I'm "Just" A Mom.

There comes a moment - say, when you are searching the entire house for your child's lost blankie for the fourth time at 10pm on a Sunday evening - when you realize that your finer aspirations - becoming, for example a modern-day female Hemingway - have necessarily fallen by the wayside.

In that moment, you have no choice but to stop, breathe deeply, and acknowledge that, no, this is not the empowered, Ayn Rand-ian existence you had imagined for yourself; that it is quite unlikely you will rewrite the rules of history or change the geo-political landscape of your time. There is a very good chance you will never see the Sahara Desert or take tea with the Dalai Lama, and it is nearly certain that you will never walk the red carpet in an organza Chanel confection.

There's also a pretty good chance distinct possibility snowball's chance in hell that you'll ever be photographed in a bikini and mistaken for the body of Angelina Jolie.

Hey, we all have our dreams. Judgment only makes the judge a smaller person. After all, I didn't comment on your childhood dreams of being a firefighter, astronaut, or whatever.

But it is, in those moments, that I find a certain kind of clarity. There's no way to predict what the rest of my life will be like, after all, and when I think of all the great accomplishments I had planned for my life they all share one thing in common - their singularity. I always thought I would do One Great Thing with my life, something I would be noted in history for.

Instead, I find that I get 3 really great accomplishments. It may be that they won't go down in the history books; I doubt I'll be numbered among the ranks with the likes of Marie Curie or Amelia Earhardt. But their names are Jack, Tobin, and (for the moment, until we change it - as we reserve the right to do) Milo. And they are some pretty amazing things, even if nobody but their father and I ever notes it.

I started my Mother's Day in a grumpy way, which remained unimproved when I realized we were out of coffee. I slept in to a not indecent hour before waking to the screams of my children, as the two boys had suddenly discovered that brothers are, apparently, each others' natural predators. Their frazzled father was just doing his best to keep them both alive and in one piece, and so I finally stumbled down the stairs in search of breakfast which was, obviously, not going to be able to make its way up to me. And I was pouting about it.

Of course, Big Daddy quickly smoothed things over. He and Jack headed up to the kitchen to make me a lovely plate of nibbles: fresh strawberries and toast with my favorite jam (amaretto peach apricot). After the nourishment made its way into mah bell-ay, I was feeling good enough to spend the afternoon wandering the mall with my menfolk. I even bought some new lip gloss at Bath and Body Works - sparkly lip gloss that smells delightfully of cupcakes.

All in all, it was a somewhat ordinary day. Me-Me the blanket was eventually located (this morning. outside in the rain. the joys.) and I found that, for all the ambitions that will likely go unrealized in this brief life of mine, I am quite content to picture an old age where I have accomplished little that the world will note... so long as I can live those days surrounded by my children, grandchildren and - of course - my pretty spectacular husband.

Reality? It's not such a bad place to live. Sometimes it even smells like cupcakes.

More Than Words.

Once in a while I realize that hope is not enough. Hoping that people will change, and grow, and learn to accept you for who you are without attempting to revise history or judge things they don't understand... such hopes are ultimately futile, because we can't ever change other people. We can't even change how they see us, once they've chosen to view us through a particular lens.

The closest I can come for today is this: THIS is what one-day-before 29 looks like.


And this is what my kids look like.



See all the smiling? This is because they have a mother who loves them, and who accepts herself as she is, follows her own heart and her own conscience. I am happier and healthier in my life NOW than I have ever been before. It took a long time to get here, to begin to learn not to be burdened by trying to squeeze my square peg into a very narrow, round hole.

To love someone unconditionally means, really, to accept them. To say that you love someone and then try desperately to change them, or to tell them who they are (even if the description is only accurate in your own head) is NOT love. Control and Love are not synonymous. Loving someone does not mean attempting to make your own vision for their life a reality... it means doing your best to understand THEIR vision for their best life, and helping them achieve those goals. Even if they're not the goals you hoped for, and even if you don't understand why.

Tomorrow I will be 29. But I'll still be me, and maybe one day I will be able to aptly articulate exactly who that is.

Still.. Yet... Living.

I have been inexcusably absent of late. I realize. I will explain later, but mostly it involves lots of running around, doing chores, preparing to do our taxes, and even - GASP! - a bit of social interaction not centered around my children. I know! It's like living in some sort of parallel universe, one where I actually feel like a regular person sometimes!

So, then, lacking in any wisdom of my own to share today beyond "don't eat yellow snow" (which is not as useful as you might think, since we have had 2 days of rain and a sadly obvious lack of snow...) I submit instead....

The Zen Parenting Wisdom of Oh The Joys. She rather brilliantly does something that I think many parents struggle to do -- which is to effectively apply acquired life wisdom to the raising of children. Because keeping our cool, actively choosing how to interact and respond to our children: these are things that require conscious choice on our part as parents.

My sister and I had a conversation recently wherein I finally managed to articulate my major Zen Life Philosophy. It's been brewing for a long time, but I was able to put it into words for the first time.

My ultimate goal is to Live Life On Purpose. The most important thing I DON'T want to do is to go with the flow, take the path of least resistance, or live my life according to habit or my emotional responses. Everything in our lives that we are dissatisfied with can only be changed by active decision on our part. It's not going to magically happen -- whether "it" is raising our children to be the best people they can be, achieving the personal or professional success we desire, or even just getting ahead of the housework or getting physically healthier.

My goal for this year is to attack these things one at a time, prioritize which are the most important to me, and actively improve each one. I think that OTJ has hit the nail on the head -- finding the Zen in the Parenting Zoo requires making a decision to bring as much of the Zen to the table as we possibly can.

So how about delurking and weighing in? What are your tricks for keeping your cool and keeping Zen in raising your kids?

Personally? I find that when I'm stressed to my limit, making time for a bubble bath with a hot cup of chamomile tea after the house is quiet can do wonders for my mental state. Also, getting out in the sunshine and letting the kids run around crazy (until I am inevitably lured into joining them and flying around in the fresh air like a five-year-old, myself) helps me fall in love with my rugrats all over again.