A night at home

As of yesterday, I had been home for five straight days with my sick son (tacked onto a weekend of being home a lot, too) and out for five straight nights -- three for work, one for meditation (part of my volunteer commitment) and one for my volunteer commitment, a meeting I organized.

The good news is that I think I have two wonderful women who are willing to share that volunteer responsibility and leadership title with me. I was starting to feel like if I could not get that, I would just let the whole thing fold since I refuse to carry on a resentful role when having a second child. Or even if I end up dealing with a loss. I need help. I think they will offer it such that I don't have to throw in the towel on something I care about or let it further get to me. I don't want to be grumbling about this thing I love pissing me off while I have a new baby or am dealing with a miscarriage.

But, assuming the pregnancy goes forward, I still worry about being able to cobble out a postpartum existence that fits my values of attachment parenting at the same time that it provides boundaries other parts of me need.

Today my husband stayed home with a tummy bug, which was in some ways helpful and a relief, but it also was the first of several days of all three of us (with lots of snow predicted) and a boy who isn't really well enough to go to any holiday doings anyway, it doesn't seem.

The thing I want and need is time by myself. I cannot write an article if the little boy could burst in at any moment or his dad might just start playing the piano. It's fabulous that I now have a room of my own, but sometimes I wish it came with a beam that would transport me to a remote location where I could not be touched.

So if I feel like this now, without a mouth attached to my breast... Can I get it together by August?

Clarifying my goals

I'm really writing this after the fact, because when I got home at 10, I just had a snack and read some Brain,Child and went to sleep. But we can pretend.

Tonight (ahem) I hosted a group meeting on "Creating Balance in Family Life" with two life coaches. They had us working on clarifying our values since misunderstanding our values -- or setting priorities that don't, in fact, fit with our values -- is a lot of what causes people to get frustrated and to feel unfulfilled.

I came to the conclusion that I value complexity. I just do. I don't like things that are simple. They are not interesting to me. I like competing themes and ideas in literature, film, art. I like to be involved in a lot of things. I like to see connections across disciplines and from one aspect of my life to another.

This doesn't mean I can't develop mindfulness, or that I can't train my brain to appreciate one thing at a time. I think that is healthy. But it means that it's silly to say I'm striving for things to be peaceful, for that elusive "one day" when everything will be cleared out and have its specific place and time. I like messiness. It makes me feel alive, involved in life.

There's part of me that has always known this. I recognize that I have a fear of becoming like my mom who was depressed and didn't have a whole lot of passions, interests or relationships when I was growing up, at least not when I was really young. So this can go kind of pathological if I let it.

But it's also just plain who I am, someone who likes to be busy and have lots of irons in the fire. I wouldn't keep making that happen if it weren't true. I wouldn't have started my fifth personal blog here if I didn't feel like I needed many spokes from my center.

So, although I sometimes complain that my husband doesn't take initiative -- and I pretend that I want him to have passions that he pursues and schedules and prioritizes instead of stuff he can take or leave, enjoy it and get inspired by it when it happens (like playing piano or listening to music, but not take action to make sure it happens) -- tonight I appreciated his yin to my yang. I would -- at least not in the long term -- be better matched by someone who had a similar temperament. I get to inhabit my temperament in part because he's not taking up/using/inhabiting the same kind of energy pattern.

So when I crawled into bed and snuggled up to him, I got present to what a good thing it is that he is who he is so I can be who I am.

Maybe one of these days we can talk and see that beauty instead of always kind of wishing the other were different.

Maybe we can manage having a second child together.