It’s Nature to Nurture

Posted on October 6, 2016 by CNF • Posted in Blog, Brain, Child, Featured Blog Posts, Slider Content • Tagged Diane Lowman, motherhood, mothers, nature, nurture • Leave a comment

By Diane Lowman

I met a friend for lunch the other day at a restaurant called Green & Tonic. She walked in and we hugged, and then I started to explain Green & Tonic’s offerings.

“They have pre-made salads and sandwiches over there in the case,” I said, pointing, and then turned her manually toward the menu board, continuing “and they make good smoothies…” But I trailed off, my hand still on her shoulder, as I heard my boys, in my head, in unison, protesting:

“Mom. Thanks. We can read the menu.”

I looked her in the eye.

“Sorry. You’re a full grown adult. I’ll bet you can navigate the place on your own.”

The need to feed our children is perhaps our most primal instinct, taking precedence even over feeding ourselves. Especially we of the Jewish persuasion. Animals in the wild, and wild Fairfield County mothers alike will go to great efforts and distances to make sure that their offspring have adequate nutrition. Some of us are pushy about it. Some of us forget what the jungle moms aim for: training their young to hunt for and nurture themselves, so they can quickly step out of the picture. I remember a very wise pediatrician telling me, “Diane, the only thing your young children can control is what goes in and what comes out. Don’t fight with them about either.” But I neither followed the laws of the jungle, nor the sage advice of my kids’ doctor.

Long after they could read, long after they graduated from high chairs to big boy seats, long after they transitioned from the children’s to the adult menu, I remained involved.

“Look, Devon,” I’ll say. “They have a T-bone steak on the menu.” I neither eat nor cook red meat. He does both.

“Thanks, mom. I can read.”

“Dustin, they have gluten free crust!” He does not have Celiac, but refined wheat doesn’t agree with him.

“Thanks, mom, I see that.”

Their reactions range from mildly amused to mildly annoyed, and vary in direct proportion with how many menu items I’ve pointed out. So I bite my tongue now, both when we peruse menus together and when we order. I try very hard not to let my mommy and nutritionist personas rear their Hydra heads in unison, saying things like, “Lamb? I didn’t know you ate lamb?” or “That’s all refined carbs, honey, no protein?”

Yet I wish, too, that they would see that I offer these well-intentioned interventions in the spirit of love, concern, and wanting my children to be sated and healthy.

My teenage and young adult irritation gave way to appreciation when my mother, having seen a news report on an impending storm or subzero temperatures would call from Florida. “You’re not going to drive in the storm, are you?” or “Are you dressing warmly? They say it will feel like 10 below with the wind chill.”

Now that she’s gone, I miss the motherly admonitions.

I try hard to navigate the fine line between nurturing and noodging. I will never stop doing the former, but need to wean myself, as I weaned my children, from the latter. When I do that, their annoyance might tip toward appreciation, too.

Meanwhile, my friend managed, with elegant aplomb and without my guidance to pick out her own lunch. I know my children can do the same.

Diane Lowman is a single mother of two young adult men, living in Norwalk, Connecticut. In addition to writing about life, she teaches yoga, provides nutritional counseling, and tutors Spanish. She looks forward to what’s next.

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Sometimes, I Yell

Posted on August 12, 2016 by CNF • Posted in Blog, Brain, Child, Featured Blog Posts, Slider Content • Tagged boys, daughter, Diane Lowman, mother, yelling, yoga • Leave a comment

I started studying yoga and meditation when my boys were still young. I used to joke that I’d still yell at them, but at 5:00 pm rather than 4:00 pm.

By Diane Lowman

My mother was a screamer. If she thought we did not hear her, did not understand her, or did not change our behavior quickly enough, she just shouted louder. I know, now, that she shrieked to be heard. To be acknowledged. It had nothing to do with toys on the floor or the still-full dishwasher.

I, beaten down by the raised volume, vowed to be different. To speak softly, without the big stick. But, as often is the case with parenting traits, we inherit them, whether we want them or not.

My outbursts may have been neither as frequent nor as thunderous as hers – after all, I was a product of two gene pools, the other quite quiet – but I did often default to a raised voice as a discipline device. It was as ineffective with my boys as hers was with us. I regret having hurled it at them at all.

Fifteen years ago, after earning a black belt in Tae Kwon Do (my way of venting the pent-up aggression, perhaps?) I took up yoga. I liked that it helped me to cultivate the same qualities of calm and focus as the martial art, without subjecting me to hand-to-hand combat. I studied the history and philosophy of this ancient practice, and now I teach it.

I don’t believe we can fundamentally change who or what we are with any activity, drug, or distraction. What I have learned through Asana and meditation is that changing ourselves is not the goal. What I have learned on the mat is how to recognize and radically accept myself, foibles and all. Including the proclivity to shout when frustrated, provoked, or dissatisfied. I notice, more quickly, those signs in my body that tell me I’m about to blow, and watch them with curiosity and kindness.

“Why, Diane, are you so irate at that moron in front of you who cannot seem to find the gas pedal, ever, when the light turns green?” I might ask myself as I white knuckle the steering wheel on, ironically, my way to yoga class.

This is not to say that I don’t get annoyed at stupid little things, or yell at the moron anyway eventually, but I might wait longer and I certainly notice it more.

I started studying yoga and meditation when my boys were still young. I used to joke that I’d still yell at them, but at 5:00 pm rather than 4:00 pm. But that’s something.

If I was particularly short-tempered or agitated they would ask: “Mom, have you gone to yoga today? Do you need a class?” And if I thought for a moment before admonishing them, the answer would inevitably be “No, and yes.”

In her 50s, my mother went back for her associates’ degree in early childhood education. She had found and was following a better path later in life, as had I. She would call me, almost daily, to tell me something she learned in class, and “what horrible mistakes I made with you girls. I wish I had known this then.”

“Mom,” I’d say, “We do the best we can. You were and are a wonderful mother.” Yet she continued the self-flagellation all through her formal education. Maybe she couldn’t change how she parented my sister and me but she was the best, most patient, most attentive, and most fun grandmother ever to my boys and my two nieces.

There is no gold mommy star shining over my head just because I shifted my path ever so slightly. And I would never take away the gold mommy star that now shines like a halo over my mother’s head just because she shouted. She was a saint; she earned it many times over.

I, too, often feel not heard, not seen, and not acknowledged, as she did. I just wish I’d started working on better ways to earn my star earlier.

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A Change in Seasons

Posted on July 20, 2015 by CNF • Posted in Articles Page, Highlights, Slider Content • Tagged changes, Diane Lowman, empty nest, leaving, moving, seasons, teenagers • Leave a comment

By Diane Lowman

I am putting winter away with a wistful mixture of joy and sadness; this may be my last winter in the house I’ve called home for 18 years, where my children grew up and my marriage fell apart. Where I now live, alone, banging around in a too-big space like a ghost, haunting only myself.

I am putting winter away with a ritual I relish. When I sense the temperature start to change, it’s time for me to put away one set of scarves and welcome the new season with another. I wear a scarf every day. Rain or shine, hot or cold. I keep them in a set of macramé-wrapped hanging rings in the front closet for easy access. At the last frost and the first crocus, I take the warmer, bulkier ones down, admiring their hues and recalling how I came by each one.

The winter scarves will go in the wash together; the swirling soapy rainbow washes the season away. This relentlessly harsh winter brought snow and subzero temperatures that beat down even the hardiest of us. I am not sorry to bid it adieu and welcome the seemingly reluctant spring.

Still warm, I fold the scarves carefully. Symetrically. And stack them, colors coordinated, all ready to go in the enormous Ziploc bags currently holding their lighter counterparts hostage in the cedar closet in the basement. When I retrieve those diaphanous spring scarves I imagine they have their own stories — they are happy to be out of the dark; ready for action in the cool spring air. These scarves, which have enveloped me for 18 years, have born silent witness to my stories.

My mother and I found the light blue one with yellow feathers during our trip to New Orleans to celebrate her 75^th birthday. We could not know then that she only had two birthdays left. “Is it too much?” I had asked her (I count myself amongst the women who need conspirators to shop).

“Not at all!” — She loved it. “You can hardly see the skulls when it’s wrapped around your neck.” She always loved to have time alone with me and my sister, and it made her happy that I asked for her opinion. She bought the scarf for me; I knew she longed, like I do with my own children, to take care of me still.

The long, silky teal and purple scarf is from Rue La La. I never wear it because it’s “special.” It was expensive for me, albeit deeply discounted. I have been saving it. For what, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t feel I deserve to wear it. It feels so “grown up;” so fancy. I have been primarily a mother for so long that it’s hard to see myself as anything else. With the boys grown and gone, I know I need to try on new roles, but every time I put that scarf on I feel I’m playing dress-up.

Mom bought me the black and grey silk oblong one from China. The red characters that run vertically up and down its length may offer up some fortune-cookie wisdom about life, which I could use now. Perhaps the characters outline what the next chapter of my life will look like, but the message is shrouded in mystery. I can no more decipher them than I can make my future out in my mind’s cloudy crystal ball.

After I put the winter scarves away, I arrange the light spring ones by color as well, fold them into thirds and hang them in the woven rings in the front of the closet, ready for spring. I am well aware that when the next crisp fall chill fills the air I might be storing these wispier wraps in another home, another place.

At each transition I shed scarves that no longer serve me like a snake molts skin it outgrew, and does not look back. I try not to get caught up in the sentimentality of their stories. I wish I could look toward this new phase of life with such serpentine aplomb. I try to adhere to the adage of “If you haven’t worn it in a year, toss it.” But for each one I jettison, I buy a new one, and create a new story.

As I will have to when this house sells; already there is an offer to a new family to buy the space we’ve largely vacated and I’m mostly just heating and cooling. I wander through the rooms now, scavenging for items I can donate in an effort to lighten the load.

I have made so many trips to Goodwill of late that they know me. “Thank you for supporting our mission,” they smile and wave as I drive away, sure that I’ll be back soon.

What must they think of my life’s leftovers? My items are junk to them but each speaks of my life’s moments. Of the endless hours I spent building K-nex creations with the boys when their dad walked out, to distract them and myself. Of fingers that bled sewing the gold and brown toile cushion covers and matching pillows of the small bench myself, that I love, but no longer need. There’s no one to sit on it any more.

I don’t donate my scarves, I will keep my stories; they are inside of me, not forgotten in this house. I look to that moment when the house sells with an ever-changing combination of liberating anticipation and crushing dread. And as I sit on the floor folding and stowing, I wonder what these lighter scarves and the years to come have in store.

Author’s Note: Facing the empty nest can be challenging, emotional, and exhilarating, especially when you are doing it as a single person and not a couple. Selling a home, moving and having your children leave home really add up on the stress scale. But such change can also present wonderful opportunities for personal growth and development.

Diane is a single mother of two young adult men, currently living in Westport, CT. In addition to writing, she teaches yoga, provided nutritional counseling, and tutors Spanish. She is looking forward to what’s next.