New Book Has Launched!

Announcing the Arrival of A Seaside Lullaby!

Click here to order a copy of A Seaside Lullaby

In one way, this story begins in the same place as my last post: at the same pediatric hospital, seven and a half years ago.  That time our eldest child was having his tonsils out – the largest tonsils the ENT had seen, apparently.  It was July, and in the midst of a heat wave.  

Sitting in the waiting room, I thought, we’ve got to make a plan to get away; somewhere with breezes and cool at night, but warm during the day for swimming, low-key but with enough space and amenities to make traveling with young children manageable, and with interesting things to do.  I remembered the place that friends have mentioned, rental cottages on a freshwater lake, blocks from the beach, in a small town on Cape Cod.  

Marsh grass & tidal flats, Skaket Beach MA

Endless space to wander

So we go, and it is a wonderful week.  One day, early morning (see above: “young children”) we go to a beach that’s been recommended to us, Skaket in Orleans MA. We’ve checked the tides and have gone when it’s low tide.  We discover a truly magical place.  Tidal pools and flats that spread out, seemingly, to the horizon.  It’s enchanting, and we spend the whole morning wandering and exploring, with no plan, no agenda, and no schedule.  We just meander around and have fun and enjoy it.  Clearly it made such an impression that I was pretty much compelled to write a book about it. 

Room to run, room to explore

What form the book would take, though, revealed itself only over a long time.  I was fascinated by the idea of tidal areas; neither here nor there, betwixt and between, not land, not sea, and all the legends, myths, and holds on the imagination with which this concept has hypnotized humans since first we reached the sea.  At the turn of the tide: when there’s a big change.  Babies are born, souls move on.  Battles are won or lost.  Societies change direction. Civilizations crumble and fall, and civilizations rise.  Ideas gain hold, and ideas gather dust and dwindle away.  

Moonlight ripples on the water

And dreams.  What of that dream-state, when we are neither awake nor full asleep? When our minds wander where they will.  All of this swirled around me for a number of years while I sketched rhymes and phrases and scrawled in a notebook.  Finally, though most likely I'm not done with exploring this, the direction for this particular book took hold (two years after my self-imposed due date, which was the birth of my nephew to whom the book is dedicated).  It’s an especially relevant dedication, since he and I have an ocean between us.  

Examining a hermit crab

Curious clam

Scuttle crab up close

 

Careful what you touch

 
Once I had direction, it was a matter of finding the right words to express the joy of a child exploring tidal pools and discovering all the flora and fauna therein, and to capture the timeless lullaby of the sea.  That took some time.  The next step was illustrations, and for these I worked with a talented young artist, Elizabeth Liedtka.  She completely understood my vision, and created beautiful art that complements and enhances the storyline. A Seaside Lulllaby is infinitely better because of her illustrations.  I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to collaborate with her.

I approved the final draft (literally, I basically click “publish”, which is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying) and the first copies arrived just days before my son’s accident detailed in the aforementioned previous post.

So here I am, finally announcing the launch of A Seaside Lullaby.  Officially the book is meant for ages two to six, to be read aloud and experienced with a grown-up.  To me, though, the book is for everyone.  Falling asleep to the rhythm of the waves, waking up to a fresh new glorious day on the beach and wandering around, exploring, observing, and discovering, breathing and playing, watching and wondering, well, that is something pure and beautiful for all ages.  

Click here to order a copy of A Seaside Lullaby

 

End of the day

What Brought You to Your Yoga Mat?

What Brought You to Your Yoga Mat?

October 15^th 2017: 

I spread out my yoga mat in a pediatric hospital room. Might seem an odd place to practice yoga, and I realize that, and I think about how my teachers often saying at the beginning and end of class, “What brought you to your yoga mat today?”.  

Walking in the Healing Garden, October 16th, 2017

1980:

In the living room of my childhood home, I spend hours reading a book called Be A Frog, A Bird, or A Tree:  Rachel Carr’s Creative Yoga Exercises for Children by Rachel Carr (1973, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City NY) and trying to imitate the poses.  I am fascinated by it, am not ever being bored of trying to make my stomach expand like a balloon and then exhale back down, or attempting to balance like a boat, or jump like a frog.  It is such great fun, and I love moving and twisting my body to look the children in the pictures.   

2000:

I haven’t practiced yoga since.  The book was no longer available to me, and it’s still before the advent of yoga classes in schools, community centers, and the spread of private studios. And the Internet is still young – there’s no such thing as “high-speed”, let alone “wifi” and, mercifully, “blogging” has yet to offend ears as the term hasn’t been coined.  So even if I’d gone looking for “local yoga”, no search engine could have produced anything near a helpful response.  But when I see a class listed in a local evening education program catalogue, I go.  I purchase a yoga mat, which I still use.  And in class, my body remembers the poses, and even the names of the poses.  For me it’s an incredible experience.  

2002-2003:

During my first pregnancy, my birth center recommends a pre-natal yoga course, and I’m excited to sign up.  After a rough time with “morning” sickness, getting out and moving a little sounds great.   It’s taught by an amazing woman who’s had six children over two decades, with vastly different experiences over that time.  Her insights into both healthy yoga poses during pregnancy and pregnancy, labour, breastfeeding, and caring for infants are invaluable.  She lets us tape record classes so that we can practice at home, and I do, daily.  The meditations during savasana stay with me still, and sometimes during the night when I can’t sleep, I think about her words and practice their visualizations.  This is particularly so during the time that my father was ill with metastatic cancer, and again when I hold my youngest child in my arms all night, in a pediatric intensive care unit while he is in an induced coma.  

After my first child is born, I go to her post-natal yoga class to which we are welcomed and encouraged to bring our newborns.  It’s about the only thing I can manage to leave the apartment to do, except for urgent grocery store runs and walking down to wait for my husband’s train in the evening.  Nobody else I know has a baby, and most of my close friends have recently moved.  I adore my baby, but the days are long.  When I go to yoga, a few people from my birthing class are there, and it’s great to connect, stretch, see each other’s babies, talk, breathe…..breathe……and again learn so much from the instructor.  Not to mention the ultimate bonding experience of sharing wipes (wipes! wipes now please!) when the tiny creatures manage to explode poop like a volcano, up out of their diapers reaching their hair.  Babies are talented. 

2003-2008:

With two young children, I have a sporadic, yet, let’s say, highly energetic yoga practice at home.  Same mat, but materials via DVD’s, books, and gaming systems are now readily available.  I get a book about doing yoga with babies, and it has a definite impact.  My children still remember crawling underneath me during cat/cow and how what a blast that was. My oldest calls me into the room when the youngest is about 15 months, saying “He’s doing something”.  He was.  Quite a good downward dog. On the sofa.  Points for form.  

"Doing Something" 2007

2009-2016:

Yoga has mainstreamed to the Y, plus my youngest has started preschool.  So for several years I attend a variety of classes in yoga, including one class with an instructor that does a great blend with pilates.  

October, 2016:

Life changes, and around the time that none of us are using the Y much anymore, I’m helping chaperone a school field trip when I meet a woman whose children are the same ages as mine, and who happens to have a yoga studio. She offers me a stretch suggestion when I honestly feel like I cannot keep up with trekking round the hills any longer. It’s brilliant and effective, and so I check out her studio. 

It’s not just another yoga studio.  All of the teachers have a different background and approach to yoga, and they are all incredible and offer a unique perspective with small, individualized classes.  It is a perfect fit for me in all aspects: exercise, stretching, breathing, reflecting, thinking, connecting with others.  Which makes sense, because the studio’s name is Balanced For Life.  And that’s exactly what it provides: balance for life.   This is the studio where often class begins with the teacher asking “What brought you to your yoga mat today?"

October 13^th, 2017:

My youngest son is in the backyard playing with a friend.  It’s a Friday, and this is typically what they do.  I hear them running around outside; it’s a warm afternoon and the windows are open.  They run in and out of the house, getting snacks and water and answering my question of when to drive the friend home with the response that his dad is leaving work early and will come get him.

I go outside to ask when exactly his dad is coming. My son has a party this evening and needs to shower and get ready.  I don’t see or hear anyone in the backyard and call for them.  I’m distracted momentarily because the cat’s tent is twisted up.  

Then the friend appears and says, in reference to my son, “I think he’s joking, he has a rope around his neck”. 

What? I say.  What are you talking about? What are you possibly talking about.  Putting a rope around your neck is not a joke.  

I run to the back of the play fort. And in fact, yes, my son has a rope around his neck, but this is no joke.  It’s tight around his neck, and he’s slumped on his knees against the back of the playfort.  His face is pale.   

Okay. Get the rope off. Need more slack.  Can’t risk the rope digging in more or catching his neck at a bad angle.  Scream for the friend to lift his legs as I struggle to get the rope off. 

The rope is off, he’s on the ground.  But he’s not breathing.  His eyes are rolled back and partly open.  His body is limp. His skin is a so-wrong colour.  I want to shake him, somehow shake him back to life, as ridiculous as that sounds.  I don’t.  I pull it together, go full on zen-focus.  

I start CPR, the really hard strong vigorous CPR like you’re supposed to.  It feels weird when practicing in class, but listen to me on this: in a crisis you will have no trouble compressing that chest with everything you have plus more.  Also perhaps good to know is that there might be some nonsensical bits added in that aren’t part of training at all, like shouting for the person to wake up.  Or even though breaths aren’t that effective and CPR is what really matters, doing a couple anyway, because of some basic, primal urge to literally give this pale, still child breath.  

And it works.  It works.  All of a sudden, he takes a deep, ragged breath, followed regularly by more of these ragged, not normal breaths.  But he’s breathing.  

And then, under my hands, I feel his heart start to beat.  I keep one hand on his heart, to make sure it keeps on beating, and I call 911 with the other. 

It takes 4 minutes and 39 seconds for EMS to arrive, even though, as I keep telling the emergency dispatcher, they’re literally located around the corner and could have walked here in half the time.  Make that a quarter of the time, even including rolling a stretcher down the street. 

When we transferred from the nearest hospital to a pediatric trauma hospital, the EMS team head prepared me for what I would see when I arrived:  A roomful of people in paper yellow gowns.  I guess that’s intimidating or frightening to some people.  To me, when I saw it, I felt comforted and in awe: that there was this many people, highly educated with specialized training, all present to help my child with whatever was necessary.  

Because that’s to what they have dedicated their lives; work their hardest and do everything they can to save the lives of children and give them the best possible outcome.  Trauma surgery, neurology, pediatrics, anaesthesiology, so many that I can’t recall even though I kept scanning the room, trying to remember.   Plus a chaplain, to explain what was happening and to assist in any manner possible – answer questions, help advocate, make phone calls, bring water, offer prayers.  Someone just for the parents and family, to provide help in a time of crisis.

The power of a brother ET touch, October 14th, 2017

                                    

October 15^th, 2017:

To keep going in a crisis, especially one with an unknown road ahead, you need to stay strong and healthy, and for that you need support.  So that’s what I was doing on my yoga mat in a room in the regular pediatric unit.  There was more space there than in the PICU, and, more relevantly, time for me to do a few stretches.  It’d been a difficult few days, and the body responds as much as the mind.  Yoga helps heal both.  Even just a few minutes of settling in and breathing deeply.

December 3^rd, 2017:

In addition to the amazing hospital staff, our family was buoyed by an absolute outpouring of support from our community, near and far.  Family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, staff from our children’s schools, acquaintances, and people we didn’t even know all sent prayers (in different faiths, beliefs, traditions and spiritual practices), thoughts, messages, meals, cards, treats, calls, and offers to help in any way they could.  We could literally feel the love and caring connecting us all, and I can’t begin to describe the difference it made to all of us.  I also don’t have sufficient words to express our gratitude.  Thank you.

Early morning, Healing Garden off the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, October 14th 2017

                                             

It’s taken me a while to find enough time to write this.  The phrase “What brought you to your yoga mat?” was my impetus, because it evokes the journeys we go through in life, whether throughout a day or something over time. Why have you chosen to take time out of everything you need to do to be on your yoga mat right now?  I wanted to express some what we experienced during this particular journey.  

Our son has made an incredible recovery, and is almost back to a regular academic, social, and athletic schedule.  Every single person involved was essential to this journey and, in the end, it illustrates that we are all one community.  We are all on a journey, facing an unknown road ahead no matter what what’s currently going on in our lives and what plans we make.  None of us can do it on our own.  Recognizing this and choosing to be actively part of the community and to be both present and available when needed and to graciously receive help when needed is how best to travel the unknown road: together.