I’ve started at least three entries this week that I have not finished.  And I had not intended to write this morning but rather drop Julia off at clinic and go home to clean, prepare for tonight’s supper, and shop -- that is, do the weekly errands that are getting neglected with my new busy schedule.  But while getting ready to leave the house and driving Julia to clinic, I was mentally making lists and got overwhelmed with the size of it.  More leaves need raking, emails need to be written and sent, I need to work on my conference scholarship application and think about the snacks I am going to send to school with Julia because we are the snack family next week. One of the emails is to my internship supervisor, reporting what I did this week because she was out of town and explaining to her that I cannot put in more time into this internship that I had signed up for.  The naked truth that I have put way more on my plate than I can possibly accomplish during my 24 hour days.  

Yesterday, Julia and I sat down and scrolled though our pictures on iPhoto to start her “time line” which is due at the end of next week.  I have not tried to avoid pictures of David or avoided talking about him to Julia.  In fact, I have been picking out, printing, framing, and now mounting dummy pictures on living room wall in part, because Amy took very sweet family pictures of the three of us last Christmas and I wanted to put them up.  Oh, and I am stumbling over my reasoning here.  I want us to be a ‘normal’ family is what comes to mind.  I want Julia to remember her Daddy and to have him as part of our lives.  But looking at my picture roll and framing family pictures and feeling the holidays come ‘round and feeling desperately busy (ok, just a bit of hyperbole) knocked the guts out of me this morning.  Also, yesterday at LEND a sibling panel spoke about their experiences growing up with a sib with challenges.  Karl, one of our first year family trainees, and I talked about our families in the larger context of family.  I had made notes but decided to just share Julia’s timeline which of course, mixes dinosaurs and China and death and birthday cakes.  An hour and a half of raw emotion which is still coursing through my veins.  

And so, instead of rushing home to madly vacuum dust bunnies and wash down the bathroom, I am in my favorite coffee shop with an egg on an english muffin and a skinny latte.  I will get a few of the writing chores done, make my shopping list and go to Cops, buy our pumpkins and try not to feel like I’ve cheated Julia out of a pumpkin patch, and breathe.  My dinner guests will not mind my dust bunnies and Julia will probably not complain that she did not pick out the pumpkins.

I am expecting way too much of my 24-hour days.  Why I cannot stretch time mystifies me.  And probably, thank god that I cannot do that!!  Wisdom in the universe, for sure.  And as another slow down for the beginning of this day, the computer server in the coffee shop is down and so I have no internet.  

Breathe in, breathe out.  Slow down.  Today, I know that if I breathe, I will have tears running down my cheeks.  It is that kind of day.  All reasons, no reasons at all.  Just what it is.

A few Julia things:

As I left the clinic, Julia asked “Are you going home?”  And I casually tell her how I will spend my time while she is at clinic.  I could pick her up and twirl her around but instead I tell her that I like when she asks what I do.  It is still rare, and still somewhat of a script -- someone asks you are you are and you ask them back -- but this morning sounded more like conversation and less like a script.  She is learning to be interested in what I am doing, and if she can be interested in what I am doing, she will learn to do it for other people.  Marilyn has said over and over that a child has to learn attachment and caregiving from her mother (or father) to has successful relationships outside the family.  My experience of Julia these days is that she is a better companion to me -- not like a neuro-typical child by any means, but so much better than she was.  Another step towards friends.

Working on the timeline and picking out pictures, I was please to see Julia picking many pictures and having something to say about them.  We cannot use everything that she picked out because she was given a piece of paper to use -- we could be making a poster -- but she is remembering.

About weeks ago, during morning meditation, I began to ask Julia to breath with me -- breathe in . . . out, in . . . out, sa . . . hum, sa . . . hum.  I started it because I was noticing that she was holding her breath often and the kid can hold her breath for a very long time.  It felt like she was tensing more than she had to and we’ve had a few days of very squirmy strong sitting.  “Quiet in body and mind,” I usually tell her but those words don’t mean everything the could to her.  So, the request to breath came more from my worry about her holding her breath and less from wanting to move to another meditation skill but it serves both.  

There are also two indications that Julia finds our morning meditation valuable, other than just doing what I ask.  She asks to do it on days when she does not have school and we have not managed to fit it into the beginning of our day.  And when she is running late in the morning, I have begun leaving her at the breakfast table and sitting to begin meditating.  She will finish her breakfast and come to join me.  Sometimes as quickly as she can.  Definitely this is so much better than nagging her until she finishes which I am apt to do, and for all my worry that she would just blow off the meditation, she has done it for 10 solid minutes anytime, I sit down before her.  She can also keep very still when she puts her mind to it.  Not all the time, but occasionally and without prompting, although when we finish she always points out how still she kept in order to get praised.