, I was stunned when I read a section of poetry that was unmistakably familiar, yet I had not seen these particular poems before that moment. It was then that I discovered that we used to sit by our windows looking out at the same night sky writing poetry. She was in her room upstairs while I sat in my room below hers. We looked at the same moon, the same apple trees, and the same mountains and wrote very different poetry. Unlike the years of playing cello duets and being in orchestra, we did this alone together.


She went to college for two years and quit so that she could travel around the country playing music with kindred spirits. Her heroes are Jack Kerouac, Woody Guthrie and a host of others who travelled this vast country of ours.


Now I must take time to learn the language of letting go. Last winter she was in New Orleans. When she was there, she lost her cell phone and did not contact me for months. For the first time since she left the safety of our home, I was consumed with fear. It is the unknowing that is too difficult for me to accept. The pecking of the empty nest syndrome shattered me at that point.


She returned to her home base in Vermont last summer and spent time with me. Then she traveled to Chicago for a while and returned again to visit me. When we were together, I asked her to help me understand. We both did our best. She is a ‘traveling kid’, which is part of a rapidly growing subculture of youth who have pretty much given up on our society and lack of options. They travel around the country playing music and doing migrant work. It’s very exciting for them. They are resourceful and have a code amongst themselves. They do not panhandle; however, they earn their money unconventionally. This has been a way of life in this country throughout history.


If she was someone else’s daughter, I would be excited and climb on my soapbox talking about her courage and determination to stay out of a broken system that has let them down in unimaginable ways.


However, she is my daughter. She is traveling as the wind takes her with her backpack and whatever instrument she is taking on that particular leg of her journey. (She started with her cello, and is down to a ukulele). She earns her living by busking.


For the sake of my well being, I am teaching myself to let go of the fear that has gripped me. It is a process, a time to comprehend that our children are not ours at all. We love them, teach them and give them the best guidance that we know how. When they mature and spread their wings to fly, we cannot fly for them. We can let them know that we are here to catch them, hopefully, if they fly close enough and if you know where to find them if and when they fall. It is the most frightening time that I have experienced.


I became a slave to my cell phone, taking it with me into the bathroom, afraid that I might miss her call. This fear has come to own me. But I decided that it cannot, because it was taking a toll on my health. I cannot control another person, even my daughter. It is a waste of energy. I try to erase the constant images that emerge; images of her as a sweet and innocent child who had tea parties with her dolls and the cat. I try to stay in the present and maintain a sense of balance instead of feeling hopeless, afraid and lost.


She will come to visit me again before she heads west. I will not plead with her to stay, as I did before. I will not offer her the moon and stars. I will not pretend that I do not care. I will appreciate the time that we have together and we will sit outside and look at the moon together. She will promise to call me and I will try not to cry.


I am here. It is now. I cannot sell myself to fear. I can, however, pass this message along to you. If you are a parent of young children now, please cherish and savor every moment, because it will not last forever. They grow up and go away. Trust, love and patience is what will bring them back but never as yours, rather as the free spirited individual who they have become. The umbilical cord is not severed; it continues to grow.