What are you afraid of?
I am afraid of dying with the music still left in me.
I am afraid of losing my center and forgetting who I am.
I WAS afraid of getting lost, which I did yesterday.
It started as a regular day.
I got up at 4:50 a.m., put on a facial mask, drank a glass of lemon water and met with Adrianne for half an hour on the yoga mat with my iPad and AirPods.
5:30 a.m. I walked upstairs, sat crisscrossed on my meditation pillow and spent 20 minutes with Dr. Joe Dispenza with Serena half-sleeping in her fluffy blanket.
I then came downstairs and jumped on my rebounder for 10 minutes, while watching my well-crafted 2021 Mind Movie and my memoir frequency video, with an eight-pound dumbbell to strengthen my arm muscles at the same time.
Promptly at 6:10 am, I sat down at my computer. Today’s writing prompt from 40 days 40 writes was ‘Animal’, so I wrote about an earlier memory of a skunk who ate my chirping yellow-feathered chicks and deserved to die in my 7-year-old’s eye and heart.
Half an hour later, an early bird started to sing and that’s when I looked up from the page. Through the two arched windows, I saw a hint of morning sun come up from the horizon. Mysterious shadows of the feminine statues, one mermaid and two dancing girls in the backyard, started to appear out of the darkness in front of my eyes.
I took a cleansing breath and stretched my arms overhead when the orange light began to lift the grey clouds inch by inch. The morning birds cheered her on.
I was in a Zen place.
Then everything changed when I looked down at my screen. A sentence popped up on my laptop: No space left on this device.
There was an immediate disturbance in my mind. What does it mean? I will ask Samuel to help me when he wakes up. I noticed the tension in my right shoulder.
I clicked ignore and carried on writing for another hour.
When Samuel got up, he had to leave to get his glasses fixed so I called for Serena to come downstairs and help instead. She expertly clicked on some buttons and opened a window for me to delete big files of documents to free up more space.
I spent the next hour or so going through the list and deleting files, but then I discovered files were getting deleted from my Dropbox at the same time. I had been using Dropbox as a backup solution so nothing would get lost, but now my backup documents were gone!
I was getting frustrated and feeling defeated. “Honey? Look, what’s happening?”
After studying for a few minutes, “I don’t know.” Serena casually announced, lifting a shoulder.
“Could you please figure it out for me?” I tried to stay calm in response to her no-big-deal attitude.
“Later. After Dad comes back, we’ll do it together. He probably knows more than me.” Unexpectedly, she sat down on the living room floor rug and started to work on her 750-piece puzzle of a goldfish, ignoring the impatience in my voice.
With my internal frustration growing, I reminded myself to take another deep breath and noticed an old trigger coming up: feeling stupid around technology.
She is brilliant. It won’t take her long to figure it out at all. Why can’t she help me now? But I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything.
Then I noticed Norden’s weekly point chart on the refrigerator door.
“Norden, could you please come down?” I pressed the intercom button on the wall.
It was half-past noon, he came downstairs hastily, with a small plate of steamed dumplings and a go-yurt in his hand.
“What's our house rule of eating?” I pointed to the food in his hand. He knew better than to eat upstairs.
“OK! OK!” He clearly wanted to get back to whatever he was doing, fast.
What’s up with this attitude today? I tried to stay calm, took a deep breath and pushed down my annoyance. “Could you please show me how there is an extra 136 points for this week?” I was referring to our point system that lets him exchange points for video game time.
I thought it would be a quick explanation for him to tell me the calculation, then he could go back to his routine and me, mine.
“What do you mean?!” He raised his eyebrow harshly.
I explained again and tried to be patient.
“I don’t know!!” He started to shout––in my kitchen.
His attitude was my breaking point. He was screaming, crying and stomping like a three-year-old so I started to yell back like him.
I watched my internal anger rise. Like a room catching ablaze, so fast. Before I knew it, the fire consumed me.
“You don’t care? Fine!” I tore the chart from the fridge and shredded it to pieces, which I have never done before and surprised even myself. All the while Serena sat on her rug doing the puzzle with her golden fish, not being bothered.
“Geez, mommy has some anger issues!” He sneered and stomped back upstairs.
I stormed out of the back door, crossed the pool, rushed down the stone steps and sat down on the last step. Then I burst into tears, feeling so small inside. I was deeply ashamed of his last words.
What is happening to me? Why am I still losing my temper with him?
What about staying in a beautiful state? Where is my higher self? Where are the angels?
Oh, what is my primary question?
It is: What is the gift? I heard myself answer.
No, I just want to fucking cry!! My other voice shouted out.
I felt so many emotions crashing against each other like the huge wave of a tsunami I couldn’t even begin to describe. So I let go and cried like a three-year-old.
A few minutes later, I felt the ocean of emotions leaving me along with the outpouring of tears.
I started to remember my center word: nature.
So I got up from the steps and started to walk on the grass in my light purple slippers that were passed down from my daughter. I noticed a small weed growing on the stone wall behind our pool. I began to pull them out, one by one. It wasn’t hard. But I was surprised when, along with the weeds, out came horrendously long roots still grasping onto clumps of dirt. That tiny little weed, just a few leaves, was hiding most of its body buried in the slits of the stones. That is how they get their nutrients, deep down beneath the cracks.
Is our anger the same? Something that would trigger us on the surface usually has a much deep-rooted cause. My children’s full respect for a parent is deeply rooted in my culture and my belief system. It was the deviation that triggered such anger and pain.
I walked back to the house with light steps. Serena is still on the floor and her goldfish is coming together so beautifully. I got my swamp journal out and recorded my body sensation of this just-passed suffering experience. I noticed the last entry was January 10, 2021, and I had written, I just lost my temper with Norden. That was just a little over six weeks ago.
Wow, six weeks! That was the longest peace Norden and I ever had. I smiled.
Later, at the dinner table, Samuel helped to initiate the conversation of Mommy and son’s morning battle (I talked to my hubby ahead of time to brainstorm). Serena helped Norden to understand that Mommy is a teammate who wants to help her children.
After completing all his kitchen chores, Norden came to my room and sat crossed-legged on the soft sheep rug. We role-played how to answer Mommy’s questions properly. He left happy and I felt blessed.
It started as a beautiful day. It ended on a beautiful note.
So what am I afraid of?
I am afraid of dying with music still left in me.
I am afraid of losing my center and forgetting who I am.
But I am not afraid of getting lost because I will always find my way.
Love,
WeiLi