Meditate on This

Sometimes it takes a rather unfortunate circumstance – like your kids getting sick – to make you sit up and take notice.

Bella and Evie have been each struck with a ghastly dose of gastroenteritis. I can hear Evie being ill as I type (don’t worry, Superdaddy Darren is on the job!). Bella had her dose on Sunday afternoon, and today, it’s been Evie’s turn. Poor little possums.

Although, in a way, I’ve welcomed the change in routine, of not having to leave the house to drop off at kindergarten, and not having to face the wintry fog that has wrapped itself around our lovely city. It’s cozy in here.

The house has been quiet today, and Bella has been an angelic child, sitting quietly reading, watching a DVD, doing crafts, and helping Mummy test recipes for her next book (more on that in a later blog, my dear readers!). It was nice to read with only one child, just for a change, as I could sit her comfortably on my lap – I read The Tale of Tom Kitten to Bella, and Bella read poems from Winnie the Pooh’s When We Were Very Young to me! Oh, how I’m going to miss these stories when the girls grow too old for them!

Evie has been especially clingy, as you’d expect with a sick child, and has wanted me to sit on her bed while she tries to go back to sleep after yet another exhausting vomiting episode. I want to take away her illness, to see her up, bouncing around and talking to me nonstop at full volume, but all I could do for her today was sit quietly beside her, sometimes rubbing her back, sometimes just listening to her quiet breathing.

Usually, I’d start to become irritated by all that sitting around. BOR-ING. But today, it kinda dawned on me that I needed this time. Time just to sit and do nothing. Time to consider the fact that I haven’t let myself do just that – nothing – for quite a while. The dreaded “M” word cropped up in my thoughts (Shhh! “Meditation,” she whispers.). I have “tried” to meditate many times, but I continually set myself up for disappointment, expecting great things all at once. What am I so scared of? What is so bad about actually doing nothing, and letting myself relax to a deep level? Maybe if my life wasn’t a constant whirlwind, that would be OK?

I really want the girls to master the skill of meditation, so that they take it with them through their lives. We have a great children’s meditation book called Moonbeam, which we read sporadically, but I feel I have to lead by example, and really nail this whole “deep relaxation” thing so that teaching it to the girls becomes an organic process. Can I do it? Will I master it? Is reaching for such a goal the very antipathy of meditation anyway (methinks so!)? I have been inspired by Penny’s posting on meditation, and now – even though it took my children becoming ill to make me face it – I feel ready to take the plunge.

Wish me luck as I head off to encounter the beauty of stillness.

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