misplaced mama

I was thinking about how nice it would be to get pregnant again. How nice that hard bump at my center would feel, the wonderment of fluid and loose hips. How precious the holographic light that surrounds my body (and others) when I am with child would be. What a joy it would be to reach my hands down again, tuck my chin to my chest and ahhh out a small person, a particle of humanly hope and freedom and bring her to my breast and feed her the rich milk that only mama’s have.

Was I F-in’ crazy? Insane? Worthy of asylum? Right now we have such a perfect thing: Mia and Sula are partners. Mia’s airy lightness helps to spread Sula’s passionate fire. Mia’s image mirrors her dads. Sula’s look comes directly from my blood. Both of them own their own intensity and as wonderfully fun and entertaining and intelligent as they are I would not call them low-maintenance. I have all I can handle. I have 2 arms and there are 2 of them. Together we total 2 parents, a perfect combination for raising 2 kids. We have reproduced what we equal, so why the thoughts on getting pregnant again, so soon? You’re outta your mind, my husband told me. Utterly out of my mind. (though he has mentioned there is a third soul, a girl, waiting for us to ask her in again. someday.)

I just realized today that it is not pregnancy I long to create. It is not a child I want to cultivate. It is my artistic path, the one I stepped off of in order to be Mother. A mother in total completeness, so my children were all I had to think about for a while. I want to nurture a life force again. Beginning as energy, not so different than that of a soul, yet not exactly the same either. I want to cultivate it into a seed, sprouting it like a delicate plant. I want to watch the seed swell and grow and mutate. I want to allow it expansion and make a ticket for traveling a spiral, a journey through my breath, in and out, filling the belly of my mind with creative awareness and the ability to allow something a life; nothing less than exactly who I am. And then release it. Let it all go and release it to the world as a gift. It need not be a child. I understand that now. But it needs to be something.

I always thought it was my words. Since I was a five years old and wrote a book about the gorillas throwing shit at each other while enjoying my first visit to the San Diego Zoo, I called myself a writer. I longed for the day I would be that word, that person to others. I longed to justify to them that my skill was worth their dollar and that dollar could feed me and my future family. It wasn’t until I was 23 years old and found a worthy teacher of prose that I realized that it did not matter if anyone ever read my words and it certainly didn’t matter if I ever made a dime off of them. I just needed to write and if I didn’t death would slowly creep up my spine and destroy my spirit. I knew that writing, like breathing, came naturally. Yet one does not get really good cleansing and healing breaths without pranayama, the practice of breathing. And so as a writer I knew I had to spend a lot of time practicing. I had to have the time to write.

A few years down the road I was called to be with women, to be a pillar and friend while they journeyed through their rite of passage: pregnancy, birth and motherhood. I did not ask to be a doula. It came to me long before I even had kids. But when I helped my friend breath that first baby out…wow. Oh wow. For years I have contemplated getting my training in Childbirth Education. For the most part, my prenatal yoga classes where childbirth education, yoga-style. It is something my inner-wise-woman wants and needs to do. I had an image once of being very old and gray and being the midwife for my grandchild’s birthing-journey (from the deep crow’s feet around my much brighter eyes and the gray head of spiked hair it seemed it was probably the birth of my great-grandchild). So I have half-walked this path for many years, never fully jumping in because I feared I was just distracting myself from writing. I also have issues with even getting to know a medical side to birth, something I would assume be a good thing if you are practicing childbirth education. I am such a naive birthing woman. To me it is souly magical and mystical. It is my second nature to wander to that deep place within and be with baby and invite Birth Energy to temple dance slowly, softly to allow the baby out. We all seem to receive the birth we need to grow, the birth that in the end makes a smarter and stronger woman, regardless of it’s outcome. I probably have way too hands-off approach to birthing that I would be horrible as an educator. I have a hard time speaking of birth, which for me is organic, and lusciously so. There are no verbs to describe. Just sounds and movement and touch. I guess that it why I want to study more, to learn more. To develop that language. Walking what I have down this path has helped me continue on with my ultimate feminist women-love-duty. Like I said, it seems to have come to me. Do I ignore it? No it just becomes part of this list.

I played classical piano from the time I was five until I was 21 years old. I would much rather listen to music than do pretty much anything else. When all the other kids where playing library or house or school, I was playing rock and roll chick, wearing my big sisters rock concert T-shirts of the early 80’s: Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, KISS and their wooden high-heeled clogs. I would hip thrust and head-bang for hours standing atop my vanity chair, looking at my audience: me. my reflection in the mirror. While other kids were playing tag throughout the neighborhood I was attempting to learn WHAM! and Duran Duran songs on the piano. As I grew my heart told me I wasn’t a performer. Those sweaty palms and the queasiness I had in my belly while people looked and listened to me while I played in piano concerts forced a desire to be more behind the scenes. My first piece of published writing was an interview with The Congos, a classically revolutionary reggae band. And I become a music whore. A groupie. A dancer. A supporter. And then I met my husband who (and I will rip-off this phrase from a dear friend because it is so right for me): played for me the soundtrack of my life. Electronic and wooden and wet each time his fingers would beat a drum or fiddle with the reverb, it was obvious that organic grooves with rhythm and purpose with be for me like food and nourishment. And for years now I have been the one who created flyers, booked shows, sent out CD’s, organized recording sessions, coordinated websites, searched endlessly for vocalists and according to him, shined as his muse and sound board. That’s a lot of work for one mama to do. And now the time has come to finally release the first LP. This is big work. Big tings gwan. Organizing the hopeful release of this record on a reputable label could mean working almost every second of my free-time for awhile. It would mean getting so organized that my type B personality might burst. It would also mean putting on my music industry face. Kind of fun, kind of not. If I don’t do it, don’t know who will. For the next six months this endeavor would need so much attention so that we can toy with the slightest, smallest, miniest of chances that we might be able to morph into our life-long dream: daddy working less with the heavy and environmentally UNfriendly granite business, more with sounds and people, bringing joy that goes beyond counter-tops and backsplashes. Daddy could start working from the home studio (a perfect place to start the unschooling everyday!) Visiting places around the globe, bringing music and positive messages. Lifting my kids up in the air, out of the concrete strip malls of Phoenix and giving them a different view of the world from a stage.

Then of course there is yoga. I will always be first a student of yoga, then a teacher. But I am a teacher and at one point I lived out a dream and owned a yoga studio. The day I opened the yoga studio a little line on a pregnancy test told me that I was indeed holding a delicate yet powerful flower-child within. I balanced the pregnancy while teaching 3 classes a day and being the employer of 7 other people. Then I balanced a newborn on my knee, bouncing her up and down while I ran the studio and strapped her to my front while I taught classes (she to this day is an excellent tree). Then one day she started to crawl. And I lost the balance. It was her. All about her. I had no love to give other people. At all. I wanted to follow her around and watch her grow. I sold my studio and moved to the desert to be a mama. As my practice grows and changes (and at time becomes a bit of a paradox as I long to take more and more classes yet see the Americanization or the “Los Angelization” –buy and consume yoga!– of the ancient way as a repellent, pulling me to stay home and practice alone) I really do feel obligated to teach what I learn. If open, a yoga practice can change lives. It did for me. I want others to feel it.

And above all, I have always wanted to create community. A place where my neighbors are my friends and my kids can run through their gardens and play in their yards. Instead of an email or a phone-call, I walk a thoughtful acre or so to meet up with a friend. A place set up simply yet carefully designed so that it sustains itself, ecologically and financially. A place where creative minds and industrious inventors of self and the world come to dream and live and teach a bit differently than our culture has been set up to do. It would mean, purchasing, cultivating, organizing, building, incorporating, expressing, compromising. It would be mad work. But it would also enable some time to do all the things listed above on my To Do With My Life list. With a close-knit community to help play/raise/teach children, not to mention collectively help each other fulfill one another’s dreams/life work (everyone commits small amounts of time working for each other so everyone has assistance with their lives. Explaining the 10 year and running plan of this place is a whole other piece of writing…something too close to my heart to even express at this point) time and space and childcare are not so much issues anymore. I do believe that ‘we’ have structured our society in a way that makes it impossible for the nuclear family (in most cases) to truly thrive. Parents and children are separated for lengthy amounts of time. Spouses/partners are separated as well. Arts/dreams and spirit callings are often interrupted by either survival and desire to succeed in the material world and there should be no reason why all of these things can’t live together. We live in a society that is fractured, broken. And we constantly cast it without traveling to the marrow to heal it’s wound. We are far from wholistic/holistic. We separate ourselves into compartments from living, to working, to playing to loving. I see community and meshing, blending and becoming one smooth machine of humanity. Separate we a nothing. Together we are one.

I often wonder if my push/pull to many different passions can be lent to the same philosophy. Singling out just one of my arts may make nothing for me, but together they can become All. Then the question is obvious. Where is that path that allows me the time and energy to accommodate it all? (To my sage friend who said my passion for so much acts as compost for my writing, you are wonderful. But how? How?)

And so I have come to the crossroads. I am at the center point of one of my favorite symbols: a circle that surrounds a cross, with each part equal. I know this is a powerful place to hang-out, yet it is a scary place to dwell for long periods of time. Too long and one runs the risk of never leaving. At the crossroads, I am given choice. I can pick a direction to walk. I am lucky to be offered this choice. Blessed! And I am sure through some sort of meditation and stillness, I can see what direction to take. I can walk until I reach the curve of the circle and follow it around until I wind up at the crossroad again. At this center point, where I stand right now is where the African orisha, Elleggua the warrior stands. Face to face we are and he challenges me to slice through my thickness of indecision and fear. He is the warrior whom teaches me to charge by the chaos, absurdity and unpredictability of standing directionless at the center. There will be no path pleading with me to enter it’s golden doors. It will be up to me to hear myself tell myself where to turn and what to do. Unless of course the chatter of my mind is not allowing me to hear (most likely scenario). My children, although they still need almost constant attention, are also sending me signals that it is time to start thinking of me again. Mia asked me the other day, “Who are you?” I replied that I was MaryBeth, her mama. “Who else?” This time I explained to her I was “a daughter and a friend and a wife and a lover of life.” And to this she told me, “And you write and you teach yoga? Yes or no, mama? Yes or no?” I realized then she was trying to see me outside of herself, outside of her mama. She was trying to see me as a person (she also asked me who she was that same day. I told her only she could answer that.) And so for her, and for me, and for the world, I would need to start making me a better person and mother and member of this universal community. Time to do something wildly creative and wildly me. It is understood that I must offer more gifts to the world besides my children. And I am burning up to do so.

Yesterday I received animal medicine. I pulled a card from my deck and was given Antelope: Action and Pace. The card was upside-down telling me the pace of my action was too slow. Antelopes, which run in a straight line and at high speeds, without unnecessary waste of energy told me, “Do it now. Don’t wait any longer.” Stop taking and give. You are blessed. Quit being so conventional and following the path of others. Make a decision now and take action. The fear of the unknown will subside once your devoted action begins.

Then I pulled Whale. Upside down as well. Whale, the record keeper of the knowledge of Mu, the Motherland. Whale medicine allows us to hear subtle frequencies, the songs of the soul of the universe. Whale told me that until I have the desire to know, to really know, I will keep hearing all the chatter in my head, the restlessness in my soul. The questioning and wasteful floundering will continue. Once I can hear the whale call, I can unleash my power and tap into my own stash of the fresh akashic ether.

All morning I stood alone at the crossroads and pulled my hair out trying to figure out the path to take. I am struggling with my love for too many things and not enough time to spend on them. I have a few hours a day, at night to work on things other than being a better mama.

And of course, more than anything else, I am committed to my children. To being a gentle and attentive, patient and creative, loving mama. They are my true passion. They are my ultimate creation. They are my life. I will not farm them out to daycare. I will be there for them like the river is for the rocks. Like the wind for the oaks. Like the sun and rain for the crops. And because I spend all my time with them, I am now at loss for what else I am.

And that brings me to what a yoga teacher said a few days back while we lie in Sivasana: Once we start to think about who we are, we are not being who we are.

I stand at this crossroad with Ellegua, The Antelope and The Whale. I sing Om Nimaya Shiva. Greetings to you who I am. I sing Om Ojo Vatyei Namaha. Greeting to Her who is full of energy and shares it with me.

After I started writing this entry(it takes me days to write a sentence) I went back to my Ashtanga Yoga class with Dave Oliver, a teacher I hope to be ready and worthy to study under. While driving there my head was spinning. My mind full of monkeys that I know belongs in another type of jungle. I asked myself to just listen for one message, one little, teeny tiny piece of guidance to help me with this questioning. At the beginning of the class Dave reminded us of what Ashtanga yoga meant. 8-limb. 8-fold path. The whole science of yoga consists of 8-equal slices of life pie. He was reminding us that Asana, the physical practice is only 1 slice. And not to rely on that one slice too much. It’s not whole within itself. At the end of the class we spread our bodies heavy and limp in corpse pose and looked up to the crafted skylight above us. It was circular and had 8 perfectly even pieces of pie. The constipated desert sky, a gray-blue with flecks of urging light streamed through each slice equally. It observed me as I observed it. Dave spoke of the paths of Ashtanga: keeping yourself in check; observing the self and others; asana/physical practice; breath-work/ life-force; letting go of the senses; concentration; meditation; and the last one: to be happy. To just be happy and joyous. At the point when we are so happy and blissful, asana isn’t even needed. Ashtanga yoga will allow us to stir up our fears and our doubts, our ignorance and our attachments to needing and knowing. And as we become conscious of them and see them and can own them as our own humanly imperfections, we can then let them go. So one simple science of yoga is able to achieve One thing through 8-different paths. Paths that you can practice pretty much simultaneously.

And all the paths lead to the one thing. Samadhi. Happiness. Joy. Bliss.

I will stand here then. Waiting a bit more. Each morning I will turn to face each direction, among the pewter hue that surrounds my space and I will try to project an image of myself against the sky’s ceiling. I am standing tall and strong. I am Shiva/Shakti-like, Durga-like, mother-like: multi-armed. 8 Limbed. I am equipped with Apparatus. I am many parts, I am destroyer of chaos, I am serpent energy. I am fire.