Here we are — the long river of summer slowing into the still eddies of late fall.
I am sinking into it little by little.
Tending the small things close at hand.
Walking the path I am given to walk, and marveling at how far it has carried me.
How good and full this summer and harvest season have been!
How sweet it is to pause and rest. To be quiet and take it all in.
Do nothing extra friends, and be well.
Well, since I gave up my big plans to organize the revolution and save the world (it’s a long story, but let’s just say my friends and I settled on starting a facebook page instead), life has been rather quiet, the kind of days where you can’t think of anything much to report when someone asks you what’s the latest. The garden is in at long sweet last, so at least there is a bit of watering every day to be proud of. As a recovering type A uber mother, this is in so many ways a sweet victory for me–pulling back, returning to center, letting go.
So I was surprised to find myself feeling stifled. If I couldn’t organize the revolution and save the world, I wanted to write, I wanted to sew, I wanted something more. But I wasn’t doing any of it. I was just muddling through the days with a growing feeling that something was missing. Here’s the funny conundrum that is my life: I don’t want too much, and I don’t want too little. Maybe I was wrong and things can get too simple. Surely there is a way to get a good nights sleep and also have a stimulating and productive inner life. Right?
Well, maybe sometimes. Life follows its rhythms of fallow and fertile, whether we remember to embrace it or not. We go sometimes so far into one polarity, like simplicity or hyper productivity, that it spits us out into the polar opposite. And from there we have to slowly watch the next seed begin to grow, to accept the mystery that will be its flowering.
I’ve known that something new would slowly emerge for me to lift and carry as I walk through the ordinary days of my life. As Kim John Payne reminds us to tell our bored children, “Something to do is just around the corner.” I knew it was coming. I just also knew I didn’t have will forces to make it happen. Write something? But there was no muse. Sew something? But there was no time. Think of something else? Sigh.
My dad used to tell me, “If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.” I knew I had to wait, however impatiently, to trust that guidance and direction would come. And that’s what I resolved to do. I reminded myself that doing nothing is the best way to be receptive, to be that empty vessel from which all possibility is born.
Still, I was taken by surprise when something did start to happen. A thread of life came beating into my slightly discontented world, but it wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t a poem or handmade dress (which I had now latched on to as the gold standard of That Which I Must Do). It was a burst of renewed energy for my ordinary work of homemaking.
While looking outside myself to find myself, I had turned my gaze, even if almost imperceptibly, away from my home.
While expecting that I should be doing something Worthwhile, I forgot how worthwhile the work I do every day is. And not just worthwhile in the cosmic sense of childrearing as an act of grace, though it is all too easy to forget to put our faith in that simple truth, but worthwhile in the sense of it gives me meaning.
I won’t describe the very ordinary scene of my epiphany, which came while writing a menu plan. I’ll just say this:
Homemaking isn’t what we do while waiting for something better to come along. It isn’t biding our time, or settling for less. It is the source of our creativity, not the stealer of it. Meet it with purpose and passion, and behold the keys to the kingdom.
Now if you’ll excuse me while I go water the garden.
Thinking that no matter how simple I think my life is, there is always room for still more simplicity. How even when I have dedicated myself fully to this work of homemaking, I can be tempted by ambitions and the big ideas that seem in alignment with the values I believe in, seem worthy and good, and yet are not right for this season of life. They are too much, too soon, and pull me away from my center, rather than growing out of that grounded place where I try to live. Thinking that sometimes I just have to go along for the ride, and enjoy finding myself back where I started, wiser and with renewed commitment. That said, I should add that sometimes it is the right time to stretch and take on more. Perhaps the indicator of whether or not something is in the flow or not should be how much sleep one loses over it. In my case, big plans were scrapped for simpler ones, and my how sweet the sleep is these days!
Feeling grateful and relieved when I remember that who I am and what I’m doing is just right. It is enough. In fact, it’s amazing. Feeling blessed and connected by the small rituals of the day: pouring dish water into the garden by hand, several times a day (thank you Erin for reminding me that sometimes the smallest acts are the most meaningful); singing the songs that the little one loves best; and every so often, spending five minutes in something kin to stillness, save for prayer and thanksgiving. I’m also feeling so relaxed, in this moment, about motherhood. I’m both grateful for all the work I’ve done to reach this place, and wondering why I had to take it so seriously, to make it so hard. I came across this quote in an interview at The Wonder of Childhood: “The parents are working hard. If they aren’t working hard to make the money, the parents are working hard to be PERFECT.” Gah. Just as our children are blossoming in their time, growing into themselves in their lovely way, so are we. Time to take it easy, mamas! Sit back and watch your garden bloom.
Doing a lot of spinning on my Navajo spindle. After a year of thinking I’d never learn to use it, that perhaps when I was an old Grandma the time would be right, a friend sat down and showed me and within five minutes I was on my way. Amazing how something can be both so complicated and simple. And so dang fun to do while the children bumble around the yard like drunk bees. Also tending the gardens, planting and transplanting, watching for rain, reading about wishes and wabi sabi, revisiting an old writing project, setting the sourdough to rise, holding little ones, and accepting the mess that goes along with all this as a sign of a life well lived. Oh, and still searching for the last mitten or two needing to be stored…
What are your head, heart, and hands up to these days? I really wish you’d say…
Thanks for visiting and have a lovely day!
Last month, my e-friend and mothering and soapmaking mentor, Renee of FIMBY, published a wonderful e-book called Nurturing Creativity: A Guide for Busy Moms. This little book is my cup of tea: inspiring, rejuvenating, down to earth, and only three bucks. It’s like manna, royal jelly, and super blue green algae all mixed up into a power bar for the creative soul. Yup, that nourishing. She writes, “My dream for this book is to tend the garden of your creative spirit.” And it’s true. This book is like a rich load of compost followed by a long soaking rain (or a week of sun, for those of you non-desert dwellers). While she was writing this book, Renee asked me and a few other bloggers about our experience balancing creativity and motherhood. She was looking for about a hundred words on some specific questions, but once I started writing I found I had a great deal to say on the subject. This the gist of it:
Confluence
Before I had children, I spent much of my time crafting poetry and fiction and nonfiction. In those days, I believed that writing was the most creative and important thing I could do with my time. When I was pregnant for the first time and just wanted to sit and dreamily crochet granny squares for a baby blanket, it felt almost like a waste of my creative energy. Shouldn’t I be doing something “real” like writing a poem? A good friend reminded me that however lovely it was, my poem would be virtually unread, while the granny squares would keep an infant warm. “How could that be a waste of time?” she asked me. Eventually I made peace with the question by writing a poem about crocheting a blanket for my unborn babe.
In the years since I have become a mother my creative life exists in the confluence of two streams that seemingly contradict each other. Out here in the West we have hot springs that send warm water into cold rivers. Imagine it as kind of like that. Except one of these creative streams has been Letting Go, and one has been Holding On.
Letting Go
The Letting Go Stream has been the release of my old ideas of what it means to be creative. No longer can I accept the idea that to be a writer one must write every day, for a certain amount of time. Or that I am only legitimate when I write a poem every week, or a few hundred words a day. As I let go of those notions out of necessity, I found that motherhood opened up a vastly more creative world for me.
How could it not, when every act in my daily life—from birthing and nurturing two daughters, to cooking our daily sustenance from simple ingredients, to keeping our home beautiful, to actively creating a positive outlook and being curious about the world around me—is a creative act. In fact, I have a hunch that while I might have to wait a few more years to complete my next book (and I feel the pull to do that strong as ever, even if it is simmering on the back burner), I will remember these years with small children as the most creative in my life.
Holding On
Because I am (like you) a complex creature, the other stream flowing through my life in the last few years has been the Holding On Stream. This is the one that reminds me that This Is It—my one life to live. Having a child and then another made me realize that I couldn’t wait to someday sit down and write a book—it had to be something I made room for and nurtured, or else I was truly at risk of losing my voice. And while it may not always be possible to have a regular, steady practice of writing, I can nourish my writer self by reading great writing, by keeping a freehand journal when I can’t work at the computer, by letting creativity not be defined as only one thing, but as a way of life.
It hasn’t always seemed this way. I have felt at times like I was sacrificing my writing self for motherhood (never mind that my first book was conceived at the same time as my first child, and born the same month as my second). I had a lot of old ideas about how much I should write and how disciplined I should be. Looking back I see that they did very little to motivate me, and a lot to hold me back.
While I was feeling guilty for not writing poems or chapters in my half-done novel about a tree pruner in 19th century New Mexico, I was busy with all kinds of other things. I embraced the domestic arts—things women have done for ages to bring creativity and beauty into their lives. Things that can easily be done alongside a child. I have taught myself to sew and knit, and make much of my children’s clothing. I sing and tell stories. I make toys: dolls, stuffed animals, books. I write Old Recipe. I bring together a circle of friends for a mothers’ circle each month. I have grown into a much more holistic view of creativity, and see it flowering in every part of my life as a homemaker. Writing continues to be essential food for my soul, but the diet has become more varied.
Like a Garden’s Seasons
Creativity comes from the joy of creating. It is a natural outpouring of a healthy life. And, it should not be a constant. Like the earth itself, our creative energy needs time to rest and lie fallow, while new seeds germinate and begin to grow. And so I accept that the creative spirit will move me when it does, and be ready to receive it when it comes.
While I go through long periods of not even keeping a journal, I also have intense phases of writing thousands of words a day. I no longer judge either of these times as good or bad. I welcome them both for the gifts they bring. If I feel especially in alignment with my sense of purpose when writing, I trust that the times in between are fueling that creativity in essential ways.
Eventually, the little seeds inside me go in search of light. I am filled with ideas and inspiration, and move naturally back into a rhythm that includes space for me to work alone.
And slowly, I find myself surrounded by handmade things. Slowly, I find new stories coming to life, new ideas that want to be manifested. I find myself in the midst of a beautiful and surprising renaissance, where every act is a creative act.
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To read my simple technique for making time to be creative, you’ll have to get Nurturing Creativity. Which I assure you has much, much more to offer than my little bit of advice.
To see a little of my poetry in action, leave a comment in this giveaway for a new poetry anthology I am included in.
And do tell me, how has the confluence of creativity and motherhood shaped your life and work?
“Read these poems and feel the rich earth crumbling between your fingers, see the precious seed covered over with dirt, hear the prayer on your lips asking for rain.” —Richard Vargas
“This collection will inspire you to grow chiles, follow an acequia, call an old friend, hold someone’s hand, watch your children sleep, try out Grandma’s recipes, bake bread from scratch, pick weeds in the Bosque and more.” —Stephanie Dobbie
I am honored to have a handful of poems included in How to: multiple perspectives on creating a garden, a life, relationships, and community, the latest poetry anthology from Albuquerque’s Harwood Art Center. It is a celebration of land, relationships, community, and heritage, all told through the metaphor of gardening.
It also happens to be so good that I want all of you to read it. But I only have one extra copy.
So, in honor of Poetry Month, and the land you live on, whether or not you call it a garden, and in honor of you, my dear readers, whether or not you call yourself a poet or gardener, it is my pleasure to give away a copy of this genius little book.
To win, please leave a comment (just say hi if you like) by clicking on that little talk bubble at the top of this post. Giveaway ends Sunday, April 22.
We fired up the old bus, Miss Shelley, for a springtime tour of the land. Up and down mesas, along dirt roads and highways and foot-trails we went, getting a little lost, but even more found.
A night on the banks of the mighty Pecos river, doves singing in the willows, children playing in the dirt, light falling in unexpected ways, a burst of rain, an old lowrider cruising slowly past the cows.
Back in time to the old red rock villages hiding like forgotten gems in the piñon juniper scrub. Past acequias flowing full, and freshly tilled fields flooded with that snowmelt bounty.
We’ve traveled this stretch of land many times, but each time we crest the horizon it is to find the mountains and mesas opening anew, bigger than before. There are layers upon layers of history to peel back, roots to sink deeper, stories to discover and tell.
When we pause to listen and look, or at least travel very slowly (as Miss Shelley loves to do), it all comes pouring forth.
We’re Universe in a Grain of Sand people, my husband likes to say. Oh, New Mexico, you might be sandy, but you are home.
I always wanted one of these charming birthday rings for our birthday table, but the sheer number of parts–and the price tag they added up to–gave me pause. Then a dear friend gave me a spare ring. With a birthday coming, I set to work figuring out how to adorn it for, oh, about five bucks. And I thought some of you might like to hear how I did it.
First, I should say that I did consider buying the decorations, which are wooden and quite charming and no doubt worth the investment. But while bargain hunting (and getting heart burn from the thought of *gasp* buying something ready made) I came upon this tutorial on making your own. I have been in a stash busting mood when it comes to my wool felt collection, and so this was a win-win.
My husband, enrolled as the engineering brains behind this project, found flat mushroom top pegs in one of those many drawers filled with handy little things at the hardware store. They would provide the base for our ornaments. He drilled tiny holes in them to feed 22 gauge brass wire through. The tutorial I linked to above used 3/4 inch dowel sawed to size with a pushpin-made hole to hold the wire. Either way you are looking at some tool use.
Also, the holes in our birthday ring are actually not quite 3/4 inch wide, so there was a bit of sanding to open them up more. Nothing the Man of the Place couldn’t handle, and I probably could have done it too. But I had lady bugs and flowers to cut out.
I used two layers of felt for each symbol, glued together around wire armatures threaded through the peg and bent to the shape of the felt to hold it all in place. We used regular craft glue, and left them overnight to dry.
I recommend keeping the shapes small, and the total height of the ornaments about 4 inches.
Insert sigh of satisfaction and relief.
There is an edge of fire hazard to felted decorations on a candle holder, so use good sense, always keep an eye on it, and if in doubt, blow it out!
The ring and brass candle cups came from here, where you can also buy the wooden decorations and beeswax candles if you like. The wool felt came from here.
Oh, and you could also get super crafty and make decorations for different seasonal festivals…
And lest you think I went totally uber mother for this birthday, let me just say our gift to the little birthday girl was bought new, something that is almost unheard of in these parts and has so far brought all of us joy unfettered by heartburn. Sometimes you just have to know when to spend and when to tap into your inner riches of creative abundance (and too much felt).
The hebrew expresion “Tikkun Olam” literally means “to repair the world.” Ideologically it suggests a wholehearted acceptance of the world’s brokenness along with our ability to repair it, or at least our ability to try. It does not point to a particular time or transgression. It does not cast blame. It does not indulge the notion of absolute good or evil. It simply accepts that we live in a broken world and and can, or should (if and when we are ready), reach towards its repair. —Harriet Fasenfest, The Householders Guide to the Universe
I have learned a great deal of humility as I grow in my ability to join our collective repairing of this broken world.
I have at times found myself at a loss to define what “repairing” looks like to me. On the one hand I am impatient with small things like switching to cloth napkins (though please do it if you haven’t yet), and yet it can also take me a very long time to do something as basic as making my own household cleaning solutions. What’s more, as a high achiever, I’m drawn to the dramatic, all or none No Impact Man style changes. Eat only local food! Grow it all! No plastic! Don’t buy anything! No car! Repent!
Sigh.
When our family ended our plastic fast, I felt like a failure for returning to a relatively “normal” life. Still, I knew I had to go in search of balance, and so I surrendered my idea of what I should be doing. I focused my attention on nurturing my family and myself. I learned how to breathe through temper tantrums, to knit and sew, to discover how abundant life on a small single income can be. I carried on with my garden, with milking goats once a week, with hanging the laundry on the line, with building friendships and connection with my community.
I grew and grew and grew.
And the other day I looked around my kitchen and saw that yes, there are plenty of little bits of plastic packaging and such, but actually not very much. We have organically grown away from once ingrained patterns and habits of consumption. While the rules of our fast did foster amazing change and insight in a short period, over the last few years we’ve naturally come to embody that change more fully, more authentically.
For me, a big part of this repair work is an inner repair, one that moves beyond a Type-A Save the World mentality, and towards something infinitely more mysterious.
When we open our hearts to living in a way that strives towards repair, it is our own brokenness that is mended. That must be the first step, for it is our own healing that will guide us to heal the world we inhabit. We have a lot of learning and remembering to do. Just that is enough to fuel our spirits for the good work before us, as we discover the goodness of what it means to create things by hand, to grow things, to lift our voices in song, to really love and nurture, to be whole.
Sometimes it happens by accident. We begin with an action to heal the world, and find ourselves changed for the better. That’s good, too.
Here is something I never thought I’d say out loud: It doesn’t matter what you are doing. It doesn’t matter if you are doing big things or little things, nothing or everything. What matters is that we are all finding our way back to that wholeness. And changing the world from there.
Because I am at home, and it suits my nature, I do what I am doing. Mind the children. Search for beauty. Meet as many of our needs as I can by creating and repairing. Grow a few more vegetables every year, gather herbs from the mountains. Get a little more skilled at all this, a little less awkward. Not worry so much about what other people are or are not doing. Or if anyone is noticing what I’m doing.
So we raise our families and our gardens. We grow out of our radical youths. We may or may not get rid of the car, or have a solar panel array, or ever quite quit plastic. But we do get much better at many things, and also much humbler. Our work of repairing turns out to be about building a new way of life, rather than simply dismantling the old one.
And that will keep us busy for now.
Here is my revolutionary three-step plan to a mess-proof house:
Step 1: Pick up the Mess.
Step 2: Get rid of It.
Step 3: Repeat until the mess is composed entirely of things you can’t live without, or consists of things that are pleasingly wabi sabi in their strewn glory.
I first got hard core about decluttering when I was pregnant with #2. For my birthday that year I told my husband all I wanted was get rid of 1/3 of our possessions. That meant: one teapot, two dozen cloth napkins, forty books, a garbage bag of clothes, a sleeping bag, and on and on. And on.
That was almost two years ago, and I’m still peeling back layers of stuff and excess.
My children charmingly believe that play is basically imaginative emptying of every possible receptacle in the house: cupboards, drawers, toy chest, sewing box, yarn stash, garbage can. I don’t want to keep them from what is no doubt healthy development but nor do I want to have high blood pressure.
So, I’m just getting rid of it all.
Just curious–does this look like a lot of toys to you, or a little?
A friend of mine is an especially inspiring de-clutterer. She says that she has yet to reach the point where she feels like she’s done enough. I did once get rid of too many spoons, but perhaps it’s a sign that I should pare down on knives and forks.
I de-clutter because it makes my house more beautiful and because it makes my life simpler. The constant picking up and putting away of our detritus takes a tremendous amount of energy from me. Our belongings take mental, physical, and emotional energy to care for. As we get rid of stuff, we are freed in surprising ways.
Where toys go when mama gets tired of picking them up. Visitation is allowed. The bottom floor is kept clear as a hidey hole.
Currently in the Out Box: Anything that annoys me, including, but not limited to
Joining in again!
We’ve been so happy that our library got Pocketful of Posies, a book of nursery rhymes by one of our favorite’s, Salley Mavor. It is such a feast for the eyes! (I loved the illustrations in another book she did, In the Heart, so much that it inspired a whole “line” of repurposed and embroidered woolen clothes like the ones in the book.) The link on her name takes you to all her books.
I believe so strongly that fostering literacy begins not with letters but literature. And for very small children, that means lots of verses. It’s been hard to find a beautiful collection that doesn’t feature animals dressed as people, and save for This little piggy went to market, this book delivers. Gorgeous illustrations you will want to step right into, and a perfect assortment of our favorite rhymes with many new ones, too.
In knitting news I take back my words about size one needles–this bonnet turned out to be easy and fun and fast. I’d show you a pic of Maida wearing it but a) it would be so cute your computer might freeze up, and b) she’s asleep. So my third little baby here was kind enough to model. The pattern is DROPS bonnet in “Fabel.” It’s darling.
I’m also reading Unconditional Parenting at long last. So good to finally read the book that has indirectly had such a huge influence on my parenting, both inspiring and at times confusing me. I’ve really been mulling over this line:
“The reasons we parent as we do might be said to fall into roughly four categories: what we see and hear, what we believe, what we feel, and, as a result of those, what we fear.”
Hmmm.
Think I’ll pick my knitting back up to think about that some more.
Kyce Bello 