It was plainly my fault. Because, I feel deeply, anything that distresses my boy is.
Bath time, these balmy spring evenings, has been a tad more fraught than usual. Mike has been arriving home right around when Jake and I sit down for his dinner. So we all head out for the deck, where Mike and I share some of our cheese and crackers with Jake and Jake excitedly drops things, like my cell phone, between the deck railings. This is so much fun that whenever I choose to start running the bath, it is sure to be way too early by his reckoning.
Still, a bath he must have, at least this week when he has been sporting a couple of persistent diaper sores that I feel are well served by a soak in warm water. I chalked up his rejection of this proposal over the past few nights to being over-excited and having a very clear sense that bath time was the first step on the road leading to bed.
Last night he made it very clear, however, that the factors prompting his complaints were far more dire.
First, we opened his soggy diaper to find it distressingly full of poop. "Distressingly" in this case refers to the fact that Jake was standing in the bathroom, where he sees no need to, say, be still while we clean him up. He explained this point to us in no uncertain terms as Mike struggled to hold him while I grabbed some wipes.
Then came the wipe with blood on it. Jake's teachers had informed me a few days before that a bit of his diaper rash was bleeding and that I might want to put some antibiotic ointment on it. A quick canvas of the house confirmed that whatever antibiotic ointment I might have purchased, probably in, oh, 2002, had disappeared. Pressed for time, I managed to locate a tiny foil packet of Neosporin in an emergency kit that, incidentally, still had the plastic wrap intact. It's not that we don't hurt ourselves around here; it's just that we don't bother with much in the way of medical first aid.
At any rate, one dose of the antibiotic ointment on Monday night seemed to have done enough healing to make me both lose the Neosporin packet and conclude that I was in no rush to get to Target for a proper tube of it.
Which is why I knew it was my fault when my boy, bottom bleeding and unmedicated, began shaking with tears of rage as we, first, tried to sit him in the warm bath and, when that failed, tried to put a clean diaper on him. I should have known that he would need more antibiotic ointment. I should have known that he was suddenly rejecting his beloved baths because they hurt his bum. And -- for at least the past sixteen months -- I should have known the bleached, scented diapers we were using were bad for him.
And, because I felt I really did know all these things deep down but was too lazy to follow through, too distracted by my own needs to tend to my child's, I cried too. I cried, as well, because I had no choice but to put the painful diaper right back on his poor little bottom.
The Searing Need to Make Everything Okay
Mike took charge of putting Jake to bed and I dashed out to the local natural foods store in search of all the items we were so sorely lacking. As is my wont when things spin out of control, I berated myself the whole way there, both for my failings in the diaper area, and for whatever else came to mind.
Like (I might as well admit it all): not feeding Jake enough fruit because I can't find any that he likes and that doesn't kill songbirds in Mexico; running up the stairs with him in my arms while wearing my new flip flops from Discount Shoes and falling on the fourth step, banging his head only a little less violently than my knee; letting Jake play near his dad's bike so it fell on top of him (I know when Mike said, "I was going to tell you not to leave him alone near the bike" he was blaming himself, but I choose to take it as blaming me); not thinking to send cheese pizza to school in his lunch, a shortcoming I realized only when I was told the other kids who are lucky enough to have cheese pizza in their lunches love it; watching Grey's Anatomy yesterday afternoon while pretending to read Jake books; not fixing the brake on his stroller even though it's been broken for over two months and we live in a very hilly town; and, just now, running away when he woke up from nap at school and saw me there chatting with the other moms volunteering some of our time.
These are, I know, the little things that go wrong in everyone's day all the time. I am aware that I'm not the only one who is often remarkably stupid, but that is somehow of little comfort. True, I called every mother I knew the time I drove home from the pediatrician's office to find that Jake's howls were meant to to tell me I had forgotten to buckle him in and he fell over on the first left turn. I was, I'm sure, hoping that one day they would regale me with stories of equally glorious stupidity. And, for the most part, they have.
We're human. We spend a lot of time with beings whose sense of balance, danger, reasoning, cause and effect are only crudely developed at best. It may, in fact, be possible to watch them every moment, to cushion their every fall. But, frankly, it is also very possible to lose one's mind doing so.
A theme I frequently return to -- and one that came up as the other moms and I volunteered to watch the kids at Jake's school while the teachers had a Teacher Appreciation lunch -- is how to balance being good to my child with being good to myself. Because sometimes I want to watch Grey's Anatomy, as difficult as it may be to justify. And sometimes I will think my child will be fine without antibiotic ointment for a few days because I just don't have the time to go to Target right now. Yes, there is an element of self-indulgence in my decisions sometimes. But why is self-indulgence such a bad thing?
In some forms, doing what our gut tells us is lauded. Mother instinct, for example. Who hasn't had her child's pediatrician assure her that, ultimately, she knows best? If we know what's best for our children, shouldn't we also know -- somewhere, buried beneath the self-doubts and the misconception that we are supposed to offer ourselves up as sacrificial non-virgins once we become mothers -- what's best for ourselves? And if we know both of these things, why can't we trust the balance we strike?
The answer, I think, as I look back on the dressing down I gave myself on the way to Greenlife last night, is that we magnify life's little mishaps. So much easier to focus on what we've done wrong than all the things we do right. Okay, so one's attention is naturally drawn to the incident provoking one's child's red-faced screams. And when he is playing by himself, his perfect pink lips pursed in concentration as he tries to figure out what the knobs on the back of the patio heat lamp do, I just admire his beauty without taking any credit for what I've done right. (Not to worry -- I can't even manage to turn on the heat lamp, which I realize gives me the sort of false sense of security that is sure to pave the way for another one of life's little mishaps.)
It's funny. I want to say we aren't very good at looking at the big picture. But then I realize I often spend too much time looking at some vague big picture of how my future is supposed to be.
I suppose what I mean is that we spend too little time looking at the big picture of NOW. It's hard enough to be in the moment. Trying to take in the fullness of the moment -- the whole loaf of what good mothers we are instead of the crumbs of diaper rash and bruises from Daddy's bike -- can be kind of overwhelming. How do you focus on this moment without losing the import of what is happening in this moment?
In other words, last night, at the moment Jake was stiffening his little body and quivering like a diving board just after someone has done a back flip into the water in protest of my apologetic diapering, it was impossible for me to see beyond my child's distress and the causes of it: a) we had not been putting antibiotic ointment on his rash (my fault for not buying it); b) we were using scented diapers (my fault for not trying the other kind); c) he had some seriously dangerous poop (my fault for feeding him sweet potatoes and seven grain bread).
But that moment was only part of a bigger path. Once I got out of the car at Greenlife and found organic watermelon and organic cantaloupe, as well as something called "Wound Care" that sounds pretty scary but is really just calendula, and once I found the unbleached diapers, I felt like a good mom again. And when I came home to find Jake still awake and he smiled and kicked his legs as I changed his diaper on the bed and grinned in my face, the bigger picture came to me.
As I lay on the bed with my boy falling asleep in my arms, I rose above the pieces of the day that colored everything dark and saw the light that reflects off of those dark spots.
Plus, Jake seems to dig those unbleached diapers.
Opening Out and Opening In
Wow. Imagine me typing those last words, then hitting the wrong button on the computer. Picture me panicking as my words disappear from the screen. Then try, just try, to be with me as I struggle my way back to this screen and Every. Page. Takes. Forever. To. Load.
I got a chance to practice just what I was going to write about. (And maybe it helped just a little bit, because I don't seem to have lost anything I wrote.)
In those moments when the little "I'm working as fast as I can" circle was twirling and nothing else on my computer screen was changing, as I felt all I have been working on for the last hour dissolving into cyberspace, I closed my eyes and tried to open out.
Opening out is, broadly, simply recognizing the world outside ourselves. In yoga, we try to break the artificial barriers between this "I" we have created and the world around us. We forget that we get energy from outside of us. Food, for instance, enters our bodies, becomes a part of us, then becomes part of the earth again. When I teach an asana practice, I frequently remind my students to remember that they can find energy for a difficult pose outside themselves instead of struggling to generate it all alone. We breathe, we drink, we sometimes conceive babies from things outside of us.
So last night when I got stuck on all the things that "I" was responsible for, what I really needed to do was open out. I can't take all the credit for everything that went wrong, much as I'd like to. I have a son with allergies and sensitive skin. Not my fault. Not even solely my DNA.
And when I added to My faults a closed-in sense of the traumatic incident Jake was going through (though, actually, Mike tells me they had a lovely time lying on the bed together while I was crying in the car) I lost track of the fact that I was on my way to fix the problem and, in the long run, to maybe make things a little bit better. Sure, I'd love to have antibiotic ointment on hand all the time, but if I were focused on that, there's surely something else I'd be missing. The bigger point is I do what my son needs when I'm aware that he needs it.
If I had opened out, I would have gotten it. This moment is not as big as I'm making it. My culpability isn't as great as I think it is. This is just one small moment in an overwhelmingly bigger, always beautiful, frequently scary thing called motherhood.
Once we can open out -- go beyond our thoughts as if flying so far above them they become very, very small -- we can start to open in as well. Just as we draw energy from outside of us, that same energy remains boundless inside. If you believe, as I do (and, if I understand it correctly, as, at some level, scientists do as well) that we and everything around us are made up of the same energy, then we are as limitless inside as outside.
It's when you find that inner opening that you start to experience the peace within yourself.
An Opening Without/Within Meditation Practice
There are many things I wanted to do as I diapered my screaming child last night. Meditating was not at the top of the list.
This meditation, however, translates to other activities as well. While it is clearest when done sitting still and quiet, once you discover it you can bring it to whatever you absolutely need to do when you feel overly responsible: taking a walk, practicing a challenging yoga pose, driving to Greenlife for unbleached diapers and Wound Care.
There isn't a moment in the day when it ceases to be satisfying to open out and then open in.
Instructions for Opening Without/Within Meditation
1) Find a comfortable seat, preferably on the floor. I discourage chair-sitting if you can abandon it for a time because it's not great for our lower backs. Sitting on a bed or a couch is fine, but you are unlikely to find a solid foundation. Instead, try the floor and lots of blankets. Place one or two folded blankets under your sitting bones (not your thighs) as you sit cross-legged and see if you can maintain this position for several minutes. You can place folded blankets under your legs as well if they would like some extra support. Another lovely option is to lie back, perhaps with the blankets under your knees to release your lower back.
2) Wherever you are, turn your palms toward the sky, close your eyes, and focus on your breath. Be lulled by the gentle sound of your inhales and exhales as you breathe in and out through your nose. Let them grow longer and slower. Start to notice the pauses between the inhale and exhale, and between the exhale and the inhale.
3) Next time a thought comes into your head, don't try to chase it away. Instead, open out, leaving it behind and insignificant.
4) Start to explore this place you come into when you open out. As thoughts intrude, open out again. Remember, yoga is a practice, not a final resting place. Your thoughts will intrude, over and over, and you will gently continue to open out again.
5) When you feel you have reached a place where your thoughts are not intruding as rapidly, an outer opening with which you have become familiar, start to open in. There's no set way for doing this; it's about what opening in means to you. One way to start is to picture your heart as a lotus blossom with thousands of petals opening and opening.
6) Be in this place of opening out and opening in for as long as it feels good to you. When you are ready, return your attention to your breath. Take a few moments to breathe in and out deeply and consciously.
7) When you are ready, open your eyes. Maintain the feeling of opening out and opening in as you draw your hands to your heart in namaste mudra, prayer position, the position of offering. Bow to your heart to acknowledge all that is there, even as your hands in front of your heart represent the offering of what you have inside. In this moment, you may feel a deep connection to everything around you.
And you probably won't sweat the antibiotic ointment.
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