Listing for calm

Today was so beautiful I actually felt giddy.  I love warm, sunny days. I love walking around without a coat. I love taking the kids out for a walk instead of being cooped up inside – especially with a jackhammer in my ear. Today was one of those wonderful days when I felt elated for no real reason. In fact I felt elated despite some very good reasons to feel a little stressed (I won’t rehash the basement saga).  Sometimes people ask me – how are you so calm? How do you have four kids and stay so calm? Part of the answer is that I have great kids who are really well behaved most of the time and especially in public. Part of the answer is that despite my problems and grievances on any given day I have about 100 more things I could list that make me incredibly lucky and I can usually find the ability to tell myself that the good things far outweigh the bad. Part of the answer is that a very long time ago I read the serenity prayer and it stuck with me: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference…” Part of the answer is you don’t see me in private when I’m decidedly not remotely calm.

Here’s a list of 20 of the first things that come to mind that make me happy – positively giddy. It’s the things on this list and others I didn’t think of in these first 20 that I come back to when things are really bad or totally frustrating or just mildly annoying. I think of one or more of these things and I can usually bring myself back to my very first world, very privileged reality.

In no particular order:

1. Narwhals
2. Harry Potter
3. Every song from Hamilton and the fact that my kids request them
4. The baby swaying to music
5. My kids having a conversation
6. The fact that my husband will watch the entire Sex and the City series (plus movies) with me
7. Farmer’s markets
8. Country music
9. Bill Bryson
10. New York City
11. The beach
12. My son saying at bedtime, “I know you said no chit-chat, but I want to chit-chat.”
13. My other son touching a leaf and saying, “it’s just beautiful”
14. My daughter telling me at bedtime, “you’re the best mommy in the whole entire world” which is exactly what I used to say at bedtime.
15. Dinner with friends
16. Cruises
17. Saag Paneer
18. Drinks with the ladies
19. Auld Lang Syne (Barenaked Ladies version)
20. Sandal weather

So that’s my list – a small part of my list – that keeps me happy and calm. What’s on your list? I encourage you to make one – do it now. Write it on your phone or on actual paper with an actual pen or pencil if you have it handy and keep it in your wallet – next to the credit card you use most often – just so that you can see it constantly. Make your list and tell me you don’t have a smile on your face. If you’re having trouble knowing where to begin try this:

List one happy thought about each child

List one happy thought about your significant other

List one happy thought about yourself

List your favorite movies or actors

List your favorite books

List your hobbies

List your favorite place to visit

List something random that makes you smile no matter what – for me it’s fart jokes. It’s ridiculous and I have no idea why they make me laugh so hard but they do.

Go ahead now. List and be happy.

 

 

Time to Dance

I can remember the smell of my second grade teacher.  I don’t know why except that she was my favorite teacher in the world. Certain smells bring me back to different times in my life like the smell of burning asphalt in summer (our driveway growing up before we moved) and some unnameable smell that I smell occasionally and reminds me of the Disney cruise we took when I was 4. I know that the sense of smell is supposed to be the strongest and for me it is certainly up there. But I have found, especially lately, that music brings back memories and feelings of times past more than anything else.

It was music back in 5th grade that gave me a funny feeling about the new teacher in Hebrew school (he played guitar and taught us a new way to sing Oseh Shalom – he was so dreamy). It is the music I listened to in middle school, high school, college, and beyond that makes me think about those times so vividly when I hear those songs again.

I’m the type of person who can listen to a song on repeat for hours.  Is everybody like that? Sometimes a song just hits me and it gets stuck in my brain. Here are some songs I’ve obsessed over:

As She’s Walking Away by Zac Brown Band (feat. Alan Jackson)

Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver

Cathedrals by Jump, Little Children

Diane (really the entire Keep It Together album) by Guster

Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap

Samson by Regina Spektor

Empty by Ray LaMontagne

Hallelujah by anyone who ever sings it

The Family Song by Michael Napolitano of Preschool of Rock (a music class for toddlers) (Yes, really.)

The Nutcracker Pas de Deux by Tchaikovsky

Alexander Hamilton and every other song from Hamilton (Lin Manuel Miranda is a genius)

There are more. The list goes on. And when I think of each song I can clearly remember the time in my life when I was obsessed with it. I feel the same feelings if only for those 3 or 4 minutes.  Guster was the soundtrack to my summer after high school graduation. Hide and Seek was blaring on the drive up to visit my best friend at Putney when we were in college and I was mid break-up or some crisis of the heart. Cathedrals was my junior year of high school. The Pas de Deux is our song – the song we got engaged to and the song I walked down the aisle to. And Hamilton – don’t even get me started.

Lately I have a new obsession. About a month ago we went to a Tot Shabbat at the synagogue and heard a few songs from Tizmoret, a Jewish a cappella group from Queens College’s Hillel. Now I’m a sucker for a cappella so I was already into it.  Then they sang a song and told everyone to get up and dance. No one did. No one except my daughter.  She stood up and danced every second of that song and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her the whole time.  I even took a little video but I felt guilty doing it on shabbat in the synagogue so started it too late and ended it too early but I was able to get the idea. She was dancing wildly with limbs flying in every direction – I mean she looked a little crazy but I so admired her complete lack of inhibition. She was DANCING! I envied her and was amazed by her and was so proud of her and hoped that she would always be the one to get up and dance even if no one else was. The song she was dancing to was called Et Rekod – a song originally by Yaakov Shwekey – an incredibly popular orthodox Jewish singer who sings under the name Shwekey. Et Rekod means Time to Dance and the translation of the lyrics according to zinga lyrics is this:

There is a time for everything
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for war and a time for peace

But tonight we are all happy
It’s time to dance!

If you have 4 minutes I highly recommend you watch the video on YouTube linked above. If you have google play you should listen to the Tizmoret version on their album Where We Begin because that is the one I listened to no fewer than 15 times in the car today (and probably more I’m just embarrassed to say the real number).  It’s catchy, it’s upbeat, it’s hopeful, and above all it’s a reminder to take a page from my 5 year old daughter’s book of life – when you hear music DANCE.

Am I alone? Does everyone obsess in this way? What songs do you have on repeat?