There is a point in every yoga class I’ve attended - EVERY SINGLE ONE - where my body says to me, “Whhhhyyyy?” with a pained and completely put-upon voice. It’s usually about the time when the teacher says to pay attention to our breathing and I remember I’ve stopped doing that and quickly inhale to find that I’ve tensed the body part I’m supposed to relax.
Yesterday, I found myself attempting to fold my body over a bolster. Unlike the rest of the class that seemed to have melted like a Salvador Dali painting over a bolster, I was more Picasso in my representation, all angles and edges and sharp colors of red. And then as usual, when Teacher told me to "lengthen the inhale" of our breath; I discovered I’d stopped breathing at all. That I was actively holding onto my breath as my body slowly froze in a permanent position of self-conscious agony. I released my pent up breath in an attempt at controlled exhale, letting the air “fill the space” and promptly tightened every muscle but the one currently filling like a somewhat flaccid balloon. Meanwhile, my brain would not “turn off” as requested. Who in the heck has an off switch for their brain? And where can I get one? Cause no matter what I’ve tried I cannot shut that thing down. EVER! Not once during class did my brain stop skipping from topic to topic, a veritable three year old in FAO Swartz’s toy store having just had dessert at Serendipity. I was everywhere and nowhere at once. Reprimanding didn’t help. Teacher telling us to focus and to “put away our worries till the end of class” didn’t help. Not one thing put my brain into neutral and let me concentrate on breathing or remembering to breathe or on not falling over. I even thought about this post while sitting there, ankles on fire, skin sticking to skin, back threatening to leave me if I didn’t move. “Focus, stupid!” I’d tell myself. “Everyone else is managing to do it, why can’t you?” I’d crack an eyelid and watch the tiny brunette one in the corner, a veritable statue of peace. Or I’d spy on my friend next to me, breathing steady and slow, waves of calm washing over her, not a wrinkle of worry on her face. And then I’d try; I’d slap my conscience across the hand and tell it in in a very stern voice to focus. I’d breathe in, counting slowly to eight, attempting to “fill my ribs and breathe into the space in my back.” And then, while breathing out, a thought would flit by my eyelids and I’d follow, net in hand, chasing the pretty wings of distraction away from the structure of empty space I was supposed to maintain. This post even visited me, jumping around my head space while I contorted in sweat: Yoga Mat For Sale. Used Once. - $1. If you've not read it before, READ IT! This man knows of what I speak. I wrote last week about listening to my body. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to do. My mind is too loud to hear anything over except for the high pitched whining of pain.
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Years ago, when I was a shiny silly kid, I had a dance teacher in New York who’s mantra was that we should all, “Listen to your body. It will tell you what it needs.”
This teacher - I’ll call him Bill - was a longhaired, short of stature hippy with hairy knuckles, tight revealing spandex and a penchant for touching as he talked. Bill would draw out each word, each syllable as he spoke until a simple sentence became longer than a soliloquy in Shakespeare prose. He preached vegetarianism but ate a bacon cheeseburger whenever his body “told him to.” Rumor was his tall pretty Asian wife had been a student and that he smoked more greens than he ate. I thought he was hokey, and stupid and filled with the old Mary Jane more often than not. I didn’t listen to my body. Why should I? I had moved to New York to be an AcTOR. I was going to change the face of theatre. I wasn’t a dancer and so I didn’t need a dance teacher. I didn’t need to be told to listen to my body. I was smart and talented and I was going places. And Bill was washed up, and clichéd and stupid. Turns out he was the smartest man in the room. My body was a confused mess of muscles and memories. I may have thought it had it all together, my mind may have been on top of it, but my body was in disarray. Sure, it did, for the most part what I told it to. I was young and that youth permitted a carelessness and a stupidity that time cannot easily heal. That flexibility, that total disregard for well-being, was something I didn’t think about, didn’t need to consider. What I didn’t see was that the memories of falling off stages, handsy half brothers, standing as silent witness to flying fists, overbearing Aunties with burning hot water and well-intentioned love was imprinted in everything my body said and did. That each memory did more than just tighten a ligament or tear a muscle but that they left me stiff and frozen. I didn’t see that. I thought I was secure in my self, my heart kept safe inside its shell, my body just a vessel for my fears, my overbearing feelings. As hugging became the cliché to every good-bye and my abstinence from that casual touch became a punch line in a joke, I listened to my head. I did not listen to Bill. Mother nature threw a fit the night my mother left and then again last night. The skies lit up the room, making it a kind of daylight hours after I’d gone to bed. My plans of playing in the yard literally soggy as the yard became nothing more than a mud pie. My body, still not healed from the flu, still aching from the years of neglect, had no choice to sit on a couch and reflect. For some reason, Bill’s voice and all his smoky wisdom came popping into my mind, flitting through my memories as slowly as he spoke. “Listen to your body. It will tell you what it needs.” Smartest man in the room. A good-bye lunch with Mom and Husband included this statement from Husband about the Queso dip –
HUSBAND: Isn't that the greatest melted cheese ever? It's like laying down in a comfy bed for your tongue. And we laughed at the statement. And then somehow, because he's Husband and likes to make things awkward, he brought up tea bagging, mentioning that someone at work had been teasing a friend about it. To which Mom said – MOM: What is tea bagging? To which Husband laughed self-consciously and said - HUSBAND: Never mind. To which I responded – ME: Mom. You know what that is! Remember a kid in the dressing room a few years back was telling all the boys what it was and I had to tell the parents what had happened and then had to explain it to the costumer what it was and then, when I was telling you the story, I had to explain it to you? And Mom said – MOM: No. I don’t remember. And Husband stupidly laughed a little more. Because he thought this was going to be the end of it. But he should know better. He’s known me for ten years. He’s known Mom for ten years. We discuss things. Even at a table in a restaurant in Nashville where people are listening. So I told mom what tea bagging was. And she said – MOM: Oh. Ew. And Husband laughed uncomfortably and tried to change the subject. And lucky for him, they brought us our food just then so the subject was in fact changed. I miss Mom. Good thing I still have Husband around to keep it interesting. The Mom leaves today. It’s been an absolutely lovely visit and I’m sad to see her go.
I am sad that I won't have her here for the everyday and the exciting. I’m depressed that she won't be here to share bizzare experiences shopping as we end up in weird exchanges with the folks that work at the stores. That we won’t be able to have the type conversations we’ve had that we start on one day and finish the next. In the almost three weeks she’s been here, we’ve solved the world’s problems and uncovered a few random oddities about people, places and things. Conversations with Mom have always been like that – educational, arbitrary and totally not at all what other people seem to discuss at dinner or the grocery store or wherever. One day we discussed how Gentian Violet was used to ‘cure’ sexually transmitted diseases. The next we revisited my childhood trauma with the Aunties trying to burn my brief contact with a possible leper off my hands. At a party for our friend's two-year-old twins, she attempted to explain the reason the Maasai drink blood with a curious ten-year-old while I looked on in slight horror and amusement. A topic, by the way, I’d brought up while sharing a memory from when I was a child of watching my father share a cup of blood from a cow with a Maasai elder. And while she did verify my lion story - the lion that got into our school yard and chased the poor guy around the field as we stood in the window screaming until his shoe fell off, the lion stopped to eat it and the guy got away - she disputed several others I tried to tell over the course of her stay “You’re making that up, ej.” with a matter of fact tone and a laugh she’d say. Mother Nature has cooperated and put on quite a show for her. We’ve had countless Owl sightings and wild bird sightings and deer and raccoon and rabbit and on and on. I’ve enjoyed watching her watch them from our windows, binoculars to face, for hours. The baby Owls trying to catch chipmunks or a rabbits have fascinated her as equally as the deer trying to eat seed out of the bird feeder. She, who has no TV, has also been transfixed by the wonders of Myth Busters and How It’s Made and House Hunters. It’s been more entertaining to watch her watch the shows, as she’s giving her opinion of the facts they pretended, pointing out the truths and the suppositions. We’ve spent time in the library, which resulted in time on the couch "reading", which led to the most wonderful naps and to Husband referring to us as corpses in coffins. He can subtly dig at our indulgence all he wants; napping with Mom has been my favorite part. Lying on our separate couches, tucked into blankets while reading, slowly dropping off into dreamland, waking up to chat about this or that, the big window filled with green treetops and colorful feathers… It has been heaven. But Mom leaves today. And it’s time for her to go. I have managed to temper my snippy responses, couching them in a laugh or a silly phrase but I know that she’s getting sick of my mothering. She’s had enough of my babying her down steps or while walking or when I explain things to her. She’s done with my cussing and my stories of how awesome and how right I am. She’s had enough of us dragging her out to hear music that is “too nasal...” And “sounds all the same…” She’s done listening to my snarky comments to Husband and his snarky comments back. She has had it with me. She’s ready to go home. I am ready for her to go home too. But I am not ready for her not to be here. FACT: Marriage is not funny – unless you’re married to a Scotsman. Because then you get this in rebuttal to your snarky post about the current toilet paper tube war: And he even unrolls a full roll toilet paper roll just to get the tube for 'U' so he can finish the statement. How can you win a war when faced with dastardly persuasive tactics like love declarations in paper tubes? And then, in solidarity, our friend – we’ll call him Bob – tells Husband to “Stand strong. WE…ARE…CHARMIN!!!!!!” and posts this picture on Facebook: NEW FACT: Marry a funny man, regardless of his race, nationality, ethnicity, whatever. It makes the tiny skirmishes that pepper your lifetime together somewhat entertaining.
Even when you don’t win the battle - which you never do and never will - you come away laughing. Sometimes it's in shame, but you're laughing just the same. |
AuthorMy name is ej. I'm a girl. I say that because with the short hair and the short initials, folks aren't always sure. More brilliant insights to who I am in About me Archives
April 2019
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