Graceful Parenting in Austin

I’ve talked before about my morning yoga tape of music, prayers and yoga poses that I made on my Mac with Garage Band and how one set of prayers is about loving kindness towards yourself, your family, neighbors, people you don’t know, people you don’t like, and all that. Some mornings I listen to these words and my logical mind says “of coarse, sure, I got it, I’m a nice person after all” and other mornings I feel the words more and I know I have a long way to go.

One of the more interesting parts of the prayer is showing kindness to people I don’t know. SURRRREEE, I say. I’m kind. I’m nice. Why wouldn’t I be nice to someone I don’t know? I’m not MEAN, after all, right?

Take last night, for example, when Baby Girl was having a really hard night and was so tired and so unable to sleep. All the routines for how she usually goes to sleep were out the window and Blue Eyes and I tried all the tricks. At one point, I took her out in the stroller, because this usually calms her down, and I notice it looks like it might rain, after months of super-dry, thank-goodness-we-have-sprinklers, careful-with-those-fireworks weather. It will be good to get some rain tonight, I thought.

Well, almost half way through our walk, at almost the furthest distance from our house, I feel one raindrop. I turn the stroller around and two seconds later it is pouring down rain. I’m walking pretty fast, trying to get home quickly, then I see a car parked in the street with its windows open. I should knock on the front door of the house and let them know. But just then, the dog in the next yard starts barking at us and Baby Girl starts crying, maybe because of the dog or because she is getting wet, so I walk home instead.

Hmmmm… I’m not mean, but I’m efficient. I tend to be logical and manage my time well, with my mind instead of my heart. So, when I’m in a hurry and getting rained on any my baby is crying, my default settings tell me to get on home, when a knock on the front door would have taken just a minute of my time.

I want to be a person who takes that minute, who walks up to the door, soothes Baby Girl when we get under the patio, then lets my neighbors know about their car. So I pray in the morning while I’m doing yoga and I and I hope the thinking about it a little each day helps me get there a little bit at a time.

Stay tuned tomorrow for how I did better the next day, in response to a highly inappropriate question…