This was Sarah’s first full week of summer and she helped me with short errands in the time we had each day before I took a zoom class for three hours. Then she watched her favorite shows, played outside with bubbles, and took naps. The zoom class was about health and healing and was taught by Bears and Samahria Kaufman. They are the people with whom I studied for a summer during college and who taught me to run a Son-Rise Program, known here as Sarah-Rise. It was such a treat to have them co-teaching each class. I find that the Option process that they teach is similar to the Alexander Technique in that it is both incredibly simple and something you can study for your whole life and keep learning new things. Or maybe it’s not new things, but it is that I come back to the original principles as if they are new. Both processes are about noticing what we do and kindly inquiring if that is what we want to be doing, whether with our bodies or our minds. This time around I realized how I spend so much time, energy, and effort trying to control things and people that I actually can’t control, but that I spend relatively little time, energy, and effort on shifting what I can control, which is me and my thoughts. The most notable and easily accessible shift for me pertains to my cat. Every time I feed her dinner and she refuses to have her meds – meds that she sometimes consumes easily – I get frustrated and upset. Or I used to. Now I am remembering that I am actually in control of me. Can I control my cat? Absolutely not. Can I decide to maintain my inner calm even if she doesn’t cooperate? Yes. Yes, I can. And it matters. The next forefront is of course my children. While I can set rules and pararmeters and make requests, ultimately I can’t control them. Sometimes I get upset about this, but I am giving myself more moments to pause and reevaluate the situation and how I really want to be. Usually the reason I get unhappy about them not doing what I want is that I think if they do what I want then we can all be happy, gosh darn it! I’m trying to avoid them being unhappy in the future because I’m scared of the upset. If I can remind myself that I am safe and all is well even if they don’t do what I want and even if they get upset, then I can stay more relaxed and maybe even come up with new ways to ask them for what I want.
Historically, when I go for the gold of being calm and happy more often, then I leap to wanting it all the time, ignoring how I actually feel or judging myself for any feelings that aren’t happy and calm, which leads to massive tension and unhappiness. Cue the Alexander Technique. I understand that trying to hold onto an easy neck is the fastest way to a stiff neck, so now I remind myself that trying to hold onto happiness can be the fastest way to misery. My free neck or free happiness can only come from noticing what I am actually thinking, feeling, or doing, giving room and acceptance to whatever reality that is, and then seeing if there is a shift I would like to make in how I am approaching the situation.
One evening there was a family day at Carl’s work that Sarah and I attended. She liked sitting in the small firetruck, eating Millie’s ice cream, and jumping down the giant cushioned steps. There were so many kids jumping down the steps it seemed like a kid waterfall. Amy didn’t attend because she had her afterschool Attack Theater class and she didn’t want to miss making props for the characters they had been creating.
Carl and I enjoyed a dinner date on Wednesday at Bourbon and Bridges. We ate in our own tiny private clear glass castle. It may have been made of plastic, but either way it seemed magical.
Friday was an open day with no zoom class so Sarah and I went to the zoo. It was lovely to be there with no goal except to be with Sarah and go at her pace. She really wanted to find a postcard to mail to her bus driver. We searched many of the gift shops to no avail, but she did find a mood bracelet with an elephant which she purchased with her own money. She likes to pretend that it is a tiger watch, acknowledging that it has no watch hands. She loved getting lunch at one of the restaurants and she spent many minutes watching kids go down slides. She went down the slide a couple of times, but she mainly loved watching all of the action.
Sarah did mail a card to her bus driver on Thursday during our morning time together. I picked a mailbox that would be a bit of a walk for us and she ran most of the way, practicing for the Run Around the Square that happens in August. I’m impressed with her endurance lately whether she is walking, running, or swimming. Friday after Amy came home we drove to the mailbox, since we had already done a ton of walking, and Sarah mailed a second letter to her driver. Then we visited with someone who used to babysit the girls from the time Amy was an infant. This person now has a baby of her own. How did my own kids become such grown-ups??
Yesterday we celebrated an early Father’s Day for Carl because we will be busy with other things during the actual Father’s Day. Carl played guitar and then attended a beer festival with grown-up family members while the girls and I stayed home. Then we all went to the opening of a park by a riverfront. The girls enjoyed the big slides that look like legs of a giant metal person. It has probably been ten years since we last went to that particular playground and the kids have grown just a wee bit. It was a long wait for food and Amy wilted a bit, but cannolis and noodles helped, as did jumping on a mesh net stretched over water. After sitting on giant blue chairs, we made our way back to the car and drove to a different venue for a concert by The Beautiful Mistakes. Sarah loved dancing and “cutting a rug like a starfish.” Amy struggled with the noise. I haven’t fully appreciated her sensitivity to loudness, but it is something for me to consider more thoughtfully in the future so I can come prepared with ear protectors. We finished the day with milkshakes at the Milkshake Factory, which has three dairy-free options that are Sarah-friendly.
Lots of love to all of you. May you have kind space to notice any patterns that aren’t serving your sweet self the way you think they are.
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