Be

A hundred years ago, when I started this blog, I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love and was taken with the idea of her giving a word to each city. This year, both MPJ and JW have chosen words for the new year. I think this started several years ago. I can't remember if it is from the book. One of my yoga teachers also does it. I see it as a take on the New Year's Resolution, perhaps one a bit more open-ended that declaring that one will exercise three times a week or lose 15 pounds or what have you. This year, I want to play too, and I have chosen my word.

My word is be.

Whatever I am doing, I want to do it totally, without looking forward with anxiety or back with regret.

I am being now, sipping a glass of yesterday's pinot noir while Amelia naps, and writing. I was being earlier this afternoon, when I found my distressed, still-sleepy baby wide-eyed in her co-sleeper, and I lay down with her and nursed her back to sleep. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of my teeshirt. I was being this morning, when I put on some beautiful music and began to write the moment A went down for her morning nap. And I was being 45 minutes later, when the nap ended, and I picked up my smiling, cooing baby and brought her downstairs to dance and sing.

This year, my first full year of motherhood, I sense the danger of the never-enough, of the constant feeling that there is more I should be doing, that there is too much I am not getting done. I want to try to live in the moment, enjoying all of the love and the blessings I am so lucky to be surrounded with.