misplaced mama

How cute is she?

After her father’s heart….Mia loves to skateboard. She began asking for a pink skateboard a couple weeks ago. She has been watching her pops skate around the neighborhood and being the physical little lady that she is, she is utterly intrigued, demanding rides from him or getting herself on his big board trying to scoot all around the back yard. One day at a stop light—not sure if she saw someone skating or what but she asked me for a pink skateboard. I told her sure, we could find her a pink skateboard. A few hours later she asked me,”Mama, did you get Mia a pink skateboard? I want a pink skateboard.” I told her I hadn’t a chance yet, but sure, ,soon we could get her one. The next day she woke up and asked to call her dad at work to make sure he was going to make her a pink skateboard. “Mia wants to skate today mama. Okay, mama?” I let her call her dad and ask him and sure enough that day he came home with a little skateboard the perfect size for her 2-year old frame and a can of day-glo pink spraypaint (it was acutally a sponge bob skateboard, but nothing that a little spraypaint couldn’t cover). After they painted it he took her to the skateshop so she could pick out some sitckers for her new board. Then they were off to the skatepark. The chic rocks on the board to say the least. What a bad-ass daughter I have. It freaks me out and swells my heart with joy at the same time…she has no fear of falling and is intent on balancing, staying centered and softening at the knees. Here is a shot of her after a mini-tantrum at the skatepark. Bill wouldn’t let her go into the middle of the bowl where all the kids where doing fancy tricks. She insisted she could skate like them and threw a bit of a fit when we wouldn’t let her go skate the middle I don’t doubt she will be there soon.

Sula is in my arms. All day. Sometimes I wear her in one of the 7 carriers I now own (no, I am not being indulgent, it’s actually practical when you have child that refuses to be put down. At all. Ever. I have one specifically for walks around the ‘hood, one for hikes, one for stores, one for sweeping, one for nursing, one for the back while I am cooking hot stuff and one even for the shower) Sometimes she rejects all carriers and insists upon the bare arms…either with her tummy high up on my right shoulder or held front-facing across my belly. Once in a shile she likes the cradle pose, but not often. Somedays she’ll let me put her down in 5-7 minute incruments to play under her little baby gym….but shortly after a Leo roar while bellow throughout the house demanding arms. But alas! We brought out the bouncythingy that our dear friend Mel sent us and hooked it up outside under our shade porch. Sula loves it. She loves the feel of the chilly concrete under her toes as she bounces like a little bunny. SHe loves to spin around and bounce to the beat of her sister singing and painting in the backyard. She loves to just bounce and watch her sister from all directions, contrtoling where she can see without straining. She loves to bounce so much that she will stay in there for a whopping time of at least 15 minutes. 15 WHOLE minutes!! Which does enable me to do a load of laundry, paint with Mia, or just have a tiny little siesta outside in the hammock with a good book. Aaahhh…as much as I am repeled by baby contraptions….the bouncy is such a blessings! Here is a picture of Sula bouncin’.

Where I have always dwelled: Space

Where I dwelled after always and before now: Space

What opened my mother up to birth: Space

What my eyes first saw and my ears first heard: Space

Where magic and science and love exist: Space

Where the moon is and what makes it glow white or hang dark: Space

Where my mind wanders: Space

What I selfishly take up: Space

What I imagined the West to be like while living in the East: Space

What I imagine the ocean to be like while living West: Space

The reason I moved out of the city and into the mountains: Space

The reason I moved out of the mountians and back to the city : Space

The yoga studio we built: Space

What music creates in my blood: Space

What I try to make when I dance: Space

What I created to hold my unborn daughters: Space

What I breath into my gut, canal, and every last muscular tissue of my being when I labor my babies: Space

What I breath into my vertibrae and heart when I practice: Space

The reason we moved from L.A. to Phoenix and why I want to leave Phoenix: Spacec

What inspires me to keep my house clean: Space

What settles between my fingers and these keyes: Space

The click and capture of a camera: Space

What I long for in bed at night: Space

The color of the sky, the white of the clouds, the green of the earth, the wet of the sea and the thick flesh of a moutain: Space

What my favorite Oak tree is made of: Space

Breath: Space

My thoughts: Space

Your thoughts: Space

What seperates me from you: Space

What moves us closer together: Space

It was a while back when I wrote a letter I stumbled across the other day. It fell out of my copy of Autobiography of a Yogi (http://www.yogananda-srf.org). I was going through my bookshelf and a folded up piece of paper fell out to my feet. On one side it had a star, a circle with a cross through it and a heart. They were symbols drawn with my hand. What the heck was it? I picked it up and skimmed the sort of sloppy and rushed words. The night I wrote the letter came back to me. It was a full moon. Nobody had showed up for the Full Moon Meditation I held monthly at the yoga studio. It was just Mia and I sitting on the floor in the flickering candlelight. She was so small then, but I was thinking about her future and my desire to give her the world. I remember watching her scoot her little body across the yoga studio floor in her red long johns, not quite crawling, but moving just the same. I thought that the yoga studio would be a great place for a kid to grow up in. At times I felt like even though I didn’t know I was pregnant when we started building the studio, that deep down it was always for her. By this particular night in March, I had decided I was going to have to give up the studio. With Mia so small and no affordable or quality childcare with a business needing so much of my attention, I knew the best thing would be to pass the space on. I was laying on a wool blanket, watching my daughter scoot her way over to the big laughing Buddha we kept on the floor underneath the plant boxes. The room smelled like aloeswood and I had paper in pen in hand. I was going to write a letter to the Universe. And 2 years later, the letter is back in my hands.

The letter was a request. I wanted something sort of specific. I wanted to live in a city. And I wanted to live in the mountains. I wanted both and I asked the Universe to please send it my way. I asked for something simple yet creative and completely sustainable (www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook) in the mountains. I asked for my city space to be a place of creativity and community as well. I asked that both spaces help in Bills quest as a musician and my path as a writer. I put the old letter back in the book and put the book back on the shelf. I thought about how time flies and the night that I wrote that letter seemed like decades past. I quickly forgot about the letter as diapers and potties and fingerpainting and puppet shows took me over. Bill came home from work a few days later and wanted to talk to me about something.

He suggest we buy a huge wharehouse somewhere in this city, convert into a green space and use it as a live work with as many other people as it will accomodate. At the same time we could purchase a plot of land, pitch a big tent or trailer on it, hook up a solar shower and have a mountain retreat until we have the money and time to build on it. Bill feels this is probably the only city in the West where we could still afford to have a city and mountain home.

We have had dreams (and detailed designs and plans) for a really long time to live sustainable and create community. We have so many amazing people in our lives and the list just keeps getting longer. The possibilities could be endless with cottage business and inter-active art space not to mention the resources for keeping all living in the color green…from building to growing…constantly exploring innovative and creative living endeavors. This is how I want my kids to grow up. This is how I want my kids to be ‘educated’: hands on and through interaction with others. I have imagined all so many times. Space for music, space for woodworking, space for welding, space for traditional crafts that include sewing and production of hand made goods. Space for yoga. Living spaces. Garden Spaces. Education and gallery space. Then somewhere up, up, up would be my little mountain side awaiting me for full moon weeks, and equinox fire celebrations, and quiet moments where my kids and I just walked around scrubby hillsides or through thick pines, rode horses, spoke to the tree spirits and basically detoxed. Then someday transfer completely up to that mountain space. (After I got my city-girl cravings outta me)

I think about it now and get slightly overwhelmed. How could we make something like this happen? Where could we find an empty urban space here for under 1/2 a million dollars? How long could it possibly take to create something like that to be kid-friendly and simply livable? And what about my little piece of mountain paradise? Could I live on it in a very rugged way for a week here and there, when Bill schedule allowed. He suggests spending the waxing moon time in the city and then spend the waning moon time in the mountains and trying to convert to living time on a 13 moon (www.tortuga.com) and figure out the best times to spend where. We could split our time for maybe 4-5 years and then start seriously building to live in the mountains(?) Could I have 2 homes, 2 extremes and 2 kids? Oh the possibilities are endless as well as the fears and the doubts. And all the same time feel so lucky that I have a partner who inspires and shares in common dreams with me…believes in these dreams…feels them in his core as I do. How in this world do we manifest these dreams? How do I even know what my true dreams and desires really are? Would I reallywant…..

Then K called. She is a great old friend living in another state. To put it lightly, she is bad ass with some serious tools. The woman can weld jewelry, build stonewalls, throw together huge pieces of stained glass, construct metal furniture plus bake some damn fine cookies. K told me she could get transfered to Phoenix in the next year or so and what did I think about that? I asked her what she thought of converting a wharehouse space into an extraordinary living experience. Of course she was all for it. “It’s time, ” she told me. I bet there are others out there, wanting, needing, ,envisiong…understanding that the whole works much better than just its parts and that the nuclear family is really pretty useless.

So where do we go from here? Keep looking for land? Looking for big huge old wharehouses that aren’t too disgusting and at least 7000 sq. feet and in our price range?

I guess I should just concentrate on going to the river and filling the bucket, staying in each of these moments and looking into my girls eyes. But it really does feel incredible when you see the seedling sprout of long-time visions. Maybe I should write more letters to the Universe.

We decided we don’t take pictures…we have photo shoots. This was our princess day at the park.

I was glad to have another girl. There can’t be a better gift than a sister.

A quiet moment for Mia. Although she really seems to be years ahead of herself, I like this one because it shows me she is still my little girl.