Archive for the ‘Musings’ Category

When my growing girls flip flopped between the comfort of playing with dolls and then reaching out to try on lipstick, my view was compassionate amusement.

Now I am the one flip flopping and I am not feeling particularly compassionate, or amused.

Today I am flat out blue. One of those girls is leaving home to start a life in Washington, DC.

She is determined, lovely, eloquent and brave enough to have made the decision without having a job. All this while friends have been telling her she was foolish.

Well everyone has their opinion, what I know is that we respect people who take chances, go ahead, and believe that it will work out, and it has; and all my pride is not banishing the blue.

So why am I so blue? This daughter has not been in the house for more than a month at a time for the past four years. Recently graduated from college, she has been home for five weeks, just the two of us, and the dog and the cat.

I have more time now. I am not doing the drive bys (this is where you are in such a hurry to get to your appointment, you leave your kid somewhere and then call on the cell phone to make sure they got in). Yes, I was often a crazed single-parent.

For five weeks I have enjoyed folding her laundry, feeding her, hearing about her day. I like all of that, but seriously. I need to dig deeper. Do I feel guilty? Do we parents ever do enough? Am I afraid I won't have enough going on when she is gone? (If you know me, you are laughing here).

I did not cry when either daughter went to kindergarten or college, and I always make jokes about the way mother eagles push their young ones out of the nest and they either make it or Not! Today I cried after I dropped her off at work.

This blue is another curtain closing on my role as Mom. It is another nail in the passing of youth. I can deny the unease of touching my toes, by not trying, but it is impossible to deny that the flipping between busy-Mom and free-Mom is ending.

Does this make me a crone? I love crones, but I am not ready to be one; the title is still for other people. I love being a Mom.

To make matters more intense, I have been sorting family pictures.

Part of this transition is a craving for order. The feng shui consultant has come and gone, and I have projects. I want to enter the next phase peacefully and free of any clutter.

Whew, I do feel better. It is ok to flip flop between happy, sad, and proud.

I did the best I could do, and eagle moms are smart, so out you go girl! Tomorrow, I am buying all of the girls in my family new lipstick!

Food Inc., a documentary about the food industry, unveiled my denial and I have changed my mind. I will now pay more, much more, for a chicken who has had a life.

My friend used to joke, ” What’s the big deal about a free range chicken? You are going to kill it anyway!”

Last weekend, during a mother-daughter viewing of Food Inc, a woman farmer walks into her chicken house which is STUFFED with chickens. She picks out the dead ones, “These chickens are bred to have big breasts. They cannot move and they are standing in feces.”

She lost her contract with because she allowed her chicken jail to be filmed.

WTH The sight of a top heavy chicken, who can’t walk, pumped up with antibiotics, brought out my rebellious side. A chicken breast is not meant to be the size of a whole chicken. I will not buy those chickens.

We have a lot of power. What we ask for in the marketplace we will get.

I love to play games with perspective.

At the beginning of February, I decided  to counter all the gloom and doom reports by perceiving every present I received, as a symbol of good things to come.

Boy, did I get tested. It took three service calls to convince my furnace that it wasn't an air conditioner. With that out of the way, I discovered that my name and some Chinese characters clicked through to some pretty disgusting pornography. Wow. Do I have to call that a present?

Got that out of the way, and my laptop crashed. I immediately carried my little baby out the door, to the local Tech guy, who immediately recognized me. Two hundred dollars later, I was back in the saddle.

Three days later, on a Sunday afternoon, someone broke into my home and stole my laptop off of my dining room table. Keep on playing.

So, let's get to the presents. I got so many in February, it is crazy….wonderfully crazy. My dear friend of many years brought me a beautiful box from Vietnam.  We have years of shared memories, but presents…..

I returned from lunch and outside my door was a beautiful bouquet from a colleague, left as a thank you, and a complete surprise.

A client sent me a text: I have presents for you: she brought me a beautiful, pashmina scarf, and earrings.  Really, my birthday is not in February.

Next came the unexpected money.

Then I received a case of red grapefruit mixed with honey tangerines and blood oranges. Now this is how to make the juicer in me happy!

An old friend called, out of the blue, and offered right on buying advice for a new laptop.

My nineteen year old daughter slipped into my car and handed me a paper Valentine she had made for me with the kindergartners in her life.  She reported they asked her incredulously, "YOU have a MOM?".

There is more, there is always more……………………… My life is just like yours.  Stuff is happening all of the time.

Now that it has been proven, yes proven, that your thoughts change your brain, you, we, all of us have no reason not to get busy training our thoughts.

I know I just said a MINDFUL, and I am bursting to share everything I have learned in the last few days, but it is going to have to wait.

For now I am passing on a recipe for getting excited about food that is  carotene rich, really good for your brain, and so delicious. Moroccan Stew