Growing Versions

 Rainbow and pot of gold, 2017 Trump under the rainbow (if only...), 2017

A few years ago, I came across this delightful article,   Leaning Back , about the merits of doing less in The Economist. To think that there may be financial gain, not loss or trade-off, by doing less is intriguing.  It is particularly useful for me to think about this as I am fully immersed in my "busy season".  As the demands for my time is ratcheted up in every aspect of my life, I must discern how to spend the precious resource of my energy. I also like this idea because in recent years I've been putting in a whole lot of effort and leaning or resting has not been happening with a regular enough frequency. The once bottomless reserve of energy has been dwindling and the gauge is just above empty. I also read the book Lean In about taking our place as women leaders in business.  It encourages women to put their resources towards building healthy relationships and reliable childcare (easier said than done) to enable themselves to take a full seat at ...

This time of year I start to yearn for a different place. Any place. I have resigned myself to being grounded by cold and fluctuations in the weather, but by now, I start drooling over Instagram posts from blossom festooned Europe, sandy southern beaches and Asian feasts. Take me there, I tell myself. I whisper back, yes, my dear, it just won't be in a straight line.

You can learn origami on the internet.  You can learn how to make monsters, dragons, creatures, shapes. You can get beautifully illustrated, step-by-step guides to making beautiful complex creations out of paper. But what is really fun is having someone who is made one many times before teach you.  No youtube tutorials, just a friendly person, taking time to teach you, step by step. And a little scotch tape doesn't go amiss.

For the past few months, my son has been having a tough time. He was struggling with both seen and unseen things and it was making him grumpy; what was worse, he stopped being playful. I longed for the weekends of yore when he would spend hours upon hours making elaborate marble runs out of cereal boxes and slides off of the couch ("I love the physics Mama").  His spark was flickering and I was worried.  I was not sure how to reach him. I also started to think, if he feels unreachable now, how much further will he be from my grasp when he is a teenager? In the past couple of weeks, a combination of things got solved medically and socially. Some of it was parental/teacher initiative, but a large part of it was his own (with the additional help of several days home due to storms) .   The results over all are a happier, lighter spirited, more playful boy that we have come to know and love. One morning, after I thought things were more or less settled, my son burst...