a peach mama

This is a post about me, in a manner similar to most of the posts on this blog. But this is one that I hope will have signifigance for others as well, one that may hopefully resonate with many. It's decorated with some of my favorite photos I've ever taken for this here blog of mine (because I've nothing new to decorate it with), and it tells a story that begins at the lunch table today.

So today at lunch I lost an incredible opportunity for a fun conversation with my preteen daughter. I've been going through this rough patch of motherhood lately where my kid is growing up and is no longer so intent on doing stuff with mommy, and there it was, this opportunity for conversation which I didn't fully take up because I was absent-mindedly thinking about something else entirely. You could even say obsessing.

I've always been the chameleon type of person who finds it easy to blend in with new crowds and take up shared new interests with cool new people or a community if I want to. The flip side of the coin is that I've always been the type of person who easily forgets who she really, at the bottom of it all, is. I don't mean that I'm easily persuaded to do stupid things, I just mean it is easy for me to lose the essence of myself when trying on a new persona that fits the new crowd or whatever.

I'm also the type of person who gets easily excited about something and then obsesses over it, forgetting all else for a bit.

And this summer I've totally felt myself losing myself, and I've totally felt like I'm bouncing from one thing to another without sticking to anything much, as if I have no ability to concentrate whatsoever. One week I'm all about Blue Zones and Greek cuisine, the next I'm researching all things auyrveda to find out my dosha (I'm Vata-Kapha) and how knowing that can benefit my journey towards better health. It's like the internet is my bouncy castle and with just one payment I can bounce away as long as I like. And yet I never ever bounce back into me.

On a particularly where-is-me moment this summer, I wrote this list of when I'm happy:

- when I take a perfectly baked pie out of the oven

- when I smother my face with a rich layer of ByBi Babe Balm in the evenings before going to sleep

- when Blinding Lights by The Weeknd plays on the radio, and also when it stops playing in my head

- when we have a healthy, veggie-heavy lunch with some local fish thrown in

- when I get to go to the library, and there's no rush, and I just stroll the aisles looking for reading treasures, and even when I tell myself 'no more'

- when I'm by the sea and the water changes color before a storm

- when I'm reading in a cafe & having the perfect chai latte

- when I've slept well

- when new blooms open up in my garden

- when I put on my favorite Breton shirt and wonder why I didn't buy ten of them at once

- when I hike to the top of a fell with my family

- when a movie makes me cry

- when the wind picks up and there's a promise of rain in the air

- when I'm playing Takenoko with my daughter

- when the veggies I grew from seeds keep growing in my garden

- when there's enough firewood for the next winter in the woodshed

- when I swim in an ice cold lake for the first time of the summer

- when we sit in the car and are going somewhere, anywhere really

- when I slice peaches for my daughter who doesn't like to get her hands all dirty, and she calls me a peach mama

And would you imagine, all these things have happened this summer, and yet I feel detached and like there's something lacking somehow. Like I'm not me enough. 

Notice what's missing from that list entirely? It's the thing I like to think of as my creative outlet: Instagram. It does not really really make me happy, and I suspect it's one of the things that results in me finding it hard to find me. It's a constant dilemma for me: I love taking and sharing photos & writing stories, and I love the community of friends I've got there. But, on the other hand, I do love being wholly present, too. 

So this is what I have been thinking of now that a new autumn with a new school year is approaching and I'm going back to work next week:

I suspect that peach mamas are at their best and ripest and finest when they take up an opportunity for conversation at lunch, rather than think of Instagram and plan on what they're going to write in their caption. Peach mamas are also at their finest and best when they decide to embrace all their peach-mamaness and concentrate on being one.

Because really, it's a choice. If you want to be the type of woman who makes meals out of fresh veggies & local fish together with her family, and has lovely conversations at lunch, and slices peaches for her kid until she runs out of peaches, and then rides a bike back to the grocery store to pick up some more, then you gotta start being that woman.

Which I'm promptly going to do, because what I know for sure is this: these days are fleeting, and before I know it, my daughter is going to be all grown up and ripe and gone, and now that she's still here, I'm really, at the bottom of it all, always, a peach mama.