All that has transpired has made the last week or so seem like a year....or maybe two. On top of it all, the weather has turned humid, getting heavier and heavier with our AC broken (it needs recharged - and hopefully only that), and I have been wheezing and struggling to breathe. I was waking up every night coughing my head off and needing my inhaler. I haven't had an asthma attack this bad since I was a child. So I think lack of sleep and lack of oxygen might be contributing to the ability to think clearly.
Last night, I was telling Travis about how hard it has been for me to breathe lately. He was listening. Really listening, kinda like he cared. He has a window unit in his back room. He started asking me if I wanted him to put it in our bathroom window, saying we could close the bedroom door and it would keep that one room in the house cool enough.
Usually he finds anything like this an imposition. Giving up comfort for the room he has chosen to live in the year and a half since we moved into this house, refusing to engage and to the complete neglect of his family (which he hasn't entered in 3 days) is a huge personal sacrifice. I can see something in him has broken. Whether this is permanent or temporary remains to be seen. I am just ready to get off of the ferris wheel - and at the first sign of temporary I will be jumping - even from the tippee top.
It seems a simple thing but it made me cry, the air conditioner, and how it must seem so natural for others to have their most basic needs so easily met - like the need to breathe. I realize in a deep way that I am not accustomed to having anybody take care of me, at all. I am tired of being the one sitting on the sidelines wondering what it feels like to join in the dance, to be swept up in love, to be nurtured and cared for. Emotionally I have felt like the dirty little girl with the ripped dress and no shoes for so many years.
Showing posts with label breathe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breathe. Show all posts
23 April 2008
18 July 2007
Instincts and Obligation and an Update
Well, first things first - my husband a/k/a the Fabio version of the computer geek - only without the long hair and without the rest of his body waxed of every hair - managed to get everything (we hope!) off of the hard drive on my computer. Hewlett-Packard is sending me a Fed-Ex box with shipping paid so I can send it to their repair center. I hope that we get this problem eradicated before the 1 year warranty of the darn thing is up. It must be something special about me - I do indeed have the opposite of the Midas Touch when it comes to electronic devices.
Now on to my regularly scheduled thoughts this evening:
Right now it is 10:15 pm, and Kendra decided a short while ago that she wanted to make a Chai cake she found in a recipe book yesterday - the chai flavor being her favorite and all. She asked if she could - and I hate to say it but I really struggled to say yes. You see, I am learning to live free - and accept that my kids need to live in freedom in order to blossom into the individuals that God made them to be. For Kendra, her optimum, peak-performance time is night. It has been since she was a baby. What upsets me is that I have to fight everything in myself so hard to allow them this freedom. I don't want a mess, or the noise, or the questions that will come with baking an unfamiliar recipe. But what my daughter needs to do is create - try her hand at something new. I grew up with an early bedtime, waking up every morning to the demands of an alarm clock or someone else's idea of what I should do and when, making my bed before I left my room, and following "the plan". This is very responsible, and there are likely quite a few of you reading this thinking, "what on earth does she think is wrong with that?" This routine may create an obedient, well-regulated, societally oriented person, but it will never facilitate the extraordinary. When I was in high school my life was school and work. I was a talented writer - but my homework assignments, even in the creative writing class that I loved, were delegated to an item to cross of the never-ending list of things that I was obligated to do. There was no joy, no searching out the world around me with wonder.
I watch television shows like the Gilmore Girls and see the college bound Rory that I adore, however, I find it supremely unrealistic. Rory is involved in about a zillion extra-curricular activities, has breakfast every morning before catching the bus with her mother at the local diner, participates in everything that is going on in the community, has a boyfriend, a best friend and reads constantly - not light reading either - Russian authors, and classics like Shakespeare, all while maintaining a grade point average to keep her at the top of her class. I am sorry but no real human can maintain all of that - but yet most of our society models their lives after what they see on the boob tube. I imagine many families watch the Gilmore Girls and feel inferior because their kids and families aren't doing all of that.
What I want is to create space in our lives for my kids to grow, branch out, try their wings. It is counter to everything I have ever learned. It reminds me of learning to breathe - it should come naturally - but when we are anxious or under pressure - we tend to hold our breath. I have been holding my breath my whole life waiting to learn this lesson - for them and for me. It is what unschooling is about - inhale - exhale - inhale - exhale.
Now on to my regularly scheduled thoughts this evening:
Right now it is 10:15 pm, and Kendra decided a short while ago that she wanted to make a Chai cake she found in a recipe book yesterday - the chai flavor being her favorite and all. She asked if she could - and I hate to say it but I really struggled to say yes. You see, I am learning to live free - and accept that my kids need to live in freedom in order to blossom into the individuals that God made them to be. For Kendra, her optimum, peak-performance time is night. It has been since she was a baby. What upsets me is that I have to fight everything in myself so hard to allow them this freedom. I don't want a mess, or the noise, or the questions that will come with baking an unfamiliar recipe. But what my daughter needs to do is create - try her hand at something new. I grew up with an early bedtime, waking up every morning to the demands of an alarm clock or someone else's idea of what I should do and when, making my bed before I left my room, and following "the plan". This is very responsible, and there are likely quite a few of you reading this thinking, "what on earth does she think is wrong with that?" This routine may create an obedient, well-regulated, societally oriented person, but it will never facilitate the extraordinary. When I was in high school my life was school and work. I was a talented writer - but my homework assignments, even in the creative writing class that I loved, were delegated to an item to cross of the never-ending list of things that I was obligated to do. There was no joy, no searching out the world around me with wonder.
I watch television shows like the Gilmore Girls and see the college bound Rory that I adore, however, I find it supremely unrealistic. Rory is involved in about a zillion extra-curricular activities, has breakfast every morning before catching the bus with her mother at the local diner, participates in everything that is going on in the community, has a boyfriend, a best friend and reads constantly - not light reading either - Russian authors, and classics like Shakespeare, all while maintaining a grade point average to keep her at the top of her class. I am sorry but no real human can maintain all of that - but yet most of our society models their lives after what they see on the boob tube. I imagine many families watch the Gilmore Girls and feel inferior because their kids and families aren't doing all of that.
What I want is to create space in our lives for my kids to grow, branch out, try their wings. It is counter to everything I have ever learned. It reminds me of learning to breathe - it should come naturally - but when we are anxious or under pressure - we tend to hold our breath. I have been holding my breath my whole life waiting to learn this lesson - for them and for me. It is what unschooling is about - inhale - exhale - inhale - exhale.
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