Oh, Mama

Oh, the excitement of opening up Microsoft Word! Just to open a file where I can paint pictures, blanketed comfy on my couch, with candle flames dancing on the hearth and a breeze running in and out with the children…on this chilly-cloudy day, I have made a nest where life-changing things are happening. Just like the wind, the force behind and the matter of this that bubbles up within me is not something I can see.


Today it is the spiritual practice of mothering and being teacher to my children that is on my mind. Regarding homeschooling in particular, by tradition, I would have normally begun last week, September 1st. But Mama had chemo two weeks in a row. Mama hasn’t gotten her teaching resources together. Mama hasn’t gotten her DAY together half of the time…

That rhythm that makes a home run more like clockwork…it does melt away during the summer, as we become more will of the wisp. Most parents and children adjust to changes in September, so what’s my hang up? Why does getting from here to (where was that again?) seem like a long, steep hill?

Well I got it recently. Along with our routines being swept under the beds all summer, so was the nurturing of our home. It became clear to me that my starting place was our living space; and just like all the Mamas and Papas need to put on their own oxygen masks before those of their children, in an airplane emergency, the place I focused on first was my own bedroom—

The Inner Sanctum

Oh boy, it can sure become a catch all. What a difference when the vision of my altar and Dream Space is in reality, something nurturing to me. The place where I go to let go, relax and dream is good for me.

Then I moved on to the kids. It was a hands and mind and heart absorption into clearing out their living spaces and creating cheerful, celebratory, comforting nests for them, for creating, dreaming and all this growing…I imagine I can HEAR them growing sometimes.

It’s the Womb outside the Womb. The children were born from my body and into my arms. All that time spent in my arms, being fed on mother’s milk, very gradually sitting, rolling, crawling, tiptoeing into Selfhood. It’s cooking, not milk, heartfelt, brief squeezes, not rocking in the chair, that helps them grow now.

Now, as the soil is beginning to feel prepared, I can more easily imagine myself being inspired to engage in some homeschooling with them.

I look forward to the stories and fables I will tell them, weaving together a pattern that will be a reference in moments requiring a noble conscience. I look forward to being near them as the world opens up a little more and a little more, through their natural drive to explore and learn.

I am significantly daunted by the need I have for regaining routine for us. How does Mama rise each day before the children, fit in an hour with the Molecular Enhancer, a varied, time consuming routine for Mind/Body health, and room for the variables that can arise from chemotherapy treatments and the Moody Blahs? There are things I need to be on time for. There is creamy oatmeal to be made with strawberries and coconut. There are morning songs to sing, pies to be made, a home worked as soil amended with physical, intellectual and spiritual nourishment for us all.

Oh, Mama.

- Carri