Your own path, your own time

Not a recent photo, but the dance is always current...

I am still not sure how much capacity I have for diligence and drive in my own pursuits right now, even though little H just turned four, and desperate to be independent.  I would like to dive in to dance and say I´ll devote every spare moment.  I have the karmic energy, maybe not the physical energy.  But a big part of me also just wants to take it easy, not expect too much, not expect to drop everything and return to dance after basically taking a year off, and taking several years off from performing.  Isn´t it enough to find some groundedness in this crazy life that has been handed me, isn´t it enough to seek serenity and do whatever makes me happy in the moment, even if it´s planting rows of carrots in the garden instead of practicing my turns and upper body technique?  I don´t yet have an answer.  I don´t want to feel guilty for watching DIY home improvement and design videos online.  I also don´t want to feel guilty for harboring that secret dream to drop everything and dance and live in abject poverty.  I am not expecting answers.  But I´m saying this is where my mind goes.  This is the nature of the artsy mama I guess.

I spent most of midwinter break decorating the garage with the upholstered insulation panels I mentioned in a previous post, getting really good at the staple gun and the liquid nails with the caulking gun.  And I kept wondering when I would consider myself "done" and ready to start using the space for dancing.  The floor was in there.  Wasn´t that enough?  Shouldn´t I drop everything and dance?  No, I guess not.  It needs to look good, and feel good, before I´ll be comfortable being myself and stretching my abilities.  There is always a balance to be struck in each day. 

What is most important today?  What´s the next step?  What can I do now?  It doesn´t have to be all at once.  It doesn´t have to be right now.  Next year I will drop everything and dance.  And it will be okay.  And in the meantime I will care for my son the way he needs to be cared for, and I will care for myself the way I need, and I will slowly work my way back to a place where I feel confident and completely immersed in art.

IEP, Garage transformation, new dreams for Spring

Spring is coming.  The gigantic cherry tree in our yard is full of tiny pink blossoms that are cotton-candy thick, blocking our view of... everything.  Our patio is planted with seeds of all kinds, in boxes, in containers, in hanging pockets, and I have my fingers crossed.  Things will happen.

First stages of studio creation:  Hudson helps paint the walls.

The garage is almost done - I've been slowly transforming it from the drop-off station for all our extras after we moved in, to a usable dance space for practice that will not feel dark and dingy.  I have the floor pretty well set up:  Foam tiles and MDF board on top of that.  There are insulation foam boards decorated with fabric adorning the walls and the garage door (without fabric), and there is a free mirror I got from someone off craigslist leaning against the wall.  Whenever anyone remodels their bathroom, they give away the old mirror!  Seems like one shows up on the free list every 48 hours on craigslist.  Inspired, I decided we'd take down our own bathroom mirror and use that to have a bigger reflective area, and buy a smaller framed mirror for the bathroom.  Okay, all details aside, it's turning out to be a pretty functional space, and I'm "done" enough with the setup to start using it for practice.

It might change my life.  I've been trying to slow down and not rush anything, but I feel a steady push leading me back in the direction of flamenco after dancing very little for about a year.  I thought perhaps I'd get back into classical music.  I thought I could push myself back into poetry.  And this is scary to say, because I hate sounding definitive about anything, but what I am naturally drawn to explore and learn more about and what gets my heart pumping just thinking about it, is flamenco.  It's scary because I don't know if I'll do it as "well" as I want, I fear that I will come up against the same barriers of time and childcare that felt so insurmountable before, and I'll feel insufficient.  But my slower mentality is telling me it will be ok, don't get ahead of myself.  The important thing is to dance when I can find time, find videos online because it's fun, and keep myself healthy and ready to go for the times when I can really dive in, like Spring Break.  Things will happen.

And this morning we had an IEP meeting for H at preschool, which lasted almost 2 hours.  We learned that he is apparently quite the little dancer and athlete at school, though we don't see much of it at home.  We learned so much more.  The actual IEP document is 15 pages long and details his present levels of skill in social, communicative, pre-academic, and other areas.  And it lays out specific goals to reach in each area for the next school year.  It was such a joy to hear so much about what he's doing at school, and to hear about what they think he can do.  To start actively playing with peers, to initiate conversation, to independently follow multi-step instructions, it made me feel giggly just imagining him doing all this.  So, needless to say my energy is super high today, I'm pumped on all the possibilities, and I haven't really sat down to do any concrete planning for classes the rest of this week.  Now that I've gotten some of it out, perhaps I can decide what exactly we'll practice in Spanish class.  Wish me luck.

Create.

Parenting is the biggest creative challenge I've encountered yet.  The writing challenge, the choreography challenge, those are far less intense and seemingly endless, and in many ways, less real.  Though I do love them, let's not forget that.

When I feel like I've found a parenting solution it directly impacts a human being, my son.  I also love finding something close to a solution for a line of words.  But I never really know if that's a solution or just something better than what I did yesterday.  If you get down to it, that's the same thing, really, it's all just looking for something better than the day before.  Yup.  Can I get Hudson to not throw a tantrum right now... can I get him to eat his dinner... can we play something other than wheel-spinning and actually keep his attention...

I can't wait until he gets a bit bigger when we can really start doing arts and crafts.  When we can really start drawing, and making sculptures, and making sand castles... It's going to be great, and that will definitely satisfy my need to keep creative even when I can't sit down to write any thoughts for hours or days or weeks at a time.

I'm reading Imagine by Jonah Lehrer, our faculty summer reading, and it's doing a great job of helping me realize how many ways I don't stretch my creativity and my brain power.  I had very much the same sensation when I read Poemcrazy a few years ago, though they are actually quite positive sensations because I come away determined to do more, and also satisfied with the knowledge that I can in fact cultivate creative thinking in myself and those around me.  Travel, go to coffee shops, talk to more neighbors, allow myself to be under the influence (within reason) and get out into the arts world to be exposed to other people's creativity.  These are all important lessons I'm getting.

Mostly, I'm learning to take advantage of time even better.  To take a day and a half to write a blog post is okay if that means I am actually using every five-minute piece available to me, and if it means that on the whole I'm writing more.  I'm learning to observe more closely and narrate not just to Hudson what's going on in the world around us, but to myself.  I think it's all connected.  Hopefully all this will help me stay creative as a parent as the years go on...

Economic bilingualism?

Hudson is multicultural in so many ways!

In a casual playground interaction the other day at Matthews Beach, a mom told me her half-Mexican daughter would be attending Zoom preschool for the summer and that it was very difficult to get into.  I have heard other parents say similar things, and it looks like several programs run an average of $350/month for attending twice a week.  There are some, like La Escuelita that don't even post tuition rates on their website and I'm the kind of person who assumes that means it's too expensive for me, and even though it's a convenient location and it is clear they have a strong program, I probably will never even call them.
Currently I am our family's full-time income-earner, bringing home enough money to keep us going and to save a bit every month toward our imminent down payment on a townhouse.  Ben paints houses during the summer (anyone need painting?) and gives us enough extra cushion to allow for our uncontrollable extras like booze and seeing shows, attending flamenco workshops, etc.  We certainly do not have an extra $350 a month right now.  (We are even using state-offered health insurance for both Ben and Hudson, because adding even one of them to my program was prohibitively expensive.)  In short, bilingual preschool is not in our future unless Ben goes to work during the school year, in which case we'd also be needing to pay for child care when preschool is not in session...

The chain of money is dizzying, yet I'm dedicated to providing my child with bilingual experiences and education.  How do we go about this?

So far, I am simply counting my blessings that I am a fluent Spanish speaker and know of great resources other than preschool.  This makes me Hudson's sole exposure to Spanish so far, but at least I'm cheap.  Free Spanish exposure seven days a week is quite the bargain I think.  Perhaps by the time Hudson is school-aged we'll consider a two-parent income model so that we can afford a bilingual school.  Or I should call the school district today to get on a wait list for kindergarten at the John Stanford school, which I hear is also hard to get into...  My head is spinning.

At any rate, my dream is to travel to Spain (not to mention the rest of the Hispanic world) at least every two years, enroll my child in a bilingual school, and most importantly, just make some Spanish-speaking friends.  But my social ineptitude is another issue entirely.  Let's see what happens.

Inauguration post: Three weeks so far!

I arrived in Seattle about three weeks ago, and I am charging forth with a blog to document the adventures to come.  I mostly aim to push myself to write regularly, and focus on what I'm writing.  I love my journals, my notebooks and my smooth inky pens, but I am ready to write cohesively... at least, if I say this to myself enough, it will be true, won't it? 

I couldn't decide, however, if I would focus on the art of writing, and the Seattle writing community I aim to discover, or if I would focus on flamenco, and the flamenco community I aim to discover here, or on Spanish language, and the bilingual families I aim to meet and the playgroups I aim to join.  So in the end, I have one blog for all my life's passions.  No one is so narrow in their interests, I'm sure, as to not understand this.  Well, I'm sure there are some truly obsessive, genius artists out there that don't understand my wacky brain reaching out in all directions.  But I'm normal.  Not genius.  I have a wacky, rather unfocused, brain.

Some introductions are in order:


Ben is my husband, also a Seattle native and happily returning after traipsing around the country and the world with me, and Hudson is our son.  He is fifteen months old but is just shy of twelve months in this photo.  Hudson loves to spin wheels, read books, eat animal crackers, and practice his walking up and down these new crazy things called sidewalks.  (We have spent the last several years in New Hope, PA.)   He's also fond of playing his daddy's guitar.  Ben loves to invent words, read graphic novels, play music, and play with Hudson, and I think he may be determined to try every microbrew in the state by the time we sign an apartment lease here.  He is my north star and my laugh machine and  the other half of my orange (do you speak Spanish?)

A word on apartments in Seattle - they are expensive!!!  We are looking at the University District because it's going to be the most affordable and easy for my commute to Kirkland (where I refuse to live, even if my sister does live over there - I have experienced the East Side and will never go back).  But even for $1100 we are struggling to find adequate options.  Some tiny, dirty options, but places we are excited about are few and far between.  To be more specific, there is one, just one.  We'd like a two-bedroom please, a park within walking distance, a grocery store would be nice (this is partly why we moved to the city to begin with) and a not crazy-busy street full of UW students.  Something will turn up by August 1, right?  I love my in-laws dearly, but I don't want to be crowded into their house past August.  On Capitol Hill, we could live in a decrepit litttle house on John St, or a shiny granite-countered one-bedroom and trip over baby toys all day, and in Greenwood or Lake City we could live in a huge apartment but have nothing within walking distance and my commute would take forever.  We are watching craigslist like hawks, and emailing apartment managers almost daily, and checking their websites.  I might be getting a bit obsessive over the whole process, but I do have a pretty thorough understanding of the Seattle rental scene by now.

I'll be sure to share what we end up with.  And we'll be throwing a party, wherever it is. 

 At the moment, my brain is starting to fade and I may have to get ready for bed.  I am, ironically, writing from Washington, DC, where I am attending the annual AATSP conference, which I will be sure to comment on in my next post.  But here I am, welcome to my blog!  My goal is to write from personal experience, to give commentary on the arts, to post poems, to discuss parenting  (especially in two languages) and other online content relating to all of the above.  Sound good?  Okay then.  Till the next one.