“HI!”

Rowan*, my niece, is two.  This is one of her two favorite words.  She will be in the middle of dancing about the living room floor, then she’ll suddenly lock eyes with me, stop abruptly, rush over, gaze at me deeply, and say it:  “HI!”

She’s just made that word completely delicious for me.  I turn it around in my mouth, and pass it along to Bob, to the girls, just as she does…coming in super close, letting my love radiate out with the word, feeling the vibrancy and excitement of life shine from my eyes, just as they do Rowan’s.  It’s the simplest word, and Rowan brings so much meaning to it:

I am here.  You are here.  We are here together.  Now.  This is AMAZING!

“HI!”

She has one other favorite word.  

“NO.”

That, too, engulfs her body.  She gets a little line between her eyebrows, her cheeks fill up with air and her little arms fly back, all in an effort to help her push the word out to the world.

I am in awe.  She’s a linguistic genius.  She manages to set boundaries, be present, express deep love and joy, all with the use of only four letters. 

“HI.”

“NO.”

“HI!”

I’m considering this as I go into an online workshop I’m teaching for The School of Traditional Skills this past week.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, they offer online classes for rural and urban homesteaders who are trying to learn the skills to lead a more self-reliant lifestyle.  And this week’s lesson happens to be all about saying NO, a topic I covered in-depth here on The Hearth of Sap Bush Hollow in season 4, episodes 11, 12, and 13.

It seems almost counterintuitive that homesteaders and homemakers would need help developing the skills necessary to say NO and set personal boundaries.  A life that embraces self-reliance skills is, quite often, a rejection of mainstream culture.  The choice to can tomatoes rather than buy sauce in the grocery store, to have a backyard garden, or raise up a pig for meat all seem like a screaming NO to the way most westerners live today.  

And yet, the lifestyle is rife with landmines for over-commitment and over-exhaustion.  Rowan’s skills with the word NO would come in handy:  too many projects, too many responsibilities, too many impositions upon one’s time.

“Growing up in my family,” remarks one of the participants, “we weren’t allowed to use the word NO.”

I’m stunned.  While I am no fan of over-indulging children, I cannot imagine raising little ones and squelching their instinctive need to learn how to use it.  

And yet we do.

I myself have struggled mightily to learn to employ it successfully in my life.  And at 50, I’m starting to get there.  I’ve learned conversational tactics for relaying my NO’s, I’ve identified the importance of being clear so as to avoid default yeses (which are essentially failed attempts at stating my NOs); I’ve even established firm rules for myself for unique NO’s that I always must enforce for myself (no group meetings, no social media, no people pleasing, to name a few). 

But it’s Rowan’s other favorite word that actually seems to be inspiring me more of late.

“HI!”

Life is growing more tender and precious to me.  I am losing respect for productivity for it’s own sake, and find that I want to feel the joy and enchantment of Rowan’s “HI!”  in all that I do, whether that’s driving Mom to the podiatrist, cleaning out the brooder to get it ready for the turkeys, kneading bread dough, sitting with Bob over a cup of coffee, clearing my schedule to take time for the girls when they ask for it, listening to Dad about what he’s going through with Mom’s recovery, cooking breakfast for a customer, practicing my saxophone, or just sitting down at the computer to pay bills.  

The younger version of me would fly from task to task, checking off one as I mentally prepared to do the next.

Fifty-year-old me has lost tolerance for that kind of reckless efficiency.

If I’m driving Mom to the podiatrist, I don’t want to check-off an errand.  I want to enjoy that she is able to walk to the car, drive slowly to enjoy the scenery, and I want to listen to her talk.  If I have thirty minutes to practice my instrument, I want to lose myself in the sound.  If one of my daughters needs to talk, I want to ignore everything, sit still, and hear everything she has to say.

Fifty-year-old me doesn’t want to take any of it for granted, doesn’t want to look at anything as a chore.  Fifty-year-old me wants to says HI! to everything in front of her.

I think lots of caring people want to embrace the needs of their family members while enjoying their work and their personal interests.  But I think we try to cram it all in, without recognizing that we run out of nice juice.  I am learning that I am not able to be emotionally, spiritually and physically available at all times.  If I don’t replenish my nice juice, my HI turns into ……*sigh*, and that might devolve into something worse — arguments, shouting, frustration, resentment.  

So I celebrate Rowan’s other favorite word:  NO.  Sometimes, like in the last episode, it comes as an outburst.  But more and more, I’m able to smile and say, “I just need my downtime.”

And the more I communicate my needs and my limits, the more I see other family members step in to help. I think society has conditioned me to believe that a devoted wife and mother should be responsible for the emotional and physical needs of all my family members.  Now I’m seeing that Bob can make a great burger salad, that Ula is happy to sit with my mom for an afternoon reading books so that my Dad can go out to the upper pastures; that Saoirse really doesn’t mind cleaning up the kitchen and running errands.  

And after I’ve replenished my supply of nice juice, I, too, am able to step back into the world, not with a sense of burden, but with that joy that Rowan reminds me to hold in my heart:

HI!

 

*Not her real name. 

If you enjoyed this, please share this podcast with friends & family to get the ideas to spread.  Better still, you can help make the magic happen for as little as $1/month by hopping over to Patreon and looking up Shannon Hayes.  Or, if it’s easier, you can also donate to support the podcast by sending a check to Shannon Hayes, ℅ Sap Bush Hollow Farm, 832 W. Fulton Rd, West Fulton, NY  12194.

And that’s a really important thing to do, because all of this— the podcast, the blog, the books and the creative recharging that happens over fall and winter—   are a result of the support of my patrons on Patreon.  This podcast operates much like public radio.  It is freely available to all, made possible by the gifts from our patrons.  And this week I’d like to send a shout out to my patrons  Stephanie Rynas & Bonnie Friedmann…who was just here visiting Sap Bush from Germany!  It was great to see you, Bonnie!!!  Thank you, folks!  I couldn’t do it without you! 

Interested in learning more about Sap Bush Hollow Farm? Find us on the web here.

 

Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash