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By Mama Paloma, 14/02/2012 00:05

January 2012

So, usually, when I tell a story here, there is some conclusion to be drawn, some lesson I learned. This is not one of those stories. This is a more typical parent experience, I think…when your kid says or does something that leaves you shaking your head and you feel like you should be able to draw some lofty conclusion but all you can think is “Shit, he’s only three and already working me this way. What are the teen years going to be like? I need a drink.”  

I never intended to nurse my kid until he was four. Like most American moms these days, I had gotten the information about how nursing at least the first year has some pretty amazing health benefits. I had listened to/read about moms who are still breastfeeding their seven year olds. I thought a year or year and a half seemed good, seven a bit much. From the start, nursing came super easy for AJ and I. The day after he was born a lactation consultant came in to help me, took one look and said, “Well, he knows what he’s doing, you’re going to be fine.”

He did nurse for the first year. Exclusively. It was not the first time I felt the gaze of those who feel entitled to assess another person’s (particularly a single mom’s)  parenting. Other people would suggest different foods and try to get him to eat, even after I explained my own efforts to entice him. I could tell they thought this exclusive breastfeeding thing  was  about my need to be the most attached granola mom EVER. Eventually, he did start eating and is a ‘good eater.’

And he still wants to nurse.. He calls it ‘having babas.’ He asks for babas at night and in the morning, mostly, and when he’s upset.  Honestly, this has more to do with my general laziness than any parenting philosophy. I knew it would be work to cut him off and then I’d lose the one thing that can always calm him down.

I hoped, as with the food, he’d just get to the point of being ‘ready’ and lose interest but that wasn’t happening.. In the months leading up to his birthday yesterday, I told him that we wouldn’t be having babas after he turned four. This wasn’t an easy concept for him. One day, he was having a total meltdown. “I need babas,” he cried, “because I can’t calm down.” As he nursed, I wondered aloud about what I might do, after he turned four, to help him calm down, since he wouldn’t be having babas any more.

“Well,” he said, “when I am four, I will still have babas. When I am a big boy, like (paused to think), maybe ten or twelve, then I’ll just stop.” He made a definitive gesture when he said the word ‘stop,’ like a smoker swearing they’ll go cold turkey right after the New Year’s party.

“Oh, honey,” I replied, “the thing is, when you turn four, you are not going to have babas any more.”

“No, mommy,” he said, “because, especially for boys, if they don’t connect, they are going to have bigger problems.”

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February 13

So, tonight was a rough night. Actually, the past week has been rough. For several reasons, I am re-working my entire childcare setup. Addison’s birthday brought an ever-more acute awareness of his dad not being present (a topic for another day).. He has also been testing limits and getting very upset when I, say, turn off the movie. And then, there’s the babas.

When it came time for bed,  he was  sobbing about a movie-related conflict, then about not having babas to calm down,”I just want to go back and not have my birthday and stay little. I don’t want my body to grow. I want to be a baby.” I held him and talked with him and let him cry. I talked about how hard it can be when things change but how they usually end up all right.. I told him I am happy that he is growing and learning because that means that he is healthy and no matter how much he grows how he will still be my baby. I stroked his hair, rubbed his feet and talked about how things like that might help him calm down the way babas have. Finally, he began to relax. I extricated myself from his fierce little embrace, kissed his forehead, and whispered, “I love you so, so much, sweetheart.”

“Thanks, mom,” he whispered back and fell asleep.

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By Mama Paloma, 31/08/2011 17:46

December 27 is to be my fortieth birthday. Yep, the big four-oh. This approaching anniversary has got me considering how I have lived my last forty years and how I want to live going forward.

I have also been thinking a lot about legacy–not in a morbid, what-will-I-leave-behind-when-I-die way but more in the what-will-people-remember-about-this-tomorrow way. I have been considering the wake we leave as we move from one interaction to the next. Over the next three months, as that day approaches, I am taking steps to shift some of my habits to be more in line with the legacy I’d like to leave in my wake, the ways I would prefer to experience myself and be experienced on a day-to-day basis.

I am starting with the concepts of attention and choice an the power we have in our choices about what we pay attention to.

This morning, I took a few minutes to watch today’s featured TED Talk TED.com

(If you love this as much as I do, please go to this link Julia Bacha: Pay Attention to Nonviolence and comment.)

this talk literally brought tears to my eyes. The impact of war, discrimination, and environmental exploitation on civilians is near to my heart and my work is driven by the same certainty that what is reported on in these situations will grow–violence or peace-making, disconnection or community. I wrote to Ms. Bacha immediately and hope to connect as colleagues and kindred spirits in this arena.

Closer to home, though, I was challenged by this statement (emphasis mine):

Parents can incentivize or dis-incentivize behavior simply by giving or withdrawing attention to their children. But that’s true of adults, too. In fact, the behavior of entire communities and countries can be influenced depending on where the international community chooses to focus its attention.

It reminded me of yesterday morning. I had just gotten up after a virtually sleepless night, the result of 1) a rather distressing email from an employee (Oh, why did I peek at work emails just before going to bed?) and 2) my son waking up in the night, vomiting. My entire day was shot, the second in a row to be thrown off by external forces and my own physical limitations, and I was, shall we say, a bit cranky. And depressed.

I opened my computer to try to get something done and immediately this comment by Marianne Williamson popped up on my Twitter feed.

There it was, my life’s work being applied to my life. I sat there for a moment, considering where I have been affirming the power of the problems. It’s not a short list. Finances, the situation with my son’s father, an untenable work-life imbalance, a non-functioning nonprofit Board, my health, three-year-old AJ’s tantruming (Terrible twos? Try tyrannical threes!)–all of these had drawn me into a focus on what isn’t working, where the problems are, how I am stuck and powerless and alone.

I was confronted with the fact that this experience is to a large degree a choice, a series of choices I am making every day. Ironic, really, isn’t it? My therapy practice is called Talking Possibilities and here I was, choosing to talk about, ruminate on, and prioritize my own problems over the actually quite rich possibilities that are available to me.

Home with a sick child, I spent the day being with this awareness, considering how to shift each of these areas. I started noticing my reactions to things and shifting the meaning I was making.

This wasn’t just ‘positive self-talk’–which I find too often to be a kind of denial of what is. I was able to be with my son and empathize as he experienced that uniquely awful sensation of knowing another bout of vomiting is to come. At the same time, I was able to–not enjoy, I don’t want to ever see him unwell–appreciate the opportunity to give him the experience of being attended to, comforted, and understood and to teach him about self-care and patience. I was able to take time to consider how to respond to my employee with empathy, to value the opportunity that this situation presents me–to simplify and take back valuable time of my own–and to choose not to respond right away but give myself space to attend to other priorities. I still haven’t sorted out what to do with the more emotional parts of the baby-daddy situation but did realize that I had been choosing to believe I had to figure out things that I can and should get help with. I decided to wait for good advice and not throw my energy at the situation until I was clear as to what I should do. I called a friend for a referral to a specialist in International Family Law. Finally, I turned my attention to my own physical and emotional state. I took stock. I have been really depleted for some time now and, remarkably, no one has come to rescue me from that. I realized that it is high time that I take ownership of my own well-being, that I have many options for balancing and enriching my experience of life, and decided that this needs to be my top priority for the next few weeks.

All of this from a choice. Had I chosen, even by default, to give my attention to all of the challenges I am facing on a day-to-day basis, I would have likely been immobilized and buried by noon. The choice, in a moment of abject discouragement, to give my attention to the possibilities, shifted my experience immediately and space almost magically opened up for solutions to emerge and for me to take steps toward them.

We give our power to what we pay attention to, whether we are talking about international peace-building, parenting, or peace of mind.

We live in a flash of light;
evening comes and it is night forever.
It’s only a flash and we waste it.
We waste it with our anxiety, our worries,
our concerns, our burdens.
~Anthony De Mello~

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By Mama Paloma, 14/04/2011 23:46

I shouldn’t be writing this right now. After my weekend revelation, I started off strong with giving my bed the quality time it deserves but the past few days have been creeping down from eight hours to seven…

…so, as I have been taught to do when meditating, I am noticing that shift and bringing back my attention to the original intention.

This has become part of the plan, as well. A renewal/development of  other things that I find restful and restorative.

Like signing up for Marianne Elliot’s 30 Days of Yoga course. This program is designed for people like me (in both present and past incarnations) who, due to our work as mothers/humanitarians/otherpeople are challenged to get to a class more than once a week/month/year.

I haven’t started it yet. Apparently, Marianne and I need to sort out my intentions and what kind of practice will work best for me…which I love. My recent rant about parenting gurus could apply to many fora, including the ‘self-help’ realm where judgment rules covertly behind “accept yourself right where you are” platitudes. Marianne talks about kindness in our practices and I think she means it.

So, once we figure out what I am moving towards these next few weeks, I’ll get started and let you all know how it goes.

In the meantime, Marianne shared a lovely guided meditation from Peter Fernando whose Month of Mindfulness may just be the next piece I want to add in, once the yoga is a bit more on track.

In the meantime, I think I’ll just listen to the meditation Marianne shared over and over. It is about Gratitude and Joy.

The past couple of months have been tough in that shake things up, reevaluate, start making things happen kinda way. I am ready to make my life more the way I’d like it to be and Joy and Gratitude seem like a good place to start.

More later. Now, I sleep!

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By Mama Paloma, 09/02/2011 23:25

Watching the protests in Tunisia, other places, now Egypt unfold…and hold has me thinking about the twin virtues of patience and protest. Sort of a ‘yin-yang’ pairing, really–the Universe held in balance by opposing forces. In my tiny universe, I am currently involved in a bit of a showdown. The implications are at once clearly less weighty than the struggles of a country to find its way out of an oppressive regime and profoundly significant and complicated.

Generally, my practice has been to back away from conflict. To state my position and let it stand. I have done this recently when I elected not to continue communication with a relative who is profoundly disrespectful and self-absorbed. I tried to sort it out with her but realized that it’s not personal, it’s just how she goes about in the world. I couldn’t be respecting her and be comfortable myself so, for now, I let it go. Equanimity, kindness, gentleness trump being ‘right,’ having the last word, or coercing someone to change.

But, sometimes, when basic principles are being swept aside by another’s agenda–the need to control or their fear of being judged for what they have done (in this case, both) or some other motive–voicing the brutal truth is a virtue. There is safety in the truth, community in stepping out of the shadows, hope in enlightening the dark places and secrets and lies. The question is how to do it well, with integrity, clarity, and strength without being caught up in the other’s lack of principles or in our own egos. I look at those in Cairo, in the streets for over two weeks now, and am inspired.

So, I pray for safety for those who won’t stand down in the face of official unfairness and brutality. And I pray for the little angel sleeping in the next room, that I will be able to shepherd him through this tough time unharmed and provide him an example of the kind of compassion and strength it takes to navigate the big bad world of relationships and family.

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By Mama Paloma, 15/01/2011 08:59

Generally, I am a believer in perseverance, in taking one step after another, faltering occasionally, thinking you can’t go on, resting, reorienting, and then taking yet another step. Still, occasionally, the time comes to realize that continued steps are only taking you in a circle or, worse, a downward spiral, and it’s just time to stop.

I reached one of those times today. Well, I have been reaching and retreating from it for several days now but tonight made the decision. I am letting go and in doing so believing that there can be ‘beauty in the breakdown.’

Imogen Heap (frou frou) – Let Go (live A VOIR)
Uploaded by clem182. – See the latest featured music videos.

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By Mama Paloma, 07/11/2010 19:27

A bit over a week ago, a wise and intuitive counselor of sorts told me that I need to clear the clutter, stop trying to figure everything out logically, to make space for expansiveness and increased connection, and take time for reflection. I thought, I wish. In fact, for months now, I have been feeling pulled to do just that. Itching to clean out and organize my closets. Longing for a week or so in a quiet place with no phone or computer.

The problem is, I have also been thinking there is just too much going on, too many things at critical points on too many fronts, to take a minute to pee let alone reflect and organize. Professionally, I have an organization that is gaining momentum, a trip to Africa to prepare for, a youth media engagement curriculum to document and develop, a private practice languishing on the vine. Personally, I have a little boy who just started preschool to enjoy and nurture, preparations for leaving said little boy for the first time to travel for work, a baby daddy visiting in just over a month, legal issues to settle with said baby daddy, an estranged family member wanting to reconnect, and a love life that is languishing on the vine.  Oh, I also have closets to clean and organize, a car to finance/turn in/at least wash,  finances to document and straighten out, Christmas to prepare for and enjoy…the list could go on and on. All of these, to varying degrees, command my immediate and intense attention. There is no fluff here, no non-essentials, no hobbies.

Yet, in spite of this truly insane amount of diverse activity in my little world at the moment, this week I have taken this counselor’s observations to heart and  made time for at least the reflection. Well, ‘reflection’ seems a bit too active for what I have been doing. ‘Rest’ or ‘napping’ might be more accurate. Because when I stopped to reflect, I found out that I was really, really tired. And I went with it. On the day after an event for the organization, I literally did nothing. Took AJ to preschool, came home, lay down, read a novel, and slept until it was time to pick him up. Saturday, instead of doing something on my list of things to do RIGHT NOW, I lay on the couch for a moment and crashed. Today, with AJ at church with my mom, that extra hour became an extra morning of sleep and crossword puzzles and a latte in the late morning sun.

And things are getting done. The rest and recovery is, slowly, slipping into reflection and insight. Solutions (and random songs) are moseying through my dreams like they used to. I woke at 5:00am today with the solution to a troubling logistics issue so clear in my mind I had no worries about forgetting it and went back to sleep.

Just now, AJ called to me from his play room where he is involved with his wooden train and track set, “Mommy, what are you doing?” ”I’m writing.” I responded. ”You don’t need to,” he said, repeating, “you don’t need to.”

He has a point. I think I’ll go play some train.

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By Mama Paloma, 22/03/2010 19:30

I am a fish murderer. When we returned home one day, it was there, floating belly up. “Is that fish OK?” my friend Sarah asked. I looked. “No, it’s dead.” I responded.

It wasn’t clear how long s/he’d been dead or why.

Poor Cookies. That was the fish’s name–Cookies. Poor That. That’s the other, now lonely, fish’s name. My son, then just shy of his second birthday, named them on Christmas Day. He came out to see what Santa brought. “Firsh!” he squealed, in his weird toddler accent, “Firsh!” We admired his fish for a bit. I told him they needed names. Later in the day, after piles of presents, while friends dropped in for a bite to eat, I found him, standing up on his playroom chair, nose to the tank.

“Are you looking at your fish?” I asked.

“That that,” he replied.

“Yes, that’s your fish.” I said.

“No, that That,” he said, pointing at the mottled black and white one and then at the orange one, “that Cookies.”

“Are those their names?” I asked, “That and Cookies?”

“Yep,” he responded, clearly pleased to have gotten the concept through to his rather dense mommy.

That and Cookies were joined a few weeks later by Sausage (his name) and Stretch (mine), who were meant to help clean the algae off the walls and gunk off the bottom of the tank. Sausage and Stretch are, shall we say, slackers, and the tank got more and more icky. This may have had something to do with my also being a bit of a slacker and stretching the time between water switches and filter changes. I’m a single mom, things slide sometimes.

I had noted that the algae was rather taking over and the filter looked, well, ready for a change. For several days, as I would pass the tank, I would think to myself, “really have to clean that tank tomorrow” and drop the fish some extra munchies to make up for my neglect. Post-mortem investigations would reveal that the algae was evidence of too much nitrate which is the result of too much food and the resulting too much fish poop, which really needs to be cleaned out regularly. I killed Cookies with my guilt. Sigh.

The last time I checked, the fish had been cavorting about as usual. We went out to run some errands and there was Cookies, in suspended inversion, eyes wide–in shock? horror? anticipation of fish heaven to come?–as s/he bobbed by the filter housing.

We had a toilet funeral. I told AJ that Cookies couldn’t swim in the tank any more and needed to go back to the sea.

He got it.”Cookies beach?,” he asked. AJ loves the beach. Realizing my mistake, with visions of AJ sitting in the toilet trying to flush himself, I quickly explained that ONLY little fish could get to the beach that way–NEVER EVER little boys. He nodded sagely.

I said some words thanking Cookie for being a good fish and AJ said “Bye, bye Cookies.” Then we flushed.

Later, he said “Cookies, swimming, toilet?” and I said “Yeah, Cookies had to go swim in the toilet.”

And he said “That, Sausage, swimmin’?” and we went and looked at them still swimming in the tank.

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By Mama Paloma, 30/06/2009 15:29

My little guy is now sixteen months old and rapidly heading toward the days when I won’t refer to his age in months. He is still technically a baby, I think, but close to that ambiguous ‘toddler’ status. The changes are profound if almost imperceptible on a daily basis.

This morning, I noticed something new. As we cuddled a bit before getting up to face the day, I stroked the top of his head and felt hair. Real hair. Coarse, ready-for-a wad-of-gum-that-peanut-butter-does-NOT-get-out hair. This is a good development. By now, AJ’s apparent baldness makes him look different than his more hirsute friends. He looks, well, like a baby. But as his apparently strawberry blond locks fill in, I have mixed feelings.

As my son has grown, I have not been too sad about the changing stages. I keep expecting to miss the ones before but each new phase of development is so fun, so interesting, and brings him even more into himself. I have wondered at times at my lack of nostalgia for sweet days gone by.

Now I miss his hair. He did have it, all along. It felt like velvet, unbelievably soft. In the car, I would reach back into his rear-facing car seat to stroke his head and marvel at it. It felt like a rose petal.

We know from myths and Bible stories, hair is a symbol of strength and protection. As AJ moves more and more into the world, I want him to have a good layer of both. I want to welcome and treasure his masculinity, his roughness and hard edges. I also hope that I can help him keep some of that softness somewhere–a little bit of velvet in his heart.

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By Mama Paloma, 12/05/2009 23:00

This is something I wrote last year. I am re-posting it on the anniversary of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in honor of those who survived and those who did not and of everyone who holds the impossible space where we both love and let go.

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I turned on the radio yesterday and heard an NPR reporter describing a scene in China’s Sichuan province, which was hit by a massive earthquake on Monday. I listened, mesmerized and horrified, as she shared the story of a couple whose two-year-old child had been buried with his grandparents in the rubble. She compressed a day into a few minutes during which they waited, raced to find equipment for rescue workers, tried to find sniffer dogs and other resources, and finally heard the news that bodies had been found.

“Mama’s here,” the woman called out in Chinese to her dead child, “wake up, mama’s here.” As I heard the interpreter translate her cries, my heart jumped and got stuck in my throat. Perhaps it is one of those universal mother things to do but that is EXACTLY what I say to Addison when he is distressed. “It’s okay, baby, mama’s here.” When he seems to be having a bad dream, “Wake up, sweetie, mama’s here.” But this wasn’t a bad dream and this woman’s baby was not going to wake up.

It struck me at that moment that it is very possible that someday I might be that mother calling out to comfort my baby who isn’t there any more. Tears rolled down my face as I tried to think of some way to be sure that won’t happen, some way to keep him safe forever.

I know I am not the first to say this but being a loving parent is really an impossible assignment. How can I let myself love so deeply and care so completely while simultaneously letting go?

There is so much talk of attaching with one’s child—developing a secure attachment, attachment parenting, and so on—and very little of the ongoing process of separating, the endless, consecutive goodbyes.

Before I even knew him, I was aware of our separating. There was a moment, when I was 37 weeks pregnant, when it struck me that he was already who he is. He could have been born safely then, and would have come out pretty much the same as he did a few weeks later. His personality, those facial expressions that he was using from day one, his calm, curious presence—it was all there before I even got to meet him. Then, there was the birth, the brutal physical separation when he literally had to be pulled out of me as I pushed with all my might, tearing myself from the inside. Today I ponder the separations to come, some subtle, some huge. I want everything for him, and so I will let him go bit by bit. There may even come another time that I have to push him out—this time out of the metaphorical nest, tearing my heart in a way that can’t be stitched up by a doctor’s hand, show him his wings are strong and he does know how to fly.

One day he will go to school, cross a street by himself, spend the night at a friend’s house, go to summer camp, college, have his own home, his own family. And–oh, how to bear it?–one day he will die. It may kill me, but I want to be there. Because, in his hour of deepest need, I want to be able to say, “Mama’s here.”

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By Mama Paloma, 24/03/2009 04:44

It is not that anything significant came of this call. It is a mere step in a long journey to secure my son’s legal status. It merely led, as expected, to more waiting.

Recently, I talked with a friend who has been finally getting to some of the account changes with the phone company, the bank, and so on necessitated by her husband’s death. Having come through the initial pain and loss with grace and strength, she now finds these simple tasks exhausting and acutely emotional.

Another friend, having survived the trauma of separation is now taking practical steps toward a divorce and is finding this all-consuming. I remember this phase well. I also remember how shocked I was to be the deep and painful emotions evoked by putting our lives on paper and signing my already established new identity as a single person into being.

As I reflect on tonight’s Herculean effort, vodka in hand, I wonder how it is that these things are so difficult. In each case, the person concerned has already passed through what seems to be the worst, the fear and shock and sorrow. These steps are just formalizing what already is, even what has come to be preferred. How is it that they can feel (as I described the legal process of my own long-ago divorce) as if one is sawing one’s own arm off with a nail file?

I think this pain of completion is not as much about what is as what is not. Calling Australia is not hard. It is hard that I have to do it. This is not what I expected to be doing when I had a small child. The widow did not expect, at the age of 30, to be erasing her husband’s commercial existence. The divorcee did not expect to be picking through the knotted strands of years together, divvying up proceeds and plans.

You know it is over, that the die is cast, that you have to move on. Like someone looking at the burned out hull of a house for the last time, you may not want to go back. What was there is gone. But in some way it doesn’t matter if you do not want to live there any more. Sorting through the details, through the rubble of your hopes and dreams and expectations, is sometimes the hardest part of all.