game sees game
the old trick of making a big mess even bigger in preparation for a therapy net to catch me
The high school spring lacrosse season kicked off yesterday. I was teaching yoga and milking. I missed it. I also missed Freddy’s first big literary event. Chris drove him out to Waitsfield while I was teaching up in Hardwick to meet the author of Magic Woods. He got autographs and photos and had a real, live flustered fan experience, just like Kitty Karate.
Our boys won both of their games. Scrimmages, really, but a great start. I spent the wee hours of last night poring over the nearly 800 photos that one of the dads shared with the group. I could feel the familiar thrill of the season rising inside of me, lacrosse mom identity beginning to take hold once again. A total outlier, really. A game of one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other. I do not blend in the lacrosse mom circuit. It’s not so severe during the high school season, but once club hits… naturally, I love being a little unexpected.
It was dumb to miss the day, but also caring for the cows is sacred work and I am thankful to dip into their orbit a couple of times a week. There were fresh calves at both of my recent shifts, and the slow concentration of attention required to teach them to take a bottle is good and grounding work. One of the mamas has mastitis and needed extra tending and care when she came through the parlor last night. Maybe it is because I know the feeling, or maybe it is simply because the cows are so gentle and kind, but doing my very best to offer them some relief and not compound or prolong any suffering captures not only my attention but all of my effort.
A deep and essential part of myself is likewise tended when I give myself to the task of chores. Nearly 100 animals are entirely in my care for a stretch of four hours twice a week. I give myself to them during these times. Even as I am absent from my own babies and missing moments with them that I am wired to witness. It’s a strange time for me, this lack of availability to the thing I’ve been centering my life around for over two decades.
But I go hard all the rest of the week, and that’s probably the ticket. The reprieve of chores like a massive in breath that recalibrates me within the timeless unfolding of the lifecycle of a cow.
I have started talking to a therapist once a week again. After too long a time away from this support. It is a whole thing to begin again with someone new. So much to dig up. So much ground to lay together. It’s a fucking slog, but it gets to the point where there remain zero viable alternatives, and so here we are. I had to give myself a big ‘ol pat on the back at the beginning of this particular round. It is the first time ever in my life that I haven’t acted out in some wildly self-destructive way in the days or hours leading up to a first appointment. It is a disgusting pattern, but one that is so predictable to me at this point that I can only chuckle. And have some compassion for the impulse, I guess. Like, I am just about to be caught (as in before I come crashing to the ground) anyway, so what does it matter?
But, bravo and back slaps, I didn’t do that this time. I simply began. Revealing each individual thread of back story so that the full picture comes slowly and painstakingly into focus. What I did do in the days leading up to this new beginning, instead of self-sabotaging, was to allow the fog of distorted reality and fantasy that live in opposition to the edifice of my dreams to dissolve out of my mind, out of my body. Like an exorcism, like a reclaimation. The change feels like growth, and I am proud of that. Turns out this old girl can still learn a new trick or two.
I also finally got my teenage son in to talk to someone this week. After nearly a year of looking. And wouldn’t ya know, he has a little of his mother in him. A little of the ‘ol I am just about to be caught, the tell-all is coming, so what do I care? Let the chaos spill all the way up and over the top. Let’s see what happens. So it came as zero surprise to come downstairs the morning of his first appointment to find
