Author Archives: Anna Sims Bartel

On wading in: Day 8. Coming to rest.

It’s Sunday, which is sometimes conceptualized as a day of rest.  Those of you with small children may feel free to take a break while you laugh.

There.  Better?  Right.

At our house, Sunday is what we call a “whole family day,” which is much bally-hooed for its tendency to involve intricate train-track development sessions or reading marathons.  But it also tends to be a kind of painful day for us grown-ups, because it feels like our last chance to get things done.  So this morning is a good example: I’m running around trying to finish washing windows and start some other projects while Len entertains the beasts.  It’s not satisfying but it feels necessary.

So I got to thinking about “necessary.”  About my own capacity to over-do.  About the other kinds of satisfaction we need, besides clean windows.  (“Clean”: this is the first time they’ve had their outsides washed in eight years, and we maybe get to the insides every three or four years, so, well…there it is.)  My point is that I have a hard time prioritizing rest.

“Rest” itself is a kind of a squishy concept.  Sleep: sure.  Laying down with a good book: yes.  Watching an episode of something fun on Netflix: I can’t tell anymore.  I think that’s rest, but then it never makes me feel rested.   Going for a walk in the woods: yes, though for the opposite reasons.  It is not really rest but it makes me feel rested.  It rests my soul.

And perhaps that’s the crucial distinction these days.  Perhaps our bodies (or at least, at this point in time, my body) can handle a lot more than we think they can, and perhaps the kinds of rest we need are heart-rest.  Spirit-rest. For some people, that might mean church or some other kind of organized faith community; for some of us it might mean listening to the rain on the roof or sewing something or taking pictures of flowers your son brought in yesterday.

Any way you slice it, the hard part for me may not be resting per se.  It’s COMING TO rest.  I get to moving pretty fast, especially in the mornings, and especially when I have the bit between my teeth.  To know that I should rest, to schedule rest and plan for it and intend to take it: these are things I can do.  But to actually stop, to put down the sponge or the computer or whatever it is and intentionally CHOOSE rest: that’s hard.

So that’s my intention for today.  To honor the many forms of rest (including love and creativity and conversation with friends and making pie) and to choose them over the many forms of busyness.  To catch myself in the busyness and to gently let it go.

On wading in: Day 7. Gettin’ it done.

I am a big list-maker.  But as we’ve discussed before, I may not be proficient in the most USEFUL kinds of list-making: the kind that actually spell out your tasks for the day.  Today, in typical over-achiever fashion, my list said this:

Pressure washer (code for: rent one; use it on all external surfaces of the house; borrow a ladder from somewhere to get up high).

Wash windows (code for: all of them.  Inside and out.  We have three floors with TONS of windows).

Edge  beds (we have nearly three-quarters of an acre, and much of it is landscaped with perennial beds…all of which need edging.  NEW edging.  Not clean-up edging).

Mulch beds (see above).

There was something else on it, but I forget what.  Because this list embodies what should be, oh, three or four days worth of work.

But you know what?  Turns out that when you stop worrying about how ridiculously over-ambitious the list is and just DO things, things get done.  It’s startling.

I suppose this is kin to being in the moment…just embracing the work before us without trying to strategize a better way or bundle chores for greater efficiency.  We just DID it.  And loved it.  And we’re amazed by how beautiful the house looks now.

There’s a subtext here about stewardship…one of my chronic self-disappointments is not taking good enough care of the wonderful things I have.  (And Len’s laid-back attitude doesn’t always help, if you see what I mean.)  But it seems that actually DOING things is far easier and less stressful than worrying about getting it done.  (And of course we didn’t do it ALL, but we did a great deal and it feels delicious.)  Who knew?

(I know.  You did.  Whatever, smarty-smarterson.)

Even better was that our post-cleaning, post-mulching, post-mowing trip to the garden for kale for dinner involved a little spell of flower-picking, too, and Ezra wanted to carry them all into the house.  He knows how to take care of their tender stems, he says.  And then we made three bouquets which are gorgeous, and then Ezra said we had to have a Celebration at dinner.  Because of the flowers.  To celebrate the flowers.  So we did.  My heart is smiling all the way down to my toes.

On wading in: day 6. All the things.

So today was one of those days where the best you can do is coast. The intentions fall by the wayside (funny how none of them involved the reality of a post-vaccine 20-month-old nipple leech). There’s no room for reflection. The best I can hope to do is notice when I yell at all the grumpy children and leave the room for some quick deep breaths. Then: back into the fray.

So what have I learned from this little episode wading into the whitewater?

1. Edamame (in pod) are the perfect food for a three-year-old. They squip everywhere and are delicious and nutritious; Ezra was helpless with laughter at their antics. Plus, it made him want to help serve his brother. Ha.

2. Chalk is not a comestible.

3. I have no problem medicating (mildly) an obscure but persistent misery in my kids. Hey, he had a vaccine. Chillax.

4. Dessert beer is a category.

No wisdom here. Just moving with the current. You?

On wading in: Day 5. Quieting the critic.

The problem with having an active, well-educated brain is that you tend to use it more often than you need to.  You tend to think of it as a problem-solver…of ALL problems.  But in my reality, that brain causes a lot of problems, too, and I need to be careful how I use it.  (And when.  Mindfulness practice mostly happens at 4 am here at my house.)

Example: yesterday’s hopes for “going under.”  I enjoyed the day, but I wouldn’t describe it as immersive.  I stepped from stone to stone across the river rather than dive right in.  Which is fine.  I mean, I’d like to have accomplished more, but it was fine then, and it’s fine now.  And that fine-ness, that relaxation with how I’ve been doing, is what enables me to keep moving forward. (And trust me, this is an atypical response.  I must be growing up or something.)

Here’s a more typical pattern (see if you recognize any of this!):

1. Make a vast and impressive list of really critical things to take care of;

2. Spend most of the available time alternately re-organizing the list and eating chocolate on the couch;

3. Accomplish one important thing off the list and get halfway into another;

4. Spend the next three days in an analytical downward spiral over why I never get anything done.

My physical therapist is trying to convince me to use a lacrosse ball to release trigger points in my back.  You stand with your back against a wall with the ball between you and the wall and you roll around, leaning on the ball.  It’s transformative.  It’s painful.  It’s illuminating.  And, apparently, it’s necessary, because you can’t really strengthen muscles that are all tied up in knots.

See where I’m going with this?  A relaxed, forgiving attitude toward failure turns out to be not only not a problem — it’s a positive solution.  That’s right.

And if you get your head around that before I do, let me know.  I’m still working on it.  But I realize it’s true, my BODY knows it’s true, even though (because?) it gravitates against most of the self-evident “truths” we get taught: that lists are made so we can check things off; that our job is to check off as many of them as we can; that discipline is next to godliness (or something); that NOT checking things off constitutes failure; that failure is bad.

Today, instead, I’ll try these on as truths:

1. Lists are made to help us see clearly our commitments and desires.  It’s a vision exercise as well a form of task management.  I need to know which is which.

2. Our job is to live wholly and well, fulfilling our many commitments and desires (listed or unlisted) over time, and that may mean RESTING.

3. Discipline is useful and necessary and it is also a skill we practice and, at times, eschew.  We get to be the deciders.  And we can TRUST ourselves, trust our desires and whims.   Discipline alone is only one avenue toward achievement.

4. A revolving to-do list may indicate failure — but of which kind?  The delicious kind that suggests we had much, much better things to do, which have filled us with glee?  The painful kind that indicates we had to spend our time doing things not on the list (doctor’s visits, soothing troubled children, plumbing)?  The mundane kind that tells us we really don’t WANT to be doing the things on the list, and maybe we’d do well to delegate or let go?  The terrifying kind that might tell us the list is not specific enough, since we’re totally paralyzed and overwhelmed?  The exhilarating kind that means we’re onto something big here and a list will never contain it?

5. Failure is not bad.  It means we’re learning something.

“SEE?” my inner critic gloats.  “You USED me for this, and look how much it helped!”

“Yes,” I say.  “Thank you. Now go lie down.”

On wading in: Day 4. Going under.

But not in the bad way, not like you’re thinking.  I mean it as in swimming lessons, as in my three-year-old who loves the water but is afraid to put his face in or actually go under.  (Not surprising, considering his first total submersion in conscious memory involved falling off a dock…)

I mean it in the sense of this extended metaphor, that life itself is this vast and beautiful body of water and we dip our toes.  We wander along the strand.  I’m working on wading all the way in, and what I find is fear.  Not of drowning, per se, since I’m awfully good at survival, but of never wanting to get out.  (Here my fellow Mainers are laughing heartily, since the waters here are COLD.  Staying in is not a winning proposition.)  But you hear what I’m saying.

I know artists (of many stripes: academics, builders, designers, cooks, writers, painters, photographers, etc.) who get so immersed in their work that it’s hard for them to resurface.  They skip meals and neglect their families and commitments, or at least experience transitions back to dry land a little like a fish: there’s gasping and often a little thrashing about.

I am afraid of that.

I LOVE the work I am doing — the reading, the writing, the scholarship, the design; the complexities of play with children; the management of many lives.  But I’m always afraid that if I dive right in to the art, to “my work,” I might not be able to come back. And I NEED to come back.

This is where you’re wisely examining my metaphor and saying, “But Anna, who said you had to look at life as a matter of safe, dry land (dry in every sense) versus joyful, life-giving sea?”  And you’re right.  It’s a false binary. But for survival-oriented kids, and perhaps anyone taught that creativity and contemplation were wasteful, it’s reasonable to see a divide.  So here I am.

The intention today, then, is to put my face in the water.  Perhaps even to try going under.

On wading in: Day 3. Breathing.

Today I’m all about the intention.  I woke before the kids this morning (which means before the light and pretty much before the birds) and lay in bed turning over all the little pages and post-its in my mind, until I realized that I was tense.  I became planful and a little anxious just in the process of sorting and sifting my commitments for the day.  I forgot to breathe.

At the gym, I was reminded how critical breathing is, though I kept forgetting to do it well or thoughtfully; on the way home, I tried singing along to Adele and realized that my vibrato has become chronic lately not because of age but because of lousy breath support.  When I breathe the way I was trained to (as an athlete, as a singer), I remember my wholeness.  My posture improves, my face relaxes, the limits of my body become both obvious and right.

I know these things.  But still, my busy little brain keeps moving me right past my body and into the next abstraction. This is not how I live best.  (For the record, it’s not how anyone lives best: see Jon Kabat Zinn and others’ The Mindful Way Through Depression or most any basic Buddhist or yogic text for more on the power of the breath.)

The agrarian writer and critic Gene Logsdon says that firsthand experience is what makes a good writer.  I’d say it’s what makes us good HUMANS — a willingness to be present, with mindfulness and intention, to whatever shows up.

So today it’s clear to me that the intention, the breath, need to come first.  And in my effort to wade in more fully to this rich and rushing life, I need to set those intentions early in the day.  Smooth stones in my pocket, I carry them with me.

On wading in: Day 2

I’m enjoying the fact that Day 2 is September 2nd…and also painfully aware that when I miss a day, we’ll all know it.  But hey.  This little practice is more for my benefit than yours, so perhaps I’ll be the only one to care.  (Assuming you can live through the agony of missing a post from me…I know, I know.)

Today was a mixed bag of a day.  It was our second Sunday and it sure felt like it.  (Explanation: when I was an academic, someone once explained to me that the summer months could be best understood if labelled as weekdays: June is the Friday night of summer; July is Saturday; August is one long Sunday.  Sunday always involves a little relaxation and introspection, but it’s mostly filled with housework, homework and dread.)  We had this beautiful gift of a four-day weekend, and I was all giddy with a sense of possibility before I realized a) it would rain the whole time; b) we had no plans and it was Labor Day weekend; c) we don’t really have disposable income at this time; and d) we have tons of stuff to do around the house.  So we decided to make it a staycation of sorts, with predictable results.  We loved having two Saturdays (I lobbied briefly to call it three Saturdays and one Sunday, but let’s be real) and used them well, with a picnic by the river and lots of fun garden time.  There was picking of homegrown veg (based on Alice Waters’ Simple Food refrigerator pickle recipe), singing, dancing, and a whole lot of important house and yard work.  But today the rain was INTENSE, and we loafed about all morning and then spent the afternoon with friends we haven’t seen in ten years.  Which was satisfying in itself.  And now…and now…

Here I am, trying to imagine what this project of wading in means.  Partly, it seems to mean paying attention to things so that I can develop a habit of living in the moment and recollecting it with some reasonable calibration to reality.  That’s not a strength of mine.  I notice the dramas: the joys and failures.  I tend to discount the mundane.  But in life with kids, the mundane is kind of the point. It’s the source of the joy.

All this is reminding me of this brilliant new series I’m creating (and scholarship I’m writing) for the Maine Humanities Council on the agrarian novel.  It’s not much of a category in the US, you see, though it should be.  It’s farm literature that illustrates a love of the land, a reverence for the ordinary, an appreciation of people and nature and the routine, miraculous systems of nature.  It tends to be skeptical of gimmicks and passers-by, preferring deep roots and time-tested solutions.  It pays attention, sitting quietly for a while to make room for the wise, the funny, or the beautiful.  Just in case they show up.  That’s the kind of approach I’m trying to take to my life these days…and it’s nice to be living it even as I let my ever-scrambling intellect go play with the abstractions.  Gene Logsdon says “firsthand experience” is the difference between the agrarian writer and the writer; I’d argue, today, that firsthand experience is the difference between happy living and muddling through.  Not just HAVING the experience, but showing up for it.  Being present with it, sharing it with others, and remembering it as best you can.  These are my work, today.

What’s yours?

On wading in: Day 1

Rabbit rabbit, or whatever you say to herald the new month.

It’s September.

Everyone’s going back to school, cleaning up, settling down.

Except for me. I’m jumping off a cliff.

Well, that’s what it feels like anyway. I’m wading into a vast unknown ocean of freedom to choose my projects and commitments, and I’m equal parts thrilled and horrified. So to avoid checking out entirely and spending the next month with my head in the sand, I’ll be starting a little group instead. The September group, I’d like to call it. Join us by following and commenting here, and by checking in on Facebook (The September Group: On Crafting a Life).

What’s funniest is that sticking my head in the sand is only half of my usual response to freedom and opportunity. The other half is manic activity, and what’s kind of worrying is that we never quite know how long these cycles will take. And when it’s, say, six months in the sand, well, that’s not really something we can afford. So like all efforts toward health, we’re not trying to eliminate the pendulum swings, but rather to bring them back to center a little more quickly. And that seems mostly like a process of mindfulness.

So here I am: Day 1 of a 30-day adventure in checking in, writing down, reaching out. I’m looking forward to hearing what all of you have to say about your lives and projects. Here’s mine, today:

My baby boy got his first haircut today — I couldn’t bear to cut it too short, which was fine because he kept wanting to hold the comb. He loved how it sounded when he ran it against the edge of the water glass. (And how fascinating that his big brother could always sit perfectly still and watch a show, but Chi is all in love with how everything works and sounds and feels…)

We spent some excellent time in the garden, earning Chi his new nickname: Tomato Joe. He CANNOT leave them alone. Seeds everywhere. It’s gorgeous. And if any of you have ever considered growing haricot vert (bush green beans that don’t get huge): try Masai. From Fedco Seeds. I’ve never seen a more prolific bean — and so delicious! And patient with a late harvest! Also, I have to note the asclepias (butterfly weed) in its orange profusion of gorgeousness. It’s self-sowing and I’m letting it, because I’ve seen zero butterflies this year. Total. And not one in my garden. I am gravely worried for our world.

I finished Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation last night, and I can’t recommend it enough. Silly, beautiful, profound, painful, awe-inspiring, concerning, and consciousness-raising. It’s a fun trip and one you’re glad you took.

My best work today (usually, in fact, I’m seeing) is happening when I don’t quite mean to Work. I fall into it because it’s fascinating. I’m trying now to let that falling happen. (Years ago, my insightful and loving mother-in-law gave me a card that said “Books fall open and we fall in…” and I’m realizing that books aren’t the only things the universe holds open for us.)

What else? This is clearly a strange and disjointed practice, like mind-dumps, like photo-editing at the end of a trip. But day by day, I imagine this one way we find courage and continuity and compassion and creativity. I hope so, anyway. We’ll try it for a while and see.

On the restlessness

You know the restlessness I mean.

The one that shows up at inappropriate times, times that you’d been looking forward to, like vacation or other brief eras of freedom in the midst of our pressured lives.

It’s a sudden and unwelcome thing, the byproduct, perhaps, of a sudden sense of possibility and too many ways to take it.

I myself have done a surprisingly good job staving off that restlessness after my decision to devote the fall (at least) to not teaching.  I have a bunch of other projects and a much larger pile of hopes and desires, and now, two days after submitting summer grades, they all seem elusive.

I’m back to unpleasant chore lists (call and haggle with the health insurance company!  Clean the basement!) interrupted by occasional fits of checking out (complete with Netflix and chocolate cake).  This is not what I had imagined.

The amusing part is that it IS, in fact, exactly what I had foreseen, and I’m only really surprised that it took me this long to fall in the hole.  I am a structure person, you see, and I seem to do best when I have clear windows of time and neatly delineated tasks.  Getting comfortable with freedom, in fact, is my greatest struggle.  And it’s one I’m diving into today.

How’s that going?  you might ask.  Well, there’s tea and chocolate; there’s a measure of compassion; there’s a great deal of planning.  There’s even quite a bit of productivity.  But I have this illusion that the in-between times are also somehow supposed to be Perfectly Satisfying, that we move fluidly from Great Achievements to Profound Relaxation.  And back again, of course.  And that’s a bit tricky.  So overall, I’m trying to be happy with the long to-do lists that aren’t getting done (let’s be real: they are less lists and more repositories of all the many things in life and work that need to be done, unsorted by priority or purpose).  Indeed, I’m rather proud of myself for Doing Things and then, if they weren’t on the list already, putting them down so I can cross them off.

But I’d like for the FEEL of these days to shift.  Perhaps I’ll try a project-based approach, where there’s a little task-time but most of it is devoted to a particular project.  Or maybe I’ll get into Pomodoro, or some other time-management strategy.  It’s delightful that I have the freedom to try it a couple of days a week.  Now the hard work is quieting the guilt and managing the expectations.  But we’ll be fine.  Right?

On parenting and patience

A dear friend and I talked today about the alarming uptick in irritation with our kids lately.  Naturally, we were unable to really HAVE the conversation because of the galloping and hollering of said kids.  (Climb the tree, climb the tractor, run barefoot into the barn; I want to SWIM but I won’t put my head under; Mama milk!  Mama milk!  You get the idea.)  So I sat down this evening to write out the rest of what I wanted to say, and it is this:

Dear Kate,
I’ve been sitting with your concerns about parenting and patience, not least because they are also mine.  I feel like maybe I hit this particular wall (at least, most notably, most recently) earlier this summer, so by now I’m both more cynical and blessedly more tolerant.  Of my own failings, that is.  I don’t like them, but I accept them and continue to work on trying to change them.

What’s trickiest for me is this: the circumstances that lead to shortness and eruptions are partly about me (have I scheduled the time I need for myself; am I using that time to best advantage; am I taking proper care of myself in all the textbook ways; am I feeding my creative energies; am I nurturing the relationships that I crave…) and partly about the world as I see it (am I using my gifts productively in the world; am I addressing problems I can see and help with; am I contributing to my kids’ lives in the ways I’d like to; am I speaking my truths to the powers that I humbly submit need to hear them).  It makes me crazy to have this bifurcated diagnosis.  I’d like to imagine that a renewed commitment to mindfulness as a practice would solve everything.  Truth is, it would help, but not solve.  I’d like to believe that finding meaningful paid work would fix things.  Truth is, it would help, but not solve.  In fact, it would create a host of other issues by draining away some of that vital attention that I now try to direct to my boys (which is, all by itself, getting harder as I get more interested in more and different things).  I suspect this is in part the curse of the smart, dedicated, socially-conscious parent: we engage with our kids and are fascinated by them, but there’s so much else that also engages and fascinates us that it’s hard to keep focus.  I feel like the theory of part-time work is beautiful, and sometimes it works out that way in real life as well.  But other times, we spend our days checking the clock or checking our email or jotting lists of things we’d rather be doing.  Of course we don’t hear everything the kids say.  They aren’t the only ones we’re listening to anymore.  And that’s hard for all of us.

Sometimes I wonder if shifting to full-time work would be a better plan.  Sometimes I wonder if giving up on work altogether and pouring myself into the kids, including home-schooling of a sort, would be a better plan.  Often I think that one or the other is an absolute necessity.  Now.  Today.  But my reality is that while I am not skilled at tacking back and forth between critical, engaging priorities, I seem to NEED it.  So I try to imagine that THIS is my work: this daily, excruciating, exquisite practice of loving everyone and everything I love according to their needs and my capacities.  That means it doesn’t always look the same, and some days feature a lot more cursing than others.  But I figure my kids must be learning some key lessons about the preciousness and precariousness of our lives, and they sure as heckfire are learning how to read and work with the moods of others.  I need to believe there’s value in that, too.

Most days, I think a little more structure would help; I turn to Pinterest for more ideas about creative play and how to get a handle on our lives.  Every day, I think a little more mindfulness would help; even a tiny practice like a three-minute meditation while the coffee brews has helped me enormously in the past.  It gives me distance from my life, in a way, and lets me see myself and my struggles in the vast context of the universe — and that, of course, lends me a little more humility and tolerance than I might otherwise be able to find.  I’ll take what I can get.  Mostly, these days, I’m working hardest on letting myself off the hook.  It feels a little like defeat, but hey.  Defeat and acceptance are siblings, I hear, and I’m trying not to ruin my life for the sake of some macho Western illusion.

Anyway.  This is all to say: I feel your pain.  Holy SMOKES, I feel your pain.  And for what it’s worth, I think you are an extraordinary parent: creative, loving, attentive, compassionate, smart, nurturing, supportive, concerned.  Your soft voice and obvious enthusiasm for your kids are models to me, as is your willingness to say yes, to follow them where they need to go, to give them the room to be themselves (within safe limits).  If I could cultivate your patience, I’d imagine myself a ten times better mother.  But I know how you feel, and that’s part of the point: the feeling is not necessarily well-calibrated to reality, and when it is, it just makes us cringe.  So we try to keep our eyes clear and our heads (and hearts) in the game and put one foot in front of the other.  And as we do it, we try to sing a little song, or pat a little cheek, or generally hold our whole selves open for the ridiculous beauty that just keeps showing up.