On Keeping Up
I have a half dozen ideas for things I’d like to write about swirling about in my head. Reflections about reflections. Thoughts about thoughts, about how the mind works, about how the mind works when there’s so little time to write or read or have a meandering relaxed conversation with a friend, but there’s lots of time spent washing the same dishes, cooking the same food, reading the same A-B-C book out loud, and singing the same bedtime songs. Contemplations about time, about how a month can seem interminable if a baby is crying all the time, or it can seem like it’s going by so fast if the baby is a delight to be with. About the gradual, subtle, almost-imperceptible-sometimes, beautiful transition from perseverance to savoring, the difference between getting-by, between “keep keeping,” as in Sandra Cisneros’ beautiful piece, and keeping up, living life in each full cascading moment and enjoying it. Ever since we hit 5 months, Life With Baby has been easier for us, more manageable, which doesn’t mean it’s been easy, but it’s been so much better than those first 5 challenging months. And now we are in the halcyon days, the sweet days of amazement at what our child discovers each day, the days that I think we thought having a baby were going to be like, and they may only be a smidgen of what having a baby is actually like, but they are amazing, amazing days.
I’ve been saying to friends and family that the phase we seem to be entering into is “keeping up.” And because it took almost 10 months for us to get to this point of joy, of truly enjoying the moments and not just surviving them, I am embracing this keeping up. Keeping up means that I am managing to completely empty the sink of dishes and now-and-then have an empty dishwasher as well. Keeping up means I am starting to think about what I’d like to cook, and maybe looking up a recipe, more than 5 minutes in advance of needing to eat right now. Keeping up means that we are blessed with the resources, ability, and energy to be feeding our little eater vats of healthy, home-cooked and home-prepared food, and she is loving it: tofu, quinoa, carrots, avocados. Keeping up means that I’m excited and eager to start making more complicated things for her to eat, combinations of things, food patties and to-go food. Keeping up means that there is just the littlest bit more spaciousness in our days, that I feel like I have gotten enough sleep, and that I can think ahead to next week and start to imagine going to a yoga class or to the gym. I have not prioritized exercise as much as I’d hoped to by this 10 month point, but I’m aware of that and working towards it—and that, there, that’s keeping up. “Aware and working towards.” It feels like the clouds of “putting one foot in front of the other” are lifting. The other night (while washing dishes, of course) I noted the distinct and surprising feeling of “being elated,” being elated for no particular reason. I noted it, enjoyed it, and kept washing dishes. Because I am just keeping up.
Ordinary Time
Though March is not the season of Ordinary Time according to the Roman Catholic calendar, we are embracing Ordinary Time in this one Unitarian Universalist household, right now. (One of many aspects of Unitarian Universalist “culture” that I enjoy is that it often seems as though “rules were made to…be discussed.”) It was been a long, full, amazing, intense year of celebrations and events in our lives, this past year. In this strange but it-worked-for-us order, we went on our honeymoon (February 2012), got married (May), wrapped up 2 amazing jobs (July), had a baby (August), moved across the country (September), started a new job (August/September), unpacked, celebrated winter holidays, unpacked some more (ongoing), discovered we’d moved to Washington, D.C. (I’m seriously just noticing this lately, but let’s say February 2013) and my partner Cathy got ordained (March). Whew. We are thrilled to now be entering what we like to call “The Year of Uneventfulness.”
I also like to think of these days we’re settling into as “Ordinary Time,” and I love the term. I’ve been mulling it over for the past week. A friend asked me the other day about Life With Baby, she asked “Does it feel like it’s flying by?” My first response was still to recall the first four months, during which I sometimes had days that felt interminable–far from “flying by.” I remember clearly the days when Robin would only fall asleep during the daytime in my lap, and so I’d just sit in the blue cushioned rocker by the window for hours. And hours. I tried not to count the hours because I do believe that “a watched pot never boils” and counting the hours until Cathy would get home from work only made the day seem longer. Anyway those days did not fly by.
But now that Robin is seven-and-a-half months? Yes, it’s starting to fly by. And I appreciate the question, because it made me realize that yes, I’d be quite happy to “freeze-frame” for a while what our lives are like, right now. It feels, dare I say, like we sort of know what we’re doing, the three of us, like we all recognize each other and sort of know how to handle each other. Robin is consistently sitting happily (and stably) by herself and now regularly enjoys playing by herself with something simple like a string or a single toy–sometimes for as long as 15 or 20 minutes, studying it, mouthing it, passing it from hand-to-hand, and so on. I call that “working on her project.” Who knows what she’s already picked up from her Mamas–we like to work on our projects.
And we certainly have no shortage of projects (does anyone, these days?). But there is something so absolutely calming about realizing that these are all just the ordinary projects of life. We have lots to do–laundry, dishes, cleaning up, cooking, prep work for upcoming events and trips, appointments and errands, forms and bills, taxes and still more unpacking and sorting. But finally it is Ordinary Time. These are the tasks of living. We are so lucky to have all that we have, the components of our lives that we could so easily take for granted–each other, our lively kid, two cantankerous cats, an apartment we like in a neighborhood we love, our health, meaningful work, supportive families, our eclectic and ever-growing communities of friends. Ordinary Time means appreciating What Is, appreciating all this ordinary extraordinaryness.
The Spring Equinox has just passed; Passover and Easter are coming up. Taxes are due soon. Cherry Blossom Season is kicking off in Washington. These are all significant dates on the calendar–your own calendar may have lots of other important dates on it. And, at the same time, what I wish for all of us are more uneventful, ordinary days. Days that end with a deep breath of gratitude. Days that end with a sense of simple satisfaction. Life is an ongoing list of things to do, for sure, but as the saying goes, “Life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans.” May we all savor the life that happens on our ordinary days.