QUAIL MUTTERINGS #41. Letting Go and Reassessing (August 22, 2016)

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Chi

I suppose there is always some fear associated with a free fall although mine wasn’t, or isn’t, really unplanned. I knew it would be difficult. I would miss the kids as well as creating in that particular art form. After thirty-seven years of teaching dance I had decided to take down my shingle and close up shop. I still loved what I did, but there were other things that beckoned me that there simply wasn’t time for. And there never would be if I continued to hang onto something that I had been doing for so long. Granted, it was huge part of who I was, but in order to grow I needed to get out of my comfort zone and allow myself more time to be available for other things. Things like writing, being an involved grandparent, and sharing our canyon with visitors who needed an escape into nature (our new ecotourism business).
By the end of April The Dance Centre had performed its last story ballet and I had sorted, sold, donated or stored all of the costumes, equipment and accessories which had called the place home since the 1980’s. After taking the last load out and cleaning the studio I fought back tears as I locked the door behind me for the final time. Since then I’ve had to bury my feelings and only allow them to surface in manageable doses, every now and then. In the meantime plenty has happened.
On May 9th my daughter, Kali, gave birth to little Kya and I was thrilled to be there in my motherly/grandmotherly/doula capacity. It was a true honor and privilege to be there to welcome our third grandchild into the family. Kali and Edwin worked well as a team to lovingly bring their new daughter into the world. And the same midwife who had delivered all three of my kids was there to bring it around full circle. A second time. She had also been there to assist Jessie through her labor. Now, both of my daughters had home births, just as they had gone through as babies on the other end of the spectrum. My mom had been in the role which I now am in and I can only hope that my presence is appreciated as much to them as she was to me.
From late May into June Kent and I spent close to a month away. We were on the East Coast with relatives for the first week and the rest was spent in France and Italy where we branched out to experience other cultures. Towards the end of July I went with my sister and a couple of female friends to stay at our cousin’s house in Costa Rica. We managed to squeeze a week in the tropical paradise just before their house closed escrow and would be gone from us forever. Sometimes you just gotta jump on those things!
These adventures have undoubtedly helped distract me from the many mixed feelings surrounding the finished chapter of my previous dancing life. There are certain things which I am definitely happy not to have to spend my valuable time doing. The bookkeeping, for instance, and all the paper/computer work. Cleaning the studio and budgeting for advertizing. Phone calls arranging extra rehearsal times. And, my driving time. Then – occupied by figuring out what I was going to teach in the classes that day, and now – listening to books on tape, music, or better yet: quiet, uninterrupted free thoughts. I don’t have to make myself think up an order of dance moves and then try to retain it all until it could be passed on to the dancers’ bodies. Yes, I really do like having my brain space freed up for extraneous thoughts that come and go.
It’s all about balance. I need time to putter. I think it might be one of my favorite things to do. Perhaps because it’s so rare to snatch a bit of time from our busy schedules and allow ourselves the pleasure of simply drifting from one task to the next. And to use the opportunity to be mindful of our actions during the process. Kent and I like to go to Deer Park every so often to get our dose of Buddhism and practice mindfulness in a supportive community. It’s hard to be mindful when we’re running around in so many directions at once. Yesterday we acknowledged the fourteen mindfulness trainings after doing walking meditation and then listening to one of the nuns give a Dharma talk. We used headsets and listened to a translator since this week’s Dharma Talk was in Vietnamese. The trainings focus on good, honest, compassionate existence with all of creation. Just imagine if every human on the planet communicated with words of loving kindness and inclusiveness rather than dualistic, separatist talk. What a place that could be. As close a thing to utopia as I can see.
So while I continue to struggle with keeping a balance in my life between work, obligations, maintaining community and family, and taking time to just smile and breathe, I realize that it will always be so. I will constantly need to let go and reassess to maintain an equilibrium in life. At least I know that it’s something worth doing. And redoing.

Chi Varnado is a contributing writer for The San Diego Reader. Her memoir, A CANYON TRILOGY: Life Before, During and After the Cedar Fire and her children’s book, The Tale of Broken Tail are available on www.amazon.com. Her collection of essays, Quail Mutterings, can be found on www.chivarnado.com.

QUAIL MUTTERINGS #34. The Circle of Life (March 2, 2015)

Posted on March 3, 2015 by Chi

QUAIL MUTTERINGS #34. The Circle of Life (March 2, 2015)

Oh, father and mother, sister and brother
If it feels nice, don’t think twice
Just shower the people you love with love…

I inserted the CD into my truck player and rocked out in excitement as I drove down to San Diego on Thursday morning to help out and “Be There” with my daughter. Jessie had called earlier saying that she was feeling “Different,” and her contractions felt stronger than the Braxton Hicks she’d been experiencing this week. Caught up in singing along with James Taylor I missed the turn and had to backtrack to her street.
I lay down on the bed beside her and held her hands. We practiced breathing together. After a walk with her auntie, who lives in the front house, she was following what she’d learned in the Bradley method classes. Opting for a home birth thrilled me. The same wonderful midwife who had delivered Jessie and her siblings was now going to assist her in the magical circle of life. I brought a salad for us to share for lunch. Sean came home after his morning shift, grabbed a snack and changed his clothes. Kali, my other daughter, arrived and shortly after Deborah, Sean’s mother, joined us.
Early labor progressed and we talked quietly between contractions – allowing silence for Jessie to focus inward when she needed to. Her dad came in for a while and rubbed her feet joining in the camaraderie that this phase permits. Other family members came and went enjoying the concentrated calmness surrounding us. Hours later we called the midwife.
The midwife’s colleague and her apprentice came first pulling a wheeled, medical suitcase. Things continued in a relaxed manner and Diane came later with her own medical bag. We all listened attentively as she monitored baby’s heart tones. She asked Jessie, “How are you feeling?”
“Alright, I guess,” Jessie said. I don’t have anything to compare it to.” We laughed. In the evening there was a smorgasbord in the front house that other family members had prepared. By then, there were three aunties, a cousin, Jessie’s dad and his other daughter and wife on the scene. We spelled each other so that we could grab sustenance for the long night to come. They partied way into the night with puzzles, movies and socializing. Two of them had just flown in from Northern California.
Meanwhile, in Jessie and Sean’s tiny abode, we helped Jessie out as best we could. During the first half of the night the midwives slept in the front house as Sean, Deborah, Kali and I lay down with Jessie, rubbed her legs, fetched her water and Gatorade, helped her to and from the bathroom, or held pressure on the heating pad against her back. By midnight, she only wanted Sean lying in front of her holding her hands and breathing with her.
“Don’t leave me,” she kept saying.
“Don’t worry. I won’t, Honeybuns,” he’d say.
“Relax your legs. Limp legs now,” I’d whisper. “Relax your jaw. Put your feet down.”
Jessie wanted to spend more and more time upright, but it could cause her cervix to swell. I spread a blanket and pillows on the floor so she could spend some time on her hands and knees. This worked for a while.
Sometime during the wee hours Diane came back and took Jessie’s focus away from Sean allowing him to fall asleep beside her. Contractions slowed down, but remained formidable. Dozing in chairs, or on the little floor space in the one room dwelling, each of us snatched minutes of shut-eye time. Power naps. Diane worked her wonders with my daughter, coaching Jessie through the intensifying storm within her. It became clear to Diane that Jessie needed to lie down more, as this brought on harder contractions and more progress could be made. Time was marching on and Jessie was getting tired.
When morning came one of the aunties stuck her head in the door, “There’s coffee.”
I have to say, we all perked up with that offer. As I brought back two cups for Sean and me, Jessie said, “No coffee.”
I darted back out the door gulping mine down and leaving the cups outside. The smell was too much for her. She’d already thrown-up once. Poor Sean never did get his cup of coffee. Or any breakfast. She held him tight. Diane said that our core group was good to have on board. Any more made for too many people without jobs to do. And the space was so small. The others would not be coming in now as this labor became longer and slightly worrisome. More concentrated efforts needed to be made without distractions. Each one of us women in the room with Jessie and Sean had gone through natural childbirth ourselves and were knowledgeable about it. We made a good team.
It was getting close to mid-day when Jessie was finally ready to push. In order to make a long story short, I’ll be brief here. With a harrowingly tight cord behind baby’s neck, meconium staining, and a rare velamentous insertion of the umbilical cord that the doctors and ultrasounds had missed, we were touch and go for a while. Thirty hours after the initial labor pains little Seamus cried his way into the world. He had to be suctioned out and prodded to get the junk out of his lungs. Afterward, we were so grateful that this all took place at home. If Jessie had been in the hospital there most likely would have been a caesarian section and neonatal intervention along with a longer stay away from home. Thankfully, we had avoided all that. Everything worked out all right in the end.
Jessie and Sean became the proud parents of Baby Seamus (eight pounds, eleven ounces). I became a granny, for the second time, of another beautiful, loveable grandson. Ian has a brand new cousin and Kali became an auntie. Generations go on and the circle of life comes around. So –
Father and mother, sister and brother
If it feels nice, don’t think twice
Just shower the people you love with love…

Chi Varnado is a contributing writer for The San Diego Reader. Her memoir, A CANYON TRILOGY: Life Before, During and After the Cedar Fire and her children’s book, The Tale of Broken Tail are available on www.amazon.com. Chi directs the Ramona Dance Centre. Her collection of essays, Quail Mutterings, can be found on www.chivarnado.com.