Relationships and Exhaustion

I think one of the biggest killers of good relationships is Exhaustion. When we all have so much we Have To Do, how do we have any energy left for something extra? At the end of a long day of work or childcare, what is left for our life partner?

My husband and I both work full-time, with the addition of a 1-2 hour commute each direction for him, and two small children at home that I am homeschooling. We are tired. I have been guilty of turning to him and saying that I just think it would be easier to not be in relationship anymore - of all the things in my life that are not optional, our relationship is one of the only things I could "give up" to free up more time and energy.

It's also really hard for me to have him home on the weekend, and watch him go off to take a nap instead of either helping me around the house or spending time with me. But he's tired - he works too much. I'm tired too.

We are still far from solving this problem in our lives, but here is a kernel of wisdom that is helping me right now.

My minister gave a sermon on marriage this week, and he said he doesn't like it when people say you have to "work at your relationship". That in fact, in our work-obsessed and driven culture, that last thing we need is more work. Rather, it would be better to think of "paying attention" and "being mindful" of our relationships.

This idea is a great comfort to me. If we don't have the energy to "work" on our relationship every day, we should still have the energy to "pay attention" to each other. Even if all we do is wave wearily to each other as we pass like ships in the night, we are alright.

So pay attention and be mindful, but don't make more "work" for yourself.

Talking about Relationships

This week, in honor of Valentine's Day, I present you with a week of my completely unsolicitated, anecdotal, and opinionated advice about maintaining a happy relationship. And I have the gall to do this even though I don't have a perfect relationship!

The first piece of advice is to try and Be romantic and loving while not Expecting romance.

I grew up on a diet of romance novels, which all left me with the impression that true love came with Grand Gestures.

What I have found in life is that my husband does not Do Grand Gestures. Don't ask us for the story of when he proposed - nope, no proposal. This has caused me much disappointment and distress, but it doesn't have to.

Will he make me feel like a Princess? No. Should he have to? No. You know who can make you feel like a Princess? YOU. Buy yourself flowers, take time for massages or pedicures, make the effort to dress yourself so you feel good about your body, and generally practice true self-care. And then, after you've done that for yourself, try and do it for your partner.

If you feel good about yourself, other people are more likely to feel good about you too. And if you feel good about yourself, you are going to be less resentful and irritable and find it easier to be loving toward others. It's an all-around win!

How They Grow

My baby is four years old. She's really not a baby anymore (despite a few lingering baby things she is loath to give up, such as sippy cups), and this is my last baby. No more babies for this Momma.

With the first baby, each new thing is an exciting milestone. He pushes ahead, moving us into being a new kind of family and new modes of living. With the last baby, each milestone is a bittersweet goodbye. No more nursing momma. No more baby slings. No more strollers. No more of that kind of parenting.

So goodbye to 3 year olds, and onward we go.

Russian Tales

We've had a bit of an accidental theme going with Hypatia's pictures books recently:

The Magic Nesting Doll is a fairy tale of a land locked in winter and night, and how one young girl must be both brave and loving to rescue the land and its prince. The illustrations, by Laurel Long, are lush and beautiful.

The Black Geese: A Baba Yaga Story from Russia is about a girl who is lax and lets her little brother be carried off so Baba Yaga can eat him! Through cleverness and bravery, she saves him and returns before her parents can discover her mistake.

The Littlest Matryoshka is a more American story, of a set of dolls waiting on the shelf to be bought by some child. It has an improbable ending, and I wasn't too impressed by it.

Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave starts off much like Cinderella, but then Vasilisa is sent to Baba Yaga and must work seemingly impossible tasks or be eaten. She is saved by the love of her dead mother, and her evil step-mother is instead punished by Baba Yaga.

The Snow Queen is another story of a boy carried off by a witch, this time the Snow Queen, and and his brave friend - a girl - who went after him and saved him through her love and bravery.

I've been struck by the fact that these stories are dominated by female characters - the heroes and the villains are all women. The stories are also very dark and violent, but they are fairy tales, after all.

Imbolc, and new family traditions

It was wonderfully simple, but that made it even better. Last night the kids and I celebrated our first Imbolc together as a family. I made a soup, using as much of our own homegrown food as possible - potatoes and carrots in cold storage in our garage, parsley from the kitchen window, eggs from our chickens. Eggs especially, as they symbolize rebirth and spring. We also had a bread from our bakery share.

We set the table and lit candles, and brought out the Brigid's Cross we had made from pipecleaners. Any time you eat by candlelight is a special time.

I read Brigid's Cloak to the kids, which is about the Christianized Saint Brigid, but is still lovely. And then the kids made a "bride's bed" - which I was going to do in a little basket but which they wanted to do with their own pillows and and a sleeping bag - and decided on their own to leave some bread out for the goddess. We then watched Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves together.

Easy, peasy, and lovely.

My 12 in 12 and One Small Change update

So I selected three areas of my life to make more important by giving myself monthly assignments in 2010: Environmental impact (One Small Change), outdoor play, and a personal social life. It's my 12 in 12 challenge.

January saw these efforts:

• No Buying. I did not buy anything all month, other than food, and in the process I saw my relationship with shopping in a different light.

• Playing outside - we packed a picnic and drove out to a pretty beach at a State Park.

• Social Life - I went to a friend's babyshower and my husband and I had a date night to go see Avatar.

Yesterday was the first day I could shop, and I did buy a few things that had come up: tights for Hypatia, gym shorts for Carbon, and the kids spent their accumulated allowances on toys. But our store behavior was very different from what it would have been before the No Buy month - we went into the stores with a list, and talked about what we were looking for (and what we were not looking to buy). The kids didn't beg and whine, and shopping took hardly any time at all.

Now we are trying to reduce/reuse plastic. I think this one is going to be harder than the simple ban on shopping was. I already messed up - yesterday I wasn't thinking and I bought a bag of Reeses Pieces (plastic bag).

Today's shopping trip to the co-op was also a big compromise on the plastic:

I wanted to buy certified humanely treated meat, but that came in plastic packaging.

I did reuse a shampoo bottle and refill it from the bulk section, and I did reuse plastic bags for snack food from the bulk section, such as that licorice in a sandwich bag. We had string bags for our produce, and we had our canvas shopping bags. We resisted all sorts of packaged snack and convenience foods.

But we bought mochi in plastic, and chapstick in plastic, and frozen juice has those plastic seal strips, and our homeopathic remedies came in plastic, and we were all thirsty and got drinks and one was in a plastic bottle, and even the soup box has a little plastic pour top!

This is going to be tough.

Sunday - lend a "hand"

Within the circles of our lives

we dance the circles of the years


the circles of the seasons

within the circles of the years,

the cycles of the moon

within the circles of the seasons,



the circles of our reasons

within the cycles of the moon.


Again, again we come and go,

changed, changing. Hands

join, unjoin in love and fear,

grief and joy. The circles turn,

each giving into each, into all.


Only music keeps us here,

each by all the others.


In the hold of hands and eyes

we turn in pairs, that joining

joining each to all again.


And then we turn aside, alone,

out of the sunlight gone

into the darker circles of return.

“Song (4)” Collected Poems -Wendell Berry




New space for our community. Hand prints of all, marking this space and blessing it, for these generations and for those that will follow us.