The last professional photo shoot we had was when my daughter had just been born in August 2010. Today is November 12, 2012.

I bought a shoot over a year ago on as a Groupon or Living Social Deal and just finally redeemed it today. Although I’m thrilled that we got some pictures taken, and I hope some turn out, I can’t help but notice how not-great I feel about how I look, in my body and my face.

I have been feeling better and even starting to exercise, but photos don’t lie (unless you tell them to). And these are screaming out loud that I am getting old. Older.

I don’t like to do face shots of my kiddos on the blog, but here’s one that shows how cute my little redhead #2 looked. I’m trying to decide if I should add one of me so you can see what I’m talking about or just leave it to your imagination (or to Facebook).

Family Photo Shoot at (nearly) 40

It is sad
that I get sad
seeing photos of me next to my children
with their smooth skin,
pink and profoundly European,
and dwell on the depth
of the olive I used to like in summer
that now seems
like soggy yellowed pages
of an obsolete book
that got folded inside themselves
and will never not be wrinkled

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Okay, here’s Self-Portrait with Toddler:

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After casting aside my poetry hat for far too long, my NaBloPoMo plan is to write a poem — and to take and post a photo — every day in November, spending less than half an hour on both. The hope is to drill down, to focus, to look for and create beauty.

Previous Posts:

Day 1: Eleven One

Day 2: Shoreline

Day 3: Damage

Day 4: On Parenting and Sunrises

Day 5: When will we?

Day 6: Voting Line

Day 7: What I want my children to learn from me

Day 8: Haiku

Day 9: Reminders

Day 10: Routine

Day 11: Lux Esto, in moderation

Welcome to the second edition of the “I’m a Natural Parent – BUT…” Carnival

This post was written for inclusion in the carnival hosted by The Artful Mama and our feminist {play}school. During this carnival our participants have focused on how mainstream society has affected their natural parenting and how they have come to peace with this.

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Although I feel good about many of the choices I make, there are things I want my kids to do, practice, and believe that I’m simply not modeling for them.

Things I want my kids to have include:

An internal sense of rhythm, a sense of peace and openness in their hearts, an appreciation for beauty and magic, a deep connection to nature, healthy bodies, intrinsic motivation to make healthy & positive choices, and a “default setting” of joyful and happy with an ability to touch places of sadness and anger lightly, without settling there.

Things I do (usually but not always with the help of my husband) that help cultivate the above include:

Providing fairly consistent meal experiences (even if I don’t always join the kids in eating); usually healthy food, including some bone broth every day and never any visits to fast food joints or anything with artificial colors or dyes or HFCS; inhabiting a home that opens to the woods and a garden (in the old place, and next year in the new); getting myself help when I am not well; and keeping a cheery tone and an assumption of positive intent most of the time

But, the many things I do that run in direct opposition to the above include:

Forgetting to breathe; not exercising, or cultivating a yoga or meditation practice; going to bed too late;  letting my two-year-old daughter eat almost an entire bag of dried mango and half a bag of lentil chips because it kept her quiet and occupied (and there a lot more stories like that!); bribing my six-year-old son with half of a gluten-free Oreo if he is cooperative and doesn’t do x, y, and z; letting my son (and thus also his toddler sister) watch TV instead of finding a fun way to have him help me make dinner because I need to make phone calls or reply to emails in between stirring pots and want him out of the way; not getting out to hike hardly ever and never once to camp.

And that’s just the start of it!

Some of this is circumstantial: we’ve been renovating a house, we’ve been moving, we were on vacation, the sun is shining (for super long!). At some point, though, the “exceptional” happens enough that it becomes what kids think of as their regular reality. I have to admit it: our regular reality is not all that mindful or calm, or full of gentleness and joy.

Part of the puzzle is that I’ve been struggling with my health since my two-year-old was born. When I was in such belly pain 6 months into this gig mothering two kids that I had to go on a restrictive diet to eliminate all starches, all grains, all sugar and even, for the better part of a year, all raw vegetables (except freshly juiced) and all fruit.

That kind of put a damper on eating togetherness. I also realized that my adrenal stress was such that I literally could not digest if I had to multitask while eating. That meant no nursing while eating or trying to have a toddler eat but needing to hold her or change her diaper or get her brother’s paws off of her halfway through the meal. It’s ideal for anyone to eat calmly and sit for 20 minutes afterward, but for me, it’s a necessity for optimal health. So eating became something I did during naps or while the kids were at school or with a babysitter. Or for a while during the busiest time of the move (and after weaning reduced my caloric requirements), not at all.

Now how will kids learn that mealtime is a joyful time of sharing healthy food if mama is cleaning off her juicer in the kitchen while they eat at the table?

The sheer volume of work involved in the GAPS diet is perhaps staggering: making bone broth on a regular basis, cooking all your veggies in it, making almond “bread” from scratch if I want anything to chew on, soaking and drying nuts, peeling almonds before drying them, fermenting veggies and fruits, and the list goes on. Lots of moms do lots of these things, but I haven’t been able to manage doing them all and actually eating with my kids — and not paying for it later — until recently. I’ve been on this diet for 18 months.

Now, it’s true that I haven’t exactly dropped everything else in my life to do only food. Some might argue that I am doing too many things half-(bottom)ed around the house and too many things in general. There was volunteering for my son’s school to raise money to build a wetland learning lab last year (and the benefit concert I organized); editing my friend Monica Corrado’s real food techniques cookbook, With Love from Grandmother’s Kitchen; going to conferences, locally or with family in tow (Weston A. Price Foundation Wise Traditions, Fourfold Path to Healing, AWP, Wanderlust, Take Back Your Health, Gluten-Free Expo) and solo this summer to BlogHer.

These trips are not necessities, I know. But even though the travel and excursions might be tiring and keep me from hunkering down and doing other more nature-oriented things, learning from others in these environments inspires me and helps me feel hopeful and alive.

It could be argued that I’m teaching my kids the opposite of making your home your sanctuary.

And that would be ironic, because the biggest project of the last 9 months has been renovating our house. We bought the home next door that was in terrible shape because a) somebody was going to renovate it or tear it down, and we didn’t want to sit next door and watch a McMansion go up b) it has an awesome yard where we can build a wonderful garden and have room for a natural play area c) my husband is a wannabe architect and has been fantasizing for years about how he’d build an addition from scratch and d) this gave us the chance to look at how we were living in our little Cape Cod and create out of the identical footprint a home that would work for our family for years to come, and to be a place of beauty, too.

Except that right now, it’s a mess.

The title and tagline of the blog I started for the renovation project are: “Conjuring Home: Renovating green, smart and beautiful. Designing for real family life.” The title and tagline for this blog are “Crunchy-Chewy Mama: Living naturally, most of the time.”

Nobody is ever perfect, but I do sometimes get the sense that I’m teaching my kids to think of chaos and being in-process as the norm when I believe in my heart that order and calm are what would do them good.

So how do I compensate?

Well, now that I’m feeling better and the boxes to unpack are dwindling, I hope some will just naturally fall back in line. But I also think I need to make some lists, do some more prioritizing and thinking. Just writing the above has helped! My next task is to list all the things I wish I were doing and see what it would take to make those happen — whether they are just not who I am or if I can enjoy them after some kind of initial learning curve hump is cleared.

These are things like singing transitions, reciting some prayers of gratitude and safety/calming at meals and bedtime (and maybe using a candle), moving mindfully, getting through the day with happy tones (no more exasperation!), approaching sleep with gratitude and ease, regularly using essential oils and flower essences for balance (in non-crisis times), reading for pleasure, and eventually, doing some handwork for pleasure.

But I feel like I need some space to make these changes. This fall, I am putting my two-year-old daughter in an in-home Montessori school three days a week. I want her to experience consistency in her bones and to be somewhere she will see others modeling for her a peaceful, calm approach (well, the adults anyway. And maybe some of the kids, too!) It’s a lovely setting with a beautiful yard. She will eat with others, and only healthy food.

Essentially I am paying other people to show her a simple path where her mother seems to clutch at contradiction all the time (again, see the title of my blog!).

What I hope is that the clear-cut boundaries of time and space will give me what I need to pursue my writing (which keeps me sane) and my freelance career (to keep me from needing an office job) and my health needs. I hope my daughter likes the program and that we do, too, even though we trend more toward a Waldorf approach to education.

My son? He’s now 6.  He went to a Waldorf preschool but is returning for his first grade year at a “choice” (magnet) public school with an Expeditionary Learning focus. There is lots of connection to nature built into the curriculum, a strong sense of community, and, I’m happy to announce, a brand-new wetlands learning lab that is almost complete and is already home to happy frogs.

I am going to try to envision myself leaping for joy and then enjoying the sun from my lily pad.

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How do you manage to be the kind person you want your children to grow into and still find time to sleep, eat and breathe?

Please share your genius (or admit your imperfections!)

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This carnival was created by The Artful Mama and Natural Parents Network. We recognize that “natural parenting” means different things to different families, and we are dedicated to providing a safe place for all families, regardless of where they are in their parenting journeys.

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

• I’m a Natural Parent- BUT… – Carrie at Frugal Foodie Mama says “We breastfeed. We co-sleep. We babywear. But we do not cloth diaper. This post is about my reasons why I haven’t, and why I would still like to try it.”
• Am I Really a Natural Parent? – Valerie at Momma in Progress confesses maybe she’s a bit more mainstream than she thought.
• I’m a Crunchy Mama, BUT… – Shannon at GrowingSlower has learned that her food doesn’t grow on grocery store shelves, but she still has a long way to go.
• I’m a Natural Parent, but…my kid loves a screen – Lyndsay owns her son’s love for television programming, ipad and apps.
• Ashamed to Breastfeed – Kym at Our Crazy Corner of the World talks about how she was ashamed and intimidated to breastfeed in public.
• When they gotta go… – Jorje of Momma Jorje shares her EC weakness…
• Love For the Mainstream – Amy W. explains how letting a mainstream family into her life increased her self-awareness, and helps her to maintain balance while advocating for natural parenting.
• Weaning My Nursling – Alisha at Cinnamon&Sassafras reflects on her decision to wean her son, rather than waiting for him to decide.
• I’m a Natural Parent But…My Toddler is a Junk Food Junkie – Chanisa at City Girl Slash Hippie Mom talks about how she’s trying to get her two year old to have healthier eating habits
• I’m a Natural Parent – But…I’m Socially Awkward – Shannon of The Artful Mama talks about the difficulties she experiences maintaining her conviction when she experiences social resistance.
• Holding onto connection when traveling – Lauren at Hobo Mama wants to respect her children rather than demand obedience … but it’s so hard around family.
• What would the neighbours think?! – Teresa at This Savvy Mama talks about the pressures of balancing life skills with the realities of having two young children.
• French Fries and Diaper Blowouts – Arpita hosts a guest post detailing how, just every once in a while, the chaos of running a business can hamper even the most regimented natural parenting plans, and the sometimes messy (and stinky!) consequences!
• Confessions of a mostly natural parent – Jessica of Crunchy Chewy Mama feels good about many of the choices she makes but there are things she wants her kids to do, practice, and believes that she is not modeling for them.

The days are getting shorter. How sad. Thank goodness.

The children will be out of the house soon. How sad. Thank goodness.

We will have to adhere to an imposed schedule. How sad. Thank goodness.

In the spirit of being two things at the same time (see the title of this blog!), here is my list of things I love and super don’t love (insert euphemism for “hate” here) about summer.

Thumbs up — Reasons to smile about summer

1.  Being unscheduled. Not having to be up and have my son out of the house by 7:40 (for drop-off) or 7:15 for bus to school. This includes: a) Lazier bedtime. Not feeling rushed at dinner to get into bed by 8:00 or risk exhaustion after the school day and b) Having time for my kids to just be, to hang out and play together, try on crazy outfits, do a craft, and figure stuff out on their own.

2. Nature exploration and picnics. We had the most amazingly lovely time a few days ago at Green Springs Garden Park lunching on the grounds. Earlier the kids had waded in the creek and played in the shade of a pumpkin-vine arbor. Gorgeous.

3. Sports. It’s fun to see my son, age 6, getting interested in following teams and being so happy to watch long, uneventful games rather than clamoring for a hit of PBS. I like seeing him think of himself as an athlete.
4. Swimming. The kids are so happy to be in water. My two-year-old would just stand up to her neck in water in calm North Beach, Maryland and happily play in big waves in Lake Michigan. My six-year-old is not yet a swimmer but close.
5. The abundance of local produce. I could go to a farmers market almost every day and feel good about the food and whose labor I’m supporting.
6. U-pick. This is the second year we visited Dexter Blueberry Farm, a mile from the house I lived it until I was 10. Last year my son and baby and I picked alongside a college friend, ceramics artist  Julie Corey and her kids. It was great fun. This year it was just me and my two kids, and the picking felt wonderfully meditative. My two-year-old adored it.
7. Travel. We got to see lots of family and visit fun new places without missing school or worrying about getting off schedule. My son tried kayaking and got into reading maps. My daughter explored the sensory delight that is sand.
8. Fireflies. They are cool.
9. Warm weather. When it’s winter, this is what you wish for, or at least think you do.
10. Long days. By bedtime, you can feel like you had about five or six unique experiences and gotten to know yourself and your kids in multiple ways.

Thumbs Down: Things I will NOT miss about summer!

1. Being unscheduled. We are off our rocker without the imposition of schedule and a mom whose internal sense of rhythm is a work in progress, to put it politely. After being up for an hour or two, it’s still “too early” to go to a park at 8 a.m. while it’s nice out because “there will be no friends there,” says the redheaded 44″ tall extrovert. By the time museums open, kids are already hungry for second breakfast and little one has only 90 minutes or so left in the tank if I want to hope for any decent kind of nap. And if I don’t spend the night before packing lunch, forget it the whole thing!

This also includes a) Lazier bedtime. Not having school as a motivation to get to bed in a timely manner. This means 1) little time for parents to talk at each other or even look at anything besides dirty dishes after kids are asleep or 2) no talking at all because one of us has fallen asleep at 8:34 p.m. (If that’s me, I usually wake up at 2 a.m. and can’t get back to sleep for two or three hours). And b) having time for my kids to just be, to make a mess in the house, to undo whatever cleaning or straightening I just did, to whine and cry at each other’s failure to share, to make me so stressed out I can’t eat anything or finish an email

2. Nature exploration and picnics. Can you say mosquitoes? And a lot of dirt stuck in finger- and toenails that refuse to be cut? And needing double the water bottles because of the heat and need for handwashing? And temperatures so high your ice packs don’t stand a chance? And a side of code orange air to go with your BPA-free and stainless steel containers packed into your lead-free lunch box.
3. Sports. I liked it better when I didn’t have to cart a bat and balls to the park and wonder when the toddler was going to get hit with one or the other. Plus, now that the boy can read, he reaches for the Sports section of the paper and informs us when we have to watch TV to see whatever baseball game or golf he has deemed essential viewing. The games themselves are fairly chill, but those darned commercials are so icky (one of the reasons I was reluctant to get rid of cable with DVR, which allowed us to record and fast-forward). I wonder if the Olympic theme song will get stuck in our heads so ruthlessly in the winter of 2014.
4. Swimming. I can’t stand chlorine in any dose, and my son looks horrible after being in it. Both kids would love to spend more time at pools, but I literally cannot set foot in one. My husband is less than enthused by water sport, even though his skin is lovely and without the problems mine has. Bring on the cold weather so I stop feeling like such a mom failure who has to pay other people to swim with her kids! (And don’t tell my son that the high school down the street has a pool open year-round.)
5. The abundance of local produce. I feel bad whenever I miss a farmers market day and actually go to the grocery store. Sometimes it’s just too late and hot to get to the afternoon markets and the kids are too tired to jump in the car, and I haven’t done enough prep to then get home in time to make dinner. On weekends, if I bring them along, the older one complains about having to be on a break from dairy and that Pleasant Pops don’t come to our market anymore.
As for consuming, I’d like to be freezing and fermenting a whole lot more than I’ve been able to this summer during our move, especially after Coach Christy Marie’s wonderful presentation at Holistic Moms last week. Here’s hoping that next year we’ll do the garden up right and I’ll find a way to be more of an inspiring homesteader-wannabe and enroll my kids in helping.
6. U-pick. This is different than just buying local. Where we live, this requires driving at least 30 minutes, if not much more, which seems counterintuitive to the whole carbon footprint thing. And when we did go in Michigan, my son was D-O-N-E after I think 24 minutes. Not a good ratio of time and gas to activity.
7. Travel. Eleven hours in a car in one day. No DVDs. Barely a nap. ‘Nuff said. But also factor in beaucoup time in the kitchen prepping ahead and still needing to eat out (and offend a sensitive stomach) and, to quell the screaming between service plazas, to pump kids so full of dried fruit that all they do is sing. And poop. And, as mentioned above, not sleep.
8. Fireflies. They make my son whine about not being allowed to stay up late, and I can’t really argue with him that he’s missing something naturally cool.
9. Warm weather so hot you don’t even want to set foot outside. Scrap any plans to turn on the oven before sundown! If you forget to put up the sun shade, any driving outing starts out as a sauna. These are the days when you wish it was 40 degrees so you could just sit and read in the car while the little one took an uninterrupted nap.
10. Long days. When children start telling you they are hungry at 6 a.m. and tell you they are still hungry at 8 p.m., and you’ve prepared breakfast and then a second breakfast at home, snacks for the ride to the morning outing so they won’t bug you when you get there, a packed lunch for after the morning outing (especially if it’s far from home and you actually want the little one to fall asleep, which she’ll only do on a full belly), snacks for on the way home from an afternoon outing, dinner, and snack before bed, well, you start to wish the sun would just take a quick nosedive toward December.

What will you miss about summer? What are you ready to kick to the curb?

For the last month, it’s been neglect the blog or neglect the children. Or both.

Today I am at BlogHer ‘12, so it’s the kids who are getting none of mama’s love. They are, however, getting thoroughly entertained and spoiled by their cousins and aunt and uncle. Really, I think my son may learn to swim and my daughter may learn to talk in the few days I’m away.

For much of the earlier part of the summer, it’s been a whirlwind of preparing for the final stages of our house renovation, packing, moving, traveling, and more more traveling.

Some of the loftier goals for healthy eating and gone out the window, and fortunately my body is able to tolerate it okay so far (and by that, I mean that I am eating fresh veggies again and that I actually actually ate a small amount of rice in dosa and uttapam from an Indian restaurant, Madras Masala in Ann Arbor).

My kids are having a blast but are also getting weary of so much inconsistency. Ditto me.

On the train to New York, I started reading Katrina Kenison’s The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother’s Memoir. I love the sense of groundedness she sounds like she had in her sons’ early years. Seeing my nieces take care of my daughter also helps me appreciate Kenison’s tale of change as they moved into adolescence. The baby I saw born at home 15 years ago is now taking care of my child!

Seeing this growth reminds me just how ephemeral all this now-ness really is. They really will not be young children forever. But I am growing older, too.

So much to process. I’m grateful to be here with so many talented women writers and to have a little space to think before we finally finish moving into our new home. And into the next phase.

It isn’t every day that I have the chance to give my kids the kind of memorable experience we had last week at the Baltimore Orioles game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Since my son hadn’t ever been to a professional sporting event before, I’m not sure he fully appreciated just how special this event was. But he sure did know it was cool.

Thanks to Amy Mascott of TeachMama, I was able to join my friend Elaine of ConnorandHelen in driving up to Baltimore on a rainy afternoon. It was my first time taking a road trip with another family. Connor and my son went to preschool together, and Connor’s younger sister, Helen, was the only girl my son invited to his birthday party this year (sniff! after such gender parity in previous years!) My backward-facing toddler was thoroughly entertained by their antics in full-to-the-brim Mazda 5 (and by Elaine’s expert skill parsing out morsels of a cherry Lara bar).

We arrived late but just in time for the last tour for bloggers invited to the Tweet Up event, joining in with Scary Mommy author Jill Smokler, whose new book, Confessions of a Scary Mommy, I’d bought at her release party at Port Discovery in April. It was already shaping up to be a star-studded evening!

After checking out the family room where Orioles kiddos can relax and play during games, we walked a long concrete hallway to a door that led straight to home plate. What a view! There we were, right behind the mound, able to look into both dugouts. Still woozy from our drive, I think it was hard to let the awesomeness of those bright lights sink in before we were whisked up to other fancy places, like the open-air press box and the fancy 65-degree media room with its dozens of t.v. screens.

Back in the day, when I was a melancholy teen, I got to visit my dad’s friend and longtime Detroit Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell in his radio booth. I wish now I’d shown more awe and reverence in his presence. It is a special thing to see the inner workings of a stadium. This experience may be hard to compete with. I know my son will never forget his first baseball game, but I worry that the next time we actually pay for tickets, he will be asking where is the fancy suite with free popcorn.

Since we were late and I had a toddler to chase after, I missed some of the more salient points made by the Orioles wives during the Tweet Up as they addressed other local bloggers and took Q&A. But are clearly a great bunch of women who really try to give back to their community through projects like Habitat for Humanity.

My son went into the evening a nascent sports fan of all stripes, but he is for sure now an Orioles fan. Everyone at school knows it, thanks to his new cap and (swag-filled)  backpack, and everyone who sees me on the road knows it, thanks to the curlicued orange O magnet-stuck on the left bumper (Holistic Moms Network is on the right). And after a high-five with my boy, I think the Oriole mascot knows it, even if my toddler daughter’s shrieks upon seeing the giant bird might have drowned out the sound of plush on palm.

I zipped home with two children filled up on fun memories and yummy snacks and with the knowledge that I’d given them something pretty cool to look back on. Thanks to everyone who made this a memory that keeps on giving!

Disclosure: I was given free tickets, parking, food, and Orioles paraphernelia at this event. I was not required to write anything.

The first time I’d heard of a “touch truck” event was in a With the Kids article in the Washington Post Weekend section. Herndon Truck Days sounded like a blast! And the article also inspired me a year later to pitch an article about the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra’s Children’s Music Festival. It was published and the ASO event sold out!

Here we are, now three years later. My son is in kindergarten, so the weekday Herndon event is out. When I saw — I think on SuperNovaMommy.com — that there would be a touch truck day on Saturday, May 19, at Arlington Central library, I added it to my growing list of potential activities for the weekend.

When we got to the touch truck event, the library wasn’t even open yet but parking was already insane. I felt like I must be the last parent in all of Arlington to pull up. The lines for the crane, dump truck, cement mixer, fire engine and more were in the tens and maybe even 20s deep. Still, it was a nice morning, and who can’t get a kick out of seeing big trucks up close and personal?

I was solo parenting while my husband worked at home, dealing with one of a thousand things on our to-do list for the house renovation and selling project. (All we seem to do these days is tag-team parent!) The baby — now 21-month-old toddler– stayed happily on my back in the Ergo until her brother climbed in his first vehicle. Then she wanted “Dowww!” and to take the wheel. This was fun for a while. She stuck close while we stood in line. We played with our shadows. 

While awaiting a spin in the Recycling truck, I let my pale little beauty wander in the shade of trees near the library building. But then, I turned my back for a second and she disappeared behind a big green mechanical shed-thingie, one of those weird metal outcroppings. As if my heart weren’t already jumping from enough from the loud horns! (Honestly, can’t they turn down the volume on those for special children’s events? Someone write the manufacturer!)

I found her fast enough, though, and I admit that it was fun to run into some friends of my son’s, the same ones we’d seen the previous weekend at the enjoyable Arlington Children’s Chorus concert. It was cute to see brother and sister “driving” together. It was also heartening to see so many more mamas wearing their kids in Ergos and mei tais and Moby wraps than I did when my son was little. Not only is it easier to wield a baby on your body than in a stroller at an event like this, but I think little ones would probably feel more secure among all those sounds if they are close to a loving body.

And it was nice to be out where the people were after so many sheltered months stressing about home construction and my health and my son’s health. I felt like I was part of a much wider community for the first time in a long while.

However, I have to admit that I had more fun the next day, at the much less well-attended “Live it Up” event at the Clarendon Market Common. My son had a blast in the moon bounce and getting a free glitter tattoo. We all playing with hula hoops and watching the woman on stilts walk and hula with grace. My son wasn’t up for trying out the obstacle course set up by Washington Sports Club, but it was fun to watch. The best part, though, was the performance by Rocknoceros. I’ve heard great things about that band for years, but this was the first time I caught their show. Call me a fan! Those cats were funny, their music catchy.

As I sat with my baby girl clapping on my lap, and then later watching her get up and do the funniest sideways toddler boogie, I felt like I did last weekend at the Arlington Children’s Chorus concert. “This is what I thought mothering would be like: sharing things with my kid,s where they are exposed to some kind of beauty that we can all enjoy together.” In a spring dominated by house renovation plans and health struggles, these two events were oases of joy. We were just together, enjoying something beautiful and one another’s company. Last weekend, this came as a lovely mother’s day gift.

The Market Common event was out in the open at very casual, a great day on the lawn (until my little redheads started getting pinker than the lemonade that Red Mango was selling). The Arlington Chorus event was likewise family-friendly. It was surprising how well both kids sat and listened, but when they wanted to climb the stairs at intermission or run around in the lobby, or blurt out “Ba ba ba!” during the middle of a song, they were in good company, and no one looked twice.

So I was a little sad that we didn’t also make it to the ASO event on Sunday afternoon. Last year, I wrote about the event again for the Alexandria Patch and got a press pass to attend which I did with both my son, then age 5, and my daughter, then 9 months old.

My son, more sensitive in some ways than he was at age two, was overwhelmed with the loudness of the instrument petting zoo but enjoyed the art activities in the cafeteria of T.C. Williams High School, the school where I used to teach (before they opened the fancy new building). Whenever we pass by the building, he recalls the event and seeing a friend of his we don’t see often, whose mom and I took Bradley birth class together.

When I’d queried my son about what he wanted to do most over the weekend, he did pick the ASO festival over a few other options, but when it came down to it, after a morning outside with Rocknoceros and his sister napping quietly upstairs, he really just wanted to stay home with his dad and watch sports on TV. I can’t blame him. We can only process so much at one time. Just look at me for an example of how multitasking will frazzle your brain. And your hair.

While I may not approve of a lot of TV time, watching sports is a bonding activity for my son and his dad. It also gives him a little currency to trade in the arena of mainstream activities, which is a lot for a kid whose parents hardly even let him pee inside a McDonald’s, much less eat there, and who don’t partake of a lot of other activities that many folks associate with fun and childhood (like ice cream trucks, movies, character-driven toys).

So, a little couch time can be a good thing. While I love that the DC area affords us endless possibilities for activities, I also have to remember to budget into our schedule something that will never make it onto an online calendar of weekend options but is nonetheless important: Hanging out.

Welcome to the May 2012 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Parenting With or Without Extended Family

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how relatives help or hinder their parenting. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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This post would be awesome if I had family that lived nearby.

The topic of this month’s Carnival of Natural Parenting is exactly what I lamented over two years ago in a post I wrote for DC Metro Moms. It is hard to do this parenting gig without help, and when there is no family, and your friends are as busy as you are, well, for me that means that every slice of babysitting I need requires scheduling. And that means time, texts, and changed plans when the sitter’s kid gets sick.

As a stay-at-home mom with a few hours a week of tutoring and freelance work and multiple random hours of volunteer stuff, in addition to my current role as interior designer/realtor for our house renovation and sale, I rely on sitters who don’t always come through. I often feel like I can’t count on much. And that drives me batty. If my folks were in good health and lived in town, that would be a game-changer.

But they don’t want to leave Michigan, and I don’t want to go back. I like living near DC. And they’re not of the persuasion or stamina to take the kids for more than an hour or two anyway. My husband’s parents would not be options for extended or regular help either, though I can leave the kids for a few hours with their grandma when we visit her and when she visits us, each once or maybe twice a year.

Part of me wishes that the kids knew their grandparents more and that we could just drop in whenever and that they could come help out whenever. But since health and age and inclination don’t point in that direction, I’m okay with it being special to have visits with them.

What has been great has been help from my sisters and their kids, as I first wrote over two years ago. A community of youngsters is a place for my gregarious son to thrive. Now 6, he’d have felt so much more comfortable as a baby and toddler, I think, if he weren’t the oldest and if we had more familiar folks around all the time. I can see the difference in my similar temperament toddler daughter who has no problem with a new sitter or an unfamiliar situation if her brother is around.

We’re in the middle of a house renovation that has taken all my time and energy, and then some. The actual move, I’m sure, will take weeks, if not months to crawl out from under. When a friend moved a few years ago, she said she didn’t even unpack; her parents did it all. Then they painted her basement one weekend. That is not the kind of support I could ever expect. If I need help packing, I either need to ask a friend, which I’m generally not comfortable doing since she’s likely to be as maxed out as I am, or I have to pay someone to watch my kids and/or help me.

Last week, after the sitter got my daughter to sleep easier (and then longer) than I ever can, she helped me move around furniture in the house so that I could stage it for photos. This week the sitter has been sick, and man, it takes a lot longer. And if the baby won’t sleep, forget the bigger sorting and packing. She’ll undo whatever I did in a heartbeat. So I stay up late, and my health suffers.

So yes, it would be nice if I could send her and her brother to grandma’s. I even tend to cop a righteous attitude at times that people with family nearby simply do not understand what it means to parent in the same way that I do. Oh, woe is me, she who has to pay people to keep her sane! But seriously, it just ain’t the same as people who use their parents for childcare or as my friend who lives with her folks.

And yet, I know we are lucky to have this choice to make. A lot of the people in the recent NPR Family Matters series would opt not to live under one roof if they didn’t have to, and my friend, a mom of two who owes more on her home than it’s worth, would probably rather her family be on its own. But she also admits that it works well to live with her folks. She can go out whenever she needs to, go back to work without needing to bundle her baby to a daycare, or wake early without wondering if someone is going to have texted her a cancellation and change the entire look of her day.

With my health issues and especially with the current house project — doing renovations on the new one and prepping this one to sell — and with my husband’s schedule not putting him home before 6 p.m., I couldn’t get by without some help. I know other people who do it, people whose husbands travel out of town for days or even weeks at a time. If that were the case here, I’d need to get a full-time nanny. As much as I don’t love the stress of doing too many things, I also know I cannot take care of myself and my kids being a full-time mom without taking time to cook what will sustain me and eat it without interruption at least some days, and without pursuing things I’m passionate about. If I didn’t have a partner coming home each night, I’d set out to earn enough to pay someone to help enough that I could get all my needs met.

Do I wish that person were a family member? That the time my kids spend with another adult be with someone who shares their DNA and can tell them stories that have ancestral import? Sure. Am I jealous of people for whom this has worked out? Yes. Does my parents’ age and health today give me pause when I think about having children past 36, the age they were when I was born? Yep. Would I advise young folks considering parenthood to live close to family if that’s at all an option? Absolutely.

But I do appreciate the fact that my parents and my in-laws love us and our kids, that they respect our wishes, support our choices. There are plenty of ugly situations out there, and it means a lot my kids know that they have generous and loving grandparents. Even if they do live hours — and hours — away.

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Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon May 8 with all the carnival links.)

• Dealing With Unsupportive Grandparents — In a guest post at Natural Parents Network, The Pistachio Project tells what to do when your child’s grandparents are less than thrilled about your parenting choices.
• Parenting With Extended Family — Jenny at I’m a full-time mummy shares the pros and cons of parenting with extended family…
• Parental Support for an AP Mama — Meegs at A New Day talks about the invaluable support of her parents in her journey to be an AP mama.
• Priceless Grandparents — That Mama Gretchen reflects on her relationship with her priceless Grammy while sharing ways to help children preserve memories of their own special grandparents.
• Routines Are Meant To Be Broken — Olga at Around The Birthing Ball urges us to see Extended Family as a crucial and necessary link between what children are used to at home and the world at large.
• It Helps To Have A Village – Even A Small One — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama discusses how she has flourished as a mother due to the support of her parents.
• The Orange Week — Erika at Cinco de Mommy lets go of some rules when her family finally visits extended family in San Diego.
• One Size Doesn’t Fit All — Kellie at Our Mindful Life realizes that when it comes to family, some like it bigger and some like it smaller.
• It Takes a Family — Alicia at What’s Next can’t imagine raising a child without the help of her family.
• A new foray into family — As someone who never experienced close extended family, Lauren at Hobo Mama wrestles with how to raise her kids — and herself — to restart that type of community.
• My Mama Rocks! — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment is one lucky Mama to have the support and presence of her own awesome Mama.
• Embracing Our Extended Family — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now shares 7 ideas for nurturing relationships with extended family members.
• Doing Things Differently — Valerie at Momma in Progress shares how parenting her children far away from extended family improved her confidence in her choices.
• Snapshots of love — Caroline at stoneageparent describes the joys of sharing her young son’s life with her own parents.
• Parenting with Relies – A mixed bag — Ursula Ciller shares some of her viewpoints on the pros and cons of parenting with relatives and extended family.
• Tante and Uncles — How a great adult sibling relationship begets a great relationship with aunt and uncles from Jennifer at True Confessions of a Real Mommy.
• Tips for Traveling With Twins — Megan at the Boho Mama shares some tips for traveling with infant twins (or two or more babies!).
• Parenting passed through the generations — Shannon at Pineapples & Artichokes talks about the incredible parenting resource that is her found family, and how she hopes to continue the trend.
• My Family and My Kids — Jorje of Momma Jorje ponders whether she distrusts her family or if she is simply a control freak.
• Parenting with a Hero — Rachel at Lautaret Bohemiet reminisces about the relationship she shared with her younger brother, and how he now shares that closeness in a relationship with her son.
• Text/ended Family — Kenna of A Million Tiny Things wishes her family was around for the Easter egg hunt… until she remembers what it’s actually like having her family around.
• Two Kinds of Families — Adrienne at Mommying My Way writes about how her extended family is just as valuable to her mommying as her church family.
• My ‘high-needs’ child and ’strangers’ — With a ‘high-needs’ daughter, aNonyMous at Radical Ramblings has had to manage without the help of family or friends, adapting to her daughter’s extreme shyness and allowing her to socialise on her own terms.
• Our Summer Tribe — Justine at The Lone Home Ranger shares a love of her family’s summer reunion, her secret to getting the wisdom of the “village” even as she lives 1,000 miles away.
• My Life Boat {Well, One of Them} — What good is a life boat if you don’t get it? Grandparents are a life boat MomeeeZen loves!
• Dear Children — In an open letter to her children, Laura at Pug in the Kitchen promises to support them as needed in her early days of parenting.
• Yearning for Tribal Times — Ever had one of those days where everything seems to keep going wrong? Amy at Anktangle recounts one such day and how it inspired her to think about what life must’ve been like when we lived together in large family units.
• I don’t have a village — Jessica Claire at Crunchy-Chewy Mama wishes she had family nearby but appreciates their support and respect.
• Trouble With MILs– Ourselves? — Jaye Anne at Wide Awake Half Asleep explains how her arguments with her mother-in-law may have something to do with herself.
• A Family Apart — Melissa at Vibrant Wanderings writes about the challenges, and the benefits, of building a family apart from relatives.
• First Do No Harm — Zoie at TouchstoneZ asks: How do you write about making different parenting choices than your own family experience without criticizing your parents?
• Military Family Separation — Amy Willa shares her feelings about being separated from extended family during her military family journey.
• Forging A Village In The Absence Of One — Luschka from Diary of a First Child writes about the importance of creating a support network, a village, when family isn’t an option.
• Respecting My Sister’s Parenting Decisions — Dionna at Code Name: Mama’s sister is guest posting on the many roles she has as an aunt. The most important? She is the named guardian, and she takes that role seriously.
• Multi-Generational Living: An Exercise in Love, Patience, and Co-Parenting — Boomerang Mama at The Other Baby Book shares her experience of moving back in with Mom and Dad for 7 months, and the unexpected connection that followed.
• A Heartfelt Letter to Family: Yes, We’re Weird, but Please Respect Us Anyway — Sheila of A Living Family sincerely expresses ways she would appreciate her extended family’s support for her and her children, despite their “weird” parenting choices.
• The nuclear family is insane! — Terri at Child of the Nature Isle is grateful for family support, wishes her Mum lived closer, and feels an intentional community would be the ideal way to raise her children.

I met my future husband at a dorm room party on Friday, April 24, 1992. Twenty years ago today.

“You were babies!” people exclaim when I tell them this. Yes and no. I was 19, he almost 21. We did, in some ways, grow up together.  We’ve seen the world change together, from days of waiting for letters in the mailbox to texts moments before we walk in the door. It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years. Sometimes I feel like we are exactly the same people, and other times, when I think about the details of our courtship, I have to admit that my life today is many moons removed from that one.

The night I met LJ, I’d earlier been out to dinner to Olive Garden to celebrate the birthday of a new male friend. B and I had met just a few weeks earlier, at the beginning of the spring quarter at Kalamazoo College where we were both first-year students. I wandered into my friend Hannah’s suite in the newly remodeled Severn dorm while B and a group containing some folks I knew and some I didn’t were going around saying nice things about one another. He said my lips looked “kissable.” As someone fresh out of a year-long relationship with a high school beau, the attention of college guys were something I’d just opened my eyes to.

A few weeks later, on April 24, I went along on a group outing to the mediocre meal spot and gasped at the prices of what appeared to me then as fancy entrees. I opted for the plain marinara pasta after I realized I could fill up on the table’s free bread and salad. Kissable comments aside, this was a group thing, not a date with B. The thing that made it special was my actually getting off campus and getting out with new people instead of pining in my dorm about my jealous (newly ex-) boyfriend back home, still in high school.

Still, it was spring, and though I was not looking for love, my newfound freedom was apparently attractive. Not only had B shown an interest, but I was also going to have a date the next night with a basketball player a year older than me. What a 6′7″ guy would want with a 5′0″ girl like me, I had no idea, but I was ready to branch out!

There was a new group of girlfriends I was trying to connect with now that I fully planted in college and had lifted my boots out of the mud of my previous relationship. It was through the Outward Bound-like program I’d done at the beginning of the year, Land/Sea, that I met one of these women, a gorgeous creative spirit named Ivana. I met up with her and her roommate, Denise, and some other friends of theirs who  looked beyond my frizzy hair and the nerdy rayon shirt I was sporting from The Limited — hunter green, with gold and green buttons down the front — and let me pre-party with them before we headed over to Severn for a suite party next door to where I’d met B.

Not a whole lot of details stick out about that night after that. I know people were selling beer behind a makeshift counter in the far back bedroom, and I went to get at least one. But the rest of the evening, my butt was pretty well glued to the wooden framed dorm couch, sitting next to LJ. A junior just back from study abroad in Germany, he’d happened upon the first-year party with some friends because there was nothing better to do. It was a small school with a subdued nightlife.

He and I spent much of the night sitting next to each other on the boxy cushions of that couch, looking into our dark brown bottles and sharing the darkness of our souls. His parents were just splitting up, and I shared how my (so young!) life had been shaped by my older brother’s suicide five years earlier. Not exactly flirtatious material.

But it stuck. He walked me home across the quad in the chilly April air, and we hugged goodnight on the steps of Dewaters dorm before he headed to neighbor Trowbridge Hall. I figured that would be it; we’d shared a connection, we knew each other better than we knew some of our friends, but this was not the stuff of romance. And I was on the rebound anyway. Too early for anything too deep.

Sitting alone at breakfast in the cafeteria the next morning, I felt a little funny as he walked by, tray in hand, alongside another woman. (This was also the season of defining myself as a feminist, so my classmates were no longer “girls”). Smiles were exchanged, and I think I might have passed him later that day while he was playing frisbee golf near my dorm room. I do know the day was grey, and I know that later that night I had an innocently awful date with the basketball player. We rented White Men Can’t Jump. I probably don’t need to say anything more, but it’s too tempting not to add that he made me pizza with pepperoni, not realizing I didn’t eat mammals.

Rather than accept his offer of staying over in his extra room, I drove back to campus mostly sober and to answering machine messages from Ivana who told me that LJ from the night before had been wearing a funny hat and looking for me. She said he seemed disappointed that I was on a date. She didn’t know a lot about him except that he seemed nice, and she thought he’d been on Land/Sea, too. So our start was build on somewhat false pretenses. I thought he, too, had hiked through the Ontario wilderness.

It wasn’t long before I learned that he hadn’t and that I got a chance to learn a whole lot more about him. He found me that night and we chatted in the florescent light of the “lounge” in my dorm, an underutilized square of cinderblock walls that looked like a place furniture went to die. I wonder how the green and black stretchy sweater I was wearing would look now. At the time it seemed clingy, but in an age just after oversized was fashionable, it’s hard to know.

Our first date soon after was a trip to Meijer’s so I could buy deodorant. The next time I bought tampons. I didn’t even really consider that he’d flinch, and he didn’t. We had dinner at Pizza Hut and Burger King. This was all on my dime, our excursions in my car with my new feminist bumper stickers. LJ hadn’t much worked, and his folks were fighting at each other through his finances. I was buoyed by parental allowance and my own earnings from summer jobs.

LJ made me a mixed tape of jazz and I didn’t really know how to appreciate yet, and I took him to see Tracy Chapman. When tickets for U2’s Zoo TV concert went on sale, I stood in line at a Harmony House back home where I ran into high school buddies. We all bought tickets in a block together, me musing I hoped I would still be with this boyfriend when the concert came around in September, something like three months and what seemed like a lifetime away to a 19-year-old.

I was still with LJ, after a summer of visiting LJ on campus for K’s then-year-round calendar while I was living at home and working at the now-defunct F&M drugstore. I used to buy I bought discounted Entemann’s goodies to bring for my weekend visits to Kalamazoo. At the time of the U2 concert, LJ and I both were sick with bronchitis, but we went anyway and watched Bono talk live to the MTV awards show.

We spent the fall together on campus and then most of the rest of our relationship long-distance, through him graduating in 1993 and me going to France for six months. LJ visited over Christmas, and when we fell asleep to the smell of a honey candle I’d bought at a farmer’s market in Lyon, I knew it was his arms I wanted to spend my life in.

After that, I found a way to take my summer off so I could live with LJ and work, and be involved in my sister’s wedding preparations.  I also got myself a student-teaching job in Ann Arbor the next winter, so we lived together then, too.

But meeting someone at 19 seemed too young for forever. So after I graduated in 1995, I set off for Washington, DC to work at the Feminist Majority Foundation. LJ came out for our big conference, Expo ‘96 for Women’s Empowerment and brought my underslept and overworked self a lot of food from local restaurants. He’d moved to Austin, Texas, and was working for the central offices of Whole Foods Market even before they opened a Bread & Circus in DC or eaten up all the Fresh Fields stores.

He transferred to Chapel Hill so we could have a year of living only 4 hours apart, and then we moved together to Cincinnati so I could pursue graduate degrees in English and Women’s Studies. I started to think of marriage an arcane and sexist institution, and watching my sisters with their kids did not inspire maternal instincts.

After a few months working at Joseph Beth a super cool independent bookstore, LJ got himself a consulting gig and started to ride the dot-com bubble, jet-setting across the country and living out of hotels. While he built up his bank account and filled our cheap apartment with furniture for then-little-known Room & Board, I was reading and teaching about social justice and finding myself wondering if we were headed in different directions.

But we planned to move back to DC, where I started teaching in 2000. The transition hit me with a severe bought of depression. When LJ communicated his intention not to live like that forever, I got motivated to get help. Within months of getting on medication, I felt like a better version than I’d ever known of myself. Our landlords said they intended to sell our apartment. We decided to buy a house together, and while we were at it, I said, we might as well go ahead and get married. The meds helped me see both the forest, and the trees, and even the leaves, and I knew I wanted to be with LJ. So we put in a contract a month before LJ got laid off and began planning a wedding and 10-year-anniversary celebration for the following summer, to be held near our new home in July 2002.

LJ was unemployed and home painting the house when 9/11 happened. I called him from my classroom at school, and we went to an Ethiopian restaurant that night, pondering our future just miles away from the Pentagon. We’d met just weeks before the Rodney King verdict and LA riots set off a “Day of Gracious Listening” on our campus and protests, undoubtedly, nationwide. All the major historical markers of my adult life have been shared with LJ.

LJ benefited from the post-9/11 unemployment extension and got a job just before our wedding, which we did a little on the cheap but had a lot of fun. It made me sad that none of the girlfriends who’d been around when we met could attend and that two of LJ’s friends didn’t make it, dealing as they were with divorces of their own.

We had a wonderful time in spite of missing company, and it was great to celebrate a decade of togetherness. Still, it was a lot to plan for a wound-up gal like me (no J.Lo event planner in the budget!), and between the stress of that, the bigger crises of 9/11 and the DC-area sniper scare the following fall, combined with the day-in-day-out craziness of teaching high schoolers in crisis, my health started to suffer. My history of medications and a diet that wasn’t suited to me contributed to my finding myself in a bad way in 2003. Just when we were ready to start a family, I started to get depressed and anxious. My thyroid was out of whack, my gut was a mess, and my periods were nowhere to be seen. It was not pretty.

On my journey to heal it holistically, I learned I had celiac disease and was intolerant of dairy, too. Research and consultations with alternative health practitioners and mainstream docs alike became a part-time job. Although I was earning a decent wage, what with two master’s degrees and four years in the school system, it was a good thing that LJ had found his way back to employment that put teacher salary to shame. From a rough place to a healthy one cost a pretty penny.

In 2004, I was much improved. One weekend we attended the standout Napa valley wedding of our best man, who married his Kalamazoo sweetheart, and the next weekend we went to Colorado for another classmate’s nuptials. The former included lots of reminiscing, and the latter, not so much. LJ had been that friend’s best man at his first wedding to the woman he started dating the same spring LJ and I got together in 1992. What a blast that first wedding was in 1994. How bizarre to refrain from “remember whens” a decade later at the celebration of a new pairing. And humbling. Take nothing for granted.

When LJ’s mom remarried in 1995, she changed the date because I had a college friend getting married that same weekend. That friend, too, has since remarried. There have been moments I’ve wondered if LJ and I could make it. After my health had improved by our conception prospects looked uncertain, we started going to counseling, ostensibly to get support for dealing with potential infertility.

We got pregnant a month later, and have been riding the parenthood rollercoaster since. With both kids, there were months in the postpartum year when the lack of sleep and the trippiness of hormones converged to put me in great doubt about our future. We are not always the partners we want to be to each other.

Last fall, when it became a possibility that we could buy the house next door and renovate it exactly as we wanted, I knew it was his dream come true. His college application for Kalamazoo said he wanted to be an architect, to go to the 3-2 program and finish up at the University of Michigan after getting the best of the small liberal arts college experience. He didn’t pursue that path, but the desire to design remains.

And for us, the opportunity to take a look at how we live in our new family of four and shape a nearly identical home to suit that was an opportunity we could not pass up. So, for the past several months, we’ve been looking at our space and our habits and spending every waking moment thinking about what makes sense, what will be beautiful, and what will make us and our kids happy for years to come.

Although I’ve all but checked out of my friends’ lives in recent weeks and have spent a lot of money on babysitters while we manage this project, and although there are times when we’re at each other’s throats about all there is to do before we can sell this place and move into the new one, the process has helped me appreciate my husband in a new light.

For one thing, it kicks ass that he has figured out how to manage this insanity from a financial perspective. He did all the research to find out how to get us approved for a second mortgage while we still own this house, and then he did everything to get us to buy the new place directly from the owners, with whom he negotiated a deal worthy of neighbor envy. He’s an impressive realtor, without the capital R.

He’s also done a ton of work on both homes, in and out, and has designed most of the place such that we’ve needed architects only for permitting, drawings, and for feedback. The one we’ve turned to for design consultation says repeatedly, “You’re really good at this.”

She’s not kidding. He is. And he’s funny. And he can still play the piano like no one’s business, even though he hardly ever gets a waking moment to sit down at the bench without a child climbing on one of his extremities.

And, even though I am someone who unfortunately set expectations too high for any mortal to meet, no one can argue with the fact that he is an amazing father. When he comes home from work, it takes only one “Go see your daddy!” to get our 20-month-old daughter off my pantlegs and giddily waddling toward the front door. When I woke up next to her this morning, admittedly in the futon in our son’s room while he and my husband slept in our king-sized bed across the hall, I felt such a feeling of gratitude.

This person has seen me through so much. Through stress, frustration, success, joy. Through accomplishment and embarrassment. Through accolades and disappointments. Through sickness and through my journey toward health. Through two pregnancies and a lot of time wondering if they would happen. Through a c-section and an homebirth. Through breastfeeding struggles and successes, going on five years’ worth now. Through mothering, with all its attendant ups and downs, and extremes. How astoundingly lucky am I?

I wouldn’t want to go back and tell the 19-year-0ld me where she’d be in 20 years because I wouldn’t want to change a moment of its natural unfolding. But when I think about her, I think about the magic of that night and a night a few weeks later when I jumped into LJ’s arms after a Saturday apart and before a spring dance. It was this night I spoke of in my wedding vows, of this moment on the quad looking up at the stars, asking for this to last.

It has. For a really long time that sometimes feels like just a few breaths even though it’s over half my life. When LJ and I met, I used to jog around campus in the evening, wondering what it would be like to own a home, to be a family. I imagined the babies I would have with LJ, never seeing being baldness into what has become redheaded childhood. I am living the life I dreamed of and so much I never knew to expect.

The other day, before LJ got a much-needed haircut, I looked at his shaggy head and saw a glimmer of the young boy I’ve seen in photos from a few years before we met, at his sister’s wedding. He was in a late-80s Don Johnson pastel suit. I didn’t know him yet, but after 20 years of sharing our stories and looking at albums that now show us where our children’s eyes come from, nothing is a total surprise.

And at the same time, everything is.

I love you, LJ. Thank you for a wonderful 20 years. Happy anniversary. I love what we’ve built together.

This time of year is always good for smacking me around. Even on a sunny day like today, when the quince and camellia are blooming and you swear it can’t be January it’s so warm, winter is in my bones.

And my mom’s too.  Right around this time in 1995, while I was doing my student teaching, she fell in her kitchen and broke her leg so bad it popped through the skin. At the time, my father was on his always-dreamed-about trip to New Zealand. Travel was not an anomaly for him; he’s done plenty for business and plenty for pleasure, including a trip to Thailand after he fell in love with the cuisine. I’m told he went bird-watching in Arizona (I think) shortly after I (his fifth child) was born. To say that my mother does not share his love for travel is a grand understatement.

When I signed up to read the novel The Art of Hearing Heartbeats for the From Left to Write book club, I hoped I would be able to reward myself with the novel read after finishing a volunteer project I was working on. But then I got more work tutoring in the last week of the semester at the boarding school where I help a few kids. And my children here at home kept needing a mommy. And their mommy needed more sleep. So she didn’t finish the book, but its tale of travel in search of a lost father is certainly intriguing.

Last week, I was on a high after the successful fundraiser, and I was pleased with how well I was feeling. And yet, I’ve also been reflecting lately on just when it is that my health gave me clues that I would have a challenging road. My mom has been wondering the same for years. Maybe that leg break was as bad as it was because she was (like me) celiac and didn’t know it, or because of some other health condition that weakens bones. The skin issues and digestive issues I’m having now are not new; they’ve been cycling through my body in various permutations for years. And even my mom has admitted that her body was not the ideal place to start a life, belonging to a stressed out (and a smoking) mother of four (ages 8-12 and up when I came along).

I bet she and I share more health issues than we are aware, though I hope that my discovering things at and earlier age and the newer research around these days will contribute to an easier road for me eventually. But right now, it’s a little challenging. The heaviness I feel around the time of a drop in my thyroid is knocking at the door like a canvasser who won’t disappear. And, even if this mild winter continues, it’s always tough to go into the month of February, recalling the death of my brother in 1987.

The year before he took his life, my parents and I went to the Bahamas for my seventh grade mid-winter break, a week that Michigan schools take off so that everyone can keep a little sanity. Finding green helps. The year before that, sixth grade, we went to Hawaii. My mom probably hated every minute of both trips. I loved them but wanted to do more activities and wished I had siblings closer to my age to join. When Pat died, I was on a vacation with a friend and her family on a small island near Barbados where we went on the most spectacular hike to a waterfall. A few days later — a week shy of my fourteenth birthday — I had to fly back home alone to the dreary Midwest.

Today, I still have my father’s zeal for adventure and his propensity to get and stay busy, but my body isn’t exactly keeping up. I’d like to join my sister-in-law’s yoga retreat in Costa Rica in March, but seeing as my thyroid really crashed just after meeting her family in Vermont for the Anusara Grand Circle and Wanderlust last June, and seeing as I have to cook all my food from scratch or face a lot discomfort, travel will have to wait.

I’m not even sure how I’m going to make it to Baltimore for even one day of the three-day Fourfold Path to Healing Conference this weekend. Although I fantasize about staying overnight by myself without having to wake to nurse my 18-month-old back to sleep, my not coming home Saturday night wouldn’t magically disappear all my issues. I’d still need to bring a bunch of food with me, and I’d probably want to pump. In order to reap the benefits of something that would be therapeutic, I have to make some sacrifices that might otherwise jeopardize my health (not to mention that of my daughter, son and husband, who I’m guessing wouldn’t have the greatest night of sleep since we haven’t done a dry run on the night weaning).

And what would they do all day Sunday if I stayed at the conference until it ends at 5:30, or would I leave at noon? How would my daughter react once I got home, and then had to go out after dinner to tutor? How would my body react?

Tonight, when my husband was trying to use playful parenting to get my son out of whining mode during dinner, he took on the voice of a train conductor. E didn’t understand the “sh-clunk” sound of the pretend hole punch. We realized our little boy, almost six, has never been on a train other than the Metro. Maybe my husband could take the kids up to Baltimore on a train partway through Saturday, and we could all drive back home that night, I suggested. “With both of them?” my husband asked, his eyes practically reflecting the shine of headlights. After a few minutes, he said he’d look into it.

Maybe the promise of adventure can somehow give me the space to pursue some healing without a whole lot of guilt. But probably just for one day.

—

How do you balance physical and emotional needs?

What did you inherit from your parents?

What pushes and pulls?

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When Julia travels to Burma to search for her missing lawyer father, she discovers much more than she expected. Join From Left to Write on February 1 as we discuss The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

The instant I read the words, I regretted picking up my BlackBerry that one last time before going to bed. A well-meaning relative of mine had read my recent post about my health and my leaky gut problem and told me: “This is not the time to volunteer for things.” She intended to point out that there would be plenty of time later in life for me to pursue my interests when I didn’t have as many health challenges to face and when I wasn’t in such a busy time of motherhood with a kindergartener and opinionated non-verbal toddler.

I get her point. Really, I do. The problem is that her note assumes that volunteering is something that detracts from my well-being. Sure, it might have seemed that way in the post she read. I’d rushed to finish it and get it up rather than wait until who knows when I’d get a free moment to sit down again. I did, I realize, sound a little overwhelmed. And yes, balance is something I’m working on.

But I don’t regret my choices, and I don’t want them restricted. That wouldn’t help. If I weren’t busy with something that felt meaningful, that contributed to my priorities, that gave me joy, or that fueled me with passion, I would be, simply put, depressed. Staying busy and engaged in something bigger than myself is a necessity for me to stay mentally healthy without medication.

And staying off medication is something I feel is a physical necessity as well; I simply don’t think my body can handle being on anti-depressants. They made an amazing difference for two years, and then again for a year while I sought treatment for hyperthyroidism (Graves’ Disease).

But they are drugs. Even if I weren’t a true believer in the healing power of nutrition and energy work, my system has shown me it simply cannot handle anything artificial. As much as SSRIs helped, I’m also pretty convinced that they contributed to the mess I’m in now — a much smaller role than 30 years of eating gluten, probably, but a role nonetheless.

No amount of saying no to volunteer work is going to undo all the damage that was caused by decades of eating food my body couldn’t handle, to say nothing of mild but young substance abuse. What will help me heal is continuing to eat real food, pursuing what makes me happy, and cultivating a mindfulness practice. It takes a lot more time and energy than popping a pill, but I really don’t see that I have a choice if I have my long-term health in mind.

Until I got this late-night email, I was, I admit, stewing a little about the lack of time to do everything I cared about. But rather than push me to step aside, as was its intention, the note inspired me to remember why I have chosen what I’ve chosen to do and to be grateful that I have the opportunity to do it.

The fundraiser I was working on was a great success, both in money raised and in positive momentum and a spirit of community, which was probably even more valuable to this project about which I care deeply. Even as I wished for more hours in the day to proofread the program and organize the volunteer schedule, I remembered that I proposed this event because I believe in the cause and that I offered to head it up because it’s something I knew I could do well. I knew it could be a great thing, and I wanted to create that.

So I carried that purpose with me into the event and sincerely enjoyed it. I lapped up the kudos with nary a self-critical remark or “if only we could have” lament. It was just good, plain and simple. We can debrief and learn from it, sure, but the thing I am most proud of is just enjoying it.

And then, when I came home after being gone at the school 11 a.m.-5 p.m. and launched right back into domestic goddess mode, I took on that role without resentment. Sure, there was a smidge of “really?” in my brain when my husband said he was super tired, but rather than go to a place of bitterness, I just chalked it up to a confirmation that the job I usually do of managing house and home is, indeed, a tiring one!

I wanted the laundry and dishes dealt with, so I did them.

I wanted celery and other veggies for the next day and to not cook that night or ask my tired husband to rally, so I went out to the grocery store after picking up take-out.

I wanted to do yoga before eating in peace and quiet, so I waited until after the family meal and bedtime to get on my mat and then eat my own safe food.

Somehow, that email sparked — or stoked — a fire. What started as angry turned cozy and glowing. The email inspired me, in part, to take the Mother’s Self-Renewal workshop to explore issues of balance and honoring our many selves. That first session then gave me the sense that I am both not alone in my dilemmas about time and also that my process is one to honor. It is part of my mothering to model not perfection but an embracing of personal growth and inquiry.

So thank you, dear relative, even if noting you wish you’d gotten advice from your elders still doesn’t convince me that you weren’t being more judgmental than supportive. Regardless of their intent, your words helped me see through the messiness of internal conflict and to look toward something varied and beautiful.