Risk failing at something beautifully, wholly, and truthfully rather then never having attempted such feats at all.

That’s been my little mantra for the last few months.

Most of us expend so much energy scared to just TRY that we never even know the feeling of “accomplished failure”.    And that feeling can be full of light and hope and freedom.   I’d rather have a list of attempts than of “never tried’s”.

And I’ve also realized that perhaps, if we just stopped boxing in our “to do’s” and “wants”, and “hopes” with so many boundaries that we’d perceive success much more intuitively and that it would feel more authentic.

Instead of:

• Lose 20 lbs in 1 year
• Run a marathon by Spring
• Start own editing business
• Travel to all 50 states
• Get engaged by 2012

We’d have:

• Lost weight/get healthier/feel stronger/breathe deeper
• Run
• Start a business
• Travel
• Allow for love

Voila!  It wouldn’t matter on what timeframe we achieved those, the open-endedness of such lists allows for breathing room, allow for Life, allows for hibernation and periods of intense bursts of energy and will power.

Because of who I KNOW I am, my lists have been mostly open ended for the majority of my adult life:

• Graduate with a degree (took about 8 years)

• Transition to vegetarianism (took 6 years from first wish)
• Run a mile (besides the awful, forced miles in P.E. class, finally did on my own accord at age 25)
• Catch someone else’s baby (took 1 year from first wish)
• Quit my corporate job (took 2 years from first wish)
• Learn to snowboard (took 2 years from first wish)

• Marry Jason (took 6 years from first wish)

• Have kids (took 8 years from first wish – but only 6 months to “try”)
• Travel to Italy (took 6 years from first wish)

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Recently, I decided that dang it, I was gonna attempt to practice yoga at some point each and every day.   Just a nice, light stretching for my body and expansion of the mind.

So, on an afternoon when both of my girls are miraculously napping,  I grab the heavy window curtains and slide them across the tension wires to reveal a spot of sunlight on my bedroom floor.  I roll out my purple mat smack dab in the middle of the rectangular sun spot.   Finding a comfy pair of paint-mottled yoga pants, I slip them up and over my child-bearing hips with a deep breath.  Enjoying Pandora as my musical backdrop,  I ease down onto the mat in a sitting pose with palms up.

I gaze easily at the scene outside my window:  breaches of the palo verdes bouncing in the breeze, wild lavender bushes – never pruned – bowing.  I am almost unsure whether the blueness above is sky or sea.   I sense the brief season of Autumn is upon is.  The sun toasts my skin.

With a deep inhale, I decide I owe it to myself to welcome and cultivate stillness of mind and body.  I’m going to simply hope for some nice minutes of deep relaxation and if yoga poses come after that, then BONUS!    Three breaths into it, I hear stirring in the room where the girls are napping.

Instead of rolling my eyes, I let my lips form a smile.

A non-emotive “Of course”, is all I allow myself to whisper.

My mind calms and messages about the magic of the universe being to swirl.  I do not understand them nor attempt to.    I allow my neck to fall and stretch, muscles being pulled like a rubber band.

My eyes remain closed as I hear Indigo traipse into the room.  My breathing deepens.

I open my eyes to meet Indigo’s oceanic gaze as she sits on the mat and smiles.

My body casually drops into child’s pose and Indigo climbs on my back.

The door to the other bedroom squeaks open again and in moments Kaia joins us.

The energy is the room is raised notches above peaceful and thus my practice ends about five minutes after it began.

———————————————————————————————————-

That, two months ago, was my last attempt.  I’ve failed to incorporate the daily yoga practice and yet that one attempt left me feeling like I jumped in wholly and truthfully and failed in the most beautiful way.

It felt liberating to open the door and let a gaggle of expectations fly on out.

I believe that there will be so many other feats that I will delve into with success.  Who knows, maybe today I’ll try again.

But if I must fail, I hope it feels as truly, deeply delicious as that afternoon.

What have you failed beautifully at?

What have you dangled your fingers or toes or heart in front of, but never immersed yourself in for fear of failure?

What do your wish-lists look like?

“She would give them order. She would create constellations” – Thomas Pynchon

August 29, 2009

Born at home, a sweet little Virgo.  His mama, a dear friend of mine, magically became the tree that I’d written about just weeks prior in a poem to her.    Her feet rooted, her arms transferring the energy of birth to the walls she pushed into.

It is in your blossoming and swaying

that you appear to dance, rooted to the earth…

You stand grand like a lone Elm on

the edge of the wilderness, silently prepared

to cycle through rebirth. ready to shed your leaves

convene with Winter’s shadow and wait for the blooms of Spring

Earlier, I’d joined her as she smiled and quietly conversed, folding cloth diapers in her spacious bedroom.  Between surges, we snapped one quick photo of her ripe belly.  Soon, the surges hushed her, and I followed her steady breathing out and stood silently as she braced herself on her bathroom counter.   Down she would sway, into a deep dip, with each wave of contractions.   Down with her breath, down with her body, down down down her baby slid.   Her lips pucker gracefully with each breath.

In between a surge, she graciously instructed “Here’s my chapstick, and here’s the birth kit and towels, and here are the cameras.  I’m telling you this before things get too intense”.

Before long, it was time to fill the bathtub and she peacefully sank into the warm water as if it were her lover for the evening.   There, with a singular candle as the only light, her body flickered and moved, mirroring it’s flame.   Her hair was silken, as charcoal black as the night sky.  She had just had it styled that afternoon, as surges began to wax and wane in her belly.

Her daughter – born almost two years ago in this very same room – joined the labor party.  She read books and rode around in the Ergo on her Daddy, keeping a watching eye on Mama.

“Should I call the midwife now?”, I asked kneeling beside the tub.

“Yes.  Yes, I was just thinking that.  I think it’s time”.

The sun rose over the mountains as she moved out of the tub to the bed,  smiling between surges and giggling at her daughter’s antics.   She told me later she felt a sense of peace during this time, knowing she’d be holding her baby soon.

She found the doorway and stood alone inside it’s threshold, cradling her belly.  Short in stature, she became a towering goddess of light and strength;  a pillar.    From my spot on the floor, I snapped some photos as her husband soon supported her from behind.

The waters that held her son were strong and healthy, remaining intact until three minutes before her son was born.

And sometimes we all want the strongest things in our life to give way, to break us open so that we can be reminded of the fortitude and resilience of Life and Birth.   So that we can howl at the moon as we ride the waves, cursing the fiery sun, screaming out the years and wounds.   We need to be able to release, to know that birth, life, and death are all transmutable.

And thus began her howling call, her “singing over the bones”, her begging to be released.

“Soon”, whispered the midwife “Very soon”.

In the long and narrow water closet, a midwife, a dad, a doula, and a mama crouched.  With her moans, her son emerged into his Daddy’s hands and was pulled immediately up to Mama’s chest.

And at the moment of his birth, as I stood behind her to steady her, some of her amniotic fluid tumbled on my bare feet.   I still recall its warmth, perhaps made even stronger by a visceral memory from Indigo’s fluid on my own feet as she was born.  It didn’t bother me.  In fact, I felt honored to be a bit united with the magical, sterile stuff of life.   The mama cooed and snuggled her son and was almost instantly ready to walk to her bed to nestle in with her StarBoy.

Not long afterwards, the room was silent in reverence as she birthed her placenta, which was later lovingly used to make “Tree of Life” placenta prints and then ground into the most incredible dark chocolate hearts by her midwife (I would love to try to explain the blissful honor I had of being offered some of this chocolate and then ingesting the PURE energy into my body.  So much energy it reverberated down my spine and through each chakra.  The energy of 10,000 chants in 200 languages simultaneously.  I would love to explain it, but words do not suffice and I already sound overly crazykookycrunchyhippy).

His Daddy asked us if we’d noticed the Orion constellation, and I commented that I looked up at it as I pulled into the driveway that still, perfect evening.

Though there were two, unspoken names in the running, he was yet unnamed.   The midwife commented “Oh, he has wild eyes!”.

Mama giggled and nodded knowingly, saying “Well, I guess we have numerous confirmations of which name we should pick”.

Max Orion

Max, like in “Where the Wild Things Are”.   Wild Eyes.  Max.

Orion.  Born under the clear display of that celestial body, one his Daddy had gazed at a few weeks prior on an overnight vision-quest in the mountains of New Mexico.

She lives as she births, and births as she lives.   The sunlight broke through the curtains and we all crawled atop the mattresses and smiled for this photo.

I smiled and smiled, for a multitde of reasons.  For the knowledge that two of these women have had my own birth blood and fluid on their hands.  For the mandala paintings above our heads.  For the giddyness that she added a boy to her family.  For the way her daughter watched in safe arms as her brother was born, with an expression on her face that make me think she totally remembers this gig.   For the honor of holding her hand, rubbing her back, smoothing her lips with chapstick, and listening in the other room as she spent time alone with her man doing the work only she could do.

Her daughter and new son lay upon her chest nursing and snoozing.   A picture of life-giving motherhood and nurturing.  A snapshot of birth.   Almost too normal to believe that a first breath of life just occurred minutes before in this very space.

We later reminisced and remarked on the poem again, how much of it rang true.

“Your baby guided me”, is all I could think to say to myself.

And she said with a breathless sigh and radiant eyes, “This part, Leigh, this part is like when you were behind me holding me and my fluid fell onto your feet.  We were intertwined…”:

As the Equinox approaches, and day and night become

equal lovers, let me be a sister tree to you

Lean on my truck, for I can carry you

Hang from my branches, for they are sturdy

Let the soft earth beneath me be your landing spot

Let my roots intertwine with yours as a reminder

of this sacred woman’s work that you do with grace

and that we share with honor and joy

I’m feeling it intensely, even in this sleepless stupor.  Even in this churning and bubbling cauldron of a stomach that hasn’t eaten a proper meal in over 24 hours.   Feeling it so much, and it’s more multi-layered than you can imagine, so much more to it than just…

a baby slipped out of her mama’s center into my hands this morning

There’s deepness to this story that cannot be told now, more than just…

how I watched her obsidian hair floating in her bulging bag of waters as her head emerged

My eyes can barely focus on these letters that I type and yet I have to tell you that, in that moment, I was pleasantly proud that I cooed to her:

Reach down and feel your baby’s head

(I’ve learned from the best of them)

and, as I floated baby’s dusky pink body up from the water, grinned and called out with a gentle ferocity (though in my mind, I probably said it with Jazz Hands!):

Take your baby

Take your baby

and her arms outstretched before I even said it and brought her first born baby to her chest

and that Justice’s eyes were as gleaming as the Big Dipper that hung over her skies like a holiday ornament the evening I walked into her quiet home.

Perhaps I was too giddy, to worried about messing it all up, too enthralled with the luminescent bag of waters, too caught up in her not losing too much blood, too harried to cut the fan, too intent on keeping the baby warm, warm, warm in the warm, warm, warm birth pool.  My inner critic can be relentless and nit-picky and I don’t do relentless and nit-picky too well unless it’s foraging for the perfect jagged piece of chocolate or that one spot-on metaphor that eludes me.

But I remembered the warm towels on the baby and the cute green hat on the head!

Loving, professional help arrived less than 5 minutes after baby was born and all was well.

And so now I just say HELL YEAH!

————————————————-

The gift was in her taking, not in my giving.  A prayer.  An offering of spiraling and circular love.

The humbling part is not that baby allowed me to greet her with open palms under a sea of fluid and blood

Or that I happened to be in that very spot at that very moment

But that I was not necessary.

(my fear lies in being necessary)

I was a conduit.  Electrified, no less.  But not necessary.  A bridge.  A creaky, wooden plank bridge unsure of my frayed ropes and rogue metal nails gone awry.

And to feel the weight of someone atop me, their breath slow and steady and brand new;  to feel me carry them for two fleeting moments, from

here

to

there

or

there

to

here

well, there’s just so much more to that then you can imagine.

The desert breeze shifts, in what seems like a moment, from a blaze of heat to the cool breath of a child’s whisper.

It lifts more than the winged, graceful beasts into the air.    It lifts my spirits, the mood of my children, and the anticipation of new Earth souls born near fireplaces and under the gleam of Andromeda, Cassiopeia, and Pegasus.

The air is crisp and wafts of pumpkin, in ovens and on front patios.

The clear, smog less light of midday beckons me to keep driving, trudging on until I find that one special place nestled between base of the mountains and the ocean.  That’s a long drive.  I imagine  surprising Jason and telling him to hop in.  I imagine our girls sleeping through most of it, or watching the landscapes shape shift before their eyes.

Our hammock swings itself in the gusts and later, my husband and I make our way out to nuzzle after the girls have gone to bed.  I notice his face in the moonlight and the way the Palo Verdes sway themselves to sleep.

Nostalgia seeps out of me effortlessly in Autumn.   I pine for bonfires and hay rides and wide open storm doors and my hometown’s Fall Festival and watching the Star Wars trilogy over and over.    So, we host a Harvest Moon Soiree with scents of the season abounding and hot wassail and a recipe for homemade hot cocoa gifted to me by a midwife  (spiked with Peppermint Schnapps for the grownups) and tons and tons of friends as perfect as the moonlight.

(Thanks for the photos, Emily, who is pictured above)

For now, as I let nostalgia spin in my bones,  I cook.  Yeah,  insert sound of record needle screeching.  Yes, me.  Cooking.  Being low on cash flow (in the grand scheme of things, RICH of hand and heart) has lead me to finally let go of my phobia of cooking.  Also, an out-of-service microwave jumpstarted the effort.  We don’t miss it and don’t plan on fixing it any time soon.  And cooking gave me something useful to do during my summer hibernation.

And so I mix the crisp sweet potatoes into the quinoa.  With a wooden spoon,  I stir squash and basil into the soup.    I roll enchiladas and slather them in red sauce, because I know Jason likes it better than Verde sauce.  I bake chocolate mint brownies and grate the orange zest into the cranberry orange cookie batter.    I use up fresh Rosemary in whichever way I can – in stews and on potatoes and lentil loaf – feeling healed bit by bit by the fragrant herb.    We eat lots of hot-from-the-iron waffles and my French toast infused with love and vanilla/nutmeg/brown sugar.   I’ve chopped and diced and chopped and diced tomatoes for garlic-laden bruschetta on crusty slices of bread.  There have been massive fails too, like gooey floppy pancakes and burnt scrambled eggs and a green bean casserole in which I completely forgot the whole sauce/filling (so, it was basically just green beans with some salt, pepper, and French fried onions).   We laugh at the failed attempts and toast our juice glasses to the successes.

Oh no no no, there are still the PB&J sandwiches and frozen pizzas and quick bean and cheese burritos and canned alphabet soup.   These staples are necessary in my life full of laboring mamas and scrubbing crayon stick-figure drawings off walls.

—————————————————-

While I write this, my half-naked girls sit and watch beautiful hula dancers accompanied by various hula and coconut knee drums.

I remember being all of 11 years old or so and dancing a hula on stage with my sister and step-mama at a luau in Hawaii.  I can still smell the pig roasting in the imu pit, feet tied firmly on the stick, smoke offering a prayer under its belly.   And of course the sexy, bronzed Hawaiian men and women who draped us in flowering leis.

(me on the far left, my little sis and step-mom on the far right)

Now they are watching an African harvest dance.    And I wish I could visit a land whose heartbeat is that of a drum.  I think of my friend Brooke and how she carried babies on her back during her visit to Africa.  I think of my midwife traveling to Africa soon to share, and teach, and learn from the ways of the people.  I think of my cousin and the spread of food she partook in on her travel to Africa and they way her fiancé named his dog after a sweet boy who followed him around there.

Then I think of how the Dance Queens, MB and Brooke, busted out some African Dance moves at my blessingway when Indigo was growing in my belly.   Wine flowed, booty’s were a’shakin and I sat with an extra 50 lbs on my body just taking it all in.

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Did you know?  My half-naked two year old is potty-trained and can count to ten.  All on her own, without any prompting.  I’m speechless.  And she eats salad and salsa and has a new bob haircut that is reminiscent of Maria from Sound of Music.  How could I forget how much I LOVE two years old?

Did you know? My half-naked four year old knows basic addition, how to write all her letters, the simple concepts of conception and birth, and the beginnings of sounding out words.  All on her own, without any prompting.

And it’s not that they are extraordinary.  It’s just proof that allowing children to be ordinary, while giving them extra (love, attention, time, space), leads to them to take in life and learning at a comfortable and heart-expanding pace.  They are Ordinary, with a little extra.

Did you know that we like to dance on tables and close our eyes and sing at the top of our lungs while listening to Regina Spektor on full blast?  And we giggle to ourselves when Daddy says “Hey, we don’t stand on tables”.  Silly daddy, of course we do.  Come join us (see Video below).

Dancing Machines from Leigh on Vimeo.

Did you know that as a mama, I have a few good weeks:  those full of patience and gentle guidance and kindness and crafty crafts and fresh air and drippy blueberries and organic produce and stacks of books ploughed through with story-telling and no TV whatsoever.  And then I get slammed on my face my two consecutive days of unleashed anger and “C’mon do it MY WAY! RIGHT NOW!” and applesauce with mac-n-cheese and turning on a kids show so I can have four singular minutes alone and crying alone after they sleep in regret for the energy I forced into their space. Our Space.

I find my way back to Our Space – the one where we giggle cheek to cheek and share a singular pulse – with the late night cuddles as they crawl into bed between us.   There are 76 inches of space in our bed.   Most nights, I occupy a crevasse of about 8 inches.  Cramped and stiff, they are the most bodacious 8 inches I could ask for, for I am bookended by perfection.