For the past five days I’ve been living with my daughter, helping to take care of seven-month-old Baby Manu while her husband is away. Like most of life, there have been moments of  joy, moments of challenge, moments of laughter, drudgery, frustration, profound peacefulness, you-name-it. The only thing certain about life with a baby is that there’s rarely a dull moment.

As a grandparent I feel blessed by having a lot more perspective than I had when my own children were young. In my years of early motherhood, whenever my kids screamed, I worried that not addressing on some immediate need they were expressing would scar them for life, the fog of sleep-deprivation only adding to my anxiety. Now, as I carry Baby Manu around the house and try with my old arms to satisfy his need for incessant “jumping” (i.e. lifting him up and down as he flexes his leg muscles as a launching point on my lap) I feel wiser and calmer–even when he’s screaming. And I’ve thought about how like writing, taking care of a baby is really just an exercise in plunging in and dealing with a lot of trial and error as I try to find that “true north” point of connection.

With Manu this might mean reading a book and taking stops between each page for jumping breaks, or tango dancing around the house while humming riffs from Raffi’s greatest hits or rap songs I’m making up on the spot–all on the theme of Manu: The Life. It might mean playing hand games, or making funny noises, or going through an entire array of animal sounds. Or taking a moment to put him down to play by himself, recognizing in my new found older-age wisdom that both of us could use a little time to chill.  “Little” is the defining word here. All of these activities have proven successful–but generally none of them work for more than 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

The writing process can sometimes feel similar. While I welcome the blessings of the time I feel “in the groove,” other times my words–and my brain–can feel jumpy and fragmented. These are the days I go into the garden to chill, just as I put Manu under his playstation, so he can shake his rattles and babble to himself without Grandma’s interference. And other times, when I’m struggling with trying to write that “one true sentence,” I realize I need to switch up the activity, which for me usually means putting a story aside to revise a poem, or putting the poem aside to work on another poem, or another story or essay until I find something I’m connected to enough in that moment to “re-see.”

But I’m counting my blessings and taking the “birds-eye view” as both a grandparent and a writer. Eventually Manu will grow old enough to tell me what he wants–and so, I hope, will my baby poems and prose in progress.

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In the last few weeks, I’ve been doing some of the exercises from Julia Cameron’s classic book, The Artists’ Way. As my children are grown and I’ve been blessed with the luxury of retirement and the ability to structure my “Act III” life to center around creativity, the book doesn’t speak to me as much as it would to those who trying to pull off whatever tiny pieces of life they can from the morass of work and family demands to nurture their creative selves. Yet, I’ve found the process of “morning pages,” (brain-dumping three pages of long-hand uncensored meanderings before I get out of bed in the morning) useful. And I’ve been glad to discover that unloading my mind’s detritus in purposefully pedantic prose hasn’t seemed to affect my ability to write more creatively in other contexts, as I first feared it would. It actually can be liberating to write without worrying about creating flow or metaphor, a clear difference from other stream-of-consciousness prompt writing that I try to load up with gems I can later grow into poems.

I usually end my morning pages with an intention for the day. And while I know that an intention is simply a way of focusing on the day’s array of opportunities, rather than some set of goals I must meet or feel bad about myself for not meeting, the tightrope between goal and intention is a fine line to balance on. In the last few weeks, prepping for Passover (extensive cooking and curating a new Haggadah) along with trying to meet my self-imposed deadline of revising an old novel and submitting it to my publisher have made it difficult to get through my general daily list of writing/revising/submitting poetry or short fiction, playing the piano, taking a walk in the woods, doing a cardio or yoga tape, and meditating–creative and self-care activities that have become essential markers of my day.

Then there are all the other weekly to-dos to fit in: writing political calls-to-action and doing immigration justice work, editing/giving feedback on writing to others, spending time (in person or virtually) with friends I care about, cooking dinner, making sure the house doesn’t fall into utter chaos–and what I call admin: emails to answer, calls and texts to return, bills to pay. The list can be endless.

And, in the last six months, I’ve spent several afternoons each week putting all of this aside to babysit for my grandchild, Manu, which is the best thing of all. In fact, for this moment with Manu, I say what we say every year on Passover, Dayeinu: It would have been enough for us.

Julia Cameron talks about the importance of making dates with your inner artist that are geared solely for playing rather than to get projects done. And in my experience, there is nothing more purely playful as putting your whole self–heart and soul–into the space of a baby newly exploring the world.

So, today, even as I will still stress about being behind on deadlines, intentions, goals, whatever, I will try to remind myself–Dayeinu. Gratitude. It’s all good.

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