MAYBE I WILL JUST SHUT MY MOUTH

All effort just feels like spitting in the wind.  Like silence and solitude are the only "good".
Then again, I just finished a fifteen minute meditation.  So my word reservoir is empty or at least not churning.

Just to make sure you have the right image, I am at the kitchen table in my pajamas surrounded by newspapers and computer wires (my husbands).  That's where I meditate.  Right smack dab in the middle of it all.  No candle.  No incense.  Boom.

What's worth saying?

Foundation garments matter.
A pedicure can change your day.
A compelling book is better than most other desires.
Pop-corn re- calibrates a bad mood (but only if it has butter on it)
Don't move if you have found the perfect comfort position in bed.
When you hurt (feelings or body) --let it pierce you, sink into it  and go do laundry.
Making something look nice so that it suits you perfectly is the best path to more creative release.
Creating order is a continuous process--don't expect a result--ever.
Forcing gratitude doesn't work.  Allowing it does.
Doing a good deed really is the best path out of your crazy ass self.
Being sincere is an underrated quality

I'll stop before I'm not.

I'M A LOUSY FEMINIST

I didn't used to be.
I was never strident but I was vociferous and active in correcting inequalities of gender.
From minor to major.

I insisted on using the men's bathroom in the law school my then husband attended.  The women's was waaaaay far away in the basement.
I did make coffee for meetings with my all male colleagues but made sure they knew it came from my hospitality gene and was not a gender assigned role.
I wrote letters all the way to the top of a Fortune 500 company when asked in an interview what my plans were to have a baby.
I pointed out inequalities and blind spots right and left.
Always with good humor making sure not to push the delicate equilibrium of power out of tolerance into rejection.
I always carried my own luggage on business trips with my male colleagues.
Still the Chairman of the Board only asked me about the room temperature or the quality of the sandwiches in Board meetings.

I think the insidiousness of "good enough" did me in.
My husband was "good enough" with sharing of house and kid tasks.
My salary was more than "good enough" but not quite what a man in the role would have gotten.
My self expression and sense of self was "good enough" too.  I didn't have to kill it or over protect it to get ahead.  "Good enough" but not all it could be.

It takes discomfort to be a feminist.  Pain and Irritation.  Enough irritation to make action more comfortable than inaction.  "Good enough" is the opium of women.

I am mulling on my own behaviour and values on being a declared feminist.  Time to recalibrate.
"Good enough" isn't.

MARRIAGE IS MORE COMPLEX THAN THE ADVICE ABOUT IT

 I just quit holding my new granddaughter for three hours while she snoozed and squeaked and
snorted and contorted and I'm telling you it knocked the words out of me.
It is a wordless bliss that just doesn't demand blah blah blah.  Just being.  Well and burping.  And pooping.  I have seen all of my daughters go into the baby trance that makes linear thought harder than the first sit-up after giving birth.

 BUT  I am going to wrap some words around the fuzz in my head because I said I would come back to the marriage advice I avoided two blogs ago.  Right.  Mmmm.  What WAS that about?   OK.  I got it.  My husband and I were at dinner with our daughter and her love for our hard won 29th Wedding Anniversary and we discussed it at dinner.  Rules?  Three ideas a piece.  One sentence each.

OK.  Well alright.  Here I go.  I'm in an anti-glib moment so I'm hesitating.  Let's hear it for Ben Affleck. "Marriage is work.  And it is good work."   Some of the time.  Sometimes it's just hard work.
That's my disclaimer in case the ideas below sound glib.  They are so not.

l.  Get back to love as soon as you can or better yet, before you can.

2.  Each person is responsible for their own happiness.

3.  Start with God and get that relationship right first.

4.  Also take responsibility for your own craziness and know that you have your own craziness.

5.  Take the trouble to learn what to expect in a marriage BEFORE you marry so that you are ready for
     the journey.

6.  Stay curious about one another.  Ask real questions of your partner

7.  Know how to manage your fights, say your truth,  lick your wounds,  reach out and kiss and make-up

8.  Stay connected physically--all kinds of touch.

9.  Be friends

Bonus:  Patience, patience, patience--said in jest but we all nodded vigorously in agreement.
           
There!  Promise kept.

DO THE PREPOSTEROUS THING

I just observed my daughter as she went through labor and finally the birth of her little baby girl.

Which by the way seems preposterous from an observor point of view.

You are doing what?  Through that tiny opening?   And how long is it going to take?  How much effort?  How much pain?  As if I had never done it myself.

But even my daughter, on day three after the birth began to forget what she had gone through beginning to think it was by magic that the baby was here in this world.

We need to remember that labor.  If not our own, then the stories of women we know who have gone through birthing labor.

Remember that the act of creation is one of passion.

Remember that you have to gestate--wait and prepare and wait and prepare and wait some more.

Remember that you have made a profound committment to the end result--through birth pangs, through

true travail, through wanting to quit, through the real feel of what commitment is.

Remember you didn't do it alone--there was a partner-- whether medical or intimate.

Remember  that by staying the course you brought a new person into the world.

So please remember:

You are strong.

You can create

You can commit

You can take the pain

You can persever  to push through

You can produce your precious idea, painting, business

Don't forget the lessons of labor.

Translate that strength, that focus, that determination, that preparedness to your own life.

Do the preposterous thing.