non-attachment, my ass.

I wanted to post a picture of my kid's first day of school on social media, but didn't have one of those nifty magnetic letter boards. or groovy miniature chalkboards. Where do you people get those puppies?? Plus my 3-year-old just got kicked out of preschool (story for another time). So the proverbial back to school photo didn't feel very well, very sincere. no chalkboard. no letter board. preschool drop out. etc.

Instead, I thought a memo was in order. to all the burnt out mamas dripping with children who've HAD IT.

...the ones who've been eating Annie's mac and cheese for yearzzz and can only imagine what that freedom will feel like when one goes to Kindergarten. But until then, keep turning up at yoga in a damp nursing bra, staring down that statue of a Goddess with 5 arms, wishing like hell she too, could grow a couple spare limbs. (because if there is one thing us mamas need, it's an extra hand.)

I see you, mama. I sooooo see you. This essay is for you.

When I walked my son to Kindergarten for the first time 3 years ago, I had a baby fastened to my chest, my boob semi out, and a toddler tripping nonstop in her crocks. When we rounded the corner, I stared down the road that led to the main entrance of my son's school and realized in a trice, time to put the boob away... I'm in PUBLIC.

More sobering than that, my son was just ahead of us on his bike and was heading toward a mom behind the wheel of a Cadillac Escalade who just exited the car line like an absolute animal.

Duly note: the happy hormones had long worn off from the baby's spring arrival. It was September for God sakes and my anything goes, oxytocin charged smile was a goner. The salient fact was this: my secret garden of a life--binge reading library books in the backyard tent, pancakes whenever, and pants optional--was about to end. Pile on a mom in her big dog vehicle texting, driving, and all over the goddamn road (who I'm guessing just dropped off a bully in extra high tops)... I probably made the earth shake with my roar.

When I told my sisters about my morning, I nuanced the whole scene: the street, with no freaking sidewalk. the cross walker, in his late 80s, not stopping traffic. the baby, kvetching in her moby wrap. the toddler, still tripping, now on the belt of her elmo bathrobe. me, screaming at my son to get over to the right, in the tone of satan. my son, not knowing his right from his left.

That's when the one sister cut me off and said, "tell me you didn't flip off another mom on your kid's first day of school"... to which our older, seasoned sister was like, "oh yeah she did." (Cheers, sisters.)

Of course I've made a couple adjustments since doling out the bird on my son's first day of Kindergarten. I either strap both girls into my tandem bike pulley and stay hot on my son's trail as he pedals ahead of me so that we are in single file (vs. a blob in the road). Or I get into the bane of my existence, the car line. (think: 3 car seats in the back of a CIVIC and the strength of She-Ra to strap them all in. also think: constant kicks to my low back. it's cramped. it's loud. it's also just plain ridiculous since we live 3 lousy blocks from school. but whatever, it's safe from jackass drivers.)

That first year of getting my son to school with a baby and a toddler in tow was *beastly*. What didn't help my stress levels, was getting recurring hard copy letters in the mail from the principal pointing out his tardies. I felt like writing one back to inform him, with equal and proportionate pragmatism, that toddlers like to take their daily craps the MOMENT you get everyone's shoes on. Instead, I wrote ferocious emails to our school district's Department of Transportation and in the most eloquent way possible---told them to give my 5-year-old a flippin bus stop at the end of our street (given the fact I watch one roll by every damn day). I used words like: vulnerable, unsafe, fatal, and preposterous. They replied with words like: policy, mileage, ineligible, and protocol.

Trying to make the bell every morning. for my type-A first born. with a hernia leftover from my 3rd pregnancy. plus sight words. so help me God.

I mention all this, bone tired mama... because I know you don't think it's very close:

the day you'll be able to sit down and eat your first *whole* sandwich. (and without some kind of cortisol rush to go with it.) You feel like it's YEARS away. (and it is.) But one uncanny day, it'll happen. It happened to me just the other day. I ate my very own tomato, basil, and mayonnaise sandwich. The sandwich of my dreams with nobody humping me for a bite---made possible by my then baby, now 3-year-old getting her Daniel Tiger fix and the other two parading into school a few hours earlier carrying book bags twice the size of them.

You'd think after how many months of quarantine? After how many years of wishing I had 5 arms instead of 2? that I'd feel straight relief on this particular year's first day of school... that I'd be reaching for a high flippin five to a fellow parent after that drop off (minus that one I flipped off 3 years earlier). Maybe even a little celebration dance to signify this "two down, one to go", moment. Or a sweet Jesus, WE DID IT text, to the husband.

I did none of that. Didn't even moan during my uninterrupted sandwich, or crack a smile at drop off.

Instead, I stood beneath the cheery cobalt letters of my kid's elementary school portico--hysterically waving, snot-sobbing--and thinking, of all things, about this one pesky yoga concept.......... non-attachment.

This is that yama that comes across like a borderline threat... don't get too attached now!.... delivered in the tone of everyone's German grandmother (or at least mine).... and the way I always understood it, meant this: stop drooling over new shoes. or your neighbor's 5 bedroom colonial. or chicken tenders. or some slick car. (or any other material-world crap.) And pre-kids, my basic attitude toward this yama went like this: psht. got it. (come to think of it, my basic attitude toward nearly everything before I had kids went like that.)

The yamas and the niyamas, BTW, are like the 10 commandments of yoga. the ethics. the bones. the RULES... of yoga. they get their own limb and everything. They are the things you study and try to live by if you want to get remotely serious about this whole yoga business. And about a decade ago, this was me.... a serious yoga person---and I had Pantajali's Sutras on my living room bookshelf and the leg warmers to prove it. I also stopped eating meat which made me feel extra balls out about the whole thing.

Fast forward to the other morning, roughly 10 years and exactly 3 kids later, when I dropped my son to 3rd grade and daughter to Kindergarten, my new approach to this yama went like this:

NON-ATTACHMENT, MY ASS.

I walked home with my 3 year old on my back (doesn't get any more attached than that), pining for the days we were all tangled up together. Sure it was hard.. wearing one. pushing one. and convincing the other one to either get back in the *goddamn* stroller or ride the scooter. "These are your choices!", I'd snap at my son, who would be rolling around on someone else's front lawn, boycotting our trip to the playground.

But we were, before anyone went to school.... a pack. And when you're a pack, you hold each other's bad moods and empty water bottles. You get to be the worst version of yourself, and still get your eggs prepared exactly how you like them in the morning. And if your pack is anything like our pack, you will, all at once, try to shove your hands into the last mini bag of pirate bootie at the beach---and someone always ends up wearing a diaper two sizes too small on the way home. They're messy times, but when you get to the end of the day and you're all still alive, your pack is also your greatest success story.

In fact, back in the day, when everyone (and their mother) told me how much easier it would be "once he goes to Kindergarten", I'd smile back politely, but want to tell 'em all to go suck on a banana. I didn't want to think about it......... school.

I mean, SCHOOL! home to wads of germ-y gum stuck under desks, lukewarm pints of milk for sale, and swear words ping ponging down the hall.

My tell-it-like-it-is friend told me the day before my son went to Kindergarten that I'm probably just upset because I'll have to know what time it is for the first time in 5 years. Then she had the guts to suggest I cut his curls "because he looks like a ragamuffin." Her first point, very valid. The latter? I sent her away.

Then. In our backyard, with a beach towel wrapped around his neck, I cut his hair for the very first time---corkscrew by corkscrew. He beamed. I winced. His little sister giggled. My husband said, finally. I called my friend and told her it was all her fault. She came back with a couple IPAs and a box of ice cream sandwiches and a gigantic smile. Because she loves me.

The first day of Kindergarten, in other words, is a big ass day. (Other) moms even wear makeup. I do special things too, like make sure my kids eat at least 30 pomegranate seeds before we leave. Then I worry that they'll have to poop at school, which is the impetus to a group text I fire out to my short list of mom friends who homeschool... just in case I change my mind on the way. I mean, I can't have my kids pooping in a bathroom WITHOUT ME.

(See what I mean about non-attachment, my ass?)

Even if someone told me exactly where to get one of those miniature chalkboards on point with the times..... there's no way I could get my shit together to take a halfway decent photo of my children on their first day, let alone arrange letters to spell out their names and grades. and not even because I'd be too busy making their sandwiches. because I'd be way too busy FEELING EVERYTHING SO FREAKING FULLY. (ie: squatting in the kitchen, offering them all to nurse one last time, force feeding spoonfuls of elderberry syrup, etc.)

This year, I gathered up all my complicated feelings and did what I always do with them. First, I vacuum like a maniac. Next, I rage garden (this involves things like digging up mature rhododendrons and moving them across the yard like Hulk Hogan.). Finally, I go to yoga.

I planned on asking the teacher after class to nuance that non-attachment yama for me, again. Maybe I understood it wrong? Maybe I conflated it with my grandmother's finger in my face, telling me to stop spoiling the baby, "or else." Or maybe there's a school of yoga that discerns material world attachment from human form? Are all those attachment parenting moves (that yogis generally get behind) good for the baby, but monstrous for the mother later on? Was I not supposed to nurse them until my boobs turned into deflated pancakes, pile us all into the same bed, and wear them around all day after all?

I felt like a real handful with all these questions loaded for a run of the mill vinyasa class on a Saturday morning in September... so I waited until after class to pester the poor teacher with my yoga philosophy conundrum. And lucky for her, she said something while we were all in downdog that spared her.

Beyond the usual cues--pull the hips back, spread the collar bones, let the head go... and the customary space left to bend the knees, maybe swivel the hips, and all that jazz... she said the thing that not a whole mess of vinyasa teachers will say before getting the party started. "Let's just be still for a bit."

And inside that stillness, she dropped the truth bomb of truth bombs.

"Remember guys. You already know what you're doin."

She said it in a way that I knew was going beyond the mechanics of downdog.

More than that, she said it in a way: I believed her. (and not even because of her bed head, pants peppered with stars, or fact that she was making her way through a muffin while teaching, though those are always points for credibility in my book.)

I believed her because she was sincere.

I couldn't even carry on with the vinyasa. I had to drop my knees and tuck myself into a ball just to take that motherload all the way in.

I know what I'm doin.

I know what I'm doin.

I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, DAMMIT.

The rest of the class raved on with yet another vinyasa.

I hung tight in child's pose and eventually met everyone in downdog again--this time, a brand new woman.

In a matter of one pose (and maybe one minute), I shed alllllllll the rules. and not because I felt like I might snap if I didn't go run a bunch of red lights. or steal a row of candy bars. or have an affair. because I hit a point in my life, I think, that I became so hell bent on trying to do the right thing--that I lost track of the most important thing I had: my guts. my instinct. my moxie.

Even as I type those words, I know there's an oil for that. a 2nd chakra to tend to, for that. Follow Dr. Shefali on insta, for that. kapalabhati breathing, for that. the maha mantra, for that. Glennon Doyle, for that.

Holy as those humans and modalities are, I think there is something holier: YOU, knowing.

knowing. without props or parenting books. without yamas or niyamas. without tips from your mother or her mother. without a list of prescribed rules or self imposed ones. without boxing yourself into a persona, or logging in to see what everyone else is up to. without someone else's awakening guiding your own.

and so, my memo today isn't really MY memo. it's the memo I was handed that sunny Saturday morning at yoga.

You already know what you're doin, mama.

This. This is the tailpiece to all the rules you've ever been told, or bound by.

Sure came in handy the other night, when my brand spankin' new Kindergartener wandered into the living room to tell us she couldn't sleep without my hair. (She's been twirling my hair to sleep for as long as I can remember.)

Something about eating my first whole sandwich in 8 years earlier that day, I rallied to watch my first *whole show* with my husband (other than Daniel Tiger), in almost a decade. Without thinking too hard about it, I got up, walked into the kitchen, grabbed the same scissors I use to cut quesadillas and open endless amazon boxes with-—and cut a fairly substantial wad of my hair off. Then, I secured it with one of those bread twist ties-—and handed it to my daughter.

And not even like a mom whose HAD IT.

like a mom who knew exactly what she was doing.

I didn't worry if this was too attachment parent-y, or not attachment parent-y enough. I didn't think twice about the yamas or the niyamas. Or what my grandmother would have to say. (and it goes without saying, I didn't worry about my hairdo.)

All that mattered, was that I didn't hesitate.

God know what knowing means to you.

But I think it boils down to the things we, as mothers, do without hesitation.

As for my daughter, she did not whine for me to lay with her that night. She took my hair and in fact, ran with it.. down the hall and hopped into bed like a delighted bunny. Then, she packed it up and took it to school in the morning. I'm told by her teacher that she keeps it in her pencil box and pets it periodically throughout the day.

A few weeks later, she came home with her very own book about "Me and my 5 senses", highlighting her favorite sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch.

She likes to *see* snow, *smell* a chocolate chip cookie, *hear* the ocean, *taste* ice cream, and *touch* MOM'S HAIR.

I framed that last page, the one she used a fat brown crayon to color the heap of hair I cut off for her that night, complete with a red bread tie and everything. On the mat beneath her work of art, using a fine black sharpie, I wrote:

non-attachment, fall 2020.

which reminds me, and daily, to be my own version of motherhood.

Be warned, though, my dear mama friends—-the instinctive path is not for the faint of heart. It does not fit in with the rest. It's neither pretty nor easy. In fact, it's plenty messy, awkward, and uncomfortable---this whole trusting yourself business. It might even involve flipping off another mom whose kid ends up on your kid's soccer team later on, or nursing your kids until they are old enough to do the monkey bars, or having to to walk around with the world's worst haircut.

but I wouldn't trade the true version, the true story, for anything.