Answering My Own Questions About Summer from May 1, on August 22.

I had this idea in May to document my planned sabbatical from this Existing Together work to dive in fully to being with my children work. I wrote about it a few times this summer - not as much as I was expecting! Instead I found myself immersed in it! So as the summer comes to a close I’m reflecting on it by answering my own questions from back in May.

• Can I find renewal and rest while with my kids way more than I am during the school year, without paying more money and/or screen-blitzing them?
  A miracle, somehow this happened! It’s not that I wasn’t burnt out some times, but the difference is I didn’t hold onto it. My practice has been: I feel burnt out right now! It’s so hard. And then not making it about the future! Turns out making it about the future makes it harder than it has to be.
  

• Can I introduce them to more people doing more things they want to do, and set up learning exchanges with friends that feel nourishing for all of us?
  I didn’t do this as much as I had planned, but a dream situation that happened was my mom and her best friend came for jewelry camp (something Chop (7) has been interested in for ages!). My mom’s best friend brought so many beads and supplies (very generous!) and her beautiful intuition about how much to teach and when. It brought me joy on so many levels, and my mom, and her friend, and the kids. My favorite part was the kids getting to experience the expertise of older people - across generations.
  

• Can we have people over more and not feel overwhelmed? Or lean into feeling overwhelmed?
  We didn’t have people over much at all. And that felt just right!
  

• What if we get to delight in the bliss of not having to get out the door so often, so early?
  We DELIGHTED.
  

• Can we deepen into presence within conflict, expand our relational capacity together?
  Somehow I do feel we deepened with each other. There’s something for me about becoming a “worse parent” makes me a better parent. Do you know what I mean? Like the more I let go of my idea of how I should be as a parent, the more authentic and deep our relationships become, even as they might look messier, or something. The kids fought so much! It was exhausting. But also, I’m so grateful for the times together, even in the fighting, there’s a beauty to the intimacy of it. Beauty is only in the real, I feel.
  

• Can Bogs (3) learn to ride a bike with pedals?
  She did not yet. We tried a bit, but not enough. It’s hard on the old back hahahaha. And! With Chop, it felt like he wasn’t ready for forever, aka it was effortful, and then one day, he just did it. So that non-effort is in the back of my mind for her journey.
  

• Can Bogs learn to put her face under in the pool comfortably?
  I went back and forth on this one. I tried to make her a few times, which didn’t work well. Then she went and did it on her own a few times. That is a deep dharma lesson - I’m seeing a pattern emerge here hahaha.
  

• Can Chop do more for himself and others, and feel his capability more?
  He has done this in some ways. Every chance I can find for him to be helpful in a real way, I try to seize it. I feel this lack of being needed in a real way (or the appearance that we are not needed by each other, or Earth is a major wound/delusion of our time, and particularly for our adolescent humans.) Thinking through this as I can, as he gets older.
  

• Can I contact joy everyday?
  This happened. The new surprising kind was right in the midst of the fears and angers.
  

• Can I balance arranging our days, and not arranging at all?
  This happened without me “balancing” because life showed us what needed to happen, as it always does.
  

• What happens if each person gets to choose what we do, on a rotating basis?
  I feel some regret about this because I don’t think I checked in with Bogs about what she wanted to do enough.
  

• What happens after everyone gets burnt out on each other?
  We got to this space many times, and I’m learning it just rises like waves and then disperses, without orchestration on my part.
  

• What experiments can we do with time?

• What experiments might time do on us?
  We didn’t rush in the way we do in the school year. That’s the main thing. And I got to notice that rushing is an extra that doesn’t have much to do with time, it’s an internal orientation. Sometimes I’m rushing, sometimes I’m not, and it’s some feeling of avoidance. Duly noted as we enter into the school year.
  

• What form will our contribution to life take this summer?
  Seems like the contribution was just me getting oriented to what is possible in this phase with the kids. We went backpacking!!! A small, perfect trip. I don’t care about “backpacking,” I just care about being with my children in places where cars and electricity do not go, to feel the aliveness and the continuity with Land. That’s what backpacking is for me. This opened my sense of what is possible in future years so much. I don’t really think of that as a contribution, but it felt like building toward more possibility for contribution in more overt ways.
  

• What stories will they tell about this?
  No idea.
  

• What should we audio record?

• What should we draw?

• What should we write together?

  We did basically none of this! Perhaps we will do more next summer, who knows.

I feel immensely grateful for all the conditions that contributed to getting to have this time for them to be in summer and for me to be with them in summer, through all the states we were in. I’m also sad about them going back to school. And I’m happy about returning to this work of looking deeply at life with you in the form of astrology readings (and more)!