Cleaning House

It’s fall now, but I’ve got that feeling in my bones that it’s time for a spring cleaning.  Time to purge, clear the old stuff out, decide what to keep, wipe off the dusty surfaces, move things around.

Fall is my spring.  My favorite season.  It’s a time for industrious activity before the stillness, the hibernation, the settling in of winter.

So I begin with my closet.  I’ve decided to apply a simple rule:  If I haven’t worn it in two years, it’s gone.  Of course, there’s a caveat for dresses.  With fewer occasions these days to wear a nice dress, the two-year rule isn’t quite right.  For dresses, it’s five years.  And…do I even like it anymore?

Interesting how as I rifle through the T-shirts, blouses, shorts, skirts and sweaters I’m thinking about why and when I acquired it.  What was going on in my life at the time?  What impulse or insecurity or inspiration was up for me when I adopted those jeans or that camisole as my own?  Ah, there’s another rule.  If the thought of “What was I thinking” comes to mind, it’s destined for donation.

Cleaning can be such good therapy.  It’s a cheap, feel-good way to lighten the load, spruce things up, make room for the new.  Yet so often we put off and avoid the task because it means reflection, making decisions, and yes, even taking a risk.  The risk that we might miss those canvas wedgie shoes when they’re gone, even if they have been sitting on their sides in the back floor of the closet collecting dust for ages.

Cleaning requires our attention, demands our focus, invites hard assessment.  Perhaps this is why there are so many pack rats and hoarders in the world.  They’re just not up to the task.  It’s too painful, too huge, too overwhelming to let go and move on.

Cleaning like this is a delicate balance between the past, the present, and the future.  Clinging to what was isn’t healthy, nor is wholesale rejection.  Somewhere along that spectrum is peace.

You're Not the Only One

“You’re not the only one.”  That’s what he was really saying.  Your shit isn’t special, but it is important.  The fact that I’m here listening to this guy is another cosmic joke the Universe is playing on me.  The more I learn, the less -- it turns out -- I know.  So I start all over again like I’ve done so many times before.  Beginner’s mind.  Never done.  Always searching for that elusive “more.”

See, that’s the thing.  In this day and age, everyone’s an expert.  Maybe it’s the money, but they all sound like they’ve got it down, all covered.  But not here.  Not with this man.  What ever happened to that almost extinct species, humility?  It was shut away long ago in a zoo pen, so forgotten they’ve stopped locking the gate, assuming it doesn’t have the will to step out again.

But in this room, it does.  It has taken a bold step beyond the threshold and has found its quiet but powerful voice once more.  I hear it in his voice.  He is a Lakota chief, a medicine man, a Sun Dancer.  I feel it in his presence.  I see in his eyes a life that has died a thousand deaths, has made a thousand sacrifices.  And with each new rising, his light, his fire grows brighter.  

You don’t trifle with this man, and yet he loves you.  Unconditionally.  Failure is not an option because it does not exist.  It’s all just a bunch of do-overs, hard fights before the glorious fall into the peonies’ folds, soft pink and white.  Relishing that fall, relishing that bottom.  I have a fantastic excuse now to do nothing, to lie naked, to cry my eyes out, to just be.  Just breathe.  Just come to a dead stop and smell those flowers another day.

And so it begins again.  Every door from one vast room opening to another, and another, and another.  I never want it to end.  Why would I?  Why would anyone?

No Kidding, Seriously; Absence Is Presence; Presence Is Absence

In my mind, I have often walked in the moccasins of a tribe I am not part of in this lifetime:  Parents.  This time around, having children was not part of “the plan.”  Why?  Well, that’s a discussion for another blog post.

When I was in my 20s, a very wise man, who at the time had a very sick young daughter, said to me, “There is only one thing that divides the people of this world.  And that is the experience, or not, of being a parent.” 

That statement alone prepared me well for what I was just beginning to witness at that time:  Friends, family members, and acquaintances becoming first-time parents and, thus, their lives instantly changing focus and trajectory.  I sensed that these peers who I had known in one way had passed, and who was reborn in their stead was never going to be accessible to me quite in the same way again.

Having and raising children, I have both heard and observed, is both potentially greatly challenging and deeply rewarding and fulfilling.  While it may be difficult at times raising kids, please consider for a moment the scenario of not having had them.

Moving through life in, shall I say, a “child-free” state, one must necessarily acquiesce to the needs of other people’s parenthood.  Consequently, I’ve become adept at a social life alone or with friends who also happen to not have children and whose schedule better allows for availability and social access.  Now, don’t get me wrong:  Plenty of my friends are parents.  But gathering socially is a much different experience when kids factor into the equation.  By necessity, the topic of kids in conversation and thought becomes an understandably dominant theme among parents, one I can only connect and engage with to a limited extent.  So, as a child-free adult, I have learned to accommodate and accept the social tweakings that accompany discernment of parents and non-parents along my path and in my circle.  It’s all part of the village.

Admittedly, as a Western woman, while it is much easier these days to live a child-free life (as it is now essentially regarded as a lifestyle choice rather than as a default status stigmatized by lack and/or judgment), moving through life reinforces the separation of experience between parents and non-parents.  Because once you are a parent, you are a parent for life.  That fate is sealed.  There is no return policy, there is no “going back.”  No matter if a child is somehow removed from one’s life, one has still parented a child.

A while back, a friend of mine who is a mother asked me if I regretted not having kids.  The question surprised me a bit and felt heavy with assumption.

“The absence of one thing is the presence of another,” I replied.

I really liked my response.  Not just because it sounded good, but because it was true.

So what is present in a child-free life?  Fundamentally, a particular kind of freedom.  And there’s the rub.  This is probably the most coveted aspect of a child-free life.  Believe it or not, it took me many years to really embrace this huge opportunity for nurturance, self-care, and personal growth of a different kind without feeling “wrong,” “insecure,” or “guilty” about it.  I endured the gauntlet of both my own perception of people’s judgment about my not having children as well as the occasional reality of such judgment, and I have emerged stronger, relaxed, at peace, and finally embodying the conviction that not only am I entitled to the same joy as every other human being on this planet, kid and adult, but that I have equivalent and alternative means by which to create and manifest that joy in my life and other people’s lives.