Getting it Right

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

--"Lake Isle of Innisfree", William Butler Yeats

I know many people who believe that their problems and inadequacies as adults are derived from problems and bad experiences in their childhood.

I am not one of those people. 

I had an exceptional childhood filled with love, laughter, and adventure. I grew up in a small town in Southern USA in the 80s with sweet tea and popsicles on our front steps, complete with long summers with plastic pools and slip-n-slides. We had no Internet, laptops, or DVDs, and we got bored, gloriously bored. I had two parents who loved each other and my brother and me unconditionally and provided a stable home  that we yearned to return to at the end of a school day. Our home smelled clean and looked cleaner, and my mother would have a homemade snack and a list of questions about our day waiting for us upon arrival. We ate dinner together as a family every night, and we watched our favorite tv shows together once or twice a week as a treat. I remember catching fireflies at dusk on long summer evenings while my parents sat watching and talking with neighbors sitting in metal lawn chairs. We had magical Christmases with too many presents, delicious food, and family. We made piles of leaves in Autumn and jumped in them, making the leaves fly and watching them make their twists and turns in the air during their descent. We took beach vacations and went on camping trips and told stories which made us laugh many years later. In fact, I cannot think of one thing I would change about my childhood.

With such a childhood, I dreamed of providing my own children with similar experiences, and so far, quite honestly it's been a hard act to follow. I've experienced more "parenting fails" then I'd like to admit, and my children are growing up in an environment that could not be more different than the one from my childhood. Yes, my husband and I love each other and our children more than life itself, but we might as well be from two different planets. We are from different countries, cultures, faiths, and speak two different languages. My children grapple with speaking two different languages at home while trying to learn a third at school just to communicate with the other kids on the playground. Bucker, my oldest, traveled half way around the world to Palestine with Raed before his second bithday. Since then, the boys have accumulated more stamps in their passports in their 2 and 4 years than I had the first 25 years of my life. We moved our children away from everything they knew to Berlin, and live in the middle of a city, in an apartment half the size of our previous home in the States. Personally, I've screamed at my children, completely lost it and cried in public as a result of their behavior (more than once), and have spent far too long on the phone/Internet and watching TV when I should have been on the floor playing with my boys. All of these things my mother, pillar of strength and wisdom driving her Custom Cruiser station wagon (back in the 80s), would never have dreamed of doing. Further, I've shamelessly bribed them on countless occasions and fed them entirely too much sugar. So, all in all, to say we haven't provided the stablest of homes for the boys would be quite the understatement. 

But last week, we got it right.

We went on vacation. My husband and I chose a small rental home in Sardinia, Italy, where we could enjoy the beach for a week. We packed one suitcase, yes one, and took a quick two hour flight on a discount airline. This wasn't any ordinary trip for us. There was no telephone, no television, no Internet, and the house was in a sparsely populated area, so we pretty much had the area and beach to ourselves. Largely untraveled dirt roads led to white sand beaches with sparkling, clear water. It was breathtakingly beautiful, rugged and unspoiled nature. Olive, orange, and lemon trees grew wild, and the air was scented with honeysuckle and salt.

Where we stayed

Running to and from the cold water

 The boys played for hours in the sand, and ran back and forth from the water, which was still far too cold to be comfortable in, squealing to the top of their lungs. We slept easily at night without the lure of the Internet and TV. We ate outside and lingered at the table over ice cream and coffee. We ate cold pizza on the beach for lunch, buried each other in the sand, and spent lazy afternoons in the sun. We dried our clothes on a line outside and cooked freshly caught fish over an open flame in the stone barbecue pit. The boys played imaginary games and my husband and I had time for an actual conversation or two. We built a fire in the fireplace and had afternoon tea and told stories on a rainy afternoon. In short, we gave our children time, time with each other and with ourselves in which we weren't pacifying them so we could be busy doing something else. We caught up as a family, and we saw how present we could be without all of the distractions of modern life. 

During the week we spent there, I thought about how my time is spent on a daily basis, and I realized how distracted I truly am. I came to realize that the majority of the struggles and problems in my life stem from things that distract me from living for "now" and being wholly present in whatever I am doing. Most of the time, I am either planning what to do next or thinking about how I could have done something differently in the past. I realize that life isn't a vacation in Sardinia, but I do hope to have brought home a new understanding of myself and what I need to change to live more fully, gulping in the air of life as it streams by. I hope that we gave ourselves and our children a taste of simplicity, and of quiet, and perhaps it will be one of those vacations that we can talk and laugh about for years to come. I think that this once, we got it right.

*****

Feel free to comment! Tell me about a time when you felt you "got it right". What distracts you from being fully present?