Watch the Stinker

During Ella's first month of life, she slept most of the day. She was the most peaceful thing I had ever laid eyes on. No jostling, loud noises, cold face clothes could wake her from that deep dreaming state. I know she dreamed. Her eyelids would flutter and her little mouth would twitch into a blissful smile. Our nanny, Edna, who is very catholic, would make the comment, "look, she's talking to her angel." That would make me smile. Despite a turbulent environment filled with Daddy's dark days of depression, Mommy's swinging hormones, Neal's two year old excitability, Ella slept. Her presence, in spite of all these outside disruptions, brought calmness. She was perfection and peace.

All (sleeping) babies are perfect, I think. At least mine were. We celebrate a baby's birth because it is a joyous time. Babies don't DO anything. They just ARE and people are drawn to their stillness. For the first six months, people have no serious expectations of babies. I felt like a superstar, walking through the park with my little bundle strapped to my chest. People of all walks of life would gaze in my direction and look at me with kind soft eyes, and flash me warm smiles. I would have to remind myself that they weren't really lavishing this adoration on me; they were naturally drawn to beautiful baby anchored to my chest. I remember experiencing the same thing when Neal was an infant not to mention when the Moo was a puppy. I also remember how short that period of perfection lasted.

I think it ended at 12 weeks. At 12 weeks, babies are handed their first expectation. They are expected to sleep for longer periods of time. Chatting with other new Moms, the topic would inevitably land on sleep or lack thereof.

Thankfully, my baby boy had been a pretty good sleeper, so I had no concerns. He measured up but a few months later, the question on everybody's mind was:."Is he sitting?" Then: "Is he crawling?" and of course the big one: "Is he walking?"

We desperately want our children to succeed and those first milestones, meaningless as they are in the grand scheme of things, are so laden with expectation among parents. The idea that one's child may not keep up with their peers intellectually, or worse that the parent, him or herself, has not provided the right kinds of opportunities for their child to succeed, stirs the pot of insanity. As a teacher, before having children of my own, I had observed many parents inflicted with this inner turmoil, or as I had come to describe it wing-nuttiness.

My personal favourite wing-nut was the mother of a student in my Grade One class many years ago. "Flexible Grouping" was a common practice at this particular school. There were multiple classes at each grade level and the teachers worked together and frequently traded students for various subjects. In Math, we decided that it would be helpful to have homogeneous classes - that is, students of like ability working together. We created the classes based on a "pre-test" and then placed the students in their appropriate level.

The students were never told WHAT level was what, merely that each class was working on different skills that would challenge them. One day shortly after the new Math classes were underway, I had a request from a parent to meet with me. She was flustered as she attempted to explain her concerns. She knew that we had leveled the students in Math. She knew who the “top students” were. She asked her son if he was in the same class as them and when he told her "no" she was SHOCKED and presumed that we had made a mistake. Her son was GIFTED in Math. To prove that her son belonged with the "top students" she invited several of these kids over to her house after school and gave them a test of her own.

"See," she said, "my child outdid them. He BELONGS in the high level class." Mindboggling. As a childless teacher, I swore up and down that if I ever had children of my own, I would NEVER be that nuts...

Flash-forward 9 years.

When Ella was three weeks old, I enrolled Neal in a gymnastics class. Yeah, I know. The idea of attempting to do anything when you are three weeks postpartum is insane enough, but my heart was in the right place. I figured that having a fun one-on-one activity with Neal would help ease the transition for him.

The key word is fun. It was supposed to be fun. After twenty minutes of the first class, we were NOT having fun. He was over-stimulated by the colourful apparatus and throngs of children. An empath by nature, he was absorbing the exciting energy emanating from the thirty-some kids ranging from eighteen months to four years in age who were bouncing everywhere and every way. My little dude was ready to jump out of his skin. To top it off, the coaches expected us to sit still and listen to long, drawn out instructions, and to, politely, wait for our turn on the trampoline. The experience could be likened to taming a butterfly. It wasn't going to happen. We recognized that he wasn't ready for this kind of chaotic structure and politely asked the head coach if we could defer our admission until the fall session. Her response: "How old is he?"

"He just turned Two."

"We don't refund or defer admissions. He will be fine though. EIGHTEEN-MONTH-OLD kids do this class.

And there it was, BAM! the loaded expectation that if kids six months younger than ours could do this, we had NO CHOICE but to prove that ours was equally capable. So, for the next three Wednesdays, Neal and I stumbled our way through the corridors of toddler/parent wonderland, pretending that the grotesque, enchanted gym was fun, but in reality feeling quite trapped and bitter. Tantrums ensued. I listened to my own voice repeating: "no" while my inner voice screamed expletives.

Fun? Oh yeah, it was a barrel of monkeys, I tell ya! I knew before starting the third class that my energy reserves were low. Ella had been up most of the night. I was running on sheer adrenaline. I tried to prepare myself mentally for gymnastics class but Neal was in monkey mode before we even set foot on the mats. The instructor had gathered all the toddlers in a circle. "Put your hands on your head, if you're listening," she sang. Neal's hands (and feet) were thrashing about as I tried to hold him on my lap. It seemed all the other automaton children were sitting calmly. Mine was a tornado. The other parents sat smugly, with thoughts so loud they could rival Neal's shrieks: "Thank God my kid is listening". Ouch.

Neal managed to propel himself free from my grip and stormed across the sea of blue bouncy mats, hurling himself into the quicksand pit. No, really. I'm not being poetic here. There was a pit of endless foam blocks and once one was immersed in them, he or she would have to perform the Michael Phelps butterfly stroke in order to avoid suffocation.

It was beautiful. By the time I rescued Neal, sweat dripping off my forehead, our teacher was demonstrating to the class how to do handstands against the wall. I felt my little contortionist, go limp as I dragged him across the mat back to the three ring circus. I was enlightened by a flash of truth for brief moment. This was NOT fun. We were outta there and never looked back.

By the time I got to the car, both Neal and I were flooded with tears. Feeling like a failure, I tried to figure out where we had gone wrong. Suddenly, my perfect, beautiful, baby boy was a muddy reflection of my own shortcomings. Disturbing thoughts trampled through my mind. Why couldn't Neal sit quietly and follow the instructions like his toddler peers? Was he developmentally delayed? What if he had a severe learning disability? What if he was emotionally stunted? What if he had some form of autism? How did this happen? What were we going to do? Yes, I suddenly identified with those scared wing-nut parents that I vowed I would never be.

My husband, who is no stranger to wing-nut land, was in the midst of reading Eckhart Tolle's book, "The Power of Now" and kept repeating the mantra, "Watch the Thinker". He tried to impart Eckhart’s theory that our mind imprisons us in the past and future and that our thoughts (certainly our negative ones) serve no purpose but to cause suffering. If we can live in the "now" and be aware and separate from our thoughts, only then will we master our emotions. Living in a society that values intelligence and good thinkers, it is a difficult paradigm to appreciate. Yet, my mind was certainly causing me a great deal of pain and, when the anxiety started to creep in, I decided I needed to try to further my practice of "living in the now".

A friend of mine suggested I try meditation. I pondered the idea. Meditation, like the thing you do at the end of a yoga class. Oh dear God, did I really want to attempt another Yoga experience? I have tried Yoga on three previous occasions and while I know that Yoga is supposed to be all about finding Zen and serenity, it has only caused me humiliation and pain.

Simply put, I hate Yoga. The first time I tried it was with my staff in the school library. We were told to take off our socks and shoes. It was at the end of a long day. I did as I was told and seconds later the polished Parisian lady a few mats over was turning her nose up with extreme concern. "What is zat stink? It smells like feet!" I knew I was the culprit, but I wasn't about to raise my hand and tell the staff, "yes, fellow Yogis, it's MY feet that you smell." When I saw the fastidious French lady pulling her own foot towards her nose and shaking her head, I got the giggles, immature giggles that you can't control. The rest of the class was an exercise in extreme pain. I couldn't concentrate on anything other than trying to hide my foot stink.

The next time I tried Yoga it was with a friend I was carpooling with. We decided to stop by the university on the way home and check out the class. It was really her idea, but I tagged along anyway, thinking that maybe my second Yoga experience would be better. It wasn't. It didn't bode well that we were late. People stared at us as we quickly tried to melt into the "peaceful" studio. The teacher wasn't impressed with my lack of flexibility and kept trying to correct my positions. I didn't really want to be corrected. I wanted to be invisible.

Just when I thought I could be invisible when we started the cool down meditation, my cell phone rang. Embarrassed and angry with myself for neglecting to turn it off, I looked at my choices: Ignore the phone - because who would know it was mine? Or suck it up and turn it off. Ignoring the phone didn't work. The person calling (my Mom) was persistent. She called three times.

The last time I tried Yoga, I was pregnant and flatulent. Need I say more?

So, it took a lot of courage for me to seek out a PRIVATE meditation session with a life coach last week. In the 90 minute session, she walked me through various "Mindfulness" routines and sent me off with homework. My task was to take time each day to truly focus my attention on living in the present moment. To fully engage my senses in every way and to observe my thoughts as though they were playing on a movie screen.

In the meantime, I’ve read that book Ken was quoting The book added a structure and set of rules to something that had been a part of my approach to life. Watching the thinker changed from useless advice from my husband to something I could put into practice. It was almost like learning magic spells.

So I've been putting forth my best effort to "watch the thinker" and my first real test came a couple of days ago. It happened at Chapters, in the kid’s area, a frequent haunt for Neal and I. Neal was quietly pushing Thomas the Tank Engine along the tattered train table and my attention was drawn to a Mom and little boy sitting at the table next to where I was standing. The Mom was touching the bright colours of an abacus, her fingertips sliding each ball from one side to the other. Clearly and precisely, the little boy was counting as she moved the colourful balls. I couldn't help but watch impressively as he made it all the way to 100. Knowing that it was a goal for my grade 1 students to count and understand the concept of 100, I figured that this little boy must be a very bright a 4 year old. He didn't look much bigger than Neal, but then again Neal sometimes fits into size 4 clothes. I smiled at the boy and the Mom and exclaimed in my familiar teacher voice, "What a good counter you are! How old are you?" He answered, "I'm two!" BAM! There it was again, that sharp kick to my emotional intestines. And then I managed to catch the thinker.

Babbling confidently to himself, wearing his best Spider-man apparel, my Son looked up at me and shrieked, "HI MOM!" and once again I was momentarily enlightened. He may not sit for a twenty minute gymnastics dissertation, he cannot count to 100, but my two year old has what every adult human envies: He is happy. He loves life and he has not yet internalized the burden of expectations. I hope he never does.