About love and loving…

Today I want to talk about love. Not the love that drowns us that envelopes us in a haze, that is so beautiful that we can’t bear a moment without it, that makes our hearts melt in sweetness but the love that is steady and deep and burning like a flame and never stops – not for the winds or the rains. It just keeps burning and getting stronger day by day.

This is the kind of love my 2-year old daughter teaches me. The love that exists when she won’t take a nap and I lose it and yell at her, and she adds – ‘mom still loves you’. And my heart breaks. In that moment, I don’t want to love. But my heart can’t help it. This is the burning of that candle that purges all those dark places inside that I would rather not see, but I don’t have a choice. I would rather believe that I am kind, loving and don’t lose my temper and helpful and will not hurt a soul. But I know the truth – I am capable of the other side. I’m capable of slamming doors, being rough, yelling, and I do hurt others. This acceptance is the deep grief of the human heart when we come to terms with all of ourselves and all that we are truly capable of. Even though I would never hurt my child, in that flash of anger, I can see how violence happens. How if I didn’t stop myself and try my best, my emotions would rule me.

So this idea of having a child, of raising your child, of spending time involves what any close relationship does – a facing of our own shadows and the things about ourselves that we would rather not see. IN usual relationships we sometimes make the choice to not go through, to want out. But in a parent – child relationship that is often not and cannot be our choice, and we know that in our hearts. So we agree to go through this journey, of walking through fire sometimes – of losing it and finding it and forgiveness and learning to trust in our own capacities to ride the storms. The storms are inevitable, and they do pass. It’s our choice what we allow them to teach us, and our children.

And the storms always leave behind something – trees broken, hearts broken. This is the way to compassion – this picking up the pieces and putting them together and mending the bridges. Apologies are difficult. They require us to face the facts and the consequences and find ourselves worthy of love and forgiveness. When I say sorry to my daughter, the person I’m really asking for forgiveness from is myself. My daughter readily forgives. She has forgotten the episode and moved on. It is me who is still lingering in that moment that I was who I did not want to be.

And then I make the next choice – to try harder, to be more patient, and to take better care of myself so I don’t reach that place of desperation again. And I make the choice to let go of the guilt, the consuming guilt and start over again. This is now a new moment. The sun is shining. Lets go ride our bikes together, I say. My daughter skips downstairs and runs to put on her helmet. My heart still hurts, but this is a new moment. I’m here now.

With Love, S.

That wild, that loving in the heaven of earth…

I’m thinking this morning of the Mary Oliver poem on Luke. I’m driving gudiya to the preschool she goes three mornings a week. I’m singing the Illayaraja’s ‘Kanmani’ song to her, and feeling generally uplifted. And all the thoughts – the weighing of the good and bad in my life and its various variations disappear. Poof. Just like that.

The reason my life has come into review this week is because I have a job interview this afternoon, my second one with this imaging research group. The position is for a research analyst and is reminiscent of my graduate student days – before I got mired into the world of writing grants, and managing students – and gave it all up to be home more with gudiya and to keep my sanity. At my previous interview with the group, they asked me, why would you apply for this staff position, given your CV? My only answer was that I wanted to do just research without all the responsibilities that a faculty job involved. That is part of the truth. The real truth is that my life as a Mom has plenty of responsibility in it. I don’t want to seek more – not of my own volition.

But am I ready to go back into work? This involves a full-time job and I am sure I don’t want that. “But you could work 30 hours a week” – chimed in my whatever-you-want-to-hear-dearie mind – if they would be amenable to that. I am not sure I want that either. But then gudiya starts school this Fall – Montessori – and I am scared at the thought of my life passing by while I wait for her to be back from school. I can think of all kinds of rationalizations, but really I am feeling the urge to move, to change, even as I am scared to death about it. I love my life as it is, part of me exclaims. Not yet, not already!

Anyways, as I am singing kanmani after dropping off gudiya, memories of my college days flash by. They were among the favorite days of my life. I have had the most incredible friends who saw through me and accepted me and loved me. So many dear friends come to mind. I was lucky to meet many amazing people. We had fun times and I have been meaning to share old photos from those days on FB. They have been out and about in our living room – I have been showing them to gudiya, but mostly just enjoying seeing them myself.

And this thought hits me as I am reminiscing and driving: we did not know then – in those carefree college days – that it would not last. We would never have that time again – the time when we were young, without responsibilities, of fun and flirting, and of discovering our own selves through our new-found relationships. If we had known, would we have appreciated it more?

And what about now? Here is another phase in my life that is pretty amazing. To have the time and make the choices to be able to witness the growing miracle of my daughter – and my husband as a Dad – and to discover what it is like to be young again – and what it is like to play. What it is like to read the same book for the 10th time and still witness the same incredible laughter and joy as the first time from Gudiya, and to witness her unending, enduring energy and capacity for play, imagination and fun. Of long summer days of farmers markets and cold winter days of story times and libraries. Of bouncy houses and meeting other Moms and sharing stories and making connections.

What is different about this time now is I know: that this doesn’t last. Its one of those bitter-sweet things about childhoods. These carefree days of my gudiya as a toddler learning, playing, growing will pass. Just as my gudiya’s early months passed by – the miracle of seeing her sit up, seeing her crawl and then walk and then learn to talk and then put ideas together. They will never be back again. The miracles continue but I don’t take it for granted. Mostly.

And then sometimes I do. I forget.

Like some days when she refuses to take a nap – there have been more of them lately. I’m exhausted, cranky and want out. Some escape from what seems sometimes a lasting-forever cycle of snacks, potty times, books, and cooking and washing dishes and laundry. I can’t seem to remember anything else. Is this what I signed up for? In that moment of judgment – and of course there is judgment – that’s the most ready weapon when we tether on the edge of exhaustion – I forget and I take it for granted. I forget the miracle of having a healthy child, of having the luxury of being home, of feeling these frustrations and still knowing I love my babe. Thank goodness, I always wake up. In time to appreciate.

So really, it is okay. This is life. That is the truth of it. We may make choices based on what we want, what feels good, what is pleasant, what our priorities are but at the end of the day, our choices are about relationships. And it begins with a relationship with ourselves – how we relate to all of this, all of ourselves – all the moods and all the feelings.

So after a week of weighing and feeling weighed down, I am finding the light, the light that is streaming through the windows, the gorgeous sunshine of a spring day, a day full of possibilities, a light that is everywhere. I don’t know what my future will be and it is okay. What I do know is that feeling Mary Oliver was talking about in Luke and how…

“…easily
she adored
every blossom

not in the serious
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom

the way we praise or don’t praise –
the way we love
or don’t love –
but the way

we long to be –
that happy
in the heaven of earth –
that wild, that loving.”

With Love, S.

Bird wings…

This morning was hard. Lately the mornings have been hard. Anji has been waking up in the middle of the night or early in the morning and sometimes both. And we bring her over to our bed – and after that, any sleep, if existent is broken – with her turns around and her breathing and her milky honey like scent pervading my consciousness. My consciousness isn’t mine anymore. Most times, this feels like a tender and sweet intrusion to my dreams, but sometimes, I just want to sleep. I want a lot of sleep. So much sleep, as much as a human being can possibly get.

My child’s colds make this scenario worse – more Mama time, more clinginess and comfort – to be expected for all of us when we are sick, but somehow the toll is always on Mama.

So this morning after dropping off my nearly 2-year old at day care, which she did not want and made her protests clear, I made my way to yoga Level I. Sometimes I’m wary of the levels – I can’t always do what I think I can and that sometimes overstretches me. But today the level was just what my body needed. I slowly settled in, letting all the judgments drop as Sharon’s kind words made its way to my heart. This felt familiar. My body responded of its own wisdom so that I could finally relax into my own being. At one point, Sharon said, discover your strength. I had forgotten I had strength! It felt marvelous to own up to my body and my strength.

So here I am, after yoga, at my favorite café, where the people behind the counter are quietly friendly, writing.

I want to write about the rain and the sunshine. The alternating dance between the two – and one that is essential. I want to write about Rumi’s words in ‘Bird wings’, ‘Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. if it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.’ I want to write about how suffering is hard, change is hard. And change happens all the time. Children grow up and their needs change. The peace we are sure has taken root in our hearts and will always be there, dissolves leaving us in tears. Friendships change and people disappoint us sometimes. Our hearts sag under the pain, until the time when we discover the strength within. And as the saying goes, there is no greater strength than gentleness.

It is always gentleness that makes me find my way again. It is gentleness towards myself, and all my failings. Like being unable to be present with my daughter when I drop her at daycare and she is in tears, and I don’t have the right words to console her because I desperately need this day for me. To be unable to say the right words to my husband when he asks me at 4.30 this morning, is everything okay, and its not and I want him to help but I also want him to go back to sleep because I know he has a busy day ahead. My failing to pick up the phone and call my friends when I feel alone – that makes me feel more alone.

It’s always gentleness that brings me back. An intention that is picked up again by my heart in full force, out of desperation. And I find the strength again to life up my head and my shoulders and start over.

With Love, S.

Bringing the old and new…

It has been a little over two weeks since our return from India. Two weeks of readjustment, recalibration, and tuning up. Jet lag was a part of this recalibration, but only one part of it. The sheer length of the travel and what it took out of Anjali and I, needed us to figure out a new way of relating to each other and the place we called home. When we entered our house after an arduous, over 30 hour travel involving two planes, one bus ride and the stop-overs and start-overs in between, Anjali learnt a new word: home. She ran from one end of our living room to the other, repeating in delight – home, home, home. Indeed we were glad to be home, and see Abhi.

What then unfolding was longing. Missing. Comparing. Anji waking up in the middle of the night asking for the place she left. and me missing the old predictable routine we had had before we left. Ah the comparing mind. The only thing it does is bring suffering. After over a week of this dance, I realized this was a new place we were in. This was unchartered territory. Anji was in a new place – new developments, emotions and the pain of sheer growth. and I had to meet her there. We weren’t going back in time – to before our India trip or to the time of the trip itself. We weren’t time travelers.

Once I made that leap, we could go back in time – cheerfully. Visit our photos and videos from the beach, time with grand parents, seeing planes, long air conditioned car rides, ceiling fans, autos and buses. And we could see with new eyes what was in front of us: abundance.

Indeed in the three weeks we were gone – nature came into full bloom. Spring arrived here, loud and clear. The roads lined with flowers, trees heavy with blossoms and bees, sunshine and warmth and the grass so green it felt like you were wearing a green lens. Everything was so green. Surrounded by this beauty, we countered our jet lags and new routines with gentleness.

So now here I am, finally, on a warm sunny day, writing in this space. I missed it. I missed being here. and I am here now. same as old, and yet new and different. As each of us are in every moment, every day. May we allow ourselves to meet this moment with openness and grace.

With Love, S.

Confessions…

I’m terrible with change. I hate that moment when things were going great and suddenly they aren’t any more. The moment (like this morning), when after peace and contentment, suddenly I’m face-to-face with irritation, anger, frustration, without any warning and left wondering where that joy inside of me disappeared. The moments when I thought I had it all orchestrated perfectly in my head, like a soap opera, and suddenly nothing is going my way. Moments when it looks sunny outside and I decide to go for a walk, only to find a cold breeze blowing my head off, making me wish I had stayed home. Moments when I want to be generous and leave a tip at the cafe only to find that I am out of cash. Moments when I want to tell the yoga teacher how great she was, but am afraid I can’t trust my voice to not break down into tears that I have no explanation for. Moments when I am bone tired after teaching an evening Math class and really just want to have a P&B sandwich, and crash. Instead I sit with hubby and eat lovingly prepared dinner and watch television, all the while resenting it and then judging myself for resenting it. And just before going to bed, hubby tells me that Steve Jobs is no more. That moment when I feel like screaming – why did you have to tell me that now! How am I going to sleep!! Because the fact is Steve Jobs is dead is so sad that I just want to cry, even though I have never met him in my life.

I can’t help thinking we create So much Drama in our lives, simply because we don’t like change. We don’t like it when we can’t control things, and when things don’t go our way (which we are convinced is the ‘right’ way). We hate it when we see someone in pain and there is nothing we can do about it.

That’s why we practice. That’s why in those moments, we try really really hard to take just one breath. and just one more. We tell ourselves – this is what anger feels like. this is what irritation feels like. This is what judgment feels like. We search desperately for that small ounce of kindness buried somewhere inside us. And we try hard to find where and sometimes, what is compassion in that moment. And slowly, surely, inevitably, we find that the judgment, anger and frustration are there no more.

The emotions will never stop coming. That’s what I’m realizing (to my disappointment). It simply is not possible – having emotions – the entire range, is part and parcel of being a human being. If we get angry, that doesn’t mean we have failed. It simply means, well, that we are angry. Being able to be open to that, and accepting and kind is what we endeavor to do in this practice. and we have keep practicing – sometimes for endless difficult moments, like being huddled in a tiny shack under the storm. And without knowing it, the storm ends. The sun comes out. and we are still standing. and so is the hut.

May we continue to be human…
with Love, S.

holding on and letting go…

This past month has been a blast into the past. For one, my Mom is here and under new circumstances – to greet her grandchild. and adding to that, touching base with several people from high school. Waking up at 3.00 am for Anjali, my tired mind has been revisiting my own past.

I’m not one who thinks of the past very much. I wish I could say, I’m someone who lives very much in the present, but that is really not true. I live in the present and a lot in the future. And then, there have been these moments that catch me by surprise and make me realize that my mind tries to avoid the past simply because it is painful. Like when I was on a 10 day silent retreat and around the 5th or 6th day, I suddenly had this vivid bittersweet memory of buying jasmine flowers in the market and wearing them in my hair. It was so vivid and so far away, tears sprung into my eyes. And I wondered how much of my past I was suppressing out of sheer concentration.

Visiting the past holds a bittersweet pain. There is the quintessential pain of change – that moments have passed that will not return. and sometimes there is the pain we carry without realizing – the pain of our wounds. This is difficult pain, for wounds hold our vulnerability. and we don’t like to be vulnerable. and yet, as we start opening to these moments, we realize what gentleness is. And as I realized how much I was holding on to, I could be gentle with myself. I could ask myself: what is freedom?

Freedom is choosing to let go. Freedom is understanding. It is refusing to be tied to the apparent solidity of our wounds. It is the releasing of our tight grasp. and to whatever extent that may happen, there is profound peace and freedom in that.

“Love tells me I’m everything. wisdom tells me I’m nothing. Between the two, my life flows” (Nisargadatta Maharaj). Our wounds arise from love. and letting go is wisdom. and dancing between the two, we discover who we are. what a journey this is!

with Love, S.