Gone Fishin’

My kids are away at summer camp, all of them, for the first and only time ever. Next year my oldest will age out, and I have big plans to go on our first backpacking trip together while his siblings are away. I haven’t gone backpacking in almost 20 years and I’m super excited to strap the pack on and explore. This is the life hack I figured out: always give yourself something to look forward to, big or small, to keep your brain focused on the positive. (I will have to remind myself of my own hack when I’m sitting in a classroom in a few weeks instead of on summer vacation haha.)

Anyway here I am, awash in complete solitude, trying to give myself a pep talk that yes, I will cook for one tonight and not defrost something for dinner. It reminds me of my single years when I lived alone in an apartment and ate a lot of Costco frozen food, hating the solitude. We’re never happy, right? The grass is always greener.

I think the last time I was alone in my home was 2009, pregnant with my first child while my husband went to visit a friend. With the exception of a two-night work trip, I haven’t been alone overnight since 2019— and that was the first time I had ever had an overnight break since becoming a mother. Breaks are nice; it’s too bad I never got more of them. Even simple things like taking the animals to the vet or getting my oil changed are relaxing tasks when done alone. Humans need alone time, but it’s hard to get it as a mom. Very difficult when you are an only parent. But like food and sleep, I think alone time is imperative to good mental health.

I just have to say, to all of the people who have told me to “slow down” and “relax” and “blah blah blah,” now I know how it so easily came out of your mouth. It’s because you didn’t have a house full of kids. There is no “slow down” mode for parents of small children. Sure, it’s easy to move at a slower pace alone in your home. I could meditate for hours in an empty house if I wanted to. I tinker with this or that. I don’t even need a house, I could just live in a room! Everything stays clean. My chores decreased by 95%. It’s so quiet I can hear my own thoughts. Nobody is interrupting me, unless you count the needy dogs, but they can easily be kicked out of my room or sent outside. It feels like a small taste of my golden years that are to come.

And yet…I don’t love it. 

And I certainly don’t want to rush to that chapter of my life when my kids are grown and out of the house when I’m…doing who knows what by then. Will I even be around? Will I be healthy? You want to say yes, you hope it is a yes, but the truth is we never know.

You realize—maybe too late—that amidst the chaos and pain and stress was your glory years. The time when youth was on your side and you were alive right in the thick of things, the action, the precious moments, times that you will never get back. 

I suppose the true test is if you can reflect back on life and think: I don’t regret anything. I lived fully and I enjoyed myself. If you can honestly reflect about whether or not you did the best you could.

I feel nostalgic about the toddler years, yet I don’t want to go back to them. I got more than my fair share of summer splash pads with my little ones, inflatable pools, trips to the children’s museums on summer vacation and changing too many diapers. I am grateful. I’m also grateful that I’m here.

Now, I’m in this season. This chapter where my kids are getting older and have their own blossoming lives, and my oldest is five years away from college. I’m very much playing the supporting role these days. It’s a tiring job, especially as a solo parent, and yet, it is my most prestigious, most honorable, most humbling, best role I could have ever scored in all of my wildest dreams. I want to enjoy as much as I can before this season is over too.

I don’t actually think we have glory days. I think we have days that have been sugarcoated in our minds, just our lizard brains reaching for what is familiar in the face of the unknown. The truth is, all we have is right now, and what we make of our lives right now. 

This week, I want to enjoy the slow pace of my empty house, and next week I want to revel in the chaos of a full house, dirty dishes, nagging this kid to put his rubber bands on his braces, playing the screen time tug-of-war, running kids from point A to B and having their friends over. I want to shop for back-to-school supplies and brace myself for soccer season and homework.

Last week, several of the kids’ friends piled into my stinky minivan. Gawd, I hate that van. It’s 10-years-old now and smells like the toddler years no matter how many times it has been cleaned. My husband insisted on the stripped down Toyota Siena that has absolutely no creature comforts, including bluetooth. But as I drove the kids and their friends to the pool and for boba— every seat occupied and the van bustling with kid chatter— I realized once upon a time me and my husband were at the Toyota dealership with a newborn and a toddler, buying a vehicle that would fit our growing family (we had wanted four kids!), and that the Teresa back then could only dream of the day that she would be driving around a van full of her kids and their friends. And that day was now. I lived to see the day. Dreams come true. I think about that quote: “Remember that once you dreamed of being where you are now.” I tried to forget about the stained rugs and take in the moment. Happy kids. Happy life. Happy mom. My only regret is that my husband didn’t live to see the day, but how amazing and hopeful it feels to experience that joy in the face of great loss.

Truly, these moments deserve a pause, an acknowledgement that for right now, right here, you were happy. Take a deep breath—inhale it all in slowly—before you have to exale and let it go.

There will be more happy times. You have to believe that with every fiber of your being. You have to lean into your lived experience that nothing lasts forever, including the bad times. No scarcity thinking. In a world and universe this vast and wondrous, there are sources of joy you can not yet conceptualize. This I trust in.

My summer of domestic problems has continued, and as one problem after another fell into my lap, I realized I was getting less anxious about the barrage of house problems and going straight into planning out the baby steps necessary to address each issue. With practice, everything becomes easier, including handling stress. You actually need stress to build strategic thinking, become more resilient, and develop the “I’ve got this” mentality. Slowly, I’m figuring out this thing called life! Most importantly, I want to be a good role model for my kids, and hopefully even offer my students insight about how to cope when we feel overwhelmed. It seems in this day and age, we find ourselves struggling more than ever to keep our heads above water, especially young people.

The kids and I went to Mammoth recently, and when I realized everything I wanted to do was closed due to snow (in mid-July!), we pivoted to a few other activities. One day we went fly fishing with a guide. It was an amazing experience, wading in the rushing creek, catching and releasing gorgeous trout, being alone between mountains amidst the wildflowers and butterflies, under a piercing blue sky. One of my sons said something about wishing there were more fish— even though they had each caught more than they ever had in their lives— to which our guide said, “If we caught fish everyday, it wouldn’t be fun.”

I thought about those words as we hiked back up to our car with my youngest hitching a ride on my back, sweaty, tired, and also feeling like my life cup was overflowing. One of those, “Is this really my life?” moments we all want. 

I thought about those words the next day when we went horseback riding into a canyon filled with a super bloom of colorful flowers, patches of snow against the mountain sides, a waterfall rushing in the distance, another clear blue sky and perfect weather. 

“This is stunning,” I kept saying. 

How many days do we reach “stunning” levels?

I tried to soak up every second, every moment, every step. It won’t last. It never does. But that’s okay. It wouldn’t be as fun if it did. 

I’ve been working on gratitude this summer, inspired by people like Reverend Kenji Akahoshi, who talked about appreciating what we have to balance the desire for what we don’t have. 

I’ve been working on my strategic thinking, cutting out what doesn’t work for me anymore, trying to live the life I want. I’ve struggled forever with having rigid thinking, wanting familiarity, clinging, safe choices, security. True liberation requires one to fully embrace impermanence, appreciating a person or a moment or a thing for what it is and knowing when to let go. With it comes a willingness to be vulnerable and be willing to confront our fears. Our minds become more nimble with practice. I’m still practicing and growing and trying to get better.

I’m working on not explaining myself. Not feeling bad about everything. Not caring. Being more assertive about what I want. Having a clear vision for myself. It reminds me of when I was younger and used to go out with my friends.

“Where do you want to eat?” someone would ask.

“I don’t know, where do you want to eat?” I’d say, or they would say to me.

No, girl. Where do YOU want to eat? Life is too short to be indecisive and passive about how you want to live your one wild and precious life.

It has been a lifetime of developing that clear focus and breaking out of my shell.

Since childhood, I’ve been too careful, too scared, too worried, so I have done everything I could to not take up too much space, not be too loud, not be an inconvenience, not be a burden or inconvenience. It happens when you’re raised in a house where your voice isn’t valued. When you are in your formative years, you only hear, “Not good enough, not good enough, not good enough.” It is damaging.

One day my 8-year-old son said to me, “You’re 41. Who cares what they think? Aren’t you the boss of yourself?”

And it made me think deeply about how much time I’ve wasted making myself less than. How much time I’ve wasted trying to check all the boxes, to do better, to be better, to try and earn my place on this earth. 

The thing is, we don’t have to earn our place. 

And we don’t need to wait for others to recognize our value. I always heard that this realization would come with age. For me, it has taken 41 years. I have to do better if I want my kids to grow differently. I want to do better for myself, but also for my kids and my grandkids. It is my utmost priority to raise them to become better, healthier, and happier than me. If I can break generational curses, I will have succeeded in making this world a better place.

I came across a great article called “In Dark Times, Dirty Hands Can Still Do Good” by John Kaag and Clancy Martin. It talked about my branch of Buddhism— Pure Land Buddhism— and its founder, Shinran Shonin, who believed “sincere faith turns on the constant acknowledgement of unavoidable imperfection.” Shinran wrote, “Each of us in outward bearing makes a show of being wise, good, and dedicated. But so great are our greed, anger, perversity and conceit that we are filled with all forms of malice and cunning.” This is not meant to be depressing, and unlike other religions one does not need to repent their true nature, but rather, as the authors clarified, it leads to a “brave realism about the human condition.”  Basically, we come to accept our imperfect nature and move forward seeking wisdom and light, learning to put our ego aside.

It reminds me of the Maya Angelou quote: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

In a few weeks I begin my 20th school year. I ended last school year feeling out of sorts about my career, not quite as fulfilled as I had been. I read somewhere that this feeling of discontent and restlessness can come from a time of growth, when we are going through a doorway into a new chapter of our lives. As a teacher, it feels like the time is now to infuse something new and different into my work. I refuse to finish my career not liking what I do. I think about my oldest child, who will be at my school in two years, and what kind of an experience I want for him. It has to become personal.

While I was in Mammoth, we wandered into a bookstore and I bought a canvas bag that said, “Bookstores save democracy.”

It resonated with me because teaching kids how to have a voice is my passion. It’s so easy to get bogged down in the other issues plaguing my profession. Look, society isn’t okay. Poverty is rampant. People are not well. I tell my colleagues all of the time that we are on the frontlines of societal problems. My goal is to stay focused on my why: to help students find their voice. To help them articulate their voice. To encourage them to do good with their voice. I’ve tried to dig into the good of my profession: making a difference every day. What has been my honor for two decades: I do noble work for a living. This is the perspective and gratitude I want to hold in this new year. 

And in other news, I finished my minister’s assistant course and will become certified in a few months, receiving a Buddhist name and short robes in a ceremony. I recently gave a talk about the benefits of Shin Buddhism in my life for the Buddhist Churches of America. For me, Buddhism has helped me cope with loss and grief, and it continues to help me with anxiety and existential restlessness. I can’t wait to see where else this path takes me. For now, I’m focusing on what is in front of me, trying to enjoy the journey. Inhaling slowly, before I have to exhale.

It’s the same with motherhood.

The same with teaching.

The same with being a human being.

One step at a time.

Fish or no fish.

***

Thank you so much for reading! If you’re interested, check out my IG for pictures and word inspiration that I periodically share.