The title for this blog is taken from an information sheet sent home with my preschooler. Under that New Age title was a list of websites and instructions for Beginning Mindfulness Meditation and Mindful Parenting. The paper listed "useful" information with titles like: Everyday Blessings--The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting. The paper was printed on both sides with these gems. My son's preschool, although a Christian school--of a sort that is liberal, light on doctrine--is not one of those Hippy-Dippy Schools, such a special breed in LA. We chose this school precisely because it wasn't uber-liberal. My neighborhood was full of parents, who didn't want to impose boundaries on their children lest their child's self-esteem get damaged. This may sound fine, but it is not fun when your own child is crying about wanting a toy and the other parent has just informed me she doesn't believe her child(ren) have to share. And since sharing is one of those principles stressed in our household...you can imagine how torturous all of this is since you now seem like a special kind of monster in front of your young child.
What also annoyed me about this paper was the implication that none of the parents were doing it quite right, as if anyone does any of this right. And in essence, the school director is imposing her own set of beliefs. And this is especially rich because the director is childless, so she can talk about "mindful parenting," since her day ends at 5:00 and she never has to negotiate with a child, for what seems like absolutely everything in a 24 hour cycle.
Excuse the irritable tone of this entry. I've been busy downloading, or is it uploading, our CD collection to our Ipod since our stereo with most of our music collection will be in storage. I've also baked three cakes and have cataloged 3/4's of my books. As I had forewarned earlier, this cataloging is taking forever since I'm rediscovering books I need to read again, so now I have a nice, healthy pile of books which will get shipped to our apartment in New York. And since I won't be purchasing any new books during this year despite the proximity of the Strand bookstore...
And in truth, the enormity of what is ahead takes hold of me at unexpected moments. Sometimes I feel giddy about the possibilities of what could be. And at other moments, I am bereaved by this door, physical and metaphorical, closing. It seems somehow predestined that we turned 40, and are now about to start life anew in New York. I realized that most transplants who come to LA are either running to whatever it is they think this city will fulfill while others are running from whatever it is that they are running from. For me, I wasn't running here for something, but running from, and in truth, running from a broken heart. So, this bereavement is as much about missing friends as it is about that time in one's life when anything and everything is possible, when you are quite innocent, when you can dream big, gigantic dreams since life hasn't, gently or not so gently, kicked you in the ass. And so now as I start my middle years and all that means, I'm heading to another unknown. This time, the dreams are less grand, but rather, my hopefulness is about life filling out in the ways that makes the every day bearable: to be surrounded by friends, to have a career that is fulfilling, to have a marriage that is honest and loving, to have a home that serves as refuge for those days when the world is too imposing, to have one's health, and to always be able to laugh at oneself and the ridiculousness of it all. Now that I'm rereading what I've just read, I realize what a tall order those wishes actually seem since those simple desires are sometimes the most elusive and difficult to achieve.
Forgive the sentimental tone. The only excuse I can offer is that I've listened to Prince's cover of Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You," over and over and over again. Yes, despite the mid-life stage, I am still adolescent about such things. I'm hoping that will keep me in good stead, so when our son wheels me into the retirement home, his advice to the staff could be, "She loves 80's music. Just play it over and over again."
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