Thursday, July 27: the Advantages to having a Grumpy Mom

THE ADVANTAGES TO A GRUMPY MOM
The main advantage is that I get to practice what I preach, which is dong the Work, when people don’t give you what you want. ( Is it true Mom shouldn’t be grumpy? No. How do I feel when I attach to that belief? Bad, sad, mad. Who would I be without the myth that Mom shouldn’t be grumpy? Happy, free amused. What’s the turn-around: I shouldn’t be grumpy about Mom being grumpy).

My mom loves to be disapproving. She can’t help it. It’s what makes the robot in her happy, or, more truly (and sadly), it’s how she was treated when she was young.

Oh, well. Much as we can wish for a nice parent, or that our parents had experienced pleasant childhoods, or that we had experienced total childhood bliss, the way the world work is that usually this isn’t the case. At least not in our fragmented world, based on accumulating stuff and obsessed with surface and fear oriented Western so-called “civilization.”

Anyway, back to good old Mom. I was thinking about how I keep suggesting that she try out a Feldenkrais class in Awareness Through Movement down where she lives and she keeps pooh-poohing it. The conditioned me could take offence, and the happy me just smiles and breathes and wonders: what would it be like to be so uncurious?

Life must be hard for her and a lot of people, afraid to try something new that a friend or a child is enthusiastic about.

The reason I’m with Marlie is that someone I barely knew came out and helped out at the garden I was developing and then after that said she was going to yoga and did I want to come. I’d never in a million years thought about doing yoga, but what the heck, she asked, so I’ll give it a try. I was terrible at it and thought that was interesting and decided to stick out something I was terrible at. I got better. Marlie was one of the yoga teachers. We got to be friends. And then more.

And if Mom tried Feldenkrais she couldn’t be terrible at it, since it’s always about exploring what you can do and discourages people from stressing and efforting. It’s about the mind and discovering and it’s fun and you feel so much more alive and connected and present after a class. And poor old Mom is missing all that.

Oh well.

And that’s her business, eh? If I get into her business and think she should be curious and learning and happy in the ways I am, shoot, I’ll end up grumpy, too.

And that won’t be any fun.