Mothers

My good friends are visiting from TX.  We are headlong into our middle age, raising young children, navigating this maze of life.  Invariably, we talk about the confusing issues:

environmentalism
vaccinations
modern day racism
men
men
men
weight
health
men
sex
government conspiracy
the influence of corporate lobbying on government policy
men
sexism
agricultural policy
modern medicine
men

We think we perceive the inconsistencies in each (especially the men).  I need this gossip and female centered talk.  I need it like air, or affection.  Then at the end of the day, I can put all these issues down and just remain female.  Just be a worried mom, like all the others.  As long as I know there are sympathetic souls feeling like I am feeling, charged with this intense and all-important task of motherhood, also feeling highly inadequate and overwhelmed, then I can choose to let it all go.  Somehow, "just knowing that the world is round, and here I'll be dancing on the ground"  and there are those like me, I can choose to cuddle my children regardless of all the injustice and nonsense in the world.  I can choose joy over inadequacy.

Right now, I am not going to let the evidence of mankind's slow suicide deter from this good time.  I won't let distant governmental impass and it's inability to serve the population's need distract me from my old friends and our reminiscing. This sweet friendship, these good times are too important.

Living Lightly

What is "living lightly"?

I mean this in all respects:  environmentally, karma-wise, physically, figuratively, you name it.  My weight, my guilt, my judgements, my spending, my compulsions, my wanting.  Oh Christ, that I might not have all this WANT:


Here I place my Buddhist sentiments.  I have deliberated some time about striving.  Striving in front of my children, even.  But, finally, I think that I must continue earnestly to better myself even at the risk of miserable failure, if only because the children are watching.  Better them to see me try and fail than never try at all.  What I expect of them I cannot avoid myself.

Time for accounting.  Time to come due.  Solipsis. 

Pour me a glass of wine please.  I am going to be here awhile.

Origins

MORE AND MORE:  by Margaret Atwood

More and more frequently the edges
of me dissolve and I become
a wish to assimilate the world, including
you, if possible through the skin                                                                        
like a cool plant's tricks with oxygen
and live by a harmless green burning.

I would not consume
you, or ever
finish, you would still be there
surrounding me, complete
as the air.

Unfortunately I don't have leaves.
Instead I have eyes
and teeth and other non-green
things that rule out osmosis.

So be careful, I mean it,
I give you fair warning:

This kind of hunger draws
everything into its own
space; nor can we
talk it all over, have a calm
rational discussion.

There is no reason for this, only
a starved dog's logic about about bones.