A blog written like I like my honey: raw and unrefined
The Last (crazy) Straw
This morning I woke up to give the boys glasses of orange juice for breakfast, and we started looking for their crazy straws. They had accidentally made their way into the dishwasher, and one of them melted out of its crazy shape and into another, different crazy shape.
Have you ever seen that Facebook meme about “reasons my kid is crying?” Well, this would make it on the list of things that are seemingly little but that means so much. Instead of letting my kid have his small moment of sadness over the crazy straw, it was the last crazy straw for me.
Parenting (Twins) is. relentless. Unrelenting. No amount of yoga or breathing changes the need for a deeper dig into the well of available patience and compassion it requires.
So, in these crazy straw moments, my mind starts contorting, and all of the events of the past five years come slithering toward me...in the most beautiful form of this fucking. crazy. Last. straw.
The incredible number of times I have been asked the same question, “how long did it take for you to recover from birthing twins?” My response is usually, “I am still recovering.”
I have turned into a crazy straw in a dishwasher, melting into and out of my original shape, mentally, spiritually, physically, emotionally.
The straw took on the shape of the macrocosm.
The incredible sadness I experience when I look at what’s happening to Ma.
Mother Nature…
How pissed off she is…
{Pranayama Instructions:
Inhale: Oregon's banning plastic bags
Exhale: Oregon's banning plastic bags
Inhale Exhale Inhale Exhale
Repeat
"Enlightenment is never as far away as we think. It's in the next breath. - Ram Dass}
The only book I’ve read in the last five years from start to finish is Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. The aspect that is staying with me is how much human beings have fundamentally shifted the planet. And now the planet is fundamentally shifting us; away from riverbanks and floodplains.
There’s no crazy straw big enough to divert the water... from an over abundance of crazy straws, changing the sea.
None big enough to redistribute it to the (king of) carrot flowers.
One of my favorite texts from the Yoga tradition is the Saundarya Lahari. It’s a description of the form and sound of the goddess. Sometimes it translates as, “beautiful wave.” My teacher has translated it before as, flood. Inundation. No current moving so fast and furious, it’s not a conversation about sink or swim.
Some of the things I’ve been trying to let go of in the flow of incessant parenting, and bathe in the current.
They’re only five now.
I’m tired.
I have no reserves.
I am not a perfect parent. Neither am I a perfect partner.
Just because I find the words and tools to help people with their struggles , doesn’t mean I don’t have them. Struggles.
I am an imperfect human being.
And, father sky wisdom, Beauty can begin where perfection ends.
So I sit for a minute and watch the rain, listening to the crazy straw off my spine sing its nervous system sounds.
RSS Feed
