brother and sister

She is almost two and, spiritually and psychologically, it has taken me this long to believe and understand that they really are sister and brother.  They're both "mine," and they belong to each other.  And they really like being together.  Both sick this morning, they're sleeping side-by-side.

the squared circle that got me to a new place

from Coloring Mandalas by Susanne F. Fincher

"During stage 7, Squaring the Circle, the resolution of inner conflicts creates a stronger, more complex personality.  You may find yourself motivated by a sense of mission that engages your whole self in the accomplishment of worthy goals.  This mandala, like a crusader's shield, boldly announces, 'I am here.'"

That was me at age 36.  I remember settling myself down on a soccer field sideline, getting cozy in the warm, electric green grass.  I guess it was autumn, 2005, so I was just 35, about to turn 36.  I took out colored pencils, opened the book, and this image arrested my eyes.  I did not stop, as I recall.  I read the description, thought, "Oh yeah.  That's me," and set to work.  The four squares helped unify my soul.  The fragments of my spiritual self needed a common purpose to work for--me!

I discovered that I was not just chaplain, not just get-the-job-done-er.  I was struggling to integrate motherhood into my being and feeling like I did not have time to be a mother--that it was a part of myself that had to get shoved all the way to the margins to make room for the part that had to earn the money to keep the family afloat.

I still have much to learn from that experience.  Who we are is always changing, of course, thanks to new insights gained along the way.

Describing myself to myself as mother, wife, chaplain, woman, though, was a helpful exercise.  Though weak boundaries were causing me to see myself primarily as someone available to others but not herself, I experienced an amazing awakening through the simple act of coloring an image.

Isn't that something?  Thank you my sister Libby.  Thank you Joan Kellogg, C.G. Jung, Susanne F. Fincher, art therapists everywhere.

I am still thankful for that day, for that piece of paper, for images that bring fragments into wholeness.

baby shoes

Let me be clear that I adore baby shoes, especially leather baby shoes.  Especially soft-soled leather baby shoes.  Oh, I just like them so much.  And I love the little feet that fill them. 

luxurious breakfast

This morning we were out of milk and yogurt, my breakfast staples.  Instead of enjoying the charms of those particular dairy products, I made myself one of my favorite sweet sandwiches, remembering that we had cream cheese in the fridge.  Here it is:
whole-grain bread slices, or some hearty bread that won't fall apart easily
a liberal layer of cream cheese or neufchatel on one of the slices
a liberal layer of nutella or a high-quality impersonator on the other slice
a nice sprinkling on both slices of cashew halves and diced, dried apricots

Unite the sandwich slices, cut sandwich in half if you desire, and garnish with fruit or whatever else strikes your fancy.  Enjoy!

on dolls

I loved dolls as a girl, and I'm surprised now at the emotional response I have to them. A month or two ago I bought one of the dolls in the hearth at the local thrift shop, just because her vintage plastic molded face and hair spoke sweetness and love to me.

As a five-year-old, my main doll squeeze was named, "I Love You." She was a rubber doll with formerly golden hair. When I Love You's original gold tresses became unsightly, my grandma Mildred made her a (lovely) brown wig to match my own hair. My mother wrote our address on I Love You's belly in indelible ink. I lost her at the Kansas City Airport, but they mailed her back to me. One time a playmate turned I Love You head down and swished her in a mud puddle. I was beside myself. I remember crying and crying one morning on the school bus because I just wanted to go back home to get I Love You; I felt a sudden need to take her to school (I didn't get to go).

I suppose that last memory is one reason I treasure homeschooling. When you learn at home (at least ideally), you don't have to let go of I Love You until you choose to. Your schedule allows you to go and retrieve that love, because it's worth holding on to and you're worth slowing down the world for. This, I can tell, is a whole other post in the making, but not the reason I'm writing about dolls, so I'll come back to the thought another time.

Today Henry and I listened to an episode of the Diane Rehm show that focused on the danger of encouraging little girls to engage in princess play. More specifically, Peggy Orenstein made the point that certain kinds of "princess play" can make it difficult for girls to disentangle their sexuality from our culture's tendency to sexualize them.

Objectification. Consumerism. Addiction. Selfishness. These are some of what I believe to be the real problems behind playing princess. Joel has been reading Andrew Lang and George MacDonald stories to Henry at bedtime off-and-on for a couple years now, and they're ripe with princesses and heroines in the traditional princess sense. But, in my opinion, these female characters are archetypes, just as the warrior, the king, the prince, the beggar, and others are archetypes.

So, so, so often we want to throw the baby out with the bath water instead of just getting rid of the dirty water. I think the society that sexualizes little girls instead of treasuring them, that rewards them for buying off-the-rack princess costumes and attending consumer events in them rather than wearing them for outdoor tea parties that just might lead to hole digging or tree climbing, is one that suffers from multiple addictions and chronic, collective low self-worth. I could go on and on here, but to what end?

Suffice it to say, aside from my homeschooling peeps and close acquaintances and friends, I don't see a whole of mothers and fathers out there encouraging doll play. Baby doll play. I think I don't see as much of that because parents feel ambivalent about teaching girls and boys to pretend with dolls, to mother and father dolls. Better to play at being professionals: fire fighters, iron chefs, police officers, spies, princesses.

From the surface, there seem to be more "jobs" out there for preening, narcissistic types than solid mamas and papas. Oh, pardon my cynicism. I'm really a rather hopeful person.

BUT...don't we glorify the sparkle-clad movie stars and their ilk an awful lot?

My solution is to nurture my little girl by doing a whole lot of things and celebrating her whole being. But I want dolls to be companions and teachers for her if she wants them to be. And, so far, she does.

Ahh. More to say, but it is time for bed.

I really would love to have some dolls with skin of brown, yellow and olive hues. Quite a lot of pink plastic there, wouldn't you agree?

a little audio

It's about passion, and some other things

Just a while ago we returned from a Kansas Day celebration with others in our home school co-op. Kansas isn't my home state, but I'm learning more about it than I ever knew about Missouri, because Kansans are proud people. I like that about them. They know their state insect and state tree, and they really, truly celebrate their identity. Real Kansas Day is January 29, but we've had snow and severely cold weather these last few weeks, along with a couple almost-70-degree days, so we met today instead of two weeks ago.

The thing I loved most about this morning was meeting a local member of an organization called "The Brotherhood of Mountain Men," or something like that. He said there are only 400 members of this nationwide organization. Just back from a camping get-together in Oklahoma, where he awoke to snow and three degrees above zero (F) air, this guy smelled like another place in time. He brought his beaver musk for us to smell (can't remember what it was called, but, in sight and scent it was like delicately fermented ground-up organ meat). He brought buffalo-bladder-and-buckskin storage bags, knives, rifles, pistols, buffalo hides, buffalo hair socks, deerskin and wool cold-weather slippers, a porcupine-quill-embellished pipe holder, parfleches, and a host of other things, all so very appealing to the kinesthetic learner in me--especially the smell parts. It's really something to be in a room with someone who, along with his things, has an odor. Yes, an odor. Not a bad odor, but an outdoors odor.

This kind of thing just excites me no end. Whether the discipline be computer circuit-bending or historical re-enacting or knitting (and the accompanying carding and spinning) or something in the fields of science or math or literature...I don't care. Show me your passion (and your reverence for life), and I will love what you do and who you are, even if I didn't first think I would like you or agree with you.

I really feel grateful for this type of learning, because it's not just for Henry the homeschooler, it's for me too. Learning is a lifetime process and I love to learn. I love to learn!

Candlemas

Today is Candlemas, and it's fair and bright here, so I guess winter will have another flight. About this time of year three years ago, I began this blog.

I like what Waverly Fitzgerald has to say about the day here and here.

I do so desire to live out the seasons of the year. For one, it seems to me that we were just born to do it, so why not?

On Candlemas, Waverly pledges to undertake some activity that will nurture her spiritual and/or creative self. She sees it as the true beginning of the new year. I like that, too. January, then, is kind of a warm-up for the new year that is to come. We get forty days after solstice and Christmas to let the Incarnation and the returning of the light settle in, take down the decorations, show the baby at the temple, so to speak (The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord), and then begin a new year.

This year I am working on flexibility. I notice in myself less physical flexibility than I used to have. To the end of increasing my flexibility, I intend to practice (almost daily) just one yoga position, one I learned in a Kripalu class years ago: the seated spinal twist, also known as the posture of perpetual youth :).

I also want to keep spiritually flexible, but that is a topic for another time.

A blessed Candlemas or Imbolc to all!