You Can Dance

photo by Denis Collette

~ Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. ~

~ Martha Graham ~

A couple of weeks ago, I had one of those days, for three days in a row.

It began with feeling tired... Not "not enough sleep" tired or even "I'm bored" tired or "I'm overworked" tired, but this deep, deep tired that overcomes me every once in a while. It is a tired like most of my energy is being siphoned off somewhere away from me. Like my life force has just powered down and is running in twilight. It is a tiredness that tells me: Lie down and rest.

And I don't. I don't lie down and rest. Don't get me wrong — I do try to take care of myself, but I have certain constraints, mainly two dark-haired, brown-eyed monkey-boys. My lying down is an invitation for them to lie down on top of me. Which isn't restful.

So I don't lie down. I march along, trying my best to take it easy, to make the best of it, to do less.

But something is undeniably off, and building in tension, because even though there is part of me hearing me the voice, I am not really listening, and the voice seems to get more and more pissed off. The tiredness tells me: I want to have my own rhythm.

And then suddenly, the tiredness starts screaming like a crazy person. Like this: I wake up and I feel like I don't want to be here. I struggle on, and then I decide that we will go to the store so we have something nice to eat for lunch. We go to the store, and I am feeling alive, centered, and happy. I am not even faking it. We shop and get things and start driving home. The boys want to eat grapes and I am handing them back bunches as we drive. They keep eating them, so many grapes, and some random and forceful idea enters my brain that they've eaten enough. So I hand back another clump and say, "Okay, no more grapes for now. Let's have them with lunch." And Orlando starts saying, "But I want more grapes! More, more, more, more," and there is inside me a crushing sense of I just want to be listened to, and there is also the rational me that acknowledges it is arbitrary about the grapes, but another part of me just wants quiet quiet quiet at all costs so I give him the grapes, and when I do, the car swerves and I bump the curb, and the sunken voice absolutely explodes: I SAID NO MORE GRAPES AND I MEANT NO MORE GRAPES!!

This voice has — and gives — no wiggle room.

And then, a couple of days later, an almost-identical situation.... This time, we had spent the morning with friends in the woods, near a creek, having a lovely time. Getting home, we were hungry and tired. I warmed up our food from the night before — fish tacos that I had been looking forward to — and we sat down to eat. Mica, seeing the corn tortillas, kept saying, "Quesadilla!" and I kept telling him, "But we have fish, let's have fish inside like last night." We sat down to eat and Mica kept saying, "I want some cheese! I want cheese!"

I'll tell you what I wanted: To not get up and get cheese.

I'll tell you what I did: I got up and got cheese.

I got out the hunk of cheese, which I was already cursing, and saw that it was covered in mold. I took out a knife, and grabbed hold of the cheese and started to shave off the mold. The knife slipped and went right into my finger.

I immediately rinsed my finger, wrapped it in tissue, put pressure on it and held it up (wow, didn't even think about it) and then paced around the house. Each time I peeked under the tissue, the blood started up again, like mad. I began to panic and emerged from the bathroom, facing my kids sitting at the dining room table and told them, I DON'T WANT YOU TO ASK ME FOR CHEESE AGAIN! EVER!! I WILL NEVER NEVER NEVER FEED YOU CHEESE AGAIN.

I had awareness that I was yelling, so I went back in the bathroom, where I watched more blood coming out of my finger. Did I need stitches? I called my brother, figuring he would know what to tell me, and he said, "Well, I'll walk right over here and talk to my coworker who is also an EMT." We had a three-way relay, with me describing to my brother who told the EMT who told my brother who told me, and we talked through whether or not it seemed like I needed stitches (it seemed like I didn't) and how to treat and wrap the cut.

I washed it again, as the blood kept pouring out, and then I taped it up with steritape and wrapped it with gauze and scotch tape. Mica was falling alseep in his highchair, Orlando was reading in a corner, and no one had eaten lunch. I held the finger straight up for the rest of the day.

It healed. The cut, I mean. It healed up really nicely, actually.

I apologized after I yelled. I mean, I really apologize. I wait until the ache overcomes me and the deep-down love forces me to reach out. I whisper desperately into my children's hair as I hug them. I tell them: "I am sorry I yelled. Mama was overwhelmed with what was happening inside of me." I tell them: "I love you. I love all the parts of you. All of you is good, no matter what I say, you are good."

And still, I am afraid it is not enough. Will that really heal them? Me? Us?

+ + +

A few days later, Mica and I were home together while Orlando was at homeschool day camp, and Mica was sitting in his highchair and he said to me, "I yelling at you! I the mama!"

I knew what he meant.

I said, "I feel scared when you yell at me."

He kept my gaze.

"I feel sad," I said, and I saw him soften and echo, "sad."

"I feel sad when you yell at me."

"I yelling!! I the Mama!"

"Oh, I feel sad. I wish you weren't yelling at me, Mama, because I want you to comfort me, but I am scared of you."

"Mama," he said, and he reached out to me and then were hugging each other, so tightly.

Still more healing to be done.

+ + +

If there is one thing I've learned as a mother, it is that there are many kinds of yelling.

There is the bitchy-bitching... A combination of words and tone... "be quiet, get down, knock it off, I've told you a million times." All those very non-helpful, controlling type things I never wanted to say.

There is the oh-my-god freaking out... "Ah! You took all the CDs out of their cases and stacked them under the couch?!" In general, just an expression of overwhelm into the universe.

Then there is the complete losing it from the core of my being yelling. This yelling, the yelling I did about the cheese and the grapes, is in a class of its own. It is actually kind of cliche and well recognized — remember that time Mom told us we could never eat cheese again? — but it is also the most blind-siding, for everyone involved.

Yet, when I look back, I can see that this type of yelling was a long-time building (like, a life-time but also over the three days), and it had been giving me many clues. I kept hearing myself say the same phrases, those three long days, to my children, but in reality, I think it was one part of myself trying to talk another. Phrases such as, "I don't want to participate in this day." "I just want my own rhythm." "Please respond to me." "I don't want to be ignored."

Yes, more healing.

So, at my therapy appointment, of course, I talked about the almost-crashing-the-car and the cutting-my-finger moments, those moments of doing something I didn't want to do and then doing them, and immediately afterward almost or actually hurting myself and doing something I really didn't want to do (the swerving car, cutting my finger, yelling at the children). It was as if this part of me was an intractable child who became only more intractable and irrational as she felt more and more ignored. And when she snapped, she totally snapped.

My therapist (she practices hakomi therapy) asked me if there was any memory or age that came up for me. I am always amazed at this process, how something comes up without having to "think" at all. And the thing that came up was dancing to 50s music in our living room. It was my mom's music and we kids would dance around, imitating swing dancing as best we could, connecting by our hands and wrapping ourselves up in each other, laughing.

This voice had already told me what it wanted: fun, flow, connection, autonomy, response. And in case I still didn't understand, it painted me a picture: I want to dance.

And knowing now what it is that this voice wants, what can I do?

[What is the answer to everything?]

I can become aware, pay attention, offer lovingkindness.

I can listen.

I can notice that I want to dance.

And then I can dance, if I want to.

(You can, too.)

+ + +

Part of me believes that it's irresponsible of me to not have resolved and healed completely before having children. They don't deserve a mother who yells or scares them or who is so overwhelmed in certain moments that she can't attend to them. But another part of me knows this is an impossible standard. How could I have healed from what I didn't even know was there? It wasn't until after I became a mother — the second time  — that this stuff started coming up.

I wanted so badly to say "I want to parent respectfully and through connection with my children" and for that to mean that from that instant forward, every action was respectful, every interaction provided connection. I didn't anticipate what the road to respect and connection would look like, that it would be so hard, and that I would have to undo so much first.

The path to peace is indeed a bumpy road, and it turns out I really am hitting every bump on the way.

I feel scared sometimes. I feel ashamed. I feel blessed. I feel tired. I feel, I feel, I feel.

I feel vulnerable publishing this... it's been sitting in my drafts folder for days... but then today I read an interview with Patty Wipfler. Her life's work, after being "stunned at the awfulness" of her own behavior towards her children, became focused on healing parents and children through listening.

Listening... 

I am trying to listen to myself so I can listen to my children so they can listen to themselves.

~ Life is the dancer. You are the dance. ~

~ Eckhart Tolle ~