Love and Connection

  So squirrely-ness and off-centeredness continued yesterday morning and by about 7:45am I was pretty sure that if I didn’t at least go to yoga I wasn’t going to make it through the day without a major emotional storm. Yes, it’s dramatic. I could have just said I really wanted to go.

So when Ax rejected going to early morning beach, playground, scootering, out to breakfast, nature walk, and even playing with fire engines and ambulances, claiming a strong desire to watch tv before doing any of that, I gave him a muffin, brought him over to my mom’s and went to yoga.

I decided that even though in my mind we were supposed to have this marathon day of togetherness and lovefesting, Ax and I, the most loving thing I could do is let him go to glam-ma’s house for some chill time and let me go to yoga for same. The fantasy of what a fun morning should look like was not going to be actually fun for either of us. He didn’t want to scooter. I didn’t want to sit around.

I have these three women in my life right now, well maybe four, who all basically advise some version of “Decide to reside in joy no matter what,” a kind of spiritually/woo-woo-y/self-help spin on, “Just Do It.”

Well fuck. I mean if I could just do it I would have done it a really long time ago. Or at least I would be (just) doing it now. It’s not ALL an inside job for me, maybe like 99%, but then there’s the 1% that’s like, I actually will feel much better if I do this thing, this external thing. And I’m gonna. I’m not gonna do some fake-out bliss thing. I mean maybe for them it’s not fake, but for me it totally would be.

But anyway, after I got done with the yoga and picked Ax up and we reconnected, then I was able to hang and follow his lead. I wanted to go to the beach. He wanted to stomp rocket at the park. We went to the park. Then I wanted to go to lunch. He wanted to study tadpoles for a really long time. We studied tadpoles until he’d had his fill.

I watched my own discomfort just doing what he wanted to do, for as long as he wanted to do it, and then I breathed and felt the discomfort and edginess soften into something like relaxation. The whole gig was to be there and not be driving the bus constantly to be somewhere else. The love and connection I wanted from our special day together was there for the savoring.

I listened to the other parents at the playground grimly announcing five-minute warnings and yelling things like, “Stay away from the edge of the pond!” as Ax leaned over the edge of the pond, to get the best look at the baby tadpoles while I watched from a distance, offering a thumbs up and a smile when he looked over to check in with me.

For what seemed like hours but was probably only about forty minutes I trailed him, kind of like a bodyguard, from a close but non-interfering type distance, and watched him do what he did, occasionally commenting something approving like, “wow,” or “amazing!”

And then he decided to show me his world. “Come on mom, come here I want to show you something.” And then I followed him closely while he tour-guided me through the various parts of the play structure and park. He showed me the wobbly bridge and the tower you climb from the inside, the really fast curvy slide and the monkey bars. I didn’t say much because it was a moment, loving and connecting with him, the way he wanted me to, not the way I wanted to. And I liked it.