Always, with the sickness!

I wish life came with a button I could press and everything would just stop for a minute or two. Or fifteen. So I could pee, or get a sandwich or maybe just cough my fucking lungs out.

Being sick sucks.

What does this have to do with motherhood? Everything. Cause when you cough at night so hard you make the walls shake, you wake the (also sick) toddler. Who then wants his most comforting comfort: mama's milk. Which you would want to, if you could have something that warm and satisfying when your chest feels like a pile of cold dog shit that's been stepped in by fifteen different people and dragged all around the block.

But the mama who provides said milk also feels like said shit, so...

"Life is pain, princess. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something."
~ The Princess Bride

Blogger FAIL!

Here we have a beautiful, awesome blog. And two mamas who are totally into the idea of imperfect parenting... and then there is me, who is just TOTAL FAIL when it comes to maintaining more than one blog. (I also let my son's blog go to seed...)

January resolution: I am going to reaffirm my commitment to this blog. I shall post at least once a week. I shall fail and bounce back!

This week's imperfection: I could not let my husband handle one night on his own. For fuck's sake! I have been the go-to night parent for so fucking long, and I couldn't just try to see if my husband could handle one night? I am afraid of becoming my mother, afraid of abandoning my child, afraid of being abandoned all over again...

My triumph is that I am considering going away for a weekend by myself. I haven't committed to it (we're still maybe going as a family) but I think that going on my own would be a Very Good Thing. Totally wabi sabi because I will be terrified at the huge change, but... I need it. And Rems could use a lot more daddy time.

Wabi-Sabi: our cracks make us beautiful

It is not easy for me to remember that my cracks, the parts of me that are broken, are an integral part of my inner beauty. I have to remind myself of this all the time.

But it is one of my deep truths: I am broken. And in that brokenness, in the mending of the parts of me that have been hurt, have been blown apart, that is where my soul shines through the most.

Take, for example, the process of conceiving my son. Now, I would never in a million years wish infertility (or even the glimmer of it) on anyone. My life was hell for twenty two months, waiting to "fall pregnant." Every time I bled, every time I walked by a pregnant woman, I would hurt. I would feel razor shark pangs that cut me to the depth of my soul. I am broken because of those twenty two months.

But you see, it is not the brokenness that matters, it is the mending. Because during those twenty two long months, I had a chance to discover a lot about my body and how it works. I discovered that I have long menstrual cycles (and that my mother did as well, when she was my age). I discovered that I was still ovulating most of the time and that my body liked hot weather more than cold weather. I found a support system of friends, both online and in real life.

And I mended the broken parts of my soul. Each month, I cried and cried. And then, once again, I processed my sorrow. I journaled extensively. I found my voice on livejournal. It didn't make up for the fact that I wasn't pregnant, but it helped.

And then finally, blessing upon blessing, Remy was conceived and then born. And now he is going to turn twenty two months old in two days. What a milestone! He will have been out in the world for longer than I tried to get pregnant with him after Friday. Part of me is still sad that it took so long for him to come into our lives, but the other part, the larger part, that remembers wabi-sabi and remembers that who we are is broken and mended, over and over again, in a great continuing cycle, knows that he is my amazing child and that his conception was perfect the way it was, imperfect and difficult.

Lexie

I can't really remember when I first heard the term Wabi Sabi. Probably, it was during my college years, but it may have been later. It was definitely not as an art term that I learnt it (although, I did learn at the time that it was an art term!) but as a philosophical way of being. A Buddhist weltgeist , if you will.

Immediately, I took it as my own. Perfectly imperfect? Hell Yeah! I think it was around that time that Lexus was running their "Pursuit of Perfection" ads, which I also always identified with.

Anyhow. Many years later, on May 14th, 2006, my son Remy was born. At home. In a very Wabi Sabi turn of events, the birth -- while beautiful and empowering beyond words -- was a great deal more difficult (and painful) than I was expecting, and I was caught off guard by how my unconscious fears (of back labor, and pain) caused that difficulty.

And thus begins my journey into motherhood... a delightfully imperfect pursuit of perfection, wabi sabi style.