How’s everyone doing?
Confession: I’ve actually been finding it hard to show up in our art space lately. It’s worth noting that, as the owner of a small business providing process art experiences for young children, this is very unusual for me.
I haven’t felt inspired and with 24/7 parenting I’m tired all the time. Lately I find that time outdoors is the best way to refill my often-empty cup, it’s rejuvenating.
I’ve unplugged more than ever before and been attempting to embrace slow living. I’ve stoped over-checking my email. I check it once a day at best. I’ve taken away all notifications on my phone. So that the constant ping of my cell phone no longer pulls my attention ever away. I respond to texts or voicemails only when I can give them my full attention. Not as soon as they come in. Not while doing something else. Not while cooking dinner. Not while playing with the kids. Not over coffee in the morning. I respond when it works for me. This means only checking my phone about twice a day. This has been completely liberating and also educational. It’s made me aware of just how much my cell was interrupting and fragmenting my living.
“Shelter at home” has brought awareness to so many areas of my life. One of them is that I’ve become acutely aware of the weather now, getting outside at the first opportunity – nature preserves, creeks, trails, our own backyard. It’s reminded me that simple can be magical. It’s reminded me what I loved from my own childhood spent outdoors.
The problems of the world seem to dim somehow in the quiet solitude of the forest and the true benefits of “forest bathing” are palpable in our mood shift after a morning spent walking in the forest.
Schools may be closed but our own, private forest school remains open.
We’ve studied spider webs, thrown rocks in the creek, caught inchworms swinging in the air, marveled at blue, iridescent beetles, splashed in every puddle and lunched on a blanket of pine needles beneath the quiet of a forest canopy.
It’s been a practice in the art of living. A reminder that life is about everyday moments, if we can slow down enough to notice them.
Some days are hard. I miss friends, the amazing play-based preschool my kids attend and the mom break it affords me, playdates, self-care time, date nights out, dresses and an occasion to wear them, my small business, PAK, the way it inspires me, and my fitness routines like my spin studio.
But I’m also grateful for what I’ve received- a reminder to live presently in my everyday moments and embrace them when I can. To let some of the balls drop, to forget perfect and just be. It’s led to my becoming more in tune with the good days and what in particular makes them stand out as good.
In this time of always at home, I find that trips to our favorite bubble tea shop help tremendously! Sometimes you just need to go somewhere ya know? My son calls them “the smoothie with the gummies.” Plus it’s important to remember to support the local businesses we love, who are hurting right now.
This prolonged time of sheltering at home has also led to channeling the beautiful simplicity of my own childhood memories of countless hours spent outdoors. Then recreating those or building on them so my own children can experience the magic I felt.
My kids and I have collected bright red berries in our yard and brought them into our mud kitchen to create colorful pies.
Collecting pine cones one day led to homemade bird feeders, a childhood classic I’d somehow forgotten. The racoons may have ultimately gotten the best of them but that didn’t matter. It was about the process, the experience. My son loved it, exclaiming, “We’ve never done this before!”
We’ve collected wildflowers along the greenway behind us and made centerpieces from them. Bringing a little springtime into our house.
As a child I adored Springtime. I’d spend hours in the backyard just noticing how things were changing.
The wild strawberries that colored the lawn. The patch of spring onions that grew beneath the hammock where maybe a natural spring once was. The little wild flowers that popped up, like pink buttercups. The dandelions that flew away with my breath. The giant magnolia flowers. Tassels that fell from budding oak trees as small leaves sprouted forth. The heavenly scent of lavender wisteria stretching across our balcony and the bees that buzzed around it. The taste of our honeysuckle vine. The June bugs that were suddenly omnipresent.
As a child, my brother used to mow the lawn once a week. I remember stranding guard over my patch of wildflowers. Protecting them from obliteration.
These are the things we lose touch with so easily as adults. Our kinship with nature. Our noticing. Yet, as children, noticing and a connection with nature comes naturally, when given time outdoors.
Process art has filled our afternoons and been a godsend on rainy days. But I’ve been reminded that art is all around us in nature and how to tune into that more. I’m also grateful for how lucky we are to have so many beautiful forests here in The Woodlands, right at our finger tips.
I just finished another book on slow living, Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World by Brooke McAlary. She asked something very thought provoking, “What does your perfect day look like?”
So, I deliberated on this. I wanted to define a perfect, realistic day.
For example my perfect day could be a day at the beach or sipping ice cold limoncello on a balcony in Positano, along the Italian Amalfi coast. Watching the sunset over the ocean, my husband by my side. I’m wearing a gorgeous summery dress, with sun-kissed cheeks and beach-tousled hair. Sandy bare feet grazing the tile floors. But that’s not a realistic representation of an everyday perfect day.
Put another way, what’s my daily life perfect day or weekend? It’s worth noting that my answer now, in time of Covid-19, is different that what I would have answered before, or even what I may answer in the future.
For me a perfect day has flow– a feeling of time standing still and you are joyously, deeply engrossed in that moment. I use perfect day and ideal day interchangeably here because, to me, they are the same thing.
So, my ideal day, as it began to take shape in my mind, became an amalgamation of perfect moments I’ve experienced stitched together.
You know, that moment. You feel it. Time stands still and as you look around, you see that this moment, this one here, this is pure happiness. It’s fleeting maybe but it’s there. The trick is to notice it and then decide later, why did that moment or day feel perfect? What made it special? What made it stand out?
For me, it was the night we ate an early, family dinner outside in perfect weather. Everyone pitching in, the sound of our neighbors playing and eating outdoors, a fence away. My daughter insisting that there was a house in the trees as we all discovered that this infallible, two-year-old was in fact correct. She’d seen a squirrel’s nest and knew, instinctually, that it was a “house.” My son and I taking our scraps to the new compost pile during clean up.
The day my kids and I brought red berries into our mud kitchen. The bush in our backyard was overflowing with them. I recalled how much I enjoyed collecting these and making things with them as a child. So, I gave my kids buckets and we collected bright red berries. Then they took over, making elaborate pies and soups, pouring mud, berries and water back and forth for hours. Wanting me to go again and again with them to get more berries until the bush was all but picked clean. I was there in that moment fully. I saw the smiles. I joined the fun. I was not a passive observer of the play. I was part of it. I wasn’t mindlessly scrolling my phone or trying to return texts. I was there, fully.
The day we put on our rain boots and went through the wet mist on a nature walk in the greenway behind our house. In the quiet stillness of the mist we saw a large crane take flight. We spontaneously began collecting wildflowers. Which turned into bouquets, which turned into a centerpiece for our breakfast table, a reminder that spring was here.
The days I steal moments to write. When I get lost in the flow of it and the story evolves and flows through me like art does. I simply start and then the story, or the art, reveals itself slowly, as I give myself to its evolution.
This used to completely irk my outline and sketch loving teachers. I would to get so utterly frustrated; writing or creating and then sketching or outlining in a very backwards attempt to meet the teacher’s assignment.
The weekend we assembled the garden stand and brought home plants from the nursery. Spending hours in the dirt, my children grabbing shovels and watering cans in an eagerness to help. Liam insisting, he be the one to carry the blue plants (his favorite color). The cat frolicking in her new catnip. Sipping bubble tea on the outdoor sofa with my son and husband, while my daughter napped. Visually soaking in our recent efforts and the beauty our flowers provided.
The weekend my husband and I discovered that a date doesn’t have to mean a sitter and an expensive meal out. Quality time can mean moments stolen here and there. But you will only see them if you slow down and pay attention. A candle lit bubble bath after the kids are all in bed to wind down the day. Sitting on the back porch for cocktail hour while the kids are having rest time. A quiet morning of coffee, snuggles, and conversation, when up a few hours before the kids. (Although I do miss dressing up to go to things like the ballet, pictured below).
Had these, moments always been there ripe for the taking? Had we simply been too busy to notice them? Covid-19 teaching us how to have time for our marriage in the face of restricted choices.
The day the weather was a cool 70 degrees and we spent the entire morning at the forest, following a new trail and discovering new streams to splash in. Noticing tree roots making a web from one creek side to another, beautiful yet too fragile to traverse. Natural sand dunes and the smell of pine needles on the forest floor. Playing “I’m going to get you” as my kids chased me down the trail. The smile on my daughters face as she grabbed my legs for an “I got you” gigging embrace. The iridescent blue beetle we watched crawl on a decaying log. The snack we ate on the side of the trail. My sons delight at each new inch worm we caught, as they floated through the air on silken threads. The site of my children running ahead. The sun filtering its light through the tree canopy kissing their faces. The way it looked like god himself shining love down upon us. Mother earth giving us this gift. This day.
These are the moments that have stood out to me. The moments that make up my perfect day. My ideal day.
Here are my take-aways. Set aside distractions. Be present in the moment. Join the play, don’t be a passive observer. Involve everyone in the family meal. Make it special, give it a theme, end with homemade pudding! OUTDOOR TIME. Gardening. Seize moments of quality time with my husband wherever I can.
Also, weather seems to matter a lot to me. Every perfect day was a cool 60-70 degrees with no humidity and sunny blue skies up above. How could it not be a perfect day with that weather? Sadly here in Texas I’m lucky to get a few weeks of this weather out of the year! So I embrace the ones I get, setting aside all else.
Another question the book posed was what’s at your core? What are the core things that make you feel centered?
For me these are…
Nature.
Connection. (to food, friends, the earth)
Family.
Community.
Wellness. (Fitness, Clean Eating, Yoga/ Meditation practice)
Mindfulness. (be in the moment you’re in)
Creativity.
Writing/Creating.
Clutter free living.
Now, do your days move you closer to these things or further away from them?
Let me just stop here for a moment and say that, clearly, not every day can be an “ideal day” or even have perfect moments for that matter. Some days I hit some high notes and some days I feel like the parenting equivalent of a fire breathing, three-headed, green eyed monster.
Maybe the kid’s actions press my buttons and suddenly I’m morphing from my usual calm-tempered self into a full-blown monster of fire-breathing fury. Leaving even me amazed at how quickly my anger escalated in that situation.
Like the time I finally got around to folding the clean laundry that had been sitting in a pile for 4 days. Then I found my kids jumping in it, reducing it, yet again, to a pile of unfolded, not as clean laundry. I wanted to scream or maybe just sit on the floor and cry. Or both.
The time my son took all my husband’s pressed work shirts off the hangers and jumped on them in our bed, all while I was trying to unload the dishwasher in the kitchen. “But I like blue,” he said.
The time my son declared that he was going to head outside to “eat all the mosquitos” on a day when it was so muggy with humidity that going outside would be like stepping into a terrarium. A mosquito utopia day when I knew they would swarm him and eat him alive not the other way around. A day when all I was trying to do was simply get dressed. Instead I was dealing with a massive floor-sprawling tantrum.
The time my son discovered and then ran off with my Easter surprise (blue marshmallow peeps). He death gripped them to the floor like a tackled football as I attempted to extract them before they became smashed blue mush.
When my daughter whines in her “I’m two and I can boss you” kind of way until the incessant whining grates on my frazzled nerves like a chalk board that won’t stop screeching.
These moments are not perfect by any stretch if the imagination. These moments take deep breaths and positive parenting self-talks to get through. These moments are actually quite funny in the rear view mirror but fury inducing in the heat of the moment.
But then there are glimmers of beautiful even on the more trying days. Maybe my daughter uses the potty for the first time and says in her broken speech that she “needs privacy” and I smile, cracking the door, knowing that this everyday moment will not soon be forgotten.
Or I’m furious my son is pounding on his door at the tale end of his rest time only to open the door in a fury and discover that he’s cleaned his room immaculately and wants to tell me about the birds he’s seen chirping outside his bedroom window. So I exhale. I let go of my agenda to write and instead I sit with him in his rocking chair, looking out the window and embrace his invitation to slow down and watch birds.
So, think about it. What is your ideal day- your everyday moments which stop time. Write them out. When do you get up? What do you eat? How to you spend your time? What do you notice? Are you living that ideal day? If not, what’s one thing you can add to your day tomorrow to bring you closer to your own form of flow?
I have made a few changes myself. Disconnecting from my cell phone more and unplugging were huge fro me. Recognizing that multitasking isn’t actually possible, I now try and be more present in whatever one thing I’m doing. Dishes. Playing with kids. Returning a text to a friend when I can compose a thoughtful response without distraction.
One of the biggest changes I made, however, is going to bed earlier. Now I go to bed at 9pm, not 10pm. I skip Netflix and read instead.
That one small change allows me to wake up earlier. Waking up earlier means I have time to quietly journal in bed, do a bit of yoga or sneak into my office and write this post. It’s my time.
You know what? I love quiet mornings when no one is awake yet. The stillness. The solitude. No demands. My time.
Going to bed late meant my alarm clock was always my four-year-old jumping on my bed at 6 or 7am. So I missed out on these quiet moments alone which prepare me for the day in a very significant way. A moment to myself in order to fill my cup before I giveth to others.
So what small change can you make so that your ideal day becomes more of an everyday reality? What small change can you make to refill your cup? Do that one thing tomorrow and then see where it takes you!
From my heart to yours,
~RHL
