For about a year now I have been trying to escape my family.
That sounds awful.
That sounds like something a good mother wouldn’t say.
That sounds like something a good wife wouldn’t say.
That sounds like… the truth.
After hacking my way through the thick swamp of full-time, hands-on mothering for five years, I finally stumbled upon a clearing with fresh air, open space, and blessed silence. Whenever I found a free moment, I wiggled away from the swamp which bogged me down and made my skin crawl and filled my head with unvoiced screams. The clearing was filled with so much light, so much freedom, so many possibilities to explore, I didn’t ever willing leave. It was only the beckoning of my beloveds that ever pulled me back into the snarl of the swamp. Always, always a small piece of my heart remained in the clearing, tugging me back.
Let’s dispense with the metaphor for a moment.
This is the swamp:
Giving birth naturally and twelve hours later (at home) the in-laws bring over nonvegetarian food for everyone to eat, except me. I am breast-feeding. I am starving. Welcome to motherhood….spraying a hose on a cloth diaper over the toilet to knock the poop off and every other day careening my neck away from the dirty diaper dump into my washing machine so the ammonia doesn’t burn my eyes….feeding the infant with my right breast while spoon-feeding the toddler my with left hand….circling the grocery store parking lot for 45 minutes three days before Thanksgiving, because if I parked across the street, I couldn’t cross it without a stroller but I needed to use a cart to shop….joining my children in tears on a cross-country red-eye flight because without four arms, I was not enough….peekaboo, everybody sees me pee….whizzing whole peanuts into butter for lunch and then spending five minutes to clean the food processor….Italian storytime…French storytime….Spanish storytime….library days….doctor appointments….every playground in Miami….Nature Tots…. entire weekends spent on the floor next to potties waiting for pee and bribing for poop….
This is the clearing:
Plunging into a pool and swimming for an hour without a stop….Sunday afternoon bike rides….meditating….joining a writer’s group….eating macaroons and champagne with my girlfriend for lunch….Bollywood dance class….writing a book….reading 67 books….chanting in Sanskrit at kirtans until the energy is so strong I dance….a walk alone….coffee shop dates with my journal….painting….boarding an airplane by myself….witnessing the sun rise over the ocean…. mother-daughter dates at museums and malls….thoughts followed through until they dissolved into nothing or evolved into something real….
Is it any wonder my heart tugged me over and over again to the clearing?
Follow your bliss, they say, until they are left behind.
Left behind.
When I returned from my clearing adventures, I usually found my three beloveds kicking a ball in the front yard, jumping in the trampoline out back, building towers in the living room, munching on watermelon, sharing a laugh. Only rarely were they fighting, which would make me want to retrace my steps back to the clearing. Usually I’d feel a rush of love, trailed by a shadow of guilt. My family is so wonderful, why don’t I want to be with them?
What could I do? My heart tugged me away.
What is a balanced life?
Is it a tightrope walk, where we must tiptoe on a wire with our arms stretched out to the sides and every step is a balance-check to save us from falling? Or, is a teeter-totter that welcomes extremes, up high and down low, but in the end tally we come out even? Balanced.
All I know is I had to spend a long time in that clearing before I ever wanted to leave, but recently I haven’t felt like stepping foot outside the swamp. It no longer feels like a swamp; it’s more like a jungle, and you know me, I’m always up for an adventure.
I’ve been canceling plans, not just with friends, but even with myself. The same heart that tugged me away from my beloveds for a year is tugging me right back towards them. I don’t resist. Heart tugs are like gravity, an irresistible attraction, a force that tethers us to home. Home to myself. Home to my family.
Home with my plumb heart.
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