Tag: Mother

Walking. With Ellie.

~ Live & Learn ~ 81 Comments

Good morning from Connecticut. Today, makes it 1,467 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a Row.

We were primed for another rant following last week’s diatribe: “Ladies Give Me Your Best Shot.” All the targeted Ladies (aka Sawsan) went scurrying back to her Den (with her Broom). Her replacement, while not an total embarrassment, is on her way to earning that merit badge shortly.

So, there’s one Lady left standing. I asked Susan if I can share more specifics about her OCD, that being her neuroses with light switches at the top and bottom of the stairs. Wally and I got a hostile reaction, and decided that this was a red line not to be tested.

I walk, wandering, ruminating. What shall we blog about today? Is it…

  • How I gained 10 lbs in 10 days? (Cake!)
  • How my insomnia has progressively deteriorated during the same period? (Cake?)
  • Why my Doctored-ordered Glucose test (a pre-diabetic alert) reported an alarming upward trend? (Cake?)

I walk.

I noodle these issues (and others), feeling the weight of their drag.

Continue reading “Walking. With Ellie.” →

The Saskatchewan shuffle

~ Live & Learn ~ 25 Comments

As I held her, I rocked back and forth, swaying left foot to right. My mother told me that her mother, raised on a farm north of Saskatoon, had called this the Saskatchewan shuffle. But every mother knows it, that swaying. Every mother calls it something. Sometimes you will see a woman doing it instinctively, her arms empty, when she hears the crying of a stranger’s baby.

— Leslie Jamison, Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story (Little Brown and Company, February 20, 2024)

Notes: NY Times Book Review by Kate Dwyer: “The High Priestess of the Personal.” Photo: Kristina Paukshtite

Lightly Child. Lightly.

~ Live & Learn ~ 21 Comments

The trees you planted in childhood have grown too heavy. You cannot bring them along. Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV” in “In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies

Notes:

  • Thank you Beth for poem at Alive on All Channels
  • DK Photo, Monday, October 16, 2023 @ 6:21am @ Cove Island Park. More pictures from that morning’s walk here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Touching her was like taking a drug.

~ Live & Learn ~ 28 Comments

From the moment Ally was born, pushed out of Sam’s body (nothing could be more common than motherhood and yet nothing about it could ever be banal), Ally became Sam’s sun, Sam’s primary concern. She felt a directedness and a purpose and a meaning she had never experienced before. Another way of putting it: it was the least fake feeling she had ever had, the most earnest. Did all mothers feel this way? Did fathers feel this way? No, yes, doesn’t matter. On some level, it was Ally and then there was every other human on the earth. At first it was physical. The need to hold and feed and comfort. That was the best part of being a mother, answering that need. It was so simple and complete. Sure, there were times Sam longed for sleep, times she felt positively enslaved, but all it took was the head on her chest, the hand clutching at her, Sam’s own hand supporting the plump, perfect back. Touching her was like taking a drug. The back, the foot, the leg, the little arm; the lips, the ears, the toes, the perfect tiny nose. The thighs, the dimpled knees, the lines of fat at the wrists, the tapered, padded fingers with the tiny oval of a nail. Look at her. The eyes, well, they were the same always, the same today. Large, heavy lidded, dark brown, wide-set, extravagantly lashed. What a beauty she was and is. Even at the height of her adolescent awkwardness, Sam had found her profoundly, significantly beautiful. Was it “true”? Did others see her the way Sam did? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Sam had felt this abiding love for sixteen years, and it was the best thing she had ever felt or would ever feel.

— Dana Spiotta, Wayward: A Novel (Knopf, July 6, 2021)

Notes:

Lightly Child, Lightly.

~ Live & Learn ~ 11 Comments

Notes:

  • Photo: Thomas Turowski (via Newthom)
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”