light and darkness.

• Bodhi Day is the Day of Enlightenment, celebrating the day that the historical Buddha experienced enlightenment.
• Chahar Shanbeh Suri is the Iranian Festival of Fire. It marks the importance of the light over the darkness, and arrival of spring and revival of nature.
• Diwali is a Hindu holiday that celebrates the vicorty of good over evil.
• Dong zhi is the Winter solstice in China.
• Festival of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun was celebrated in the late Roman Empire.
• Hanukkah is an eight day festival commemorating the miracle of oil lasting longer than it should have, to light the darkness.
• Karachun is the ancient Slav polytheistic winter solstice festival
• Modranect (or Mothers' Night) is the Saxon winter solstice festival.
• Sadeh is a mid-winter feast to honor fire and to "defeat the forces of darkness, frost and cold".
• Saturnalia was the Roman winter Solstice festival
• Yalda Persia's "turning point" marking the end of the longest night of the year (Darkness), and beginning of growing of the days (Lights). A celebration of Good over Evil.
• Yule the Germanic winter solstice festival

Each in it's own way marks a new beginning.

How will you celebrate a new beginning?

I will welcome my father to our home- for the third time in two years. Bless his heart... he is 85 and still kicking. He wasn't the greatest of dads--but he probably wasn't the worst, however hard that may have been for my teen self to believe. I am going to celebrate that my daughter has been on earth four years. She is wise, hysterically silly and learns new ways to defeat my will every day! (Needless to say: I love her more than life.) and My cousin, the only other relative I have on this coast, will join us for dinner and we will remember those who have gone on before us. My mom. Her mom/my dad's Sister. Dad's other siblings and their spouses--my aunts and uncles. We will probably talk about my daughter's future and how bright it is. I'll probably make a few of my mom's specialties--lasagna, ricotta pie, and maybe eggplant parmigiana.

I hope to see the new year with optimism and health. With joy and determination. With purpose.

Resolutions? I haven't made any specific ones. I'll have to get back on that. But, I expect that it will include keeping the light on, and fending my tiny family from the dark.

life's definitions

i am finding that creating a valid and current definition of myself is difficult. 

once upon a time i was a young, naive sheltered girl-child of an immigrant mom and an alcoholic father. Another upon a time ago i was a crazy college student who loved photography, experimented with love and learning and got my heart broken. yet at another time i was entranced with the hippie anarchist-activist lifestyle and was mostly transient and homeless. after a while i becomes settled into a life that seemed not so much as a sell out as a buy in. i became a nonprofit, development professional. 

toward the end, i drove many, many thousands of miles for friendship and love, always moving and avoiding permanency and experimenting with alternative and even secret lifestyles. 

but permanency is unavoidable. i was caught up by a child.  she has taught me some seriousness in her very short life. and while getting pregnant was a surprise and a little unnerving, there was never a question about what would happen. there was the sudden realization i needed a home, a good job and to surround myself with stable and happy people. i could not indulge my depression and transient lifestyle anymore. 

luckily, i can say that i have succeeded in much of that. 

the sad truth is that i wonder "who was i" if "who i am now" is so comfortable. was i that lost? was i that disconnected with the world? how can any one person go through so many changes and come through it intact?

and that's the other thing i wonder about. am i intact? i work on the depression. i work on keeping myself grounded and from spinning out of control. yet, i continue to imagine other people all have it completely pulled together, that their plan is moving along nicely for their lives, while mine is tattered and worn.

does changing your life so many times make it more worthwhile. i can say i did so much. i can say i saw so many places and met so many interesting and valuable people in my life. i can say i learned more than i ever could have by staying in one place and playing it safe.

but, i cannot say that my roots have grown deep enough that i will survive if there is a crisis. i am nervous my child doesn't have a family as an anchor. i worry i have done her a diservice, without knowing she would come along. as a single mom, her existence depends on me. only me.  the pressure of this is sometimes unbearable. 

but when i look into her eyes, the pressure seems to lift away and her love carries me. corny i know. but it is true. when i see her i know i can do anything for her. 

my fear is: i will do absolutely anything for her and lose myself in the process. i feel guilty and selfish when i want to make myself happy without her. i worry i am betraying her by working on my own definition and not on her happiness. 

people tell me that if i am not happy, she won't be. people tell me all kinds of things that sometimes sound like excuses or defences or justifications. for themselves or me, it doesn't really matter. 

all that matters is that she is happy. once you have a child, your own happiness isn't really all that important anymore. you have accepted mortality. she is immortality and will carry forward the definition of herself, not me. 

my newest definition is as her mom. and for now, that's all. yet...i continue to look for additions to my definition--guiltily. 

parenting and self

I watch my child run around the house, just to run. I see her spin, dance and literally bounce off the walls. She has more energy and spirit than I ever had. Or did I once posses this life force too? Her ability to bounce from wild happiness to absolute desperate sadness is frightening, and I pray it isn't some underlying template for her future. 

She should have the brightest, happiest, most carefree (yet stable) life imaginable.  She can pursue and achieve her dreams. I want so much for her, that the idea of figuring out a way of providing her the map to get there is unnerving. I am paralysed by the thought of providing her sustainable and renewable happiness. I worry I won't be able to do it. 

Do all parents feel this way? Did mine? My mom is gone now, but I think that her life was centered on making her children happy, to a fault. Her life suffered from it. Am I selfish for wanting to be happy also? Because I am a parent, am I supposed to give up my own joy? 

My joy has become making my daughter happy. My dream has become for her to  achieve whatever she wants in life. Also, though, I do not want to become my mom. As much as I continue to love her, I do not want to lose a sense of myself. 

How I define myself will inevitably include my daughter, but will not only be about her. 

balance.

sometimes when i get very stressed, i start thinking too much. life never gets easier, does it? it just keeps going until it ends. what you make of each day is what matters.

this week: i have been fighting with my computer. i have a couple of sleepless nights. i have fought with my 3 and a half year old daughter--like anyone wins in that situation. i have become increasingly more stressed out by simple day-to-day absolutely average issues that aren't even worth mentioning.

on the flip side. i re-connected with an old friend, with whom i haven't talked to in over a year. i have decided to pursue health with determiniation. and i have decided to let something go, that i was never committed to from the begining. each has it own particularly pleasurable aspects.

balance has never been my easiest goal. i have to work for it and it is not easy. makes me wonder if it's easy for anyone -- or i am particularly balance-challenged. when one things gets me down, it's like an avalanch, and it i am not careful i get buried. if something is really great, i'll forget about everything else that is good... it overshadows.

i used to avidly think and strive for tao in my life. it used to be a lense through which i tried to judge myself. somehow over the past few years i have forgotten it.

balance is hard. stress is frustrating. happieness is elusive evenif it's right there. love is work.

6lbs 11 oz.

In February 2005, I had a baby girl. Life has never been the same.