How to Perfect Your Rhythm

My 2017 word is "rhythm." 

Rhythm is also circling seeds for the garden and reading about women

The last few months have been chaotic. I haven't been eating breakfast. I haven't been cooking or cleaning my house. I wake up in the middle of the night and drink leftover sweet tea because I'm thirsty, and then the sugar jumpstarts my heartbeat and I trip over my shoes and curse the universe.

I'm bad at routine, except for the parts that aren't healthy. I get angry when someone interrupts my sitting on the couch checking Instagram and half paying attention to Netflix time.  But you want to go out for a drink during the hour I'm supposed to go to meditation? I'm down. 

I don't know how to be in rhythm.

It is messing with my mind now. I'm angry for no reason and I have a hard time figuring out what are important tasks and what aren't.

There are so many notifications going off and the dog is asking me to fix his fence so he can play outside without the leash and I'm staring at unfinished books, both my own books and reading others. 

I have too many ideas and not enough focus.

Today, my rhythm is a cup of coffee. 

Here is my formula for rhythm:

1. Make Arabic Coffee and let the smell remind you of far away places.

2. Water your plants and clip a few leaves for tea.

3. Run your fingers over the ears of a sleeping dog beside you.

Later, when you take the dog out on the leash, let him linger over the scent in a weedy patch of grass, turn your face to the night sky and breathe.

Blessed Be the Welcome Retreat Into the Dark

A Simple Yule

White Poinsettia for Yule

Fill the cup.

Rain falls, and only 

the sound of a dog breathing

in sleep beside me 

is more prominent.

I see the sleigh come, 

working its way around the earth

but it will not stop at my house tonight.

Long ago the woman,

the winter crone,

walked the earth during those 

dark days.

The warmth of the tea

spreads through my hands

and I am her.

....

Interesting thoughts on Mother Christmas

The Winter Crone

Radio Silence

How do I begin? It's been  a long time and a lot has happened? 

---

My daughter began kindergarten and oh my heart. I understand that there are things she has to learn, particularly how to play the game, but it gives me no pleasure to hear her say that her picture is wrong because she didn't follow directions. 

Let me back up. Her teacher is wonderful. She is thoughtful and kind and consistent, everything my 5 year old needs in her life at this time.

I saw a picture in her backpack of her drawing on an easel. She loves art, and I've begun the process of "strewing" art supplies, basically casually placing materials all over the house to encourage her to stop what she's doing and create art.

And I loved this picture. It was exactly her.

When I told her that I loved it, she pushed it away and said it was wrong and bad because she didn't do the rule.

The directions were for her to draw herself completing a classroom rule, particularly "cleaning up fully after ourselves."

I was angry. Directionless anger. Anger at the world and the way it works. Her teacher is doing everything she can to help my daughter understand how to be thoughtful about systems and rules, mindful of how the world works. She is preparing her to succeed.

My job is to nurture that spark inside her that says "Yes. I am Me and no one else."

----

It was storming a few days ago, and in my dark living room, I began to make the rounds with the plants, watering, tinkering, adding soil.

I haven't been mindful of the plant life inside or out, and I've lost some things from careless lack of water, from overgrown weeds, from bugs. 

Anthurium, Peace Lily, Katherine Queen Fern, Orchid, Bromeliad and Dora

I lost a small spruce that desperately needed more water than I was giving.

I lost a rosemary that made it through the snow of the winter only to be over taken by some kind of mite.

I lost a rose that was making a comeback and I forgot to move out of the harsh afternoon sun.

I haven't been talking to them or noticing their small signals. They trusted me and I was careless. I know this doesn't mean a lot to most people; just throw the plant away and buy a new one, but I feel like a failure.

Regroup. 

Reconnect.

Tell them stories and find tiny new leaves pushing out of the soil.

---

October is a time to remember. It is my favorite month here in Nashville, and the girls and I spent the morning yesterday hiking "the mountain," a trail pretty demanding for such tiny feet. We saw deer and turkey and a kind woman looking for someone to share the morning.

My oldest makes friends wherever she goes and I wonder when I lost that ability. But I relearn how to listen when I watch her and we grow together.

I remember those who burned so that we could speak our truths.

---

One of the last days the hummingbirds were here, she and I sat very still and waited for one to fly down from the trees. I could hear her tiny voice high in a branch and when she finally flew down I was reminded of the power of stillness.

My daughter learned it that day, too. Stillness and silence give way to miracles floating in the sun above us. 

Let us be reborn in this stillness.

Everyday.

Hygge: Creating Community at Work

I'm a sucker for a good breakfast potluck.

Every morning I climb the stairs to the second floor where my office and classroom are, and if it's early enough, only a handful of students sit sleepily on the bench outside finishing up homework. 

It's taken the better part of 10 years, but I've found people that make me happy to walk into the building every morning and I'm lucky. They challenge me. They are passionate and intelligent. I can leave personal things behind if I want to and talk about ideas.

Lately, however, I've been talking about personal things, and in my ensuing crisis I began looking for community. I spend a lot of time with the people at work, and because I feel they are my people for once, I latched onto a very United States interpretation of a Danish idea: Hygge and food.

Breakfast burritos turn into breakfast nachos when we are in faculty meetings all day.

Hygge has been difficult to explain with language. It translates sloppily to "coziness" but the implicit message is the comfort. The presence of community in a place of darkness. The simplicity of that presence and the way it pulls me out of a darkness I can't control.

I want to know who you really are, I say. I want to see you in all your light and all your darkness.

William Styron once wrote a book called "Lie Down in Darkness" about the collapse of a southern family, and I felt the story so strongly that I still flinch at the title. I read it at both the wrong and the right time. It pushed me, and in my pushing back I realized that the light isn't always enough. Sometimes we lie down in our darkness, fold it all around, and when we let go of our grasping we find who we are.

So, I made breakfast burritos together with a group of people who can see me, and now it is integrated into our work rituals. It was pivotal life moment.

Work is community.

Work is healing.

----

Hygge can come where we are. The Danes experience long bouts of darkness during winter season, but hygge does not fight or ignore; it folds into the darkness and sees what is there. 

Hygge at work is essential. For us, we eat breakfast burritos and talk about our weekend plans preceding our discussions of student progress. The potluck softens our disagreements, allowing us space to breathe, to reframe and understand. We could have faculty meetings without the food, but the shared ritual reminds me of our common goal in these meetings. 

Workplace culture becomes personal culture. 

Hygge was born for us in the winter, when we missed the light during the day and found ourselves grasping, living in stress, waiting for a time in the future instead of appreciating what is here and now. 

It started with a bowl of soup and became connection.