Yes, and

Picture it.
New York City.
1999.
Upright Citizen Brigade Theater.

My brother had told me to come to the Thursday night show called Survivor where people from the audience could try their hand at improv... and get voted off the island. I had never done improv officially in any way other than maybe in staff meetings, playing off my friend's humor, or during my acting days between scenes.

Owen told me, "All you need to remember is 'Yes, and...' and you will be fine." He explained that the rule in improv is that you don't say no to what someone else on stage has put out there. It will kill the scene and it will throw off the other people in that scene. It is also a trust thing.

I was a finalist.
I came back a few weeks later to be in the final battle and- alas- I heard something along the lines of bros before hos as I was the last female standing. I knew when I stood for a scene with the other two male finalists that I was cooked! And it was a blast.

I have had "yes, and" stuck in my head ever since. I didn't always use it. I didn't use it a lot, in fact, during a time it would have been so beneficial- while hunkered down at home, gestating and raising little ones. For a while,  I took on the very familiar child-like phrase, "no, but".

As I came out of the little kids fog and embraced more the knowledge that I cannot control the world, "yes, and" has been ringing in my ears and pouring from my mouth. It has a rather Buddhist quality. It offers acceptance- something that can be seen as weak- and also power hidden within the "and".

I see what is happening and I am going to work with it this way.

I see the scene that has been set; it is what is. I will add my part to the scene with this action, reaction, or word.

I know you would like to slam every locker to make as much noise as possible, and you can slap this cement wall instead.

I was in a  meeting a few weeks ago where some very minor changes were being put into place. I am a people watcher and was busy watching people's reactions to what was being said. Many were quietly taking the notes. Others were nodding while taking the notes. Then there were the few that were fighting the change by sighing loudly while taking notes. Then the one, questioning it angrily. Why? We never had to? Who said? And then taking the notes, head shaking "No" to be sure the world knew that it was a "No". No. No. No.

I was fascinated. This small change actually would have no effect on anyone or anything, really. It just made sense to who this person is that the response would be so negative. I found it sad to choose to receive life in such a cloud of negativity, and I became even more aware of my own "no" moments, vowing to really think before reacting.

My world has opened up with "yes, and". I do things I never would have considered before and am happy doing them. I work with an age group I had always shook my head at, and I can't believe it took me so long to experience it again. I had forgotten all about my time working in a great 6th grade classroom while getting my Masters because I had strictly thought of where I should be once I graduated.

I have found that things more easily "go my way" only because I am going the way of things. I reserve "no" for only that which would go against my gut instinct and for when I have said "yes, and" too much and am exhausted.

I am not simply saying "yes" and being lead about. I am saying "yes, and" which is the balance of letting myself be guided while still holding the reigns loosely in my open palm.

A Brick

Around and around in my head keeps floating the sentence:

It is just a brick, one single brick.

I want to say it to the student who is punching the desk yelling, "I don't know!"
I want to say it to my friend when her face lights up.
I want to say it to the girl whose eyes are starting to get that far away look as she slips into her cluttered mind.
I want to say it to my daughter when she feels afraid.
I want to say it to my husband when we look at each other as we say goodnight.
I want to say it to a co-worker who doesn't know what to do.
I want to say it to my son when he is contentedly staring at the stars.
I want to say it to my Mom when her words expressing her sorrow get caught in her throat.


I want to say it when the sun begins to rise earlier in the morning.
I want to say it when my approach was the right one.
I want to say it when nothing else can be said.
I want to say it when my brothers are laughing.
I want to say it when my Dad walks into a dream.
I want to say it when my head is hitting the wall.
I want to say it when my kitchen is filled with people.
I want to say it when the sun sets and knows it has put on a show.

It is just one brick.
One single brick in the life we are building.
Our house is never finished.
Every brick matters.
It saves a place for what is next.
It is the future's foundation.
It is just one brick
and soon another one will come.
This brick will be placed,
and a new one will come.

Finding Your Mirror

Loss doesn't end. I am not saying that to be pessimistic nor do I mean that it is always a horrific struggle. What I mean is this: When someone is in your life, they are a constant presence. So how can they not be a constant loss when they leave us? It just makes sense that they would be.

I have had a sad week. I am not saying that to gain sympathy nor do I mean that I haven't had some wonderful moments. But the past few days were some in which I was in the whirl of missing my Dad and it covered most things with a layer of grey soot.

However, the reason I entered this sadness came from something warm and moving. A photo my Mom had given to my daughter had been altered at some point. She added a heart to it and the heart reads: I miss you.

It made my heart stop when I came across it because she said my words. She said my feelings so simply. I knelt on her rug with my hands filled with her toys and scraps and crayons, trying to clean her always messy room, and I let the tears slide down my cheeks as I stared. I let the mess fall a bit, from my hands, from my lungs, from my heart, because really. What is the use of trying to pick it all up? Some just has to fall and stay down all around us. We don't have to carry every bit of loss with us.

I had been avoiding my mom as I always do when I am feeling sad. Always certain that the thing to do is not share it with her. And when I call her, kicking and screaming, and I hear her voice, I know I just have to tell her. And I know she just has to hear it. We both feel better after. Someone to mirror your grief.

Realizing the loss extends past me seems obvious, but I think we can get wrapped up in it, trying to contain it and layer it away in our own selves. Seeing the photo in Evie's room- her simple announcement to whoever should hear it- brought me back to the day I told her that her Da was dying. All my children had their significant reactions. Brendan just laid down on the floor when I told him I was on my way to say goodbye to Da. Colleen kept her quiet presence, afraid to move, afraid to cry. 

But Evie. She rounded on me with all the anger and sadness I felt in me screeching out of her. She was the mirror of the little girl losing her Dad with all the rage I would have never shown. When she pointed at me and said, her diaphragm shaking her words out, "You don't go say 'Goodbye' to him. You go there and tell him that I say 'Hello'. You tell him 'Hello!'" I wanted to scream and kick the stuffing out of my bed. I wanted to let my face get chapped and my hair get knotted and my sorrow to send me into a fitful sleep from which I would rise out of later, confused.

Thankfully, she did that for me, too, when I got home and told her that he was gone.

A friend wrote me last night about how she misses her mom. I was grateful for her words so I could share my sadness, too. She wrote how she thought that by now it would have lessened. We all hear that the pain of loss will get better with time, but I find that inaccurate having barely got my feet wet in this. The pain and the missing will happen always as the person we have lost will always be lost. It just learns to visit you at certain times. And in those times I am learning to poke my nose out of my hole to find someone else who is feeling it, too.

I miss him. I will miss my Dad for my forever.

Et tu, Undies?

Y'alls. My undies are too tight.

Yes, we know when the jeans are too tight and get up in our nethers. Or the shirt is too tight and reveals the muffin tops and bra squishouts. But when the underwear is too tight... it is like a girlfriend saying to you, while at a chocolate buffet or something, "are you sure you want to eat that?"
Complete.
Total.
All encompassing.
Betrayal.

Undies are your closest clothings ever. They are literally alllll up in your business. To have them leave a mark upon thy upper thigh/side butt fat pillows is a slap on the cheek, indeed. Or you bend and they just leave you hanging...
Crack is wack, people. Why would my underwear do this to me?

Look, I can see my fault in it. I don't use woolite. 
Admitted. 
Out there.
My "lingerie" drying rack holds....nothing since it is folded and wedged under some shelves. I throw everything in the dryer. (And before you try to help me, seeing me flailing out here in the wind- they didn't shrink. I pretended that already.) So it isn't like I am completely kind to my little tighties.

So, looking out the window at the soft cascading snow, I gave myself the little pep talk we all have. The one when we 

aren't in a disgusted mood with ourselves. A touch of 
reprimand. A touch of understanding. I took the animal instinct approach. We are like bears. We are fattening to keep warm. Of course I don't want to exercise, it is against my nature in Winter. Tucking in to warmth and food to survive the long winter....Less daylight to ensure resting up.


But, do you have to hide the chocolates from the kids so you don't have to share? No. That is wrong. Let the kids eat some. And it is time to buy the kids the treats you don't like so you will stop sneaking them. 
Yes. Yes. Yes. True.
And only ONE more Little Debbie Heart cakes. One. Then move on!
(or opt for commando)

Separation Anxiety

I remember the first time Evie walked away from me to do a gymnastics end-of-the-year performance. She was 3 or 4 and I was wringing my hands. I couldn't believe that she was going to do something in a big arena, separate from me, with a lot of people she didn't know.
Wasn't she amazing?
Wasn't she something else?
Wasn't she howling in tears?
Howling.
Sobbing.
I think there may have been some muted screaming...



But she wouldn't stop.

My husband was sweating and Colleen was in distress. I handed over Brendan and went to the edge of the mat and said, "Evie, come here."
She kept doing donkey kicks while crying.
"Evie! Ev, come here!"
She shook her head no and kept on kicking.
"Ev. Ev. Ev. Evelyn get off the mat."

She wouldn't. She finished the whole routine she was supposed to do while sobbing.
I couldn't believe it.
I was amazed.
I was embarrassed.
I was flustered.
Mainly, though, I was amazed.

We went out for pizza after, her color back to normal and my husband breathing again, and I said, "Evie, why didn't you stop? If you were so upset, why would you stay?"

I don't remember her response. I know she shrugged. And I figure her answer was somewhere along the lines of, "because it was what I was supposed to do". Which is a shocker because she won't do things just because she is supposed to or has been asked to.

Well, maybe she will when asked by others, other than me or her siblings.
Maybe she will when it is hers and she wants to go through it. When she has put it to herself.

Five years later, I have had this girl leave my side repeatedly to compete in gymnastics meets. She can't be stopped. Our time together in general is limited. I leave her at 7:45am when I go to work. I leave her at 4pm when she goes into the gym for 3-4 hour practices, 4 days a week. We are quite good at being separated, but there is something about when she walks across some foreign gym's mats, away from me, that makes her seem small. Makes me feel small.

Makes me miss her.



All the time now she is encountering new skills she must practice and master in order to excel and strengthen her routines. Things that I call, "nuts", and some of which she calls, "easy".
Lately, she has encountered new skills that have frightened her.
And she just can't shake it.

And when she cries at practice out of frustration, I don't go to her, though I feel the wind of my heart's rush to meet her.
And when she cries at the meets from a missed chance, I'm not allowed to go to her.
Which is good, I suppose.
But very, very hard.
Very hard.
And when she is struggling, she won't ask for help.
She won't really talk about it unless she is fit to burst with the stress of it all.
Then she howls it.



I can't tell if she hears my advice- I know little of gymnastics, but I am pretty good at stress and fear in general. I don't know if she hears the dharma talks on the way to the gym, though I know she is listening, and I know she knows I put them on for her as much as me.

Anything my husband and I say to her she responds with, "I know."
Hm.
Well.
Does she REALLY know?
Did her saying she knew dismiss what I said?
Should I just shut the hell up?
I probably should shut the hell up.

Do I reach her?
Does she feel me with her when in distress?
Does she know I would spot her and buoy her all through her practices and meets if I could?
Does she know that I well up when she wells up?
That I cry when she beams?
That I am speechless with her every success because they are hers?
Just hers.
So separate from me.

I am now waiting to hear if she mastered a skill tonight. If she recaptured another skill that she lost in all her fear and worry.
I'm in this moment before my husband brings her home and she can fill me in.
I'm in this moment of wondering how her meet will go in a few days with all these flusters and flips and frustrations.
I keep repeating the word that I left her with today: Yatha-bhuta. Reality as it is.
I hug her when I say it.
She shrugs when she says it back.
It is what it is.
But it is so big because it is hers
and it is separate from me.
As it should be.

Yes, Colleen. There is a Santa Claus.

Colleen is 11 and had been hearing some crud about how some people don't believe in Santa for quite a while. I would say to her what my mother always said to me, "Santa is the Spirit of Christmas". It is a true statement and moves the child along who still has hope in their hearts. Unfortunately, on Friday, a substitute teacher told her plainly that there wasn't a Santa Claus, and a very sad and agitated Colleen came home to me.

As I leaned against her, side by side on a couch, and held her cheek against my shoulder, I explained that though a man doesn't come down the chimney and that I'm the one that bring her her gifts, Santa is the feeling I get when she opens her presents. Santa is in the excitement she and her siblings share all December. Santa is in the cutting down of our tree and is laced in every memory brought back by an ornament or Christmas decoration.

"Christmas is all heart, Colleen. And that is where Santa lives. He is real."

Santa is in the golden harp ornament my best friend, Stephanie, gave me the year that so many of my own ornaments smashed after my tree fell.

Santa is in the creche that Lisa bought for my kids a few years ago when I told her that one of them was curious about the the Christ in Christmas.

Santa is in Rebecca inviting us over to watch her family light the Menorah.

And then, yesterday, when a co-worker, Robin, heard about the spilled beans, she left a bell from the Polar Express in my mailbox for me to give Colleen. I ran up to her classroom and, with warning that I was about to do it, hugged her for understanding this sadness, for thinking of us, and for expressing the true meaning of the season. We teared up talking to one another about keeping dreams alive for our children. I said to her "THIS is Santa Claus!", gesturing to our emotion and to her kindness.

This weekend when I said it was time to formalize our letters to Santa, Colleen lead the charge. She turns on the Christmas tree. She is watching every streamable christmas show and movie. She came to me, pained, not being able to choose which present to get her sister and could she please give both. "It is the spirit of Christmas, right?" she twinkled at me. She has lost nothing more than an image of Christmas, keeping the meaning alive and thriving.

I always feel love and appreciation for those around me who hold me up, warm me, and care for me and my family. It is just that this time of year that when I feel it, it feels like a belly that's a bowl full of jelly, a twinkle in the eye, and a rosy cheeked laugh.
Santa is real.
And now we have the sweetest 11 year old elf helping to keep our spirit and love of the holiday alive.

Dear New Homeowner of the Red House

Dear New Home Owner of the Red House,

Though I can't ever picture moving out of this house, I know one day it will happen. As I sat here in the quiet and messy house, I felt a little resigned to the fact that when we move, you guys are going to find nerf bullets and hair elastics. No matter what I do, I will never have packed every lite brite peg. You will encounter it as you stumble across more storage space. Every hairball will not have been found. There will be tinsel and pine needles in a corner or embedded into a carpet. I'm sorry. We never have even had tinsel in this home, but I did growing up and that tinsel found its way into the ornaments I took when I cleaned out my parents' house. (Which probably wasn't completely cleared either)

There will be a matchbox car in one of the heating vents. There will be a Barbie shoe in a drawer. We will do the annoying thing of leaving paint cans in the basement for you to do touch-ups, and maybe a tarp or a tool in the garage because when we move, we won't be tarpin' and toolin', we hope. We won't be doing a darn thing.

I'm sorry about those two floor boards we never replaced and we had meant to change the trim color a long time ago, but.....weekends got away from us. There were nerf fights and competition hair. That nail polish stain that won't come out came with a really wonderful sister afternoon in the blue room. That loose bannister happened during a Saturday night fashion show we had to watch our kids put on. We sometimes cleaned the webs from outside the windows, but the suckers kept coming back. We sometimes raked and trimmed and pruned. We sometimes let the snow just cover it all until Spring inspiration hit again.

We have no idea what you will come across in the woods. Knowing that our children became teens in this house, I don't want to take any guesses. I know some wrecked club house will be out there. I won't venture more of a guess beyond one of their water bottles with a cute design worn off will be somewhere in the vicinity.

The Zen porch will hopefully leave its Zen-ness for you. I hope any heaviness has lifted from it and some creativity remains. I hope we cleared out all of the cat toy mice so you don't get a fright in the wood closet. I hope the warmth of the kitchen-the feeling of warmth since we probably never got around to new and better windows-gets left behind, too. Everyone was in there all the time. And make sure you get on that outdoor porch- we were so bad about using that space every minute of every warm day.

Sorry for the few grains of rice in the cupboard. Enjoy the generator we leave you.
Someone play that piano. Invite someone to a game of pool.
This house is meant to be filled with family and friends.
It is very tolerant of a little neglect, and does a great job of hiding clutter.
It should make you feel so completely at home.
But you already knew that. You chose it for just that reason.
Don't worry about forwarding us anything we may have left behind.
All we need stays with us.

All the best.