the real new year

Doesn't it seem more natural to make our new year's resolutions in September? Rosh Hashanah works seasonally. But what exactly about the gray days of January inspires clarity, motivation, renewed dedication to our plans? The new school year is my new year. Give me a hint of cool air on a September morning and that residual fluttering in the belly (that I now feel for my kids heading off to school, rather than myself), and I'm ready to disinfect the cruddy humidifier, fold the basket of laundry that's been sitting in the living room for three days, and make a big slow cooker full of porridge.

Yes! There it is up there, before I cooked it. You see oatmeal, brown rice, barley, red quinoa, red lentils, and wheat berries. Oh boy. I found this recipe online last year and keep tinkering with the ingredients and proportions. However it turns out, it is always absurdly austere. The growing edge of breakfast. I haven't had it in months, but something about this shift in season made me ready, made me crave the stuff. I'm going to need fuel like this for all the resolutions that are bubbling up to the surface these days.

I credit our time in Vermont for the clarity and energy I feel lately, as much as the mercifully temperate days we've enjoyed this weekend. It was just what a vacation should be: an opportunity to remember who I am, and return to regular life with new motivation to become that person. And so I am sloughing off the effects of August's heavy days and the stress of approaching transitions, in favor of the lightness I feel now that the transitions are well and happily under way.

My resolutions are not very exciting, granted, but worth articulating nonetheless. To attend a yoga or pilates class regularly; to make a lot more time for novel-reading; to write more; to be more present to my children (especially now that I have sufficient child care during the week, hooray!); to make time for meditation/prayer at least a few times a week; to not take on more than I can handle - that is, to not forget the primary importance of the previous items on this list because I feel too frantic and busy. (And believe me, I can make busy out of a lazy Sunday afternoon. It starts inside and manifests in playdates I've arranged that I'm ambivalent about, volunteering to help with something I don't have time for, tackling a complicated dinner I've conceived with two hungry whiny kids underfoot. Why, Meagan??)

So. Slowness, care, intention...purging the pursuit of busy. It seems possible because of the new time Annapolis Elementary School and Lucky Duck Daycare have afforded me, and because I feel a fresh commitment to asking for what I need (and likewise, saying no when I need to). 

Of course I will still yell and check email while Frances tells me about her day and try to squeeze in one more errand even though it will make us late. I'll feel resentful instead of asking Mike to help with the dishes (which, when I finally ask, he will happily do). Of course I will. The lady nibbling her nails while she types these words knows about the staying power of bad habits. But maybe I'll do those things a little less. Or at least notice when I do.

Happy new year, friends.

p.s. Just in case you're curious, here are a few practical changes I've made that hopefully will facilitate a more peaceful approach to daily life. I would love to hear about how you approach some of these things and make the time and space you need...

Mike and I scheduled a weekly check-in to talk family business. The hope is that we'll save up all the "did you call so-and-so?" and "the car really needs an oil change" and "where will we spend next summer?" comments that we throw at each other over the course of the week in between everything else going on (thus subtly ratcheting up the stress level).  We've done it once. So far, so good.  

What else? I put a Saturday pilates class on the calendar, and I've been going. I read and/or write during Gabriel's naps, when he's home with me. The adolescent in me has always resisted this kind of "scheduling" (where's the sponaneity and fun in that?) but maybe I'm growing up. A little. I certainly feel awed by the way that structure can set us free (toddlers and adults alike).

chugga chugga cous cous

This is what I did with Gabriel on Tuesday: made some things that go out of construction paper, then borrowed some books about things that go at the library, then read about things that go at home, then motored the paper things that go around the backyard. With his big sister off at kindergarten all day, there isn't much to distract him from the objects of his affection. The power, the mystery, and the satisfying loud noises! The beep beep of a dump truck in reverse! So it was not surprising that the "chugga chugga cous cous" chant developed over curried chick peas and couscous at dinner, nor that Gabriel found it hilarious and worth repeating many many times.  

What does strike me as surprising is the degree to which our children's delight can become our own. A few years ago, I couldn't imagine searching out the highest spot on a playground in order to gaze at the excavators and bulldozers beeping and dumping and pushing in a distant construction site. But with Gabriel, it is sheer pleasure. The joy he takes in such a scene is irresistible. I love what he loves. Why? Because he loves it!

This week has felt absolutely golden. The only shadow is a sadness lurking around in a corner of my heart. I cannot ignore a growing sense of loss over not having had days like this with Frances. I worked full time until she was nearly three, when her brother was born. A Tuesday morning at the playground with the whole morning before us and nothing to do, no groceries to get, no bath to take, no toys to clean up before bed. Just open time and a feeling of quiet possibility. What shall we do together next? 

This is what I did with Gabriel yesterday: dropped him off at the Lucky Duck daycare and went to work in Baltimore.

Gabriel has been begging to go to his school ever since Frances began kindergarten. We had visited a handful of times and he always loved it, but of course I was there too. So I was nervous.

We walked in and Gabriel ran right over to the train table. His enthusiasm was such that the other children followed him and they all began playing together. He did look up at me to give me a hug goodbye, then went straight back to playing.

Well.

I stood around for awhile. Eventually I realized that it was time for me to go. So I did, with tears running down my cheeks. It could not have been better ... but oh! My little one! Warm, thoughtful Lynda, who runs Lucky Duck out of her home, kindly sent me a slide show of pictures titled "Gabriel's First Day" while I was still at work. More tears! Apparently he had an excellent day, playing with bigger kids, napping without a fuss, and being his general sweet self.

I picked him up around 4:30 and as we pulled into the driveway, Frances tore out of the house to meet us. She thrust this card into Gabriel's hands.

It reads: Welcome Mama and GKHB. Hi both of you. Gabriel did you have a good day Papa is working and I was about to (?) my paper but a hopper* (?) upstairs. Love FJHB

There was a fantastic picture of Gabriel with a basketball on the card's front. I knew she'd been working on it ever since she got home from school. I wanted to squeeze them both way too hard.

We are chugga chugga cous cousing right through this time of multiple transitions. I'm not complaining about how easy and wonderful it has been, I swear. But you know me, I couldn't keep barreling down the tracks without stopping to take a breath, feel the feelings a bit, and share them with you.

Thanks for reading, friends. And now, back onto our respective trains...


*Hoppers are the beastly spider crickets that invade our house this time of year.

sprung

Doesn't it look as if these two are climbing the walls of their cage?

That's exactly how I felt yesterday. I hit a wall, scrambling, but my efforts to scale it were futile. Downright pathetic, especially when compared with these agile and energetic climbers. At one point I crashed onto the couch, defeated, near tears, while the two little animals continued to torture me. Mike eventually dragged them away, thank goodness. I can't even remember what they were doing exactly, or why I felt unable to rouse myself into more definitive action to put a stop to it.

I can tell you that Gabriel is enjoying a new destructive streak, delighting in his ability to throw heavy objects and empty jars and baskets of small items (crayons, beans, letter magnets) all over the kitchen floor. Frances is reveling in naughtiness; I caught her squeezing agave nectar from the bottle straight into her mouth the other day. The two of them can inspire each other to greater heights of whining, picky eating, and general disobeying. And of course it's a two-way street. My role in all this makes me feel most frustrated of all. I am wondering why discipline is difficult for me; why setting boundaries seems so effortful and enforcing consequences wipes me out. But that is a post for another day.

Instead, let me tell you about today. It is 1:45. I just took a shower, after which I leisurely put on some clothes, then placed the clean laundry sitting on the bed into its home drawers, taking the time to neatly close them. Then I plucked my eyebrows. I read some of the paper. Can you believe this? Are you wondering what planet I have moved to?

Planet Kindergarten! Bring on the bon bons!

Annapolis Elementary opened my cage door with a simple flick of a wrist. Gabriel and I had a beautiful morning together. Without his beloved big sister/mastermind around to imitate, he is more laid-back. Mellow. Interested in eating sugar snap peas for lunch and building towers out of blocks and uninspired to protest when naptime rolled around. It was so quiet in the house, he knew he wouldn't be missing much.

And can you blame me if I put him down a little early? If I couldn't stop grinning as I anticipated naptime? At first my mind was abuzz with all the satisfying things I could do: clean up the garden, read my novel, deal with the neglected pile of bills and mail sitting on the counter, make tea, write thank you notes, catch up on the New Yorker...when it hit me. I get to do this again tomorrow. There's time.

I'm sure if Frances weren't so darned thrilled by kindergarten I wouldn't be like a kid in candy shop right now. But she is! Her first day was a great success. In fact, she told me it was "the best first day of school ever." She attended three preschools over three years; they varied in quality but happily her enthusiasm for school never wavered. She loves meeting new people, loves feeling independent, loves learning. Mike reported that she wanted to walk into the building by herself this morning, which she did, and didn't glance back at him once.

So all feels right in my world, if only for this moment. Frances is happy in school. I'm happy having a break from her. Gabriel is chomping at the bit to go to his new "school" too, which will begin on Wednesday (a home-based day care called Lucky Duck, where he'll spend two days a week). And right now, he's happily sleeping!

I hope you and yours are happy right now too, as fall brings all its changes. Happy Monday!

addendum

Today is Kindergarten Eve. During Gabriel's nap, I asked Frances if she'd like to do some reading or painting together. She declined.

Let's just be together, she said. Let's have secret time together. Like, secret just-girls time. We'll be like grown ups, just us, having our time together.

Well, that sounded good to me. We bustled around the kitchen, talking, and eventually I asked if she wanted to do some yoga with me, thinking it might help ease some of the tension I could see mounting in her little body.

But, Mama, we can't talk when you do yoga! You have to breathe all the time!

I assured her we could talk. So we did some silly poses. I gave her a little massage on the mat and jiggled and bounced her arms and legs til they were like wet spaghetti. I did some asanas on my own, with her crawling under the bridge my downward dog makes. In the middle of my triangle pose, Frances sat back for a moment and then reflected:

You look like a girl when you do yoga.

Between my noisy inhale and exhale: Like a kid, you mean?

No...no...like a person. Like a grown up person.

A 33 year old person?

Yes. Mama, you look like yourself when you do yoga. You look just like you.

I had to sit down. I told her I felt like myself when I did yoga, which is exactly why I like doing it so much! And she sat with me and struggled to get her words out, asking me about what that meant. It was an excellent conversation.

When she told me that I looked like myself, I think she was saying that she could see me. A separate me, apart from her own desires. In that moment, I looked like a person to her, not just a mama. 

Developmental leaps! For both of us, really. And tomorrow morning we drop her off at Annapolis Elementary, where she will join Mrs. Simms' kindergarten classroom. Readers, I am very stirred up.

Here is some yoga that took place in Vermont, the memory of which inspired me this afternoon. Tree pose, I think, is best experienced surrounded by trees.