Revering the Crayon Marks

01 May Surrender

“Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.”
Mother Theresa

This was one of those relatively rare – but still very real – days as a stay-at-home mom in which I feared the best I could do would be to fake a smile and turn my back, when necessary, to count to ten.

It was on this particular day that the girls and I were heading to a distant store to pick out just the right Christmas gift for someone. My 3-year-old was passing the time by speaking every thought that occurred to her. At this particular moment, those thoughts revolved around the time of day.

“If you get up early enough, it’s night,” she announced.

“Callie gets earbubble,” (that would be “irritable”) “right before her nap.”

“Daddy comes home when it gets dark.”

I answered yes to all of these things, only half-listening. Then, making a distracted attempt at conversation, I asked her, “What’s your favorite time of the day?”

Silence.

“What did you ask me, mommy?”

I repeated the question. “What’s your favorite time of the day?”

Silence again.

I looked in the rear view mirror. Her blank stare told me she thought my question was absurd. After a time, she answered:

“This one.”

Now Cassie does enjoy a good long car ride, so I asked her the question again as she was getting ready for bed that night:

“Cassie, what’s your favorite time of day?”

The answer was the same: “This one.”

Ah. This one. And so should it be for me. How I wish it were. How I wish I could recognize the peace and joy in every single moment with my kids.
You see, my daughter is better than me at something I long to be good at. It’s what Richard Foster, author of Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, calls the Prayer of the Ordinary.

“We are Praying the Ordinary,” he writes, “when we see God in the ordinary experiences of life. Can we find meaning in the crayon marks on the wall made by the kids? Are they somehow the finger of God writing on the wall of our hearts?” In the same chapter, he writes: “It is in the everyday and the commonplace that we learn patience, acceptance, and contentment.”

That, I’m sure, is true. Particularly that patience part.

My fear is that, like everyone with adult children tells me, the time will go too quickly, I fear that I’ll wish for it back, even those mealtimes interrupted by the whisper “Mommy, I pooped.” Even those whines for another Go-gurt. Even the stray Legos I nail with my bare feet. I fear that I’ll soon pine for all the time I’ve ever wished away.

And yet, though I’m infinitely conscious of trying to freeze those moments -the good and the bad – in my memory for some distant future, it’s hard. It’s hard to see Foster’s crayon marks on the wall as anything but crayon marks. Crayon marks that I will have to scrub.

I’m experiencing a crayon mark of sorts right now. As I jot notes for this column at the kitchen table, my 3-year old is sitting on my lap, trying to push my pen along the page with her Three Little Pigs book. She has just dragged her grape lollipop through my hair and wiped her nose on my sleeve. “Mommy, make your pen go ALL the way along the page,” she orders, scooting it along and making my thoughts an illegible mess of ink.

For a moment, I have an unbecoming and out-of-the-blue urge to chuck her beloved book across the room.

And it is precisely times like these when I need to indeed see the crayon marks as something left by the finger of God. To feel a sense of reverence for my every moment of my life as a mom. To once again find meaning and glory in my daughter’s cherubic yet filthy face.

But for this, I need some kind of tool, some trick for the heat of the moment. A trick to bring myself back in an instant to the kind of mother I long to be, the kind of mother I sometimes know myself to be, and the kind of mother I want my daughters to remember me to be.

At this moment, I have a little talk with myself. Cassie and I end up tucking our feet under a blanket on the couch and reading the very book that I wanted to hurl. And I enjoy it. I always do if can just sink into the moment and remember what a little miracle I have here on my lap.

Perhaps that tool, then, is surrender.

Or maybe it’s distraction. The same trick that all moms learn when their youngest is about 18 months old. When Cassie was that age, and she’d get angry and frustrated, distraction worked wonders. When she was 2 ½, distraction worked wonders on MY anger and frustration. Sometimes, the best tool for me is to change my scenery…to get my mind on something else.

Perhaps that tool is compassion. Compassion for our children and a conscious understanding of what they must be feeling at certain times in their precious and sometimes bewildering lives.
And compassion to ourselves, which we can show by not over-scheduling our lives to the point where it’s impossible to get down on the floor and play for 20 minutes, if that’s what it takes. Or to call your own mommy just to chat for 20 minutes, if that’s what it takes.

Perhaps that tool lies in the realization that our lives are long and full and that there will be plenty of time to do what we need to do when we no longer have little ones pulling on our pant legs.

Perhaps it is the tool of single-tasking. So we don’t feel distracted all the time. This is the tool that involves downshifting out of overdrive, because it’s in overdrive that we talk too much, eat too much, think too much. Enjoy too little.

Perhaps it is the tool of shifting your awareness. A conscious committing to memory of the ripe physical sensations of motherhood: The feel of your baby’s marvelous, heavy head on your chest. The smell of Cheerios on her breath. This is how we bring ourselves back–gently–to the gifts that are under our fingers and, oftentimes, directly underfoot.

Perhaps it is the tool of solitude. So that, by enjoying the pursuit of something, solo, we may return to them renewed–and without resentment.

Perhaps it is the tool of being honest and talking it out with other moms. It helps me to remember that we’re all in this together. Most days we are genuinely loving it. Some days we are genuinely faking it, just as generations of good moms before us have done.

There is a certain solace in this story told by my mother-in-law, whose three children would describe an ideal, involved, committed, and very loving mother. There were days, she says, when her face hurt at the end of the day from smiling. A clear and present sign that her smile was, for days at a time, forced.

But her kids didn’t know. With grace, neither will mine. And tomorrow will be a different kind of a day, with new tools to look upon those crayon marks with the reverence they deserve.

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Plenty of Time

01 May Surrender

Most mornings, we revere a quiet pace around my home. We celebrate slowness. But today, it is almost noon, and we are late, and I can’t find my keys (though I know I had seen them on the counter just moments before). I am suspicious.

“Cassie, have you seen my keys?”

“Yes, I’ve seen them.” My three-year-old is lying on the couch with her feet straight up in the air, tapping her boots together.

“Where did you see them?”

“They are right to the left of behind.”

Huh? I try again, this time lowering my voice: “Where are my keys, honey? I don’t want to be late.”

She gets up. Aah, she has come to identify the subtle but effective mommy-is-serious voice.

She picks up a ballpoint pen from the table and hands it to me. “Here are your keys, Mommy,” she manages to say before collapsing in hysterics.

She looks up, still laughing. (I’m not.) “Oh, now that was a silly joke, Mommy,” she laughs some more. “That was a pen. Not your ke-e-e-e-eys.” She pulls her sister under the table with her. They are both giggling.

Ten minutes later, I had found my keys (where I, not she, had put them), and got on with the business of loading the baby in her car seat, finding the preschooler’s coat, mittens, and gloves, and stashing them into the appropriate places for later. For the older one, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a “monkey juice,” so named for the orangutan that used to grace the Tang pouches. For the younger one, crackers, cantaloupe, and a juice sippee cup. And I’ve finally remembered our library books.

Apparently, hurrying is antithetical to a preschooler’s very nature. On her way to the car, she stops to hide on the deck. Then she makes a pit stop into her playhouse.

Then she pauses to tell me that potatoes don’t have blood, but that she does. As Cassie stands in the driveway reliving yesterday’s paper cut and the ensuing Barbie Band-Aid, I resist the urge to check my watch.

It is then that I have to remind myself that my sense of urgency is, today, self-serving. I’m a busy mom, but I work hard to keep my days with the kids “business free.” And today, we are going to a simple playgroup. At this playgroup, we all drop in and out. No one is watching the clock to see when we arrive. And no one in particular is waiting for us.

I realize, all at once, that my self-created melodrama is strangely comforting to me. Then I wonder, at this time, what I’m modeling to my kids. Because we can’t simultaneously be frazzled and calm. We can’t simultaneously be agitated and attentive. We can’t simultaneously be fragmented and mindful.

I should be taking a cue from the child and not the other way around. And so I give myself a gentle reminder of the reasons we have consciously chosen a slower pace for our family. How nourishing it can be to give a child – and her parents – time to contemplate. Time to allow the day to play out on its own. Time to accomplish things one slow activity at a time.

We have just hit the highway when Cassie clamors from her car seat: “Mommy! We forgot to play the ‘Three Little Pigs’!” She gasps in mock horror, leaving me to wonder where she got her sense of drama.

“We’ll play when we get home,” I say. “We’ll have plenty of time.”

And so we do.

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The Joy of Doing Something

01 May Essays

“Sitting around is stressful.”

I heard someone say that the other day, and I laughe. Everything stresses people out these days, I thought. But then I gave it a little consideration, and I agreed that few things are as stressful as doing nothing.

Here’s an example: Think about the familiar inner debate about whether you can fit in a workout. You know how good you’ll feel afterwards. You know how much your body wants it. Needs it.

I know I need a good run when my head starts feeling fuzzy. Thoughts come and go, but there’s nothing important going on up there. I know what I could do to make the blurriness go away, but I just don’t want to.

It’s like trying to find something without my glasses on. I know what I could do to make it better-I know the solution is really simple-but it’s somehow too much. I don’t want to go get my glasses. I’d rather bump around the world for awhile.

And when I finally break free of that and go do something, there comes the clarity. The drama of it always strikes me. It rushes in like I’ve opened the drapes.

Once I’m running or biking or doing whatever it is I decide to do, really hard, the sheer joy of movement breaks me out of that fuzzy, stagnant state of mind. I feel the hair flopping on my head. My heartbeat in my face. Something comes in and sweeps out my head, and I look back to the blurry world of 30 minutes before, and I thank God I found the motivation.

When you get your body moving, you suddenly become clear on what needs to be done. All at once, fresh ideas and a renewed energy and creativity tumble in.
The same thing happens when you get your mind and soul moving.

The antidote to anxiety
When we feel scared or worried, we’ve got to get up and regain control, even if it feels like too much at first. We have to disarm the paralyzing nature of fear by doing something. Anything.

If we can just get moving, we’ll find the energy to help those in need. We’ll connect to something larger than ourselves, and then we’ll tap its energy.

It doesn’t have to be a big world-sweeping movement. In Seat of the Soul, Gary Zukav says it well: “If you wish the world to become loving and compassionate, become loving and compassionate yourself. If you wish to diminish fear in the world, diminish your own. These are the gifts you can give.”
“Don’t just sit there like you’re getting a perm.”
We talk a lot about “baby steps.” Each time I hear that phrase I think of my oldest daughter learning to walk. She was so bowlegged that, standing, she looked like she was attempting the splits. Every few steps, she’d topple over and, seconds later, up would come her little bottom and she’d push up with her hands, lean forward and try to keep her feet moving as fast as her head. Her determination was inspiring.

To me, baby steps are about breaking something big into manageable chunks, but it’s also about the will to just keep moving, no matter what.
And that brings to mind my high school English teacher, Mrs. Wasserstein. There are two things I remember about her: lots of clumpy black mascara and a writing tip on which I have based a career.

She offered the revolutionary idea that you can erase what you start with. The key is to just get started, and, once you get in the groove, the product is usually pretty good.

She must have gotten along well with my Algebra teacher, who once scrawled on his classroom wall with a red Marks-a-Lot, “Don’t just sit there like you’re getting a perm. Do something. Even it’s wrong.”

Granted, he was no Gary Zukav, but there’s some wisdom there.

It’s the same wisdom Dr. Seuss employs in his description of The Waiting Place:
“for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go,
or the mail to come, or the rain to go…
Everyone is just waiting…
NO!
That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape
All that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.”

How? Lean your head forward and try to keep up with your feet.

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Slippery Socks

01 May Love

If mom is sustained, lasting light, dad is a spark. It’s certainly true in my family, where the men simply produce a different kind of energy. Dads and Grandpas are wonderfully familiar but exotic and new at the same time.

Some of my most vivid memories from childhood took place during weekend car rides, just my dad and I. They are engraved in my memory not because we did anything particularly exciting or adventurous – these were mostly just weekly errands, with the occasional stop at a donut shop. And it wasn’t the conversation. We didn’t talk a whole lot. There was just something different about being with him.

It’s that way in the family I’ve created, too. For Cassie and Callie, Daddy is an exclamation point at the end of each day.

I’m sure Cassie doesn’t know how to tell time, but at precisely 6:30 every weeknight, she’s got her nose pressed against the glass, waiting for daddy’s truck to rumble up the driveway.

Calliope, almost three months old, coos and grins at me all day, but when Ty comes home, her muscles start to work. She starts making little jabs with her arms and legs. Her mouth forms an o-shape. She’s a picture of pure concentration. Her dad certainly harnesses – and elicits – a different kind of energy.

When my daughter and I were living with my parents awaiting Calliope’s birth, Grandpa would announce his arrival each evening with two quick honks. “Grandpa! Grandpa!” Cassie would run to the door so fast that her socks would send her sliding across the linoleum.

The wide-eyed way Cassie looks at the men in her life just melts my heart. I can only imagine what it does to them. Like most toddlers, her whole face has a feeling, not just her mouth.

I wonder how things would change – with our husbands, our fathers, our mothers, our children, our friends – if we all greeted one another like this. If we carried this intensity into all of our relationships. If we ran so fast we slid to greet the important people in our lives.

A recent Oprah episode had Toni Morrison asking, “Do your eyes light up when your children come into the room?” Because that’s what they are looking for, she said.
I find myself reflecting on that wisdom frequently. Because isn’t that what we’re all looking for? Today, see if you can make sure someone finds it.

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Same story, new kid

01 May Surrender

Like many moms, I suffer from selective amnesia. Mostly, it revolves around things like pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and the isolating early days with a newborn, which, with the first baby, culminated in the night I emptied the Diaper Genie and my battered soul by howling something unintelligible and swinging a sausage roll of smelly nappies around my head.

Thank goodness for the sharp memory of my husband, who sometimes finds it wise to remind me about those things.

Callie is six-weeks old now, which means she has reached that magical age when the doctors okay her (and her mommy) to fully participate in life. But there are these struggles that keep popping up…struggles that I had somehow forgotten about in the two years between babies, and I have to rely on my husband’s remarkable memory once again to let me know that these were the same issues that popped up after the first baby. Then they buried themselves deep in some dark hole somewhere only to re-emerge now that we are settling in with daughter number two.

They are issues common to many couples with young children and they revolve mostly around finances and the sharing of responsibilities. At bottom, they may just be a sign that I’m bored enough to want to pick a fight for the sheer drama of the experience. Because I now recall some of these struggles that you all report and I seem to have forgotten. It’s the tedium of playing with the playdough and vacuuming up the playdough and finding playdough in my bedsheets.

It’s the lack of control that pervades my days. It’s the attempt to get up four hours before the rest of my family because in this warped world of early motherhood, work time counts as “me time,” and hearing my toddler’s footsteps on the landing as she makes the long climb to my office. I’m glad she takes the steps one-foot-at-a-time because it affords me the time to sweep away my initial reaction, which may involve the words, “Can’t you give mommy a few moments of peace after all the sacrifices she makes…” and somehow dissolves into an empathetic smile, a long hug, and a tuck-in to the mattress I’ve moved into my office for this very scenario, which usually happens about half-past four.

It’s times like these when I struggle to recall how I finally reclaimed the power and the control over my life after my first child. After a little searching, I remember. After a long while, I snatched at all the control I could, and I let the rest go.

I surrendered to it after realizing that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t control when the little ones will wake or when they’ll want to eat or when they’ll poop (though I can be reasonably sure the latter two will happen right as we’re heading into the car to go somewhere), but I can control the way I deal with it. I can control my energy level by controlling what I eat and how much I exercise I get. I can even control a few things in my work life.

After the first baby, I reclaimed my power by joining a gym with good childcare and started a home business. This time, I kickbox during naptime and write and write and write during the wee hours.

Through it all, I repeat to myself (as though it were a mantra) that these choices are mine. I chose the nursing pads by insisting on breastfeeding. I chose the crazy work hours by insisting on staying home with my girls. And if I get forget, my husband will remind me of that, too.

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Getting by with a little help from my friends

01 May Friendship

“Cassie needs to get back to her playgroups,” my husband says as he hands me the week’s mail. We haven’t left the house in days as I’m trying to be vigilant about shielding the new baby from crowds and cold bugs.

Ty tells me how Cassie entered the post office and shouted with incredulity: “Look daddy, a little girl!” The two kids swapped junk mail and giggled for a time before my husband could wrangle Cassie back in the car. He sensed her desperation, and I think the whole thing struck him as a bit pathetic.

“Yes, she’s starting to go out of her mind, not having other kids to play with,” I agree, but he and I both know we’re not talking about just Cassie.

As the days get longer, my husband has been leaving earlier for work. That means that some days, by 10 a.m., the girls and I have done two loads of clothes, seven diaper changes, and two baths. We have fingerpainted, made playdough pizzas, read eleven books and played six rounds of Hide and Seek.

And it means that, by this time in the middle of the morning, I’m already wondering how I’m going to fill the remaining eight hours of my husband’s workday.

In short, I miss Cassie’s playdates. I love having friends come to visit us, but I miss packing the girls in the car and heading over the hill to where the action is. I miss the squeak of dried-up markers and the salty smell of playdough from Tuesday’s playgroup. I miss the librarian’s nervous giggle during story hour on Wednesdays. I miss the library’s cardboard clubhouse where Cassie can safely retreat from her mommy for ten minutes each week. I miss Thursday’s tumbling class and all the giggles and squeals of the two-year-olds as they skooch off the pommel horse and roll across the mats.

I miss our weekly Mom’s Night Out. (Okay, I REALLY miss Mom’s Night Out.) I suppose that means I miss Cassie’s friends, but – most of all – I miss the mommies of Cassie’s friends. These are women who reassure me that I can handle about as much as I have to handle. They are women who encourage me to be a good mom just by being good moms themselves. The last two weeks has brought to light how much I rely on their insight, their senses of humor, their abilities and their support.

In the interim, I have come to rely on this, my online support network. Your e-cards and emails mean so much to me and help me to reconnect any time of day, even in the wee hours, which is usually the only time I can sneak away for computer time. I’ve printed and saved some of your encouraging words. I keep them in a file for those infrequent but very real days when I feel as empty and spent as a crushed soda can by 10 a.m.

Even in the face of those long days, an existing support network of moms with children of similar ages and stages has made all the difference with this second child.
Momscape features articles on how stay-at-home moms can cope with isolation as well as tips on creating a support group of your own. Check them out. Then, choose a night this week to get together with your friends – sans kids. Enjoy a glass of wine or a tall, cold Coke and the company of adults. Then make a point to encourage one another because no one can do that like a mom.

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Surprises

01 May Joy of Motherhood

This has been a week of surprises. A week that proves no matter how prepared you are, there just may be another force in control.

The final preparations began weeks ago. We headed to Denver two weeks prior to the baby’s due date to avoid any possible, if remote, chance of not making the 90-mile trip to the hospital in time. On March 14th, I visited the OB for my 40-week checkup, and he told me nothing was progressing and he could induce my labor when he returned from vacation 12 days later.

Within a few hours of leaving his office, I was calling to let him know that my contractions were two minutes apart, 20 seconds long. He told me to call when they spaced out to 5-minute intervals, each one minute in duration. I labored in my childhood bedroom, waiting for the contractions to change. They only got more intense.

While I tried to let my body go limp and ride out each contraction, I felt my body and spirit divorce. The pain became a sort of entity, something my body handled while my spirit floated somewhere nearby waiting it out.

The March issue of O Magazine features an empowering essay about surrendering to the pain of childbirth, of remembering the purpose that it serves and emerging on the other side with a greater sense of peace and power. In the article “Labor of Love,” Thandie Newton writes, “I can see why people describe it as pain, but it’s so much more than that. It is a magnificent pain, an extraordinary out-of-body sensation, a humbling one.” I read her words over and over again to myself, waiting for my husband/labor coach to arrive.

As it turned out, Ty would make it to the hospital about an hour after the birth. It took him nearly five hours to make the 90-mile drive in the worst road conditions of the winter. My contractions never did get much longer than 20 seconds until they were one on top of another, and my mom and I arrived at the hospital with just 16 minutes to spare.

When the OB resident finally okayed me to push, I said, “I can’t believe my husband isn’t going to make it.”
“Well,” he said, “Neither is your doctor.” Three pushes and several minutes later, our little bundle of joy was born. My mom entered the room just before the baby did, and I cut the cord myself.

I got what I have so desperately wanted since my first daughter was born via c-section: a traditional, natural childbirth. I yearned to behold the exhilaration of this pain culminating in the most overwhelming of human experiences. I wasn’t disappointed. I have a beautiful new daughter, a new relationship with my body, a new sense of power in my role as a mother and as a woman, and a renewed sense of awe for a Creator who could make all of this come about.

There is nothing quite so blissful as nursing a newborn baby. Meanwhile, my rough-and-tumble toddler is revealing a more soft and gentle side. It’s as though these sisters have known one another forever. Perhaps they have.

We have named this baby sister Calliope after the Greek mythological muse of poetry. After all, my girls are my inspiration. They are the elements of life that make me understand, once and for all, why I’m here. They make every morning Christmas, awaiting all of the surprises that are gift-wrapped in their little souls. Now we revel in unwrapping them one by one.

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Heartburn and Heartache: A Tribute to Mothers

01 May Joy of Motherhood

The 37th week of pregnancy has brought with it an unexpected emotion: I want to stop time.

The heartburn is so bad I have to sleep sitting up, I want a nap about an hour after I get out of bed, and the baby’s incessant, claustrophobic punches assure me that she’s ready for action. But if I could only suspend time.

Cassie, my two-year-old, has reached a kind of golden age. She is curious and honest and kind. As her language develops at pace with her self-consciousness, I have to hide my giggles – and my outright admiration – until she is tucked into bed and I can share the day’s gems with my husband.

Now, I don’t doubt that I will love our second child as much as I do the first. And I’m sure that holding daughter number two will bring the same indescribable flood of emotion that holding Cassie does. But I also know that, in some small ways, things will change, and everything is so very, very good right now.

And so the unexpected emotions continue: A bit of guilt in the knowledge that there will soon be someone to compete for my time and attention. A bit of fear. A sense of mourning for the loss of my one-on-one relationship with this precious little person. And the yearning to stop time.

Because Cassie’s delivery was early and fast and because we’re a good two hour’s drive from the hospital, we are packing for a temporary move as delivery day nears – doctor’s orders. Both sets of grandparents live in the city where we’ll deliver, so we’ll hole up at my mom’s house for a few weeks before and maybe a week after. Early in the pregnancy, I was relieved that we had a plan, but, as the day approaches, the idea makes me weepy.

It’s not because I’d rather be home. I love visiting my parents. And it’s not because I’m afraid of breaking Cassie’s routine, though that’s what I’ve been telling everyone. My motives are much more selfish. It’s because I know it will make me let go of her two weeks before I’m due.

You see, the very presence of one of her grandparents pretty much ensures that she won’t notice her mom is even in the room. And if she does notice, instead of climbing my legs to settle on my hip or asking me to play “run real fast,” or to draw a pig or to dance to Blondie, she’ll push her arm out at me in classic two-year old defiance. Sometimes, she even asks me to go away.

I smile and try to understand the way my husband does. I try to understand that it’s because she doesn’t see her grandparents as often as she sees me. That she knows I’ll always be there for her so she doesn’t feel the need to cling. That I am the enforcer of rules, and the rules are different at Grandma’s. But it kills me. I mean, it hurts somewhere deep to see just how quickly the irreplaceable is suddenly and firmly replaced.

Having lived the pattern nearly each weekend for a while, I’ll make the move knowing what is to come. But, for the next week or so, Cassie’s daddy and I will be hogging her, night and day, and hogging all the time we have left. And I’ll be thinking about how the whole situation is a metaphor for motherhood and the sacrifices we make each day for the good of our kids – for the health of the soon-to-be born and the well-being of the child that is. Even when it means doing something that just may hurt our hearts.

And I’ll be thinking about all you moms who recognize that, even before our children are born, their needs are paramount. I’ll be thinking about all of you who recognize the fundamental nature of being a mother and who inspire yourselves each day to be the best mom you can be in spite of your own wishes and wants and motivations.

Here’s to you all.

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Gratitude

01 May Essays

It’s easy to be grateful when you’re pregnant. The fetus offers constant reminders of the miracle unraveling inside. My husband and I saw our next daughter’s teaspoon-sized form on the ultrasound screen a few weeks ago. We watched her tiny heart pump blood to her tiny brain and her tiny hands curl up next to her tiny face. And I am grateful.

Now that I know we’re having a second daughter, I’m even more grateful for the time I spend with our first daughter, who is currently obsessed with pennies and Chapstick or anything else she can put in her toddler-size purse. The night after the ultrasound, I dreamed of leading a line of little girls, all with their pennies and Chapstick and toddler-size purses, through a park, down a ski slope, through a mall and beyond, on into their own lives. And I am grateful.

As I lie in bed staring at the ceiling and feeling sorry for my insomniac self, the new baby will give me a swift kick and I am all-at-once grateful for this teaspoon-sized child with the strength and vigor to kick me in such a way. I get weepy watching commercials for Toll House Cookies, and I am grateful for all the memories that haven’t been created and all the cookies my girls and I haven’t yet baked.

Pregnancy hormones are no doubt at work here (my “normal” self can endure a commercial break without shedding tears), but, for all of us, actively cultivating a sense of gratitude can help us heal and grow, and this sense of gratitude will thrive and strengthen when we begin to pay attention to it in even the smallest ways.

The Importance of Gratitude
Gratitude wards off jealousy. When we’re busy aaah-ing over what we have, we’re not looking at the person across the street and wanting what she has. Jealousy has an enormous power to change us, but only if we let it. By focusing on gratitude, we shift the focus away from the things we may feel are missing in our lives.

Gratitude keeps us centered. We’re not panicking over what we can accomplish but simply basking in the day-to-day glory of what is. And yet gratitude combines nicely with ambition, helping us to be gracious to the people who help us in our achievements.

Gratitude helps us to not complain. Too many of our conversations, it seems, reduce to a competition of who has it the worst.
“Oh, I’m so tired. Bethany is teething.”
“I know. I was up all night finishing a business proposal.”
“I don’t feel good either.”
We feed off one another until, in our heads, we really are unhappy.

We often mistake the tremendous power of our words. A simple negative comment or complaint can damage another person’s day because it can damage the way they see their life, either as they compare their life to yours or as they start focusing on their own negativity.

Don Miguel Ruiz, in The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, calls such negativity “emotional poison.” But we can instill more positive emotions – in ourselves and in others.

Cultivating Gratitude
Help yourself cultivate gratitude. Here are a few little things we can all do every day.

Choose your friends wisely.
If you want to be more grateful, spend time with grateful women. Spend time with positive women to be more positive, joyful women to be more joyful, critical women to be more critical, irritated women to be more irritated.

If you strive to be spiritually strong, supportive, empowering, intelligent, energetic, and positive, seek those characteristics in others. Help your friends develop more positive traits by living those positive traits yourself. Know what kind of friends will help you nurture your soul, and set out to find some.

Help your friends cultivate gratitude.
Before you say anything about a friend’s situation, remember that everyone’s situation is unique. I’ve seen it happen to myself and to my friends. They’ll be perfectly happy until someone tells them they’re being mistreated. Suddenly, they’re upset. Don’t let your friends wield such power, and work to not wield such power yourself.

Day by day, hour by hour, make a goal to stop complaining about your own lot. Make a pact with your friends to cut the complaints from your conversations.

Give the gift of gratitude to your children.
One of the most lasting contributions we can make to our children is to help them understand that we don’t deserve anything and everything just because we live and breathe. Help them to be satisfied with the simple things while giving them the innate power and ability to achieve whatever they want in life by living in such a way yourself.

Say Thank You.
Whom in your life do you appreciate? Let them know, whether it’s your mom, your kids, your friends, your husband, your child’s daycare provider or the helpful woman behind the cosmetics counter.

You don’t have to spout some corny line. A heartfelt “thank you,” often does the trick. Make it a habit and your attention will suddenly turn to all the things people do for you. Write thank you notes regularly – not just after a gift exchange – and be mindful of all the ways you show your appreciation by the things you do in return.

Spend 15 minutes writing a letter to your children. In this note, tell them how much you love them, why you’re thankful for them, and all the ways they have enriched your life. This can be something you give them now or after they have grown.

Be mindful of the little things.
Today, strive to be aware of all the aspects of your personal, professional, and family life for which you are thankful. Take a few minutes today to appreciate nature. Go for a walk and notice only those things that are beautiful. Whether you focus on the stars above, a distant mountain range, or the cottonwood tree in your backyard, try to notice the details. Give thanks for the beauty that surrounds us.

Oprah Winfrey and Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance, speak often of the importance of a Gratitude Journal, in which, at the end of each day, they record five things that they’re grateful for. Regardless of whether you record these items, spend some time each day to focus on the little things in your life that make each day special. Perhaps it’s your child’s toothless grin. A warm home. Delicious food enjoyed with family.

Together, let’s work on focusing on what we have – not on what we don’t have – and all the ways we can help one another have more gratitude for their own lives.

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The Zone

01 May Present Moment

I’ve been reading a lot lately about present moment living…finding your bliss and all that. These authors tell me that joy exists in even the most mundane tasks if we can cultivate the proper level of awareness and concentration.

Kids, these self-help authors say, are prime examples of our innate ability to live in the moment. My toddler is proof positive. She sits in her high chair, reveling in the quiet bliss that comes with a new pack of Crayolas and clean white paper.

I watch as she pulls the crayons out, one by one, and jabs the paper with them. Then, she loads the crayons carefully back into the box. Oops, that one went in the wrong way. She dumps them out and starts over. Her lips, pursed in concentration, form a perfect “o.” Her breathing gets heavy.

She’s in the zone.

At least that’s what athletes call it. That hypnotic feeling of being so utterly concentrated that you lose track of the rest of the world. Here, we are completely task-oriented. Enveloped in a self-induced trance. Hypnotized by the joy of just doing something—of being entirely focused on a single task.

For me, this present moment awareness–this bliss of finding joy in work and play–is something I experience occasionally, perhaps when I’m on a roll with a project or on the last few pages of a juicy paperback. Even sometimes when I have my hands in sudsy dishwater. This present moment awareness can come anytime, under one condition: Everyone else has to be asleep.

Of course, the experts say that everything–even something as simple as a taking a shower can hold new pleasures when you simply focus on the details: the way the water feels as it rushes across your shoulders, how your scalp tingles when you massage in the shampoo.

But all your efforts to make your shower take on these meditative qualities go straight down the drain when you have to peek out from behind the shower curtain every few moments to make sure your child isn’t choking on the Oreo you used as a bribe to assure yourself at least time enough to shave your legs

When a meditative state is continually interrupted, the results are far from restorative. These inevitable interruptions can make us even more frustrated.

Maybe we moms must focus instead on the ability to slide in and out of zones. (I’d love to see a book on that.)

Or maybe the time to cultivate our awareness of the present moment is when the kids are in a zone of their own, such as sleep. And if all else fails, we can always hand them a new box of crayons. Then sit back and enjoy the moment.

It is a moment made all the more enjoyable by the awareness that we don’t know when the next one will be.

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