I am a swing voter. I watch debates for both parties, and I’m cheering for a favorite on both sides of the aisle. I’m interested in issues, but I’m wary of campaign promises that may never be fulfilled. I think the integrity and honesty with which the presidential candidates are campaigning is a good indication of how much of those qualities they will bring to the office, and that is as important to me as anything. My support for one party over the other hinges completely on the results of the party nominations.

The community I collaborate with on the NYC Moms Blog, Silicon Valley Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog, and DC Metro Moms Blog, has posted an open letter requesting a meeting with candidates in this race. Post in the comments section any questions you would like me to ask if we arrange a face-to-face meeting or a conference call with the candidates. Has anyone won your support, or are you undecided? What issues are the most important to you in this race?

I’ve been losing myself in homey things. Cleaning the apartment, unwrapping wall hangings from packing paper and hanging them. We’re a few weeks from our one-year anniversary in our home here, but I think the early months were so full of practicality that hanging up pretty things was left incomplete for awhile. We’re still missing some relations from our wall of family photos, but it’s getting there. Lucy loves to be held up so she can see the pictures up close, stick her small finger out to make contact as her own language floats like bubbles out of her mouth. It is a love song.

Our family changes, so how we inhabit our space is fluid. Already I’ve rearranged the girls’ clothes countless times, switching out sizes and seasons. Lucy’s crib is disassembled, and she’s learning to sleep on her floor bed, sometimes transferring to our bed before morning. I wonder when the girls will be sharing a room, when they will keep each other company through the night. In the meantime, I relish in feeling my little one’s breath in the wee hours, feeling her tiny fingers reach out to find my cheek. Soon she will be all angles and length like her sister, hardly pausing to look back and wave before running to meet her future.

I’ve also been designing and sewing clothes for Amelia’s Knitted Babe. This is slow work for me, as I don’t really know what I’m doing and do all the work by hand. But I have an outlet for the part of me that always wanted to be a fashion designer, and I feel like the shoemaker’s elves when she wakes in the morning to a magic surprise. Amelia is especially good at expressing appreciation, so when she exclaims, It’s bea-u-tiful, Mom!, I resolve to make her twenty more.

So, all these ordinary things have my attention woven into them. I sweep, I mop my wood floors to a warm shine, hoping all the time that dull parts of my soul are shined in the process. Forays into imaginary worlds for me must be balanced by firm footing in my external reality, a mountain pose in the now. I’m soaking in this quote today:

The best things are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life.

–Robert Louis Stevenson

Writing is teaching me to be happy, contrary to the tormented writer stereotype. It has something to do with what Anne Lamott says is the real gold of the writing life–getting to live as someone awake, eyes open to the beauty and mystery all around us. Writing my life stirs my awareness of it, and in observing it I’m actually freed from having to analyze it.

That’s why poetry can affect us so powerfully–not because it’s invented, but because it is rooted in reality, profoundly observed. One book I recently read says, seeing is meaning. I’m done striving to understand life as though it were a cosmic puzzle. I don’t need to be a Life Analyst. The simple invitation is to participate, hearing the music in the background, greeting passerby with my eyes and my welcome, and here I find joy.

I pressed my lips together as my daughter ran down the asphalt hill to her classroom. I wanted to yell, Be Careful! You’re wearing your Christmas Tights! But I stopped myself. I don’t want her to live too safely. She knows the risk of falling and blowing out the hundredth pair of tights this year, but she also know that running down that hill makes her feel strong and fast. I want her to be exhilarated, to feel the wind in her hair.

She learned a move last week from one of her girlfriends at school, where she snaps her fingers up high above her head and throws her hips left to right, left to right. I’ve even seen her do this move at a full run across the playground. I tried the New Move last night in the kitchen (the neighbors get quite a show through that window–more on that later), but my performance was found lacking. I guess I need more practice.

So if you see me out on the streets, doing an injustice on that move like I’m your mom, just know I’m feeling the risk but trying to live running downhill, too.

My friend over at Presumed2BMe was thrilled to be tagged in a Meme, a list of quiz questions we pass along the blogosphere. I have the opposite reaction–total dread, which is probably why I’ve never tagged her before. So, I’ve been tagged to share six quirky facts about me, which was hard–apparently I’m close to being quirk-free. Here’s what I could scrape together:

1. I have a phobia of white foods based on my aversion to mayonnaise. You never know when mayo is disguised inside that Ranch dressing, sour cream . . . I ate plain marinara in the college cafeteria every day for a year before getting the nerve to sample alfredo sauce.
2. I once received good advice that becoming an adult is about learning to be your own good parent and your very best friend, but I don’t feel like a good parent to myself when I sneak food (mainly sweets) when my kids aren’t looking. This happens most frequently in violation of my no-sweets-before-breakfast rule.
3. When I add caffeine to the stimulation of conversation with my friends, I start talking excessively and I always blurt out, mid-story, mid-sentence: Am I talking too much?
4. I hate showering. What a waste of time, that whole bathing-thing.
5. When my baby was sick recently, I watched a marathon of America’s Next Top Model while holding her feverish body. And liked it.
6. If I were choosing paths other than my own, I also dream of being a folksinger. And a nun.

There ya go. I tag Meg, Kendra, Amy, Kim and Devan.

There are two poles I lose myself between, like my daughter wanting to swing from one playground platform to the next, but not knowing how to maneuver the rings dangling between. We live in a time of empowerment, where the idea of taking control of one’s life is gaining traction. We tell our children and ourselves, If life isn’t going the way you want, change it. Parents in my part of the world are school shopping even when school is going well. They change their child’s class assignment so she can have a teacher whose age matches their preference. The workplace gets bumpy, and instead of learning to ski the moguls, we talk of switching jobs. Changing careers.

I am pulled by this world. It speaks to my desire to be responsible for my life and my living, my distaste of playing a passive victim.

And yet, my concern grows.

On the other platform I see something like: Learn to Be With What Is. It’s a call to be with difficult situations in a powerful way, to master life’s moguls. An important lesson I learned from my parents was, Some teachers will be easy to get along with and some won’t. In life we seldom hand-pick our bosses, co-workers and clients according to likability. You need to learn to work with and for all kinds of people. This isn’t passivity–it’s mastery.

I haven’t grasped every rung in between, but the creative process is one ring I’m getting my grip on, one place that helps me stand–or swing–powerfully in the middle. Julia Cameron’s words are appropriate for all creative expressions:

Progress, even if that progress is in baby steps, is what writing is about. It is a place of transformation, of spiritual alchemy. We take whatever life has served us and we make something of it.  (From Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance.)

Be with what is–don’t run from it, but make something of it. Mastery. Alchemy. My children and I will be learning these rings together.

In New York City, the F-word isn’t as much an expletive as the cornerstone of regional dialect. You can’t walk our posh streets without hearing the tag thrown-down five times or more in an outing. It isn’t meant to shock anyone (it wouldn’t shock a two-year-old here), or even offend, most of the time (one would have to upgrade to at least m.f. to get anyone to break their stroller-maneuvering-on-uneven-sidewalk gaze).

More than anything, it’s about emphasis through pacing of speech. It’s all about cadence and rhythm, which is why some people can substitute effing or flipping or freaking for a fraction of the satisfaction.

But I think New Yorkers would say, There’s no effing substitute. And they might be right.

There’s been grumbling about the low volume of pics on the blog; for those who don’t care, please bear with me while I get current.

Christmas 2007

Megan and Dustin’s Wedding

My sister and my nephew, who thought he was the Ring “Bear”

Grandma J. dances with my nephew and Amelia dances with her cousin; Lucy and Naomi

 

Women’s Bowling Tournament on the Wii: my mother, grandmother, and aunt

Bathtime at Grandma’s

 

 

 

Julia Cameron, from The Right to Write:

It is interesting to me that we ask a question about the writing life that we do not ask about other professions. For example, we do not say, “What are your odds of making it as an investment banker? As an elementary-school teacher? As a chemist?”

In those, and most professions, we assume that an interest in pursuing the career implies a probable proclivity for it and a reasonable chance for success. Not so with writing. The truth is, when you want a writing career and are willing to do the work to get it, the odds work with you, not against you. This is simple metaphysical law. As Goethe advised us, “Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it–for action has magic grace and power in it.”

One of the other contributers of the NYC Moms Blog, Brandi, writes a blog I dig called My Purple Hayes Days. This is how she describes herself:

Admittedly self-indulgent Brooklynite who refuses to get lost in Babyland: I like graffiti, sneakers, 1992, text messages, post-modern feminism, E!…and hanging out with Hayes! I love being called mommy but I hate being identified as one. I actually remember life before baby–because it was fun! Now there is just more of life to enjoy. My two-year-old keeps me running, and I make sure we both stay laced. Because being mommy is just another part of life that I refuse to lose my cool over.

I love that in a girl. Admire it, even maybe aspire to it. I first read it and thought, here is someone I could be friends with. That all changed this morning. I resented Brandi, or maybe just envied her as I stared at my sleepy eyes in the mirror and thought, This gig is kicking my ass.

I have been unjustifiably edgy and sharp lately. I can come up with all types of excuses, but those strong words haunt me with the reminder that losing my cool is somewhere somehow a choice that’s in my power. I take a closer look at the inner madness and see that I’m scraping against my expectations like knuckles running along a brick wall. They are legion:

• my children have been sick for weeks—they should be well by now

• Lucy’s over a year old—I should be able to sleep through the night

• I should be able to keep the apt. beautiful, eat healthy meals, write a long project, shower regularly and delight in my children—simultaneously and all the time.

My close friends and family know this is a recurring lesson for me this season—letting my expectations go and relinquishing to the way the present moment is playing out. It’s like a prayer for me to repeat, a pose for me to practice. Let go and skate. Feel grace return to your living, find a rhythm that doesn’t just beat, but dances.

I wonder if I’ll ever get beyond being remedial.