TONGUE SUSHI

January 18th, 2012 by Diana
Respond

Saturday morning dance party in the yoga studio.  C is doing her wild-child, hair-tossing dance to Lady Gaga, sashaying across the floor to the insistent beat of “Poker Face.”  A is arranging her stuffed animals in a corner, constructing a house for Lambie and Penguin out of yoga blocks.  After a few songs, I slip out to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

Almost immediately, A follows suit.

“Ugh— I had to leave,” she announces.  “There’s a song about… K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”  She carefully spells out the offending word.

I suppress a smile.  “Really? What?”

“It keeps going “I kissed a girl and I liked it”!” says A indignantly.  She makes the icky face she uses when coerced into sampling something green at dinner.

Oh dear.  My new Katy Perry craze may be fun for dancing, but is clearly inappropriate for the First Grade set.  Little ears have grown bigger of late, and now keenly hear every word sung, spoken or spelled aloud in our home.

“Yeah, I guess that’s not really a kid’s song,” I apologize.  “But— why don’t you like kissing?”

“Because it’s GROSS!”

“Even when Daddy or I kiss you?”

“ Well…” A considers this a moment.  “How about hugging?” [Read more →]

Tags:   · · · · · 1 Comment

FIVE POINTED STAR: LIFE ON THE STAR ISLAND YOGA RETREAT

January 11th, 2012 by Diana
Respond

Here’s a post I wrote this fall, for Embody, the RASAMAYA Movement Center’s very cool blog.

Click HERE to read about life on magical Star Island.

Tags:   · · · 2 Comments

ABUNDANCE in 2012

January 5th, 2012 by Diana
Respond

HAPPY 2012!  I have a feeling this is going to be a good one.

I love turning the corner of the year and looking ahead to the wide expanse of a fresh calendar.  The promise that 2012 brings a new dawning of the Age of Aquarius has got me full of astrological hope.

And what relief to pass by the Winter Solstice and survive the accumulated pressure of the holidays.  However sweet, there are always pressures.

So on New Years Day I was bopping around the house, happy to be domestic while A & C were occupied by a playdate.  Sometimes the threesome dynamic is a disaster, but for some reason, these 3 girls (ages 4, 6, and 7) played beautifully.  I made a big pot of carrot-potato soup, singing along to my favorite 80s station on Pandora.  Here were some of my favorite, long-forgotten gems from adolescence:

Rick Springfield- Jesse’s Girl

Pat Benatar- Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Boston- More Than a Feeling

Tears for Fears- Don’t You Forget About Me

Yes, as a relatively new iPhone owner I am head over heels in love with Pandora.  I can get my dance groove on with Lady Gaga or punch in Hanukkah music and sing along to rockin’ Jewish tunes with the girls.  And there’s nothing like the classic 80s songs to bring back a flood of high school longings when I’m chopping onions…

Why do I forget how good music can make me feel?  What a simple way to uplift a low mood.

This year, my resolutions are to:

-DANCE and sing more

-keep a sense of HUMOR

-listen to my INTUITION

-express more GRATITUDE, and

-INVITE ABUNDANCE into my life in all ways

THANK YOU FOR BEARING WITNESS TO THESE RESOLUTIONS.  What are your intentions for 2012?

Tags:   · · · No Comments.

YOU’VE GOTTA SEE THIS!

January 3rd, 2012 by Diana
Respond

Wild Night on the Catwalk!  I was there, with my gorgeous mom friends.  One of whom was the one and only Desha Peacock– Red Carpet Hostess for Vermont’s hottest fashion show.  Watch and enjoy the magic:

Episode 5 of The Desha Show: Wild Night on the Catwalk from Desha Peacock on Vimeo.

Tags:   · 1 Comment

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

January 2nd, 2012 by Diana
Respond

from Visipix.com

The moon rose huge and red over Searsburg Mountain as we drove home from my mother’s. I stopped the car to marvel at the impossible color, a glowing apple suspended in the winter sky.

“Look, girls, the moon is red!”

But the girls were absorbed in Judy Moody, MD and didn’t care about lunar phenomenon. I turned off their audiobook and they exploded in protest.

“Mommy, turn it ON!” shrieked C.

“And keep driving!” ordered A.

“Just look out at the moon, quick,” I pleaded.  “It’s enormous.  They call it the Long Nights Moon, because it’s full in December.”

“I know,” said A.  “Now turn on Judy Moody. PLEASE.”

There’s some inherent sadness in Sunday night, especially when you are driving back to a dark, empty house where the thermostat is turned low and no dinner is waiting.  Winter weekends when my man is away, I can’t bear to be home alone for long.  I take the girls out for pizza or Chinese or drive through the dark to visit family and friends, seeking out light and companionship, hot food and conversation.

But then there’s Ma Ingalls on the Minnesota prairie, alone with three girls during a raging, three-day blizzard.  Ma had no car, no neighbors, no take-out, no cell phone— no way to call or text Pa, who’d walked to town for tobacco and gotten caught in the storm.  Bravely, she lit the oil lamp for him and placed it at the window.

For three days and nights, Ma never cried or complained, not when she had to trek through blinding snow and screaming winds to feed the stock and milk the cow.   Not when icy snow blew in beneath the doors and windows, swirling on the floor of the little house while her girls huddled shivering at the stove and still Pa did not come home.

Ma’s situation puts my rare solo time in perspective.  How privileged I am with my oil furnace and all-wheel-drive wagon and two phones.  How mobile we all are in this high-tech modern world—and how restless.

[Read more →]

Tags: No Comments.

HOLIDAY BLAH BLAH BLAH

January 2nd, 2012 by Diana
Respond

Here we go again, down the long, dark tunnel of December.  On the Monday after Thanksgiving, I reclined mutely in the dentist’s chair listening to pop Christmas music piped through the office.  In my vulnerable position, I was powerless to request anything but my toothpaste flavor.  Male a-cappella groups chimed “The 12 Days of Christmas” and some rock diva crooned a jingly version of “Sleigh Ride Together With You.”

Then my doe-eyed hygienist, nine months pregnant, told me she’d gotten a jump on the holidays this year… because of the baby.  She already had her tree up and decorated, all the presents wrapped and waiting beneath it.

A wave of nausea came over me.  The sickly-sweet cinnamon toothpaste burned my gums as I contemplated the energy and motivation required to be such an organized mother.

It’s the same energy I’d need to organize the hats, mittens, and wool socks currently stuffed in a jumbled basket in our living room, pawed through every morning by adults and children alike, strewn all over the floor for someone (Mom) to stuff back in.

There are organizational solutions out there, how-to books and women’s magazines chock-full of helpful tips.  Once I stumbled across a blog called “The Mom Writes: Fun and Frugal Solutions for The Work-at-Home Mom.”

This prolific and tireless blogger offers detailed posts on de-cluttering the home, but my brain starts to zone out when I scan through them, much as it does when my husband tries to explain our income tax return.  Restless, it simply won’t let me absorb the minutiae of de-cluttering drawers, closets, and kids’ rooms.

Does this really NEED to happen now? a voice asks when I contemplate tackling some tricky organizing task.  Wouldn’t it be more productive/rewarding to… make soup/ answer emails/ call my mother?

I’ve heard a rumor you can hire a life coach who doubles as an expert in de-cluttering and home organization.  I imagine a large, indomitable woman arriving at my house with a clipboard and a whistle around her neck, stoic as my high school track coach, Carol, whose grudging praise made me aspire to sprint my fastest every workout.

Likewise, my de-cluttering coach would stand by and keep me on target.  She would not flinch as I opened the downstairs closet door and took stock of the camping equipment, vacuum bags, wrapping paper, ice skates, extension cords, knitting supplies, and bags of old photographs and winter gear piled inside.  With quiet brilliance, compassion, and large plastic bins, she would help me sort and organize.  If someone happens to know this woman and wants to hire her for me as a Christmas present, I would be deeply grateful. [Read more →]

Tags:   · · · · · 1 Comment

MOMS’ NIGHT OUT

December 8th, 2011 by Diana
Respond

I almost went out dancing a few Fridays ago.  It seemed like a good idea that Thursday, when I read about the “infectious” Afrobeat band Fenibo playing at a bar downtown.

“Sometimes you just have to get out and shake it!” said one vivacious friend, a young pretty mother of three who has a new gleam in her eye now all her children are sleeping through the night.  Maybe a sweaty evening of dancing would shake me out of my late-fall funk.

But the band didn’t start till 9:30 pm.  At which time, I am usually sacked out in C’s bed or curled up with a novel in my own bed, or sometimes, in a burst of creative energy, writing at my desk, but rarely, if ever, downtown and dressed to dance.  I imagined putting the girls to bed and then slipping into tight jeans and a silver tank top.

Could I navigate the negotiations and demands of Bedtime— what books, which bed, the flossing and brushing and fluoride and jammies, the recent, indignant refusals from A to lie down calmly and stop spinning or hopping (“You’re not the boss of me!” she shouts.  “Why do I have to do what you say?!”  Or, once, tearfully— “Mommy, I feel like a pet and you are the owner!”)

Could I snuggle and read about the Ingalls family and Ma’s enviable starched white curtains sewn from old sheets and trimmed with her girls’ outgrown calico dresses and still not fall asleep?  Could I, after that whole motherly ritual, rally the energy to leave the house?  The inertia was overwhelming.  Without a good friend to drag me out, I simply could not pull a Clark Kent and transform myself into enough of a MILF to venture into a downtown bar.

Then a miracle occurred but one week later.  I conspired to have the house to myself for 24 hours, on the very same evening of Wild Night on the Catwalk, the gala fashion show up at the Putney School (benefitting Brattleboro Area Hospice).  Jazzed with anticipation, I planned a Moms’ primping and Prosecco pre-party at my place, starting at the respectable hour of 5:30 pm.

We blasted Lady Gaga and got dolled up, trading jewelry and make-up, eyelash curlers and glitter.  I zipped myself into a red silk halter dress I’d found at Boomerang and—making the va-va-voom statement of my life— slipped on some 4-inch, leopard-print stilettos.

I threw the booster seats in the back of the station wagon and managed to squeeze six fancy moms into one car (our collective nine children in the care of their kind fathers and grandparents). Freed from the drab Vermont garb of jeans and wool, my friends were a gorgeous bunch, decked out in retro black mini-dresses, royal blue strapless, and animal-print chiffon.

“Do I need some more glitter?” I kept asking as we zoomed north on 91, trying to make the red-carpet scene with TV show host Desha Peacock. [Read more →]

Tags:   · · · · 4 Comments

ODE TO FABULOUS, CREATIVE WOMEN

November 22nd, 2011 by Diana
Respond

This one goes out to all the amazing women in my life who inspire me EVERY DAY with their creativity and passion.

Desha Peacock in action

Just Saturday night I went out to a gala Fashion Show– WILD NIGHT ON THE CATWALK– where my friend Desha Peacock hosted the Red Carpet scene. Desha is a blogger and has her own TV show and there she was, all decked out in designer sequins, interviewing models and guests in her enchanting Southern accent, looking like she could be on E! or something.

Except Desha is one-of-a-kind, not a plastic Hollywood-clone– she’s funny and warm and drop-dead gorgeous to boot, an authentic, artistic, tres-chic Vermont-transplant.  (Plus she’s the loving mom of an adorable 5-year-old who plays with my girls!)

All dolled up and (finally) someplace to go!

Yes, on Saturday I actually WENT OUT with a group of women friends and felt alive surrounded by their fun energy and sheer good looks.  (Everyone looked HOT that night, clad in tight frocks and freed from the usual drab VT uniform of jeans, wool, and clogs.)

These women are strong and smart, they have both children and jobs.  They give to their families, clients, patients, customers, and/or students every day.  They also somehow, despite the demands on them, despite being tired or down or sick or lonely sometimes, find creative outlets in their lives. [Read more →]

Tags:   · · · · 1 Comment

HAVING TEA WITH SYLVIA PLATH

November 7th, 2011 by Diana
Respond

The blood jet is poetry,

There is no stopping it.

You hand me two children, two roses.

I found this quote again yesterday.  Back in college, these were my favorite lines from Sylvia Plath, though I didn’t understand the children and roses part (on any level beyond the symbolic).  The “blood jet” spoke to me directly, of course, evoking my own passion for confessional poetry and emotionally-charged images.

But yesterday I stumbled upon my mother’s dog-eared  first-edition of Ariel, Plath’s stunning book published posthumously in 1965.  There were the lines again, from the poem “Kindness,” one of the last poems she wrote in the desperate weeks before her death.  Maybe if Plath had compiled the Ariel poems herself (rather than her adulterous ex, Ted Hughes) she would have chosen this poem and these words as her finale.  My compelling professor, the poet Cleopatra Mathis, herself a mother of two, suggested this possibility once during a lecture and I’ve always believed her hypothesis.

Blood jet and roses.  Poetry and children…  A woman can have both.  The life force of creativity and the life force of motherhood are not mutually exclusive.  The poem’s ending can almost be read as a message of hope…  I say almost because we can only read it (now) through the lens of Plath’s life and death.  Her suicide came in the bitter cold winter of 1963, alone in a freezing London flat with two babies– babies!  The boy was 12 months old, the girl not yet three.  I think of my own desperate isolation when my girls were that age.  How completely I relied on my husband– my life partner– for survival, for occasional bouts of freedom.

But Plath was a single mother deep in the Baby Cave, a brilliant poet and scholar in a misogynistic era, a fiercely ambitious woman who struggled all her life with bouts of depression–  without access to Lexapro or yoga class or the post-feminist ideal that educated parents should split childcare and domestic chores 50/50.

Plath couldn’t open the Sunday paper and  read about Elisabeth Badinter, the chic French intellectual who defends professional women from the moral chains of being a “perfect mother.”  Plath couldn’t go out with her best girlfriends and watch Who Does She Think She Is?, then talk about the challenges of mixing art and motherhood. [Read more →]

Tags:   · · · · · 2 Comments