Musings of Palm Tree Trimmings

I've stayed home completely this week. Cooking, cleaning, painting and putting away palm tree leaves. Even though I quit my full time job in October 2012, I have stayed busy with part time work, a semester at UNLV, and yoga teacher training. Since the SO is back to work as of yesterday after a month hiatus between jobs, I am now the sole daytime guardian of the children of Summer; those little people who wake up early on Saturday and Sunday; late on Tuesday; want to live in Cartoonland and turn into bottomless goblins.

Today I taught yoga at 530 a.m. and came home to the usual duties. I ended up tackling work in the back yard. While I poked myself with big thorns and cursed (admittedly not yogi behavior) I held some thoughts about my past lives. Recounting what in retrospect, seems like quite a full life already.

I've seen dead people. Up close and personal. I have touched and medically handled them. That's not so bad. Death is peaceful. It's telling the family that is hard. I've seen people dying. That's harder; especially when they die alone. I've seen people wake up from a long sleep to know everyone they loved and cared for was no longer here on Earth.  I've seen too many mothers be told their babies won't make it, and shared the grief of even more too many who have bid good bye to their babes too soon. I've been there for some closer to me when those unthinkable sorrowful moments have happened.  I've rescued drowning children and hauled drunks out of the strip in Las Vegas on New Years Eve.

I've worked in hospitals, prisons, courtrooms and visited the homes of killers who warn you they could kill you if they wanted to, or seen them in jail interviews room where the same could happen by the time help arrives.

I'm 30. I'm picking palm tree leaves and stuffing them in bags; breaking only to cut more fruit up because breakfast was an hour ago and there are cries of hunger, yet again. 

I've seen enough. Palm tree pickings are easy times, even peaceful happy times.

Any more than those memories hardens me. It changes me. That's why when I worked I ran to yoga 2 times a day between double workload. I over-trained myself into injuries doing crazy things to relieve the stress. All the years of studying policy and political science and all I realized at the end is: without money and without will there is no changing, and there is little will and too much money spent on other things.

From my years in the legal field I came to believe it was just a well-oiled machine. For all my 14 hour days and sleepless nights, in the end it made little difference to the system and the people involved on both ends, aside from a couple extraordinary times when we rocked the boat, the times that keep many others going.

I trim palm trees. Make lunch, mop floors and review summer work. I play with water, I snuggle on the couch.

Still, I make more of a difference now, solving disputes over make believe, guiding a class through breathing, or guiding my own breathing when I write in the middle of a hide-and-seek operation in full force.  I have a chance to change the world. I can change my world when I live practicing peace. I can hopefully make a small impact in the life of a fellow yogi, even if it's only for a day. I can make this summer memorable for my kids by slowing down, if you can call being home for the summer, slowing down.

I'm 30, and I have seen enough to realize there is no additional benefit in living life stressfully for success.  Do what you love, don't let it get it to you, because in the end, life is about connecting to our inner happiness and figuring out that being happy with ourselves is more fulfilling than any paycheck or an ego boost of self-importance.

Can we ride the sun?

It's fitting that the first blog is today. Today's the Day of the Sun. The summer Solstice. My daugther's birthday and the day I became a mother. Today this project is born out of the sun and my personal suns.
Eventhough today is E's birthday, it is my son, M, who is attached to the sun.

 It was a conversation with him which gave me the image for this blog. It went like this:

-Mommy, can we ride the sun all the way until tomorrow?

I paused. I was in yoga teacher training. We had been paying our respects to the sun every day and some mornings he would join me, chanting "Shanti Shanti Shanti Om" before giving water to the sun.

I didn't want to say no, because the sun is a powerful force in how we go from one day to the next.

So I answered:
 --I suppose we do, every day we wake up with the sun and we follow it until nightfall and then we wake up to follow it again.

He didn't bite.
-No! I don't mean that. I mean can we travel to the sun and ride for a whole day!

-I don't think anyone has invented a way to do that yet.
-Well, I will work on it when I grow up.

That is how dreams begin. He wants to be a ninja, or a scientist. I keep telling him he can do both. No need to let go of any one thing you want to do. He goes on to bring up The Hulk and Ironman of course. Then he momentarily debates if maybe he wants to just be Batman when he grows up.

In any case, be it Batman or ninja scientist, he also wants to build a car that loves back.  He figured this when he heard the Bluetooth in the car and I explained the car talks but doesn't feel. So he will build a car that can have feelings and love mommy like he does.

In the middle of superhero scientist discussion and cars that love back, I nurture his dreams. I want him to reach and leap forward. I imagine that if at one point a NASA engineer to be had a conversation with his mother about traveling to the moon. I would want to think she encouraged his spirit, instead of domesticating it with what's real or what is practical.

Thus, we have a ninja practice station:

A.K.A. the couch.

Every day without prompt he is tumbling, leaping over pillows and showing me his latest ninja combination. Then we spell and he builds Legos; for science's sake.

I can go look around for wisdom all over, in books and on the mat. The most raw and bright, I find when I look through the eyes of my children, or in the miracle of a sunrise and a flower.

I hope this blog to be a place to share those moments, along with yoga adventures and wisdom on the sages depending on what comes my way. I hope this is a place that serves my teachers, big and small and brings something to your life as well.

Happy Solstice!!