Category: Words in Sentences

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San Fran, CA – 2019 (SFO)

by ErinLeave a Comment on San Fran, CA – 2019 (SFO)

fullsizeoutput_d8b7.jpegHave you seen Ellen lately? This is her back in June – perfectly packed – at ease on our BART commute to Union Square for a 46 hour stint in San Francisco.

This picture is so rich to me. And perhaps I am reflecting on her because I have been in her room doing some deep “have you really been dusting” cleaning. Her room got to the point last week that it was just time to be rearranged, re-thought, evolved.

I sit (absolutely covered in dust) with a Starburst wrapper stuck on the bottom of my bare left foot and am in awe of how I am more in love with my oldest child than ever.

As I prepare to bring a bin up to start gathering up her nursery items, her kid room items, and leave it minimal – cool – updated, I realize the extent to which she and I have a decade behind us. For the most part, I know when and where she got things. I know the sentimental value behind the items in her room from her mom: items I made her because I love the little things like her sense of time and her feet.

For example, I printed this picture of her feet (one arch folded over the other, the way they still end up when she sleeps curled up on her belly) which were soles up at me while I was driving her and her sister across the country. It was taken in our van, she was dozing in the front seat in such a way that her perfect feet were nestled next to the road atlas. I decoupaged the picture onto a little box that now stores her guitar picks.

Ellen and travel just go together. (Along with her need for sleep.)

As I round out my thirties, I realize just how much the hard parts of my life are more easily navigated when I use what comes easy to me or how they are more fun and enriching when I incorporate what I love; what “just goes with” who I am.

Likewise, I recognize the effort in the ease. I hope she learns this relationship between easy and hard things early. How the surrender and the edge work together. Yet sometimes I think she already knows on a deeper level how to let go and be in the still moments that come.

Still moments like when you are waiting for when the BART will finally take off through the painted neighborhoods, to the heart of San Francisco. A city that provides a shared pulse for me and Ellen.

San Fran gets her the same way it gets me. It is a pure kind of connection that puts a person at ease before ever having arrived.

That’s it for now. #backtocleaning #sanfrancisco

Showing Up Prayer

by ErinLeave a Comment on Showing Up Prayer

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Empower and motivate us to show up –

for our spirituality, with our gifts and for our community.

Creatively – practically – financially – help us show up..

for the world – for justice – in small ways (looking another straight in the eye) to big, bold statements – politically – motivate us to show up –

in new relationships and in our existing ones, in our existing ways – help us show up.

 

I AM THE GOOSE (original)

by Erin2 Comments on I AM THE GOOSE (original)

AUGUST 3, 2019BY ERIN

Context:

goose

 

Allow me to build on my sentiment,

“I legit expect my kids to follow me following the goose”…

In my earliest year as a mother (age: 23), I remember turning my infant’s life over to the greater connected protection of the universe, The Big Love.

I sat, uneasy in the rocking chair, playing back the previous night’s episode of Law and Order, special victims unit in a post 9/11, post Columbine afternoon.

The curtains hung in the dusk-dusted nursery where a summer nap was being kept at bay. I was restless, contemplating these evils in humanity.

I did not want to “mother afraid”.

I did not want to “worry all the time”.

I did not want the pressure of “best” or the perceived stain of “worst”.

I did not want the responsibility of her story or her decisions. I did not want her carrying the weight of my own, personal regret.

In between that afternoon, where I “turned her over” to good, and the first time I watched her crawl away from me in accordance with her own curiosity, my motherhood journey became a continual invitation to Ellen (and eventually her sister, Lucy) to follow me.

Rhianna enforced afternoons in the Jeep, combing back the long way towards home from the zoo. Pizza adorned fingernails washed up in the historic tub of an ABQ lavender farm, watching sharks in Denver… trying Turkish delight in Park City…

I took on my life; them incorporated.

Our stories are plentiful, meaningful and thick. The meaning of being their leader, their goose, is never lost on me. In and out of the car, into museums and onto the plane: they have followed me.

Unlike the goose (though their personal notice is at least consistent in advertising inconsistency and temperament), I offer, give and set expectations to and of my daughters. Always gauging the fine, traumatic line of projecting one’s own experience; taking care to avoid infusing too much of the state of the world into the future. 

Indeed. This is the paradox of being more than a “goose goose” or a Mother Goose; pecking rhyme-based rhythm and order.

Aha! See, I am *the goose*, living both into her future and ushering her goslings on in their own.