You Are All Beautiful

I took the photo at the top of this post a couple of days ago, just walking down the street. I almost didn't stop, but the colors in the yarn caught my eye. Upon closer inspection, I saw that the artist had not only cozied up the meter pole; she had also stitched us a message: "You Are All Beautiful."

Monday was the first day where we could take off our shoes and let our tender pale feet begin to develop their summer calluses. It was the first day where the bugs were more than a curiosity to my kids; the first day we had lunch and dinner outside. I took the kids over to a friend's house and the two of us moms watched our older ones swing on her swing set while we cuddled and breast fed our little ones. She was telling me about a friend of hers who was expressing some distress about the fact that she was choosing to pursue her career full throttle at the expense of spending time with her kids. It seems like there's always some new variation on this one. In her friend's case, the mother was wistful about all that she was missing in order to not compromise her very successful career. My friend said, "The hard part is, in the beginning you are feeling bad for your child. All the mommy your baby doesn't get. But later, you feel bad for you--all the child and child-time you don't get."

I've taken on a practice this Lenten season. A Catholic friend of mine told me she'd given up negative thinking. How hard could that be? I thought. Way easier than giving up caffeine. I always like to take something on rather than give something up. And so I adopted the practice as well, and found almost immediately that just as with meditation I cannot do it anywhere close to perfectly, or even 25% of the time. But, again like meditation, the practice is actually in the noticing that you are not present, not positive, and then gently steering your mind back to a friendlier turf. You do this over and over and over, as Jack Kornfield says, the way you train a puppy to pee on the newspaper instead of on your rug. And while I haven't had a single day that was truly free from negative thinking, let alone complaining––which is the audible version of negative thinking–– I have to say I have never been happier in my life. I don't feel as compelled to make everyone do what I want them to do. I seen to be happy just observing and participating when called upon. People delight me. Everything seems fresh and amazing. Best of all, I have stopped beating myself up. I don't waste my time being annoyed with myself for failing so miserably at the task of thinking positively. I just go, "Oh, well. I am learning. Nice trying!"

The difference might also be that because I have to drop the thought, I don't get to fondle it, nurture it, explore all the intricate nuances of how right I am and how wronged I have been, how things really would have been so much better if they'd gone the way I'd wanted them to go, how rotten it is that the beautiful 77 degree day we had yesterday has morphed into 45 and drizzly today.

So when I start to feel my jaw tighten and my eyes get hard like a lion about to pounce, or when I feel that queasy feeling in my gut, I get reminded that this is not good for me. I think about something joyful--usually my kids or Tom or my writers making great literature and telling some crucial bit of truth, or that one detail about my kitchen that is going to completely change my life forever for the better (the filtered hot/cold spigot on my new sink!)-- and my mouth turns up, my forehead uncrinkles, my heart feels peaceful and the cycle is broken. It's as if I have a screened-in porch, where before I was at the mercy of the mosquitoes and yellow jackets. I still see them, but now they can't get at me.

Last Friday I got an email from Elle's pre-school. Her graduation is now scheduled for June 10 from 6-7:30pm. Also scheduled at that time is the Jam for the Fans dinner and Meet and Greet, and the open mic which we'd hoped my father would participate in. When I read the email I immediately spun into panic mode. I called Katryna, and she very calmly told me to just call the school and nicely ask if they can change the date.

"Why not?" she said. "The only thing you have to lose is their opinion of you."
So, with great dread (for I care deeply that people hold me in good opinion, but I care more about seeing my daughter's graduation) I did just that. I even tried to bribe them, telling them I would lead the graduates in some stirring folk song appropriate for the occasion, something like Aikendrum.


They did not change the date.

I indulged in some negative thinking. This stinks! I thought. Not only am I missing my beloved daughter's moment of glory, but I am also missing all her classmates, most of whose music teacher I have been for the past two years. It would have been so fun to get the kids to perform! And all those wonderful parents, friends I have made, shoulders I have cried on while we watched our kids go from diapers and temper tantrums to confident organized almost-kindergartners. This was one of those moments my friend was talking about. Elle might be fine without me, but I wasn't sure I was going to be fine missing this event.

And then I decided to see what might be good about this new schedule, or at least about this state of affairs.
1. Elle's grandparents will be in town for Jam for the Fans. Maybe they can shoot over and see a portion of the event.
2. Maybe Elle is meant to be mad at me. Maybe it's good that her dad is the good guy and they can have some special time together.
3. Maybe we can have a special Mommy/Elle celebration some other time. Ditto the kids and their song.
4. Maybe the Fans will tell me to come late to the Open Mic and see my daughter graduate.

Funny that Katryna had to think of this last one. It never occurred to me that I could ask my fans (who, after all, are my employers) if they could spare me for an hour.

Jesus said, famously, "Judge not that you be not judged." He didn't say this in a wagging-a-finger, Law-of-Congress-kind-of way. He said it as the Law-of-Physics-kind-of fact that it is. When we judge, we enter a state of judgment and judgmental-ism. The opinions start ricocheting off any available surface; they are like little arrows stabbing us constantly. Judgments create pain. The Buddha, a tad less famously said, "Opinions just go around bothering people." I am so lucky to have work I adore, work that feels more like a calling than a way to make a paycheck. Some moms when they give up their paycheck gig feel very clear and good about their decision. Some moms are able to keep doing the work they love while missing very few beats in the saga of their kids' lives. I wanted to be so comfortably famous and successful by the time I had kids that I'd be able to chuck them in the back of the tour bus with a full time excellent nanny who would also be one of my best friends and a traveling Kodaly or Dalcroze teacher who also loved to play soccer, and maybe my bandmates would have kids my kids age and we could all go around the country together, one gigantic preschool on the road. Katryna and I would be selling out shed dates and big theatres and then spending the mornings in the lobbies of the hotel, chasing our kids up and down the elegant carpets past flower arrangements the size of my Suburu. My kids would see the country, pooling into Yosemite and Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon whenever we toured these areas. I would have it all.

And that didn't happen. And what I have today is so much better, so much richer, primarily because it is real and not a projection of what if. The projection misses the mosquitoes and the yellow jackets--rarely do such commonplace villains get written into fantasy. But why begrudge the mother who has this? And why pity the mother who doesn't? How could I have predicted that the best moment of my recent life was getting to watch my daughter play a variation of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" onstage with a bunch of other kids on a Sunday afternoon while my son ran around on the grass outside. The best parts are always your real life. The best parts are when you stop, wherever you are--be it in the middle of your detested job, the middle of your never-ending afternoon, the middle of your peak moment onstage or in the operating room, the middle of your walk down Crafts Avenue--and let the voice tell you the truth. You are beautiful.

Waiting for Spring, and Thoughts on Little House on the Prairie

The other day I got a most alarming message from my gmail account. In a glaring red box at the top of my gmail page, I was informed that I had reached capacity and if I didn't delete my excessive emails, they would be deleted for me. I felt panic, but also astonishment. I had used up all my space? How did that happen? I'd always envisioned my available space as outer space, my emails over the course of the past 5 years like tiny specks, the size the stars appear to be--dots on a black canvas--rather than what they really are--giant suns. I had loved gmail when I first signed up for it, right around the time Elle was born. In fact, I went into labor three and a half weeks early in the morning after I'd spent the evening before wrestling for three miserable hours trying to get my old AOL contacts to import into gmail. Coincidence? I think not.

Gmail was so fabulous--it searched and found everything I'd ever written to anyone and everything anyone had ever written to me. I was saved! No need for filing, no need to try to figure out what to keep and what to trash. I could just keep it all! Or so I thought. Discovering there were limits to my cache, I was mortified. Being called on my hoarding tendencies in this arena was just as embarrassing as being called on the hoarding of clothes, tchotchkes, pots and pans, mugs, guitars, books, ancient issues of Yoga Journal, and all those scraps of paper with lines of songs on them. Not only that, for the first time I really got that my storage of useless emails of Facebook announcements, the New York Times, freecycle posts and the like were being subsidized by coal drawn from mountains in Tennessee with their pinnacles snapped off, and nuclear energy from the kinds of plants that are causing radiation sickness in Japan right now. I am the problem, and by deleting my copious emails, I can do my part to be on the side of the solution.



Elle has recently discovered the Little House books. We finished reading Little House on the Prairie last week, Tom and I fighting over who got to read aloud to the older child. These were among my favorite books when I was a child--I joyfully read and re-read and re-read them until I had memorized the songs Pa played on his fiddle, the exact items the girls got for each Christmas, the reverence with which Laura created her dowry, the color and texture of her wedding dress (black, silk). I noticed that the Ingalls girls sang "Bean Porridge Hot" while I had learned the same song as "Pease Porridge Hot." The folk tradition lives. Elle noted that she might play "Old Dan Tucker" on her violin someday, just as Pa did.

But what struck me going back to these books as an adult was the existential discrepancy between the ways in which Americans in the 1870s viewed the land, the country, its potential, and the way we do now, in 2011. It must have seemed to those pioneers that land was all we had. Land and time; when Ma moans to Pa in the last chapter that they have lost a year of their lives in building their little house, toiling the earth, establishing a claim, only to be kicked out for slightly vague reasons by government soldiers, Pa shrugs and says, "We have all the time in the world, Caroline."

For as far as Laura, the eight-year-old protagonist, could see there was nothing but the Kansas prairie grass and wild game. "We can eat like kings here," Pa declares, arriving back to the Little House with two jack rabbits in one hand and a prairie chicken in the other. And he notes that it is no longer so back in the Big Woods of Wisconsin where the settlers have already depleted the resources.

But like my blissful ignorance about my gmail account, which I'd assumed would hold every single email I ever wrote for all eternity, we Americans--actually we citizens of the planet earth--have now clearly come to the edge of our space. Hearing from a friend at a gathering a few weeks ago about her view of the Atlantic while living in the Congo--all she could see as far as the eye were oil riggers drilling off the coast--drove home this point. The world has changed radically in 40 years since I've been alive. And of course the world I read about in the 1870s was almost unrecognizable to the one I inhabited in the 1970s, when the Congo was still wooded and plain.

Sunday was the first day of spring, and Tom uncovered his garlic plants while the kids played in the warming sun. Monday it snowed. I carried my mug of green tea (yes, back on caffeine as of today--the snow did me in) to the couch in the music room and gazed out the window at the falling snow. When I let go of the story--it should not snow! It's spring!--I rather enjoyed the silent gentle falling, slowing covering the barn roof with white. I thought about the way I used to binge: spacing out while consuming a half a box of granola, completely dissociated from my body. In that state, I had been suspended in time, floating in space, just me and my mouth. I haven't done that in years, and I hope never to eat that way again, but it occurred to me today that something might have been lost in abstaining from this behavior. Just as an ex-smoker misses that opportunity to step outside the building for some fresh air, a pause and a moment to reflect, I missed that spaced-out feeling I used to get when I did the outrageous (in my mind) activity of eating copiously between meals. And when I stopped drinking caffeinated beverages, I stopped taking the proverbial coffee break. I know, I know, I could have taken small meditative breaks without the coffee, taken herbal tea breaks. But without the physical need to ingest the chemical, tea frankly lost its appeal. Why drink something that might spill and stain? I wasn't thirsty.

But today I was. I got it into my head that I wanted more than anything to build a small room at the top of my house, with glass all around, and to spend an entire year just sitting there and looking out the window. Just watching the trees change, the birds come and go, the sky turn blue, white, grey, black, purple, orange, pink. I wanted to watch spring come, crocus by crocus, bud by bud, leaf by leaf. I wanted more time and space. I wanted to just watch.

Laura and her sister Mary spend a lot of time just watching. Many chapters in Little House mention this. Laura and Mary sit at the window for three days watching the horizon to see when Pa is coming home from Independence with their ration of sugar, cornmeal and coffee (notice that these pioneers did not do without coffee, though they did without vegetables for an entire year. As far as I could tell, the only fruit they ate was wild blackberries.) Were they more or less bored than a typical child of the 2010s? What would they have made of our swarms of emails? Ma comments to the girls at one point that if they send a letter to their family back in Wisconsin in the fall, they might expect a letter the following spring. It would be less disrespectful to the planet to save one's correspondence if letters came just once a season or less. My emails to my family are copious, though short and usually not precious, though occasionally full of priceless moments: "Jay announced that from now on we should call him Sosuke," I recently wrote (Sosuke being the little boy in Ponyo). I would like to be able to look back and remember this.

I like to think that I am enlightened enough not to berate myself for my email disorganization, to sigh and accept that this is the way it is and let gmail delete all my past correspondence for me. If in a life we leave behind only traces of our past, the way ancestors of Laura Ingalls (of which there are none, actually--none of the four sisters had grandchildren) might have discovered that one letter of 1875, I needn't fret about a dearth of evidence. Even without a single email, I have left plenty. Even if the house burned down (God forbid) and I lose the papers that contain my writing, it will be all right. Songs get lodged in the ears and hearts of listeners and get passed down generation after generation. I think I'd best spend my time writing songs, sitting in a glass-enclosed room, watching the seasons changing rather than deleting emails. Though then again, there was an awful lot of busywork a person had to do back in the 1870s--it probably took fifteen or sixteen trips to the well to haul up enough water for a bathtub, never mind the time it took to heat it up. So I will do the 21 century equivalent of chopping wood and carrying water. I will go through my in-box, say goodbye to what I might let go of. And then I will write a song.

Shiva, Shakti, Seeger, Suzuki

Today in yoga class, our teacher Amy Reed, talked about the dance between Shiva (our bare, pure awareness) and Shakti (the ways in which we harness our awareness to engage with the world.) The two are always at play with one another, going back and forth. Some times we are more introverted--more Shiva--observing the world as it goes by, just noticing, not getting all hooked up in the story. And at other times, we are plunging in, seeing where the holes are that only we can fill. "Blessed are those that play, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," wrote Emily Dickinson. As a musician, I think about Shiva and Shakti all the time. Musicians need, primarily, to be listeners before they ever strike, sing, pluck or blow a note. We need to observe what the others are playing, or even what the silence is compelling us to. And then, at just the right moment, we engage. We come in. We join the symphony, the chorus, the jam, with the part that is ours and only ours to share.

All of which makes me think about my new career as Suzuki Mom. If a year ago you had said, "Hey, Nerissa. What is your biggest parenting nightmare?" I would have said: any situation that would put me in a position to force my daughter to do something on a daily basis. Make that one thing "music" and we move from nightmare to horror show. How could forcing a child to practice for a half hour a day breed anything other than resentment? I would resent her for not wanting to practice, and she would resent me for...well, for being me. Queen of the Daily Practice (be it unloading the dishwasher, writing a song per day, running, yoga, making gratitude lists-whatever if might be, you can be sure I will be compulsive about it. This is not so bad when it's just me we're dealing with, but I feared exposing someone I loved, especially one of my children to this facet of myself.) When the phrase "Suzuki" was mentioned, I cringed at the vision I saw before me. Me barking, "Stand up straight! Bow hold! Bow hold!" My daughter in therapy twenty years later, telling some long suffering analyst how her love for music had been drained out of her one Twinkle variation at a time.

Besides that, I had made a career for myself espousing an alternative approach to traditional music education. "Music should be fun! Just make a joyful noise! Dance like Snoopy! Sing loud and don't worry about the on-key part! Shake an egg to the music! Technique schmechnique!"

I didn't grow up with Suzuki. I learned to play piano when I became literate, which is to say I was discouraged from the kind of exploration that all kids lucky enough to have a piano take on: fists on the piano, arms on the piano, one-fingered chicken scratch on the piano, poking out the melodies I heard around me. I was taught in a structured way, to identify those black ant-like marks on a clef with the corresponding white and black keys on the keyboard. I was yelled at to practice, but always by someone in the next room.

And yet, I became a Suzuki mom. Here's how.

In September 2009, when Elle was just three, Katryna and I were booked to be a part of a Pete Seeger Tribute at the Academy of Music in our hometown, Northampton. My parents love Pete Seeger; their second date was a Seeger concert, and they discovered their love for each other over "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream." They came to town, and before the show, we got take-out from Paul & Elizabeth's restaurant. As we exited Thornes Marketplace, Elle spied a busker on the street playing a fiddle. She'd seen a violin a few weeks earlier in the Elmo version of "Peter and The Wolf."

"Mama!" she shouted pointing. "I want to play that!" I didn't take this too seriously. Since "Peter and the Wolf," she'd also decided to play the flute and the French horn. I'd had to explain to her that she was too little for woodwinds or horns (one needs a certain amount of lung power not usually achieved till the age of 8 or 9). But I knew little kids could play the violin, so I said, "Well, you can if you want."

We proceeded to the venue. Backstage, the promoter introduced us to Emily Greene, a friendly looking woman holding a guitar. "Emily teaches Suzuki violin," mentioned the promoter.

"That's funny!" I said. "Elle just said she wanted to play violin."

Elle started jumping up and down and attached herself to Emily's legs right about then, and so I took her number. I looked up and said, "Good luck tonight. What song are you playing?"

She smiled and answered, "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream."

Emily sent us a packet of information that terrified me so much that I kept it on the far corner of my desk for the next nine months. Suzuki parents were expected to practice with their child for a half hour a day, listen to a CD daily, and attend with the child not only a weekly private lesson, but two monthly group lessons! Not only that, we were expected to read Shinichi Suzuki's book Nurtured By Love and join a group discussion to talk about how it might shape our world view. As Katryna and I were on the road almost weekly doing gigs, and cramming to write our book All Together Singing In the Kitchen (a how-to and why-to raise musical children) I just didn't have the time, although it did occur to me in a guilty kind of way that maybe--just maybe-- being a Suzuki mom could inform my writing.

But Elle persisted. For nine months, she asked me steadily when we would start to play the violin. So in June, tiny violin in hand, we marched up to Emily's studio.


Right off the bat, Emily put us at ease. We didn't have to practice a half hour--only five minutes at first. We had some simple tasks: listen to the CD, hold the violin, make a "bow hold." Elle wasn't even allowed to touch it to the violin. And we were given a chart and some stickers. Every day we did these things, we got a sticker. My inner perfectionist was gratified.

And so was Elle. This, I thought, might just work.

Recently--well, since giving up caffeine--I have noticed the pause in between Shiva and Shakti, the moment before the partners take hands for the dance. And this is a good thing for me. I tend to act without thinking; to leap before I look. Taking the time to really think about Suzuki was unusual for me in that sense. But I believed that if I had let Elle go forward right away with the violin that I would have burned out and given up before the practice could take hold. And while I might be able to do that to myself, I felt I couldn't do that to my child. And so when we finally went forward, I made a deal with myself, similar to the deal I made when I became a parent. "I will do the best I can, and I will make a lot of mistakes. I will not be great, but I will be good enough."

This attitude, when I remember to maintain it, works very well in terms of our practice. We don't practice every day, but we never do less than five days a week. I do get impatient, but I have yet to threaten to burn her dollhouse. (See previous post). And when I do feel my temper rising--when she throws her rented violin on the floor in frustration, when she hits her brother with the bow, when she purposely plays the pieces twice as fast or three times as slow as they're supposed to be played (I recognize that these crimes might seem wildly divergent to you, but to a musician, they're all about the same)--I sometimes, OK, often, raise my voice. And then the image comes back of the poor tortured twentysomething in the analyst's office cursing Mommy Dearest. And that's when I get to soften, as we do in yoga when we find ourselves trying too damn hard. And I say, "I am so sorry. Let's take a break. Let's cuddle." And she puts down that tiny violin, crawls into my lap and we sit. We listen. We observe. And when we are ready, we pick up the violin again and play.

Why We Are Buidling a New Kitchen

Photo of the author and our kitchen by author's four-year-old.

I really think all my problems would be solved if I could a. go back on caffeine and b. buy a new iPad. Instead, I am going to think about this poem by Josephine Johnson.

This is the need, the deep necessity of every life:
To scatter wide seed in many fields,
But build one barn.

This is our blunder, to have built
Gilt shacks for every seed,
And followed our sowing on fast anxious feet,
Desiring to grind the farmost grain.

Let go. Let go. Return
Heighten and straighten the barn's first beam.
Give shape and form. Discover the rat, the splintered stair.
Throw out the dry, gray corn.

Then may it be said of you:
Behold, he had done one thing well,
And he knows whereof he speaks, and he means what he has said,
And we may trust him.
This is sufficient for a life.
-Josephine Johnson

One of the writers in my Monday group brought us this poem. It came as a gift on a day when we'd gotten two pieces of so-called bad news.

The first piece of bad news was that Elle had just lost her second lottery in a month to the other charter school we'd applied to. The first school we will not be attending is the Hilltown Charter school, co-founded by our beloved friend Penny Schultz, who teaches music and movement there. Penny is our music director at our church, and certainly one of my Knights of the Jedi Round Table (as my friend and mentor Pam Slim would say). Hilltown Charter is a jewel of creativity, inventiveness and just plain love. I cried when our number came in at 64 and I knew it wasn't going to happen for us.

The second school is the Chinese Immersion School in Hadley, about twenty minutes away from here. Although I don't think I would have sought out an immersion school, many friends encouraged us to apply because of the strong MCAS scores and parent cohort. I wanted to apply because all the kids I knew who go there love it. We drew #111.

On the same day, we got word from one of the two contractors who were bidding on our kitchen, coming in at a number that would make the figure in our savings account cower and wither and beg for mercy.

The next day we got the second bid. It was higher. Knowing that one needs to add 20% to whatever the estimate might be, Tom and I picked up the plans, scouring them for areas to decrease, appliances to recycle, tile choices to reconsider. Maybe we could get rid of a few windows. Or live without an oven and instead build a smoke pit in the center of our kitchen.

In fact, we are reconsidering the whole project. Do we really need a new kitchen? How can I justify this anyway, when down the street folks line up for a free meal at the shelter? And now that my daughter won't have a second language (Mandarin at that) in her back pocket when it's time to apply for college, shouldn't I put all the money in a college fund?

Then it occurred to me to learn Spanish. I have always wanted to learn Spanish! I speak and read passable French (well, passable to my sister who speaks about the same level of French. Katryna, that is. Abigail is fluent.) I could learn Spanish, send my kids to a Spanish after-school program, teach Spanish songs at their local public school where there are lots of native Spanish speakers and somehow shoehorn a kind of Immersion into my kids. Take that, charter school! Immersion, Nerissa-style.

Which might be what I suspect this poem is suggesting I don't do. I am queen of scattering my seeds and trying to build gilt shacks for them all. Do one thing well? Too hard. I'd much rather do twenty things kind of ok. Less boring, or so I think, anyway.

Speaking of boring, I read the reviews of Amy Chua's book with a kind of morbid fascination. For those who missed the news cycle of mid January, Amy Chua, AKA Tiger Mom wrote a memoir (note: NOT a How To) on her parenting style, which is somewhat if not completely Pavlovian and includes threatening her children with burning their dollhouses if they don't get their piano pieces error free in their daily three hours of practice. Of course, like the rest of America, I would not raise my kids that way. But sometimes I think that's only because none of my friends would let me. There is definitely a part of me that wants to raise my kids the way (some people) raise prize winning show dogs. And Amy Chua said one thing in the Wall Street Journal excerpt that I keep mulling over: "Nothing is fun until you're good at it."

Is this true? My kids certainly have a blast banging on our piano and hurling their adorable bodies around the living room to the soundtrack of Peter Pan. Their movements certainly resemble interpretive dance of a certain kind, but are they "good" at it in the sense of mastering skills? Probably not. And yet, I do remember when I was learning to play the guitar I was often so frustrated by my limits that I would give up after a few moments of miserable strumming to do something else. But, as I was self taught, I must have kept coming back for some reason. It wasn't fun not to be good at guitar. And I had what Ellen Weiner calls "the rage to master," which I presume Amy Chua's kids had
too, since at least one of them has played Carnegie Hall. But I only had the rage to master a certain level of guitar. I wanted to build gilt houses for a bunch of songs, including ones I would write myself. I did not make guitar the foundation for my barn. I did not build a guitar barn.

The lessons of this week keep circling back to this: I am building a kitchen partly because it's fun and indulgent and I love pretty tiles and BlueStar ranges; but mostly because I love to cook for friends and family, and like most families, we live in the kitchen more than any other room. The kitchen is our foundation, it is where we meet in the (sometimes cranky, sometimes luminous) bleary morning; where I write most of the day (my desk is in the kitchen now); where we gather at the day's end to thank God for our food, health, friends, family and say what was good about our day, what was bad. It's where Tom and I meet after the kids are in bed for a cup of mint tea and a recapping of the day's events. I clean the counters before turning the lights off--one of the last chores before sleep. And we hold retreats in our house where the kitchen is a whirl of flavors, laughter and activity. Songwriters write in the large bathroom cum recycling center which will turn into a pantry. Weekly writers know where the tea is stashed, how to get hot water quickly. This is a communal house, not just mine but belonging to the muses of the writers who write here.

When I was in college, I hung out at a vegetarian restaurant called Claire's for hours with my fat volumes of Shakespeare, thin Sam Shepard paperbacks and scores of Bach, and my friends from Tangled Up in Blue. One night, on a napkin, I drew my dream home: a place in western MA with three buildings. A recording studio on the left and a space to worship on the right. In the center was a house with a gigantic kitchen where we would all gather to eat and recap the day. I imagined all my friends from college coming and going, making music, sharing stories of their adventures. I imagined myself living here after my touring days were over. I'd take the cue from Voltaire: "Il faut cultiver notre jardin."

I guess I am there now. And so we are joyfully sending Elle to the local public school a couple of blocks away from here, and I hope to give as much as I will get to my community. I will teach our songs, and I will learn the new ones from the kids she goes to school with. Meanwhile, I will clean house, reinforce my barns, cook some fabulous vegetarian meals on my BlueStar stove and let go. Return.

March Meditations

March. Sweet, heartbreaking March. Today started with promise, and the sheer lake of ice that is my backyard parking area got a gleen of melt on its surface, and I could see a time in the not-too-distant future when I wouldn't have to worry about my children slipping and breaking their teeth (a strange obsession of mine.) And then this evening the wind is whipping up, flakes of snow are flying and I retreated into my warmest sweater and wool socks.

We had a fantastic retreat here this weekend. Writers braved the ice storms and any social anxiety to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard and share what they had just written with the gang. My friend Kris McCue took some fabulous photos of our Saturday evening HooteNanny in which one amazing young writer revealed herself to be a master of the Nyckelharpa, an unusual Swedish instrument that is part lute, part violin (one plays it with a bow) and part harpsichord. Elle and she played every song Elle knows from her Suzuki Book One repertoire. Beth DeSombre and I accompanied (which was easy--all the songs are in A. To read Beth's post on her experience at the retreat, check out her blog--and her music. She is wonderful!)

March brings something else for us this year too. This Friday would have been my mother-in-law's birthday. As readers of this blog might remember, she died a year ago March 13, and we are experiencing what fellow writer Marilyn London-Ewing says is "yahrzeit" a Yiddish word meaning,"a year's time." It is a time of remembering; in the Jewish tradition, families light a candle and keep it lit for 24 hours while they say prayers. I feel as though our family is coming out of a dark time into the light, just as the sun is making herself more available to us here in the Northern Hemisphere. As D.H. Lawrence writes in his poem "Shadows,"
...and still, among it all, snatches of lovely oblivion, and
snatches of renewal
odd, wintry flowers upon the withered stem, yet
new, strange flowers
such as my life has not brought forth before, new
blossoms of me––

Life goes by very quickly these days. The kids grow, master new powers, tyrants are overthrown in the Middle East, people push away last year's iPads to get the new version; firm beliefs--ideas that used to work-- within seeking individuals are out grown and tossed aside when they discover some new truth.

And my question of the day: John Gardner, the wonderful novelist/writing teacher was purported to say (by his student, my friend and fellow writer Elaine Apthorp), "What actually happens in life, and what you can convince a reader to believe, are two different things."

Why is this?

Jam for the Fans Information

Jam for the Fan tickets will go on sale Tuesday March 1st around lunch time. We will first put out a Facebook and Twitter announcement with the information you will need to order tickets, and we will then send a mass emailing a few hours later. (On Facebook, make friends with NerissaandKatryna Nields, or you can "like" The Nields. To follow us on Twitter, follow NerKat.)

Dates: June 10-12 2011

Package includes:


Friday evening: Registration and happy gathering time (snacks included)
Friday night: *Open mic (package purchasers will have first option to sign up)
Saturday Morning: *Family show
Saturday day: Scavenger/ Treasure Hunt
Saturday Evening: *Iron Horse show- 20 Year celebration. ALL members of the Nields will take the stage at some point!
Sunday Morning: Gospel Brunch (show only, food can be purchased separately)

Tickets for the whole package include a goodie bag with super fabulous (high quality) premium items and a BINGO card for a special round of Nields Bingo before the Iron Horse show!


Adult tickets will be $100 plus a $5 processing free.

A word on children: We have decided that the best way to deal with ticket prices for kids age 10 and under is to allow you to buy their tickets a la carte. There will be a VERY limited number of a la carte kids' tickets to the Sunday morning Gospel brunch so if you want those, order immediately.

Here are the a la carte Kid prices for Jam for the Fans:
Friday Night- Open MIc and Welcome Party free for kids accompanied by adults who have weekend passes
Saturday Morning- Family Show $5 for kids accompanied by adults who have weekend passes. Without the weekend pass, tickets for the Family show is $10 for adults, $5 for kids, babies under age 1 are free.
Saturday Evening- Iron Horse $20- limited supply
Sunday Morning- Gospel Brunch $10- VERY limited supply

If you buy the WHOLE kid package for $35, the child will get a special Nields Goodie Bag, Jr.
We are going to compile a list of babysitters for the weekend for you out of towners, but we cannot guarantee you a babysitter.

There will only be 90 adult tickets available.


* some tickets will be available for these events separate from the package, with the exception of the Gospel Brunch which will be for Full Package purchasers only.

Muse Food

It's Day One of our Mid Winter/Almost March-Spring-Can't-Be-Far-Off Retreat. Our theme is Feeding and Nurturing Your Muse. I have people writing in every corner of my house. We just had a nourishing meal of Butternut Gruyere Tart and Roasted Corn & Kale Soup. I stayed home from yoga today to focus on the theme, the food, the house, madly tossing huge pieces of furniture into closets so that my writers would have clear spaces on which to sit. I consulted recipes in cookbooks and then did what I usually do--wing it. I had some interesting food allergies to work with: a no-onions vegetarian, someone who is gluten-free, not to mention the hostess who is sugar and flour free. Tom had hidden the blade for the Cuisinart, so the ingredients of the soup which I'd intended to puree came out fully intact, which ended up being better anyway.

Things usually are better when I let someone other than me into play. Why do I forget this over and over again? It's the lesson God's been trying to teach me ever since I was a kid and didn't think it was such a great idea to have a little sister. You can see how that turned out. Good thing I wasn't the boss of that. And this is lesson #1 in Feeding the Muse: let the muse in. Don't doubt. I have observed, in years upon years of running writing groups, that we writers almost inevitably think that our work is bad as it's coming out of us. Oh, sure, every once in a while we have a Nanci Griffith moment where a song pours out of our mouths into our pens on onto the page in ten minutes, but more often than not, it's a tortuous process where the draft feels like it's all hemless and hopeless. It's not. Trust. Have faith in your own process. Also, you are not necessarily the best judge of your own work. In an interview with Matthew Sweet I read in the 90s, he said something to the effect that some other, more experienced and celebrated songwriter had said to him, "Just wait till you get a hit. You will be shocked which song it turns out to be."

What is Muse Food?

Well, of course, it's different for everyone. Just as each of us has our own particular food predilections, aversions and allergies, so do our muses. Some like to go to art museums. Some NASCAR races, Some use Libraries. One writer friend I know gets inspiration from really junky TV.
My favorites sources these days are:

Long walks and talks with Tom
My minister Steve Philbrick's sermons
Self-righteous documentaries that tell me the planet is going to hell because of corporate greed and quarter pounders with rBGH cheese
Bob Dylan albums
A daily run
Yoga practice
That book (whatever is currently compelling me)
Ted Talks
Taking a bath with my kids
Doing a puzzle with my kids
Prayer
Meditation
Cleaning out a drawer
Tidying a room, especially the sorting, dusting, arranging
Cooking a meal from scratch
Having a frustrating conflict and talking it out
Making a themed snack for my kids. The picture above is from a snack entitled "White Plate Snack." Very popular.


When I go too long without these things, my lens shrinks. My mind is less a glittering room full of color and texture and bright natural light and more a dull, depressing studio whose one window looks out on its neighbor's brick wall.

One way to starve my muse is to give me something to count--like calories, or items in my budget--or something to worry about--like where my daughter is going to kindergarten (and therefore, naturally, where she will go to college; who her friends will be, how mentally healthy she will be, etc.). The other way is to make me extremely busy. Though it's not the regular busyness that throttles the muse. My muse actually likes a busy Nerissa. The kind of busy where the laundry sits on the bed for an hour or so while I'm making the yogurt, and there are forms to fill out that get mailed, and the trip to the bank gets wedged in after child-pick-up and we stop at the co-op to get bananas, and then I race home to coach a client, make dinner, tidy the house for the writing group, write a song, fill the dishwasher, kiss Tom and go to sleep--that kind of busy is fine. It's the kind of busy where I notice I haven't spoken to my parents in weeks, I tell Katryna "I can't talk right now, sorry, overwhelm" and I miss evening meditation--that kind of busy does me and my muse in.

What are some of your favorite ways to feed your muse?

Fun Family Music Links

Wonderful interview of Katryna by our friend poet and mom Amy Dryansky on her great blog Pokey Mama.

And....drumroll please.. announcing our new blog, Singing in the Kitchen!

Savoring: Another Artist/Mom Post

It's Tuesday afternoon, which means I am writing with my Tuesday group, a delightful group of woman (and man) who travel as far as the Eastern part of the state and as near as down the street to exercise their "show up" muscles and visit with their muses. I am so grateful for these fellows on the writers journey I almost don't know what to say. I love the moment when we shut our lap tops and pause before we take turns reading. I am constantly amazed by what bubbles up in these fifty minutes sessions.

Today I re-read an email from a former client, asking when I would teach a workshop called "Guitar Chords for Dummies" (twist my arm--sounds like fun) and noting that she is off taking her son to visit colleges. "Time flies," she wrote. "Savor every minute."

That was helpful. As I sat down with Elle to practice her little violin, I got as present as I could, pushing from my mind all the things I wanted to jump up and do (such as sort through the gigantic tub of her drawings and paintings, none of which I seem to be able to part with) and instead let her practice at her own speed. She wants to play her "Twinkle" variations as fast as she can; when do I interrupt to encourage her to refine her pitch or draw her awareness to her wrist alignment? Today I said, "Let's let the CD play the harder variations and just listen to them go by." "Yes," she agreed. "Then we can just, you know, relax." As she said this, in the timbre of a tweener, bobbing her head side to side and gesticulating with her wrists. "Sometimes it's fun to relax."

Out of the mouths of babes.

Savoring is my creed. And most days, with savoring--being present, being attentive, being grateful--it goes pretty well. But there are times when the old anxiety dragon yawns, and its loud hot breath prickles the back of my neck, and I start to think I should be doing something more...important. Timeless. Making something that will last. Writing a classic song. Publishing my poor neglected novel. Inventing something that will save the planet from climate change, or at least make the life of a mother with small children easier.

Oh, and bring in huge amounts of income so I never have to wake up in the middle of the night worrying about things like burial insurance and other morbid-flavored thoughts.

One of the pratfalls of parenthood is that one can mistake the real and practical need to make a living to support these blessings we call kids with the delusion that our kids (or we) will die if they
-don't go to private school
-don't have iPods
-don't have dance classes
-don't get to play video games
-ever utter the phrase "I'm bored"
-don't go on a trip abroad before they are 18
-don't get squeezy yogurts in the lunch bags "like all the other kids."

I am sure, if you work closely with kids, you have your own list. When I am not in my savoring mode, I get hooked into believing that I need to run around acquiring all these desires (and many of them are mine, not my kids') and that if I do, everything will be OK. They will grow up happy, they will be high functioning, talented, socially integrated adults and most importantly, they will love me and never fail to mention the word, "Mama" without that soft, dreamy far away look in their eyes.

And I still want to be an artist on my own terms, which means, most likely, never making a higher salary than that of a (private school) kindergarten teacher.

As I am sure I have written here before, Katryna and I are gearing up for our big Twentieth Anniversary weekend called Jam for the Fans, June 10-12, here in Northampton. It's going to be a Nields reunion of sorts. My ex husband David is flying up from North Carolina to play a few songs with us ("I'm rusty," he cautioned me. "So it really has to be just a few songs.") I ran into Dave Hower, our drummer, in Thornes Marketplace last week. He is about four weeks away from becoming a new dad himself. He will be onstage with us at the Iron Horse as we blast through our 20 year repertoire. I am excited, terrified, in denial, dissociated and curious about the whole weekend, even as I try to market it and build it and manifest it. Which is pretty much the way I have lived my whole life.

But most of all I want to savor it. And to that end, I am going to pace myself, just as Elle paces herself with her Twinkle variations. I will gear up, and I will stay present and witness. I will show up for myself and my family and my bandmates.

My Grandmother's Couch

After our gig in Watchung NJ last weekend, Katryna and I spent the night for the last time at our grandmother's apartment in Manhattan. Readers of this blog will recall that she died at the age of 103, in her home, last July. Since then, her daughters have been painstakingly going through her effects and trying to decide what to keep and what to throw away. As you might imagine, there is much to keep, even if it seems of no value. I don't know how they are doing it. Every third item they pick up is drenched in history, significance, some kind of import connected with a woman who outlived a century, and who happens to be their mother. Even the shoelaces seem to hold value. As someone who hates clutter (and yet can't let go a single paper I wrote even a line of lyric on, let alone a drawing by one of my children) I do not envy them this task. I have a rule: I can't bring anything into my house unless I give something else away. And as the recent beneficiaries of several lovely pieces of furniture from my mother-in-law, we don't have a lot of space anymore. As my mother and aunt ask me what I would like to take from the apartment, I feel as stymied as they do. What do I really want? What will bring my grandmother to mind in a lovely quotidian way? And what is just 80-year-old clutter?

Even the things of value are suspect. The books, for example. Actually, the books are the perfect example: they pain me so. No one wants them. What of the Encyclopedia Brittanica? I lusted after these volumes when I was a high school student, begging my parents to buy me a set only to be told they were too expensive. Now I can have my grandmother's--but why? Who needs 120 pounds of dusty old books when there's Wikipedia? And the books are dusty. My eyes water when I get near them. Will my kids really read them? Will their information from 1945 even be accurate?

And no one else wants the books. They are not worth that much, and do I really want to box them up, lug them down seven flights, pack them into the van and drive them home, and then search for space on our limited shelves? I can have the complete collection of Shakespeare on Kindle for free, after all, and that weighs about four ounces and takes up approximately one centimeter of shelf space.

But I haven't quite cottoned to the Kindle I was given for Christmas. After the initial excitement--and a week of the stomach flu during which time the only thing I could figuratively stomach was reading snippets on the Kindle of books on the Amazon website, which sadly led me to inadvertently purchase Portia deRossi's memoir on anorexia (oops) --the device is shoved into my book shelf next to the real books. I love real books. I have way too many. And so I stood on the stool next to the bookshelf, hovering. Should I take the Shakespeare? The Dickens? The Encyclopedias?

The apartment is a mess. When I talk to my mother about the huge task she has been involved in since last July, I want to swoop in and support her, wielding boxes, sharpies and packing tape, me a whirlwind of efficient helpfulness. And yet when I enter the space myself, I am overcome by a powerful inertia that is hard to explain. My mother and aunt had eleven days to empty the apartment, and the last time we were all together, I found them sitting on the floor each going through separate photo albums, exclaiming about their tiny young selves, their adventuresome mother (who traveled to every continent but Antarctica, I believe), seemingly oblivious to the enormity of their task. And yet I too felt suspended in time. I too couldn't figure out whether we should keep the yards and yards of raw fabric my seamstress grandmother had piled in one of her closets. "Here's a half knit sweater," my mother said, her voice pleading over the phone. "You are our knitter; do you want to finish it?" That time, I was paralyzed with indecision and left carrying just a paperback volume of the Upanishads from the seventies.

This time, we took a top hat that had belonged to my grandfather, and a tiny blue tulle ball gown. I will have to alter it; my grandmother weighed about 90 pounds for most of her life. Katryna and I are going to dress up for a photo shoot to commemorate our 20th anniversary of being professional musicians.

It takes time to make these decisions. The articles I kept from the estate of my other grandmother who died in 1996 are still precious to me; even such things as the cheap aluminum stew pot and the circa 1972 spatula, and the cracked unmatching china pieces. Every time I use these things, I think of her. Grief takes up time; books take up space. And for me, both are worth it, even when I think otherwise and want to barrel through with hard nosed efficiency.

In the end, I took the Shakespeare and the Dickens and left the rest. All week, my writers used the old volumes for prompts. On the inside cover of the Shakespeare, reads This is a limited edition of which 500 were bound. You are holding," and in red handwritten ink, "No. 158." They were published in 1899.

Today the rest of the furniture arrived. The weather is finally thawing up here in Massachusetts, and my kids danced on the porch and sang songs of joy to Shane and Miguel, the moving men who brought us my grandmother's couch, her bedroom rug and some other pieces. My mother got on a train this afternoon, and when I spoke with her, she was more tired than I have ever heard her. There is a second death in the releasing of these things that bind a person to the earth, and in letting them go, it can seem as though we are abandoning the beloved. I am glad we did the sorting, and tonight Elle and Jay bounced on the new (old) couch which I had bounced on as a child as young as either of them. Maybe one day one of them will claim it for his or her own and my grandchild will be bouncing too.

How to Launch A New Blog When You Already Have a Blog You Love

When I started this blog in 2004, my impetus was the immanence of Katryna's maternity leave and the resulting fact that I was losing my platform. I needed a way to blather without being on stage, and someone (I think Meth) suggested a blog. As an avid journalist (the kind who writes 3 pages a day in a composition book, not the kind who write for a newspaper)I was used to baring my soul on the page, and I figured blogging would be a nice synthesis of my daily pages and my songwriting.

I was hooked pretty quickly. What's not to love about writing in solitude and then publishing it right away and then getting feedback in the form of comments?

Pretty soon, I saw the pitfalls. A blogger who only blogs when she feels like it doesn't usually sustain an audience. Common wisdom dictates bloggers should post at least daily. And write short posts. And respond to all comments. And stick to their subject.

I broke all these rules. What was my subject? Usually just my life, prompting a couple of readers to label me narcissistic. Yes, well.

And yet, the blog goes on. There was a period of time readers might recall, when I blogged every day. This was in 2009, when my son was about six months old and my daughter almost three. It was fun to be so connected to the "page" when I was at the same time so deeply immersed in my babies, but the directive to post every day meant that my pieces lost something in terms of length and quality. I have not mastered the art of the short post.

But now, Katryna and I are getting ready to launch a new blog. And here's the truth; after blogging for going on seven (!!!) years, I still don't know much about the art and craft. This new blog needs to be about short posts. Titled "Singing In the Kitchen," it's to be an adjunct to our book which is coming out in September (All Together Singing in the Kitchen: Creative Ways to Make and Listen to Music as a Family). Our mission is to provide young families with ideas and stories and resources to be better able to bring music into their families, to make it a wonderful source of relationship building, bonding and community building. We hope to post several times a week; to recommend other artist and books and programs; to occasionally sing a lullaby via a podcast or YouTube video. We want to start a conversation with families about the many ways they incorporate music into their lives; how it can be a source of inspiration as well as immanently practical. And yet we don't want this blog to be a big corporate affair; after all, we are the Nields. It's going to be homemade, personal, imperfect and --it is to be hoped--lovable.

And so I need your help. What are your favorite blogs? Do you read any blogs about family or music to which we should connect and reference? Do you think it's necessary for a blogger to post every day? Do you hate reading long posts? (I guess you can't hate them too much, since you are reading me.) What about the look of the blog? Should we switch from Blogger to WordPress? Any tips you can give me will be helpful!

I forgot to say that another bit of conventional wisdom I hope to flout is that one should never write two blogs at once. I hope to keep May Day Cafe alive and strong, and make Singing in the Kitchen a success, and I really want to thank all of you who read this blog for sticking with me over the years. You have taught me much. Please continue to.

Optimal Blueprint and How I Found My Tibia

Yesterday just before dinner, I came home from a weekend away and scooped up my four and a half year old daughter, kissed her, listened to her adorable recounting of the day. I cuddled her up and said, "Oh, Elle, I just love you so much. Let's be best friends forever and never ever fight."

This is a line we have been using on each other for a year and a half. But today, she just smiled as if she were the mom and I were the kid and said, "Oh, Mama, I don't really think that is possible."

I burst out laughing, hugged her again and marvelled at her maturity. We agreed that it would be OK to fight as long as we made up and forgave each other; and that that, in fact would be even better than not fighting at all. Fighting, it can be argued, can be sort of fun.

Five minutes later, she was lying on the floor having a tantrum because her dad was serving edamame for dinner and this was unacceptable. Twenty minutes after that, she was sitting in my lap gobbling up that same edamame and declaring it the best meal ever.

I spent the last weekend at the Yoga Sanctuary in Northampton, where readers of this blog know that I have been doing an Immersion in preparation for a teacher training for the past year and a half. The workshop I just attended, taught by Martin Kirk, was on anatomy. I wasn't sure what to expect--after all, anatomy has never been my strong suit. I could never remember which of the six bones in the arms and legs were which. (I think maybe I knew that the femur was the thigh bone, but humerus, tibia, ulna--whatever.) But from the moment I took my seat in that gorgeous orange room on Friday night, I knew I had come to the right place.

Martin started with a discussion of what Anusara yoga founder John Friend calls "The Divine Matrix." "There is an underlying Source that directs this dance [of creation, of life] called the Invisible Matrix. It is unseen, unmanifested energy that is you--the you that is you before you were you. That Invisible Matrix is always still there. In Anusara we are trying to line up to our individual matrix [or what is sometimes called our 'optimal blueprint'] But we are all connected to a Supreme Matrix."

I am not sure what exactly prompted me to push aside so many projects last year to focus on yoga. In many ways, it seemed a strange choice. I whittled down my coaching practice to make room for yoga classes and trainings during a year when I was under pressure to deliver a book to a publisher by a certain due date. I proceeded despite an injury to the wrist. I studied the Bhagavad Gita when I should have been blogging or writing songs. And even though the benefits of yoga for my mind and body have been abundant, I remained unclear about what inside me was so dogged in my pursuit.

And here we pause for some amusing Before and After pics.

After one month of yoga:

After 10 months of yoga:

After 15 months of yoga:

The discussion of the optimal blueprint answered my question. This was why I was here. The number one guideline for Anusara yoga teachers is to help students "Align with the Divine;" and that alignment will be different for every single individual on the planet. My job is to align with the optimal blueprint of me, and to thereby be the Nerissa-est Nerissa possible; yours is to be the Elizabeth-est Elizabeth possible, or the Fred-est Fred possible.

This is exactly what I tell my clients and the writers who write with me. The hairs on my ears and arms, not to mention the back of my neck all rose when Martin reminded us teacher trainees of this number one directive. And this: When we're injured, we ask "let me see if I can line up again." When we are off track in our lives, don't we ask ourselves the same question? What worked before? Where am I now? How to I get back to home/back to wholeness. When we find ourselves, our true path, we feel as though we have come home. When we heal, we become whole. We become holy. We return to our individual matrix.

I had a client recently who was in deep despair because he believed his whole life's work up to this point was a reaction to what his father wanted him to be rather than what his own dreams were. "And now I think that even though he was a bastard, my dad was right. I should have gone to med school. I should have become a doctor. Instead I am a failed writer who can't stop watching Grey's Anatomy. I cut off my nose to spite his face. Only it was my face."

There is a Tantric sutra that translates "Even the individual whose nature is consciousness in a contracted state embodies the entire universe in a contracted form." The laws of physics tell us that if you cut a hologram in pieces, you still retain the entire image, though it does weaken in its resolution as it gets smaller and smaller. Martin called these pieces "God molecules," and insists that "It takes pure light to project the fullness of each piece. Only you are your frequency. Refine the pure light of your own frequency and you will be luminous and unstoppable. Even the parts of you you don't like are God. It's all condensed God."

He was preaching to the choir. This is right in line (in line!) with everything in my understanding of late; that God is in the sweetness and the bitter. That everything we live through is allowed. AND that we can get closer to our own individual matrix, our optimal blueprint. Which reminds me of that old aphorism, "God loves me just the way I am and too much to let me stay this way."

But how do we refine the pure light? What is the pure light? What if we wake up on a dark snowy day with a head cold and a pipe has burst and it's negative two outside and our spouse is in a bad mood and the news on the radio makes us want to vacate the planet? And I'm not even mentioning the writer's block.

Another aphorism: "The greatest gift we can give someone is our attention." So far, this is my version of turning on the light. I give myself my own attention for starters. Instead of turning on Facebook (not that I don't love it) or the TV or reaching for a donut or a beer, I sit quietly and listen to myself whine. Sometimes this takes a long time. But it works.

When my daughter was apoplectic over her dinner selection, I just held her and let her moan. Sometimes I repeated back to her what she had shouted to let her know I heard her. Eventually she cleared up, just like the sun coming out from behind the snowfilled clouds and wiped her eyes and took a bite. And remembered she liked edamame.

I listened to my client complain about his dad and his "bad" choices for a long time too. Sometimes I repeated back what he had said to make sure he knew I was listening. I try to be like a good yoga teacher; to offer support where needed, especially when I hear a painful unnecessary thought. I offer an adjustment. I point out when the form is gorgeous and right. But mostly I give my attention. In the light of pure attention, something miraculous happens. The client begins to heal himself. Yes, I definitely point this out, encourage the healing path. But, again, like a good yoga teacher, I am not the healer. I just make the space, offer the simple instructions. Then I let him work through his own possibilities. Should he at the age of 47 go to med school? Should he become a body worker? Or maybe send his resume to a medical journal for an editorial position? My job is to listen and ask him how each of these possibilities ricochets around in his body. What feels exciting? What feels deadening? What thoughts are contributing to each feeling? It is painstaking and delicious work. And nothing is lost from the process except a bunch of used up stories that he finds were not serving him. He finds himself a free man, free to rejoice in his past, and free to make new choices for his future.

There is a phrase in Anusara, an instruction a teacher will often begin with: "Inner body bright." Martin's version of this instruction was: "Let the sun shine in your heart." I, of the notoriously slumped shoulders (which are getting much better!) notice that when I hear this instruction, I naturally lift the sides of my body as well as my rib cage. This small action not only erases the slump, it raises my spirits. I can't help smiling and feeling hopeful, even on the darkest of snowy days. And I dare say, I think this is the way we shine that light to reconstitute our God molecules into so that we, in turn, become luminous.

Here's to the return of the light.

Jury Duty

I have jury duty tomorrow. I am terrified I will fall asleep on the bench. That is my number one fear. Other fears:
2. I will starve to death between breakfast and lunch.
3. I will know the accused and be embarrassed for him/her.
4. I won't understand the trial.
5. They will explain it to me and I still won't understand the trial.
6. I will have to admit that I am a Yale graduate who doesn't understand the words of lawyers whose main communicating mission is to explain civil matters to folks who may or may not have graduated from eighth grade.
7. I will surreptitiously multitask while on the bench and get publicly scolded for it.
8. I will end up on a trial that takes 3 months and therefore go broke and miss HooteNanny and my writing groups.
9. Did I mention that I have to be there at 8 and not get to eat lunch till 1pm?
10. I will get there and the trial will sound absolutely fascinating--better than Dallas or West Wing or Friends or ER or Mad Men--but that I will be rejected for all the above reasons and regret it for the rest of my life.

Winter Greens Soup Recipe (From Fields of Greens)

This is an amazingly nourishing soup! Cure all that ails you. I modified it slightly, but it comes from the wonderful world of Greens, a vegetarian mecca of a restaurant in San Francisco where Tom and I went for our honeymoon. I don't have a picture of the soup, but here's a picture of me having just eaten dinner at Greens.



@ 4 cups vegetable stock
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced, about 3 cups
salt and pepper
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 cup chard stems, thinly sliced
1 medium potato, thinly sliced
1 large carrot, thinly sliced
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 bunch kale, stems removed @ 8 cups washed & packed
1 bunch green chard, stems removed @ 8 cups washed & packed
1 bunch spinach, stems removed @ 8 cups washed & packed
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Make the stock, or buy it. Either way, heat it up and keep warm over low heat.
Heat the olive oil in a soup pot and add the onions, 1/2 tsp salt and several pinches of pepper. Saute over medium heat until the onion is soft, 5-7 min. Then add garlic, chard stems, potatoes and carrot. Saute until the vegetables are heated through, about 5 minutes. Add 1/2 cup stock, cover the pot, and cook for about 10 minutes. When the vegetables are tender, add the white wine and simmer for 1-2 minutes until the pan is nearly dry. Stir in the kale, chard, 1 tsp salt, a few more pinches of pepper, and three cups stock.Cover the pot and cook the soup for 10-15 minutes, until chard and kale are tender. Add the spinach and cook for 3-5 min, until just wilted.

Puree the soup in a blender or food processor until smooth. Thin with a little more stock if you like--here's where I departed. I left it thick, almost like a paste. (People actually could ladle it onto a plate as opposed to a bowl and eat it like a green stew.) Season with lemon juice and more salt and pepper. We ate it with garlic bread and optional parmesan cheese. Makes 9-10 servings. From Fields Of Greens cookbook.

On The Dreaded WB (Writer's Block.)

I just finished running a writing retreat here at my house, affectionately called "Big Yellow" by the marvelous cast of writers who have been coming, practically en masse, since 2005. I love retreats. I love these people, first of all, and I love having them in my house. My kids love them too, and refer to the front room of the house as "the writers's room." They also like that whenever we have a retreat, Tom makes a batch of what he calls "crack brownies" because they are that irresistible. My kids agree. On Friday, we pulled out new candlesticks. We found our favorite Bali blue tablecloth and waved it till it settled on the dining room table. We cooked spiced lentils in butternut squash and made Tom's excellent winter greens soup from the Field Of Greens cookbook. (This soup is like drinking pure health, by the way. Ask, and I will post the recipe.)

Selfishly, I also love the opportunity to write. The method I learned for running writing groups comes from AWA--Amherst Writers and Artists-- and it demands that the leader write along with the attendees to show that the method works. In the past, I have gotten huge chunks of my books written; songs have come to me (most notably "Endless Day") and I have generally left retreats feeling refreshed and inspired.

This weekend, one of the retreatants, Ashley King, sent us all a link to a fantastic TedTalk by Dr. Brene Brown, which thoroughly primed the pump. Dr. Brown spoke movingly and sometimes humorously about her research which involves figuring out why some people have trouble with connection and others don't. It comes down to a quality she calls "wholeheartedness," and what she means by that is something we might more easily recognize as "courage." The word courage has its roots in the Latin "cor" which means "heart." ("Core" is a cognate of this word, and I love that at our core is our heart.) Courage is heartfulness, leading with the heart, with the feelings, with the emotions. In other words, courage is not so much about bravery as it is about vulnerability.

And what is more vulnerable than writing? What is more courageous, for that matter, than writing? What indeed, especially when one has what writers dread more than any affliction, even bad reviews: writer's block.

Rewind a few days. Katryna and I met with our friend Beth Spong for lunch to discuss ways in which the organization for which she is executive director--MotherWoman--and we, the Nields, could join forces. MotherWoman is a fantastic organization that creates support groups for women who have postpartum depression. Actually, their full mission is this:

MotherWoman supports and empowers mothers to create positive personal and social change through: powerful mothers groups, innovative programming to confront the feminist crisis of postpartum depression, and effective political action. Mothers face enormous challenges, including unrealistic expectations, isolation, depression and appalling family policy. By valuing and supporting mothers, everyone benefits.

Yeah. Right on! So up our alley to get behind this! And so we are and we will, but one of the tasks Beth gave me was to write "a song about motherhood which we will videotape and release on Mother's Day. Our aim is for it to go viral."

And I said, "I am up for the challenge! I will start to write it today!"

That was Wednesday.

I poked at the topic. I journaled about my own mother. I wrote a poem.

Then the retreat began. Before my writing pals arrived, I went for a walk, searching for inspiration. The sky was that kind of ice blue that you only see in January. A foreboding sky that you could almost skate on. I got lots of ideas about the song. I could see the video. I could see Katryna and me singing it. I could hear it, in a way. Oh, wait--that was the Ingrid Michaelson song I had on my iPod.

I came back and we all talked about courage, vulnerability and telling the truth about ourselves. The truth is, what keeps us from being courageous is the fear that we are not good enough as we are: that WHO we are isn't good enough, and that if the others could only see what a fraud and excellent faker we are, we'd be kicked out of the nest. This leads to more obfuscation of our true selves and therefore to more disconnection--it's a vicious cycle. But what we find out when we write together and share what we have just written is something quite different: the more truthful we are about our so-called faults--our fears, quirks, addictions--the more easily others can relate to us. While our strengths, our beauty, our kindness, our intelligence, our fashion sense might attract us to each other, all too often, it is our broken parts that connect us to each other. They seal the deal. They help us to bond. (Usually when I bond with someone it's by sharing some deeper part of myself, while the other does the same.) And it is in that connection that we begin to heal, too, or at least to laugh; and laughter is the best healing agent of all.

That was all well and good. Everyone in the group wrote brilliantly, full of courage, full of wisdom, vulnerability, exuberance, grace. Meanwhile, I took my guitar up to my bedroom with my notebooks and MacBook and wrote about seven different completely unsatisfying mother songs. (I am trying not to call them "suckitudinous.") Or at least the beginnings of suckitudinous mother songs. I was like a posterchild for everything I encourage writers not to do. I started something, then my wicked inner critic who had somehow gained access to the process, said, "That is just suckitudinous! Or, maybe it's not so bad, Maybe it's OK. But it could never go viral!" Waiting just outside my door was a parade of all the rejections I have had in my entire life, dressed for Mardi Gras, 8 weeks or so early.

I haven't had WB (writer's block) in about nine years. The last time was after I had finished recording our album Love and China and had no earthly idea where to go next. So I was caught off guard by how truly terrorizing it can be. But this time there was a new twist.

"If you were still on caffeine, you'd get the song," sneered the voice.

Oh, right! Caffeine. And thus began another parade outside my door, this one of all the New York Times articles I have read over the past ten years about how caffeine is great for brain connections, people with ADD (I am certainly a candidate) and overall heightened mental alertness. Oh, how I craved a cup of my strong black tea at that moment! I remembered back in college, my friend Leon Dewan teaching me that whenever he wanted to write a song he brewed himself a huge pot of strong Keemun tea.

What was the point of giving up caffeine if it robbed me of my muse? Was I really going to choose some principal like my health over my mission in life?

The timer went off for the fourth and final session of writing. I had something--probably nothing that would go viral, but something. I packed up my guitar and trudged down the stairs. And because, as I said, the AWA method requires the leader to show up creatively too, I started the sharing session with my bit of song. I figured at the least, I could practice courage. The retreatants were kind and supportive. And I reminded myself that it took me a year to write what is our number one song now on iTunes, the song I got a book deal for, called This Town Is Wrong, and that if it takes me that long to write a great song for mothers, so be it. It might take even longer. But I am not going to give up trying, because I really do have a lot to say.

And I am also not going to pick up caffeine. At least not today.

Instead, I am going to rely on my many WBB's (Writer's Block Busters) that have proved themselves in the past. I would love if you would, in the comments section, post your own WBBs. Here are mine:

1. Let the song go. Keep the spirit alive, but let the body go. Wait for it to come to you. It will. Trust that it will; invite it in. Treat it like a cat. Seduce it at 45 degrees.

2. Listen to lots of music. Notice that many songs you love have not gone viral.

3. Go for lots of walks and runs.

4. Every now and then, remind yourself of a nugget of the song that you like. Hum it.

5. Take lots of naps. Before you take the nap, ask the muse to help you with the song. I often wake up with a tune in my head.

6. Write a different song.

Peter Pan and Caffeine

Lately, it's Peter Pan all the time in our house. Jay insists on listening to the Mary Martin soundtrack every night before bed. Actually, technically, during bed, as we turn it on and let it play him to sleep. "Dat's my number one," he says when the song "Neverland" comes on. "Oh, ya, dat's my number one." He recently informed all of us that we should call him Peter. Also that he is from New York. He forgets the rules of the game, though. Elle wants to be referred to as "Baby Bop," but Jay will enter the room and wave casually and say, "Hi, Peter," to her.

Speaking of Neverland, in 2011, Katryna and I will turn 20. In June 1991, we played our first show for money, billed as "The Nields." That summer we got a regular gig (at the Williams Inn in Williamstown, MA) and put together a press kit (with an article from the Berkshire Eagle by Seth Rogovoy which read, "Come see the Nields. There's never any cover.") We went to music biz seminars and learned the Golden Rule for new bands: Say Yes To Everything. We did this, and it lead to us playing in the lobby of the Bushnell Theatre in Hartford, playing to attendees of a benefit. We had the idea that we could put "Bushnell" on our resume and get lots of fans. Instead we played "Closer to Fine" at the very moment a Channel 22 News camera happened to catch us in action. We also lost the local talent show to a teenage KISS cover band.

We had a lucky break and got booked at the legendary Bottom Line, recorded our first CD (66 Hoxsey Street, now out of print and doomed to stay that way, as long as Katryna and I have any say in the matter.) We got our first radio play (on WWUH in Hartford, thanks to Ed McKeon) and the rest is history. Or geometry. Or paleontology.

The rest has been a really great 20 years.

Katryna and Patty and I met early this week to talk about details of the big celebration we plan to throw for the fans who have been coming to see us lo these many years. Though I cannot divulge much of what we discussed or they will cut off my caffeine supply, I can tell you this: it's going to be remarkable. Meaning you will remark upon the happening for years to come. It will be a happening. it will be June in Northampton, and you will be there. Need I say more? OK, I will say this: We are playing the Iron Horse on Saturday night (June 11) and we have thoughts to play one song from each year we've been together. That means, unfortunately, that we will be playing material from 66 Hoxsey Street.


We all got sick at Christmas time. It wasn't the fault of the barnyard animals we serenaded. Jay threw up in Dave's face on Christmas eve, and after that, we fell like dominoes, one after another, until the only one standing was Tom. He was in such excellent health that he went ice skating several times and built Elle and Jay a double loft bunk bed.



That thing about them taking away my caffeine? was a joke. Because part of the fallout of the stomach virus was that I gave up caffeine. This was no small feat. I believe that I am hard wired to be addicted to caffeine. My whole life, BC (before Caffeine) was one long snooze. I slept through pre-school, kindergarten, elementary school and the first two years of high school. I remember many a teacher picking me up by the scruff of my neck and shaking me as I tried my hardest to use my desk as a pillow.

Then I discovered Diet Coke. I woke up! School made sense! I got good grades! I wrote long poems!

In college, I found my true love: dark black thick coffee, the kind a spoon will stand straight up in. I bought a hot pot and a filter. I lived at Willoughby's in New Haven. I became a morning person.

Sadly, I learned what all lovers of the brew learn: that caffeine stops working after a month or two, and you have to keep drinking more and more, not even to replicate your buzz, because baby, that's long gone. You have to keep drinking more to stay awake, and if you miss a cup, you're headed for the worst headache of your life.

I tried to quit. O, foolish girl! But I couldn't. Something always brought me back, usually the headache, but sometimes just the desire to feel happy. Caffeine made me happy. Like Peter wanting always to remain a little boy, I wanted always to remain up. UP! Even when it stopped working, I kept drinking it, searching for that elusive high.

Once, I gave up caffeine for Lent. Those 40 days were the longest and most dreary of my entire life. I sucked on sugarless cinnamon mints to try to extract some kind of jolt out of them. On Easter Sunday, I was in Pittsburgh, the day after a gig, on my way home. I got out of bed, threw my suitcase and guitar into my car and made a beeline for Starbucks. There I bought: a grande Americano, a venti Awake tea and a cup of decaf just for old time sake. As I drove, and drank the assorted beverages, I became a genius. Again, I wrote long poems, I had huge epiphanies about spiritual principles, I solved all the problems of each of my family members. I think I also painted in oils as I drove along Highway 80, but I'm not completely clear on that. I was pretty high.

After giving birth twice, I switched to black and green tea, also so thick a spoon will stand up in it. In order to get enough caffeine, I had three huge mugsful a day, each one with two or three teaspoons of loose leaf Peets tea (really good tea! Keemun and a fine green called Lung Ching Dragonwell.) I would have two cups in the morning, then eat lunch, make a third cup to bring up to my bed, take a nap (because I was always tired despite the tea) and revive myself with the lukewarm tea. But it doesn't work anymore. It doesn't revive me. It just makes me revved up and anxious. I have been hoping for an opportunity to quit. Who says stomach bugs don't come with unexpected bonuses?

So here I am, January 4, eight days off caffeine, titrating my daily dose of ibuprofen and feeling my own nervous system for the first time in maybe twenty seven years. For the first three days, I slept, on and off for twelve hours a day. The second three days, I needed an hour and a half nap (which, honestly, was true when I was on caffeine, see above). Then one day, I woke at 5am, went to a yoga class, had a meeting, ran for 25 minutes, picked up my kids and went shopping for dinner, fed my family, ran a writing group and went to bed at the normal hour. All by myself.

I am all here. And giving up caffeine makes me think that I can do pretty much anything. Time will tell if I can keep this resolution, but for now, nothing feels as good as my own wakefulness. I am going to miss the highs, but they may be in the past anyway. Far sweeter to face the day clear eyed and ride the waves of my own energy.

Just don't go waving your Americano under my nose. For now.