I only have two hands.

One time I asked my son why he didn`t play with two children at once at daycare and he explained that he only had two hands. This comment instantly made me understand that, just like in adulthood, playing with other kids takes attention. It`s by no means a mindless activity.

A friend directed me to the blog One Continuous Mistake, with the tag line, Zen and Parenting. It`s written by partners Tracy and Koun Franz. Koun is a Soto Zen Priest and Tracy is a writer and teacher. They co-write a beautiful blog about their experiences raising two young children. Instantly, I felt a kind of kinship with their writing and one of my favourite posts so far is Two Hands Mama. Their deceptively simple, reflective and well written posts document their spiritual journey towards mindfulness in parenting.

Blogging has been a forum for me to understand more deeply my and others experiences and reactions to parenting. Writing through the regret for things I wish I hadn`t said to my kids and the regrets for not doing more for them has helped me listen more astutely ànd in different ways than I am used to to all the words that come out of their mouths. It has been an attempt, however faltering, to transform regret into understanding and acceptance.

My kids, tracking my every move as they do, reflect back things I don`t want to know about myself as they slowly reveal to me their own growth-spurting selves. All hands on deck.

Comments

I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Fists full of lettuce

It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom. She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer). Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life. Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years. Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer. It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...

Shake your Bummy

In recent weeks, two things have come to my attention, this article by Mary Beth Williams, T he real key to good health and the viral hit created by Dr. Mike Evans, 23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health? Both coincided with when I was turning my attention to new years resolutions and reflecting on the year that was. Thanks to both, a reckoning came to be. Mary Beth Williams' candid advice was to get your heart stronger because you never know when you are going to need it. She herself has been receiving treatment for lung cancer. Dr Mike Evans' way of putting the exact same thing? "Try to limit your sitting time to 23 1/2 hours a day". In my day job, I sit a lot. I occasionally rise to retrieve something from the photocopier or to make a coffee, but an awful lot of the time, I'm on my bum. This is in steep contrast to my night job. At the end of the work day, occasionally in the middle, I h...

Growing Versions

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