Saturday Stillness

It’s Saturday morning. The boys are upstairs watching cartoons. B is gone. I’m drinking coffee, still in my pjs, listening to Explosions in the Sky, and enjoying being in the now.

now now now now now now now

It’s all we have, after all.

I feel as though I’m coming up for air after a long, slow almost-suffocation. It really is as if I can feel my brain getting oxygen and clearing and opening up and letting the fog go to wherever it goes to restore it’s gnarliness supplies for the next go round. I feel free and open at this moment.

I can honestly say that I feel no sense of rush or urgency about anything at all - that’s not something I can say often (read: ever.) I’m trying to change that. What’s the hurry? What is going to happen that I cannot wait the 10 seconds it takes to breathe, think, transition? Ah, transitioning. Not really one of my strong points. I do a lot of things, often times many things at once, things in succession constantly. I realize, however, that I don’t take the time to transition between one thing and another - I jump from one to another without batting an eye, without taking a breath, without transitioning. What happens as a result is that I miss out on the endings and beginning of things - the subtle shift that completes a thought or action, the first colors and flavors of a new idea, deed, or change. In essence, I’ve been living the Cliff’s Notes version of life. Flat champagne - still gets you drunk, but is just not the same. What a loss! What a shame! Life is in the details and I’ve been skipping over the juiciest ones:

The pleasure of noticing the sensations in my body as I sit in stillness and wait for “what’s next.”

The complete balance I experience while I sit in Lotus as my spine stretches to the sky and the energy travels up it and shines out of the top of my head.

The beautiful undulation of my breath as it moves completely independent of my efforts - it’s amazing!

When sunlight bounces off my arm, it makes my tattoo look like it’s dancing.

In between actions, regardless of how fast you jump from one to another, there is a beat. A pause. These moments, however fleeting, are our invitation to experience gratitude, peace, completion, stillness. Some days, these brief moments might be the only opportunity we have to feel any of those things. How sad to miss them. There is no such thing as not having time to find stillness in ourselves. 10 second meditations can change a life.

~beat~

B is gone for the weekend. He left early this morning to drive 90 minutes south for a camping trip with his 3 best friends from high school. These four guys were like brothers (actually, 2 of them are brothers … twins, in fact,) years ago until college and life and family became priorities. These guys have been trying to get together to go camping like this for more than 9 years. I couldn’t be happier for him - B never does this kind of thing. He’ll be gone until late tomorrow night. He has no schedule, no limitations. I’m certain that he, too, will find time to appreciate the stillness.

~beat~

I’m practicing relinquishing control while B is gone this weekend. I realize that I have some sort of “need” to control every aspect of everything in the house (read: about the kids) that it is robbing everyone - including myself - of autonomy. For 2 days, we’ll have no limits on screen time, snacks, music, etc. As long as it won’t poison them or leave them an amputee, I’m going to let the kids call the shots for themselves. This also means that I’m calling the shots for myself, as well, and will attempt to squash any “should” or “ought to” thoughts before they have a chance to manifest themselves. I belong to a radical unschooling discussion list online and the majority of folks on that list live this way 24/7 with their children and have reported amazing results. I’ve started implementing it in small doses for a week or so (giving unlimited access to computer time one day, etc.) and my boys limited themselves to only about 20 minutes longer than I normally “allow” anyway! Already today they have turned the cartoons off a full 90 minutes before the end of their allotted “Saturday Morning Cartoon Time.” I swear, I don’t give my kids enough credit.

What is this need to control? I would say that it’s because I don’t trust my children to make good choices for themselves, but if I’m going to be honest, I cannot say that. The truth is that maybe I don’t trust myself — trust myself to see the teaching moments in everything, trust myself enough to let my children learn from their own choices and mistakes, trust my parenting thus far, trust my ability to handle whatever their choices might be. It seems that in trying to teach them, I am preventing them from learning. Preventing myself from learning.

I’m going to sit with that for a while.

~beat~