Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Back to Blog Main Page

A Juggling Act

Posted September 07, 2007
0  | 
I found this helpful Thank You! Your vote will be tallied soon!

Oddly enough, I seem to be constitutionally incapable of learning to juggle. At a recent birthday party of a friend of Ben's, each kid got a trio of balls, and the parents -- former circus performers -- tried to teach us all. Basics were learned and honed, skills were mastered or at least initiated, beanbags were tossed successfully from hand to hand -- just not by me. "I'm not sure the Jews are really a juggling people," I joked while balls flew willy-nilly from my fingers and flubbed to the ground.

Which makes the fact that I can more or less handle my actual life all the more mystifying to me. Some days it feels like flaming pins, dozens of them, looping in arcs around me and I can keep them in the air only by not stopping to think too hard about it. I keep a running to-do list on one of those computer notes that sits on your desktop like a virtual Post-it, and I cannot delete tasks faster than I add them. I work five or six different writing jobs in addition to my half-time job as a college department secretary, and so the list is long and strange, organized top to bottom by priority: essays, editing, meetings, copywriting for an online golf sweepstakes that involves my looking up of golfing terms on Wikipedia ("Hey Michael, does 'Bogey yourself on down to the green' work as a snappy intro?" "Um -- let's see. No."), dentist appointments, craft testing, various less favored winter vegetables that need to be eaten before they rot, passport renewals, laundry, library books that need returning, exercise, the piñata for Birdy's birthday, and research for a piece I'm writing about healthy junk food, although I should disclose here that my research of junk food is an ongoing and personal project, not entirely constrained by the piece I'm working on.

If I accomplish something that's not on the list, I actually type it in and then delete it, all in one motion -- like Birdy who will unzip her jacket, take it off, and put it immediately back on because she wanted to do it herself. Michael does this, too. In one legendary incident I spied on a list of his: "Special Time with Catherine." Crossed out. Right under a note about the garbage disposal. "Honey," I teased him for weeks, "whatever that special time was, thank goodness we got it over with!" But I wasn't offended. Just because it's a sexy, flaming pin that you cherish doesn't mean your partner isn't still another flaming pin in the air, right?

And it's not about whether you work outside of the house or not. Because whoever you are, you're doing this too -- this thing where you're trying to solve the Rubik's Cube of your life, consolidating one color without screwing up the rest of them; where you're like Wile E. Coyote sprinting off the cliff and through the air, trying to put off the moment when you notice the absence of ground and plummet downwards, trying not to, say, leave one child behind in a stroller at an airport checkpoint because you were busy counting the luggage (ahem). Things can make it easier, of course: a flexible job, good and affordable childcare, health insurance, financial resources, a supportive partner and/or a devoted community of friends. But the only way to make it actually all work, as you surely know, is to pay attention to one thing at a time. Specifically, to your kids when you're spending time with them.

This is not a radical idea of course, and I didn't need to meditate in Tibet for a hundred years, nibbling raw rice and marigold petals, to offer it here. And yet for some of us it requires a daily -- a moment-to-moment -- renewal of commitment to put the Dalai back in our Mama, if you know what I'm saying. To quiet the nagging voice of anxiety in our heads, quit the compulsive checking of email (this likely involves shutting down the computer) and the compulsive adding of items to the list ("shower"; "research removal of permanent marker from curtains") and be with our kids when we're actually with them.

I don't mean that I don't wash the dishes while they sit at the kitchen table with dishes of ice cream or that they don't play alone while I work upstairs for various stretches of the day. I mean that when Ben curls up in my lap to read his nature magazine, I press my nose to his hair -- inhale that achingly familiar, fleeting smell -- and know that this is life as good as it gets. I brush the snow out of Birdy's sleeves and collar after a spectacular sledding mishap, and kiss her cheeks, as pink and plump and ready to bite as marzipan apricots. Or, after a spectacular bathroom mishap, I wipe poop off the floor with wads of paper towel, breathing through my mouth while my heart pounds out the rhythm of tasks that await me elsewhere -- except that Birdy laughs, and returns me to this one-and-only here and now: "Oh my god!" she exclaims cheerfully. "How revolting was that!" And when she flings her happy arms around my neck -- well, it's not that it doesn't matter that life is often too frantic or peculiar or that I can be panicky, impatient, or distracted. It's just that all the balls thud from the air to the ground all around me. Because this matters more.

Member Comments On...

A Juggling Act

Back to Main Blog Page
Search Recipes
300x250

About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

View My Profile View My Guestbook
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
August 2006
300x250
728x90
Please log in ...
Close
You must be logged in to use this feature.
Become a member

Thank You!

Thank you for helping us maintain a friendly, high quality community at Family.com. This comment will be reviewed by a community moderator.

Flag as Not Acceptable?

We review flagged content and enforce our Terms of Use, in which content must never be:

See full Terms of Use.