weekend in review

had a really fun, outdoor, sweat-and-play-hard kind of day yesterday. also a share with friends, delightful kind of afternoon. then a quiet, hang out together at home kind of evening. good times, good times...

but oldest came to our room, pretty upset, around five this morning. head hurting, couldn't sleep, just generally stressed out and ready for some help... i think he may have gotten dehydrated from hanging at the creek yesterday, but i'm not sure. some motrin and more water and he quieted. i don't know that he ever went back to sleep. i don't think he got some rogue caffeine in the evening. (we're all pretty sensitive to caffeine around here...except dr. dad who i think just sticks his in an iv at work...) i don't know...but he seems okay today...tired, but feeling fine otherwise.

so we will start working on getting ourselves together for our camping trip sans dad. i was telling a friend of mine last night that i could feel myself working out of the denial stage (concerning dad's non-attendance on this big trip), into the acceptance stage. i'm glad i got there with almost two full weeks to prepare us...pretty good timing, i must say... it'll be fun....we will be fine. (these are what my internal thoughts look like...)

still other things i want to blog about...but words aren't coming together on this. just stuff, really...nothing huge. thoughts that float through my mind but scatter when i try to catch them and put them into words. i'm patient...

but i do want to ask for prayers for a mama named julie walker. her daughter and my oldest son went to school together for first grade and we share a mutual friend who's kept us connected, sort of, in the years since. aside from being a mama, julie's a doula and child birth educator and friend to so many. she is having a tumor removed...a brain tumor...on monday....yeah, tomorrow. so prayers, positive energy, whatever you've got...please...she needs them. and it'll be a good thing to do if you send them, so it all works together...the giving, the receiving...

peace

river walking

lately, thinking has begun to feel like when you walk into sunlight upon leaving a movie theatre. (we have this sensitivity in my family where as soon as the light hits our eyes and shrinks our pupils, we sneeze.) anyway, conscious thought has begun to feel that way...i even feel my eyes squinting with the effort.

it reminds me of trying to cross a river. there are rocks, sometimes they shift, there's the current to keep in mind, whatever you have on your feet, if anything... sometimes someone wants to talk you across, maybe even touch you to help you. but depending on where you're at, if you're ready to accept trust, if you trust the person trying to help you, if there are other people watching the whole thing...not to mention whatever you might be thinking or working on at the moment you're crossing...it all affects how effective it all turns out....whether you make it across--on your own steam or as a team--or whether you end up totally drenched, on your ass, or maybe even a few feet down from where you started.

i think this was my brain's kind way of looking at the shifts i've been dealing with. i'm an aquarian and water is definitely my element, and out of all of the images that have graced my mind lately, this one seemed the most natural and the most fitting. it strikes me that the situations are as interchangeable as the players and their roles...family, friends, marriage, my own self alone...walking, coaching, needing, trusting, fiercely independent, fiercely dependent...there is no one part that is all mine. i play all the roles and i learn from them all, too, even when i am frustrated or scared. and this is something it took me years to accept. but now that i've started accepting, i have to begin the task of taking responsibility for the different roles i play and how they influence my journey and the world around me. and maybe that's why it's been such a conscious time for me...almost painfully conscious.

(or maybe it's my sinuses...or because i keep forgetting my vitamins...or because i'm not regularly working out...or maybe it's just bad character...laziness...bad energy...who knows...) :)

so, in keeping with the theme of the post, and due to the fact that i really just needed to hear this song again...(and as always, i get to be sarah on this one...in my dreams anyway...although jewel is not a bad one to be either...and have i mentioned my crush on amy ray?...don't tell emily...)

chipping away

i was thinking that learning things, gaining new ideas, new knowledge is a lot like chipping away at a huge stone. and that in that process of chipping, we sometimes knock off a huge piece we have to break down a little further. and we sometimes, in our haste, or not in our haste, chip away little shards...reactionary shards...shards that are pieces of a bigger piece but that came off incomplete...shards we break off out of stress, whatever. and before we can share those little sharp pieces that are our new thoughts, we have to knock them around with the other pieces we hold...round them out a little...let the grinding together, the meshing together smooth them out some. because if we share them too soon, someone might get hurt. or smashed if we set too big a piece on them.

there's an indigo girls song that has a line that goes

we're sculpted from youth
the chipping away makes me weary

and i've talked about that line before because as someone who was once a child (and still feels that way at times), it is exhausting to have people chip away at you. it can be rough and feel like they're trying to hurt you...make you feel scared or unsure of yourself. but then as a parent, i also find the chipping away weary. i want my children to be whole. i don't want to knock off parts of them. well, maybe the part that pees on the seat and doesn't clean up afterward...but see, even that feels overwhelming at times because who am i to decide these things? yes, i know, i am their mother. and i know i have a responsibility to guide them. but i had a hard time making the decision to spay my dogs, so while i don't think i'm stupid or unintelligent in taking responsibility for those i've chose to share life with, i do think it is wise to see the power i hold in some lives and to wield it carefully and consciously.

i am also thinking about stones rounding themselves out through rubbing together for two reasons. first, i listened to an interview on npr once with a songwriter named leonard something or other. i am sad his last name escapes me. he had such a deep and gravelly voice....and my dad has an incredibly deep and gravelly voice, so it especially impressed me that this man's voice was so much more deep and gravelly that i would not be able to listen to the whole interview, even though it was very interesting. his voice was altering some rhythm in my body...it was painful. but he talked about time spent in a monastery. and the interviewer, probably terry gross, said that she imagined he had lots of time alone to think. and he said no, he did not have lots of time to think because monastic life is about letting go of your individuality and being part of a community...that you do almost nothing alone. and he used the analogy of stones rubbing against one another, polishing each other in that action.

my son has a rock tumbler...a really nice one. and he's taken one group of rocks through all seven stages of polishing. funny thing is, not all rocks can complete all seven stages. if there are cracks that hold onto the grit, they have to be taken out. (i mean, maybe there's some advanced rock tumbling that can be done for those rocks, but my son's amateur book said take them out...) so when this leonard with the deep and gravelly voice used that analogy, it was weird how much root it took in me because of my son's rock tumbling hobby and my chance to watch and learn from it, which was the second reason i was thinking about rocks polishing each other, even though i'm really just talking about knocking off the sharp edges in thoughts...i haven't even gotten to the polishing stages in my own mind.

all this to say, i am grateful for my spouse and my sister and the friends i have who have allowed me to hand them my shards, rolled them around with theirs a bit to give back to me a little smoother, or even handed the sharp ones right back to me to allow me to smooth myself before i tried it again later. i hope my hands are tough enough that i've been able to do the same.

it's all incredibly interesting to me and i'm sure this analogy between thoughts and something so elemental is inspired by my reading of the golden compass trilogy. his dark materials, i think it's all called. i am almost halfway through the last one, the amber spyglass, and fascinated by it all. a little apprehensive about how it's all going to pan out, but undeniably fascinated.

peace (or maybe tonight it should be piece)
:)