the time that lives inside your heart

I did this thing during the pandemic. Well we all did things trying to make sense of something that made no sense. I would take the SundayNYTimes and cut it up and charge myself with making a collage. In such a state of uncertainty I let myself browse the paper and only cut out things that I liked or moved me. I promised myself I would NOT use any logic or end game.  I would gather images, words, pieces, move them around and put them together in some sort of one page collage of the week. Each weekly piece was like a tiny show for my choreographer hands, digging into what the story was in the world and in me. Seven weeks of this sure-fire long time in quarantine, I had these images on the wall.  This was one of my favorites. 

 Fast forward to today, I am making pancakes and lunch and we are rushing.  And we are going to be late. IN fact today I admit fully we always have been. I start laughing to myself because I never got good at being on time in the morning.  I am running out of time.  I get up early, meditate, move, drink coffee, make pancakes, lunches and we are still late. I surrender. Maybe it does not matter.

I am definitely a plenty time kind of mom, three girls with storybooks and pancakes, yes, one more time. I yelled too. There was a morning, which is the last morning I did this, where I had made three breakfasts, two times which meant six breakfasts that no one ate and now for sure we were late. I lost my cool that morning saying how hungry people were in the world. My youngest was only one year old. It was the worst monologue I have ever given. Of course, I was angry at myself.   After that there was a weekly menu for food on the fridge and we all ate whatever we had every day, that was that.

It is not at all easy to be a mother. I am quite sure this happened all in the midst of January. Yet it is perhaps my favorite thing I have ever done. I have taken it as my soul’s journey. I have been lucky to be surrounded and held by the Waldorf community, my daughters' teachers, colleagues, friends and family who formed a circle around my heart as I have been doing this important work of my life. 

They were the ones on those days when no one would wear clothes or get into the car, and they would receive my mismatched children with loving arms or offer the best armchair advice over the phone, bolstering me as I was whizzing to the next pick up.  They became the sigh and the breath to get up and try again. 

I ended up using the above image in our student show MOMO last year. I caught this moment of a boy who became a man inside our program. His mother who became a friend and his family who helped build the community and so many stories alongside my girls and others at Moovment House. 

Time is a funny thing, manmade you know? Quantifying it, calculating, measuring it and getting you there. Are you getting there? The space of heart I find felt and true. These things live outside of time. Anyway good morning, I am late.

What do you want to do with the time that lives inside your heart?