MAMA: Adventures in Martial Arts and Motherhood

Gassho: "A position used for greeting, with the palms together and fingers pointing upwards in prayer position; used in various  Buddhist  traditions, but also used in numerous cultures throughout Asia. It expresses greeting, request, thankfulness, reverence and prayer." In the martial arts specifically, it is often interpreted as simply "to appreciate". It's Saturday night and here we are again, bedtime,  and I have made a complete rookie mommy mistake; I have kept Maya up past the window. Y’all know the window, that magical time of evening where bedtime is a joyous mix of kisses, giggles and cozy cuddling, where you hear your child's gentle whisper as you close her bedroom door: “Goodnight mommy. I love you.” The window is the time when she is not yet too tired to behave normally, not yet dissolved into a puddle of snot and exhaustion. If you make the window, bedtime is bliss. If you miss it, god help you. I have missed it and I know that Maya is f...

Yesterday Maya and I went to the Imagination Playground near South Street Seaport. ( http://imaginationplayground.com/ ) It is an awesome place, with sand and sprinklers and all kinds of blue foam pieces which allow you to build your own stuff. Here is Maya building her own stuff: Lots of fun. While we were there a camp group from somewhere in the Bronx showed up in their bright orange so-you-don't-lose-a-kid-in-the-park t-shirts to eat their lunch. (Believe me no one was getting lost in these shirts!) Maya was very busy singing and dancing through the water so I had ample opportunity to watch the campers eat their lunches. Here is what I saw: Numerous bags of Cheese Doodles, Doritos, Fritos and other "ito" variants One bag of Funyons. (ewwww) One GIANT bag of Smartfood popcorn because apparently if it is slightly healthy it needs to be super sized. One boy was eating it. A large boy. At least someone in his house was trying. No fewer than four bottles of ...

Today was one of those days where amazing things happen. I am not saying it was an amazing day. Actually, Maya was in a bratty mood all day and tried really hard to ruin it. But despite her whining, her mean faces and her general shitty demeanor, she was no match for the incredible luck we had today. Our day started out at Arthur Ashe Kids Day at the US Open. Ever gone to this? I do not recommend it. It was very hot and unbelievably crowded. We paid $20 for parking. We waited in line in the sun for twenty minutes so Maya could hit a tennis ball with some coaches, only to have her chicken out at the last minute. The lines were what I imagine Disney World to be like (I have never gone.), only without Micky Mouse and the pretty princesses. Maya got a free snap bracelet. I waited in line at the Wilson store to procure what I assumed to be a free giant tennis ball. The "free" ball was actually $45. I left the store empty handed. After about an hour of sweating and whining and sh...

"It's not in my nature to admit that no matter how much will you summon, no matter how much courage you express, no matter how much intelligent and complex planning you do, no matter the excruciating long hours of training, no matter the dedicated and expert individuals you choose to help you, sometimes you just don't arrive at your destination. And somehow you still have to find the pride and the joy in your journey. That's the road I'm walking today. Feeling that pride, that joy. "  Diana Nyad, 8/22/2012 Good for you Diana! To make sense of this please refer to the previous post: http://mamommyarchives.blogspot.com/2012/08/chasing-impossible-dreams.html

Earlier this week, Diana Nyad went into the water again. Way back in March I wrote a blog post about the swimmer's amazing accomplishments. (You can read it here:  http://mamommyarchives.blogspot.com/2012/03/throwing-in-towel.html ) To sum it up, she is trying to swim from Cuba to Florida. She is 62 years old. She swims without a shark cage, gets stung by numerous jellyfish along the way, risks hypothermia; all of this to prove a point, that there is life after 60. She is amazing, an inspiration to thousands of women and athletes all around the world. Every time she has attempted this swim (this week was her third try) I have been impressed all over again. And yet... With all due respect to this incredible woman, she needs to stop. I don't mean that she needs to stop swimming. I plan on doing martial arts until the day I die. When I am too old and my body is too beat up from years of sparring I will simply sit atop a mountain and do katas in my head. So by all means Diana...

I am on a beach vacation. When you are on a beach vacation certain things are just par for the course. You will have sand everywhere, no matter how many showers you take; sand in the bedsheets, in your daughter's hair, trapped in places we will not discuss this early on a Monday morning. You will snack constantly, sometimes healthy things like a sweet juicy peach, other times a handful of Oreos while standing in the kitchen contemplating what to eat next.  You will spend time playing paddle ball, boogie boarding, digging giant holes in the sand, taking long lazy walks, and staring at the ocean. There will also be plenty of time for reading, however it cannot be a book that requires your full attention. No serious novels here. Instead, it has to be the kind of thing that can be paused frequently for conversation breaks or trips to the kitchen to get more Oreos. It is for this reason that I decided to see what all the fuss is about and attempt to read Fifty Shades of Grey. It shoul...

I am not usually one of those bitchy judgmental mamas. (Or at least, I try really hard not to be one.) I believe that parenting is a personal journey, everyone does it differently, and unless you are beating your child across the face with a two by four, I am fine with whatever choices you make along the way. That being said, I do have a few pet peeves. I hate a lazy four year old in a stroller, with her knees up to her face and her feet scraping the floor. I understand that pushing her is faster than waiting for her to climb up and down every staircase, swing on every scaffolding and observe every ant in NYC. (Believe me, I understand.) Pushing her is also easier than hearing her whine about how tiiiiirrrred she is and how much her legs huuuuurrrt. Still, leave the house earlier and make her walk. Tell her to suck it up, her legs will be fine. Even better, her legs will gown these things called muscles which will make walking easier. Everyone wins! And her preschool teachers will than...

"  And if my children resent having been moons rather than the sun? If they berate me for not having loved them enough? If they call me a bad mother?  I will tell them that I wish for them a love like I have for their father. I will tell them that they are my children, and they deserve both to love and be loved like that. I will tell them to settle for nothing less than what they saw when they looked at me, looking at him." Ayelet Waldman Last Friday morning we took Maya to the playground to meet up with her best friend. They played together for over an hour while Matthew and I sat on a bench and discussed the dojo. After a bit, it started to rain so we took Maya to the local indoor playspace, where for $10 she could continue running and climbing and sliding and we could continue sitting on a bench. (Now we were discussing jiu-jitsu. We are very boring.) Soon it was lunchtime. Maya, like me, turns into a bitchy, blubbery mess when she is hungry. Even so, when we told her sh...

On Tuesday evening, while on my way to my parents house, I boarded the Columbus Avenue bus behind a young teenaged boy. In the typical manner of someone who is not yet comfortable in his own skin, the boy climbed up the steps quickly, threw some change in the slot and proceeded to walk (awkwardly) to the back of the bus. The driver called him back. "Young man?" Some incoherent mumbles. "You only put a quarter in." More mumbles that sounded vaguely like "no money". "Ok.Well listen, you are a man right? A young man? So the next time that happens, be a man and say I am sorry driver but I do not have any money today. Don't try to sneak past me." The kid nodded enthusiastically, like a bobblehead on a windy day. He then slunk his way to the back of the bus, never to be seen again. The bus driver then turned to me (who had paid in full) and said, "Am I right?" He was right. Sometimes, in life, you can't pay your bills. The...

Listen Mr. Bloomberg, I am all for healthy choices. I don't drink soda , in fact, I choose to drink water most of the time because it makes me feel better. I limit the amount of fried foods I consume, also because it makes me feel better. And I exercise frequently because, yup, you guessed it. When I am eating and drinking healthy I have more energy, get sick less and like myself a bit more. And sometimes I gorge myself on a cheeseburger and fries because it is delicious and then drag my ass home to lay in the bed that I have made. The point is, I know all the information and I choose to be healthy. I even go as far as to try to encourage my friends and family to be healthy. We have a water cooler at the dojo which we fill up every day in the hopes that our students stay hydrated. I give the kids in class a hard time when any of them reach for their bottle of lemonade during our scheduled "water break." I buy whole wheat bread and whole grain pasta for our house and coo...

Try this. Tomorrow when you wake up, (after coffee of course) look yourself in the mirror and say the following things: "I am smart, beautiful and talented. I can do anything I put my mind to. Today is going to be a fabulous day!" If you are anything like me you are probably laughing right about now. I know that Self Help writers and psychotherapists have made millions off of the concept of affirmations and positive thinking but no one really does this. Do they? I am a realist. I am comfortably bitter and cynical.. I am from the generation that coined inspirational phrases such as Shit Happens and Life Sucks and then You Die. I do not say positive affirmations in my mirror like some kind of freak show! It is true I do not talk to my reflection. But I have been known to mumble an affirmation under my breath when no one is listening. I have a few accomplishments in my life that I am damn proud of and I have no shame about parading them around in my head when I am feeling l...

Many of my blog posts about the martial arts are pretty generic. I got beat up today. I like arm bars. Kids in gis are cute. But every so often I write something that rubs someone the wrong way. ( My promotion post was one. And yesterday's was another. If you have not read it yet feel free to scroll down.) I should not have to say this but I will. I love both my karate dojo and my jiu jitsu school. I have nothing but respect for my teachers, both past and present, and for all of my training partners. If you were ever offended by anything I said, I apologize, that was truly never my intention. The thing is I am not just a martial artist, I am also a teacher. I run a dojo. Sometimes when I ask questions it is from the point of view of a lost, confused student. But other times, when I am questioning the best way to do things it is because it is my job to do so. I am not attacking anyone else's teaching methods, I am just trying to improve my own. I know these discussions mak...

This week I made my grand return to jiu-jitsu class. Two weeks off does not seem like a long time but my body did not quite understand that. 'What are you doing?' it protested. 'You teach summer camp now. And watch the Olympics. Why is this person trying to choke you?' Despite some very pissed off muscles, it felt great to be back on the mats. And my return to class also gave me some interesting food for thought, with regard to jiu-jitsu training. Over the course of the week I rolled with two different women with two very different approaches to sparring. Both of them are good athletes who are very skilled at BJJ. When I went with the first one, she attacked very aggressively forcing me to become aggressive as well. We had a great round, during which I spent most of the time playing defense. At one point I made a joke about her secret leg moves. (Her legs are quick and spider-like.) At another point I commented on the way her submission (a variation of the guillotine ...