A Few Thoughts While in Child’s Pose
After Kristen Millares Young’s “A Few Thoughts While Shaving.”
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This past Thursday, I enrolled in my first yoga class since I was newly pregnant. Yoga and I have had an on and off relationship for the past six years. Even though I know it’s good for me, my brain resists the bends and flows of an everyday movement practice that my body so desperately needs. After looking at recent photos of my shoulders in a perpetual hunch—as well as my lower back having a constant ache from carrying a twenty pound baby—I decided, after two years of a pause, it was time to take down the mat that was collecting dust on the shelf in what was once my office but is now our baby’s nursery.
When I arrive for class, a storm is on the verge of making an appearance. Threatening the village with loud claps of thunder. I approach the rusty door frazzled after driving my husband’s beat up Jetta, starting and stalling in traffic as I try to remember how to drive the clutch. When I am anxious, I become moody and sullen. I always feel guilt when I leave my daughter behind. Before heading into the car, she runs up, furiously sharing a sea of thoughts as she waves her left hand across the horizon. How I wish I could understand what she is saying. What story is she holding in that left palm of hers? She dreams in a language that I once knew but can no longer remember.
My husband picks her up in one swift sweep and as they walk away, she silently looks over his shoulder. Eyes fixed on me. Refusing to blink. I know that gaze well. I recall giving it to my own mother each time she loaded up her car. Embarking on another adventure without me. The difference between my trip and hers is that my absence will be brief. Not only returning for short bursts or when I have an urge to play mother to the child who lives nineteen hours up the Atlantic coastline.
I turn the knob and slowly climb up three flights of stairs, taking note of the vacancy. A signature scent of patchouli and mold waft throughout the stairwell. When I finally arrive at the last step, I am greeted with three locked doors and a bathroom. I stand confused, contemplating if I am at the correct place. Before I have a chance to pull out my phone, a woman in her mid-forties carrying a yoga mat and tote over both shoulders greets me, “Hi! I’m Jenn. Have you been to this studio before?” she asks, smiling as she unlocks the door. I feel surprisingly chipper. Eager to engage in small talk as I readily share that I have not as I am very out of practice. I tell her that I have a fifteen month old at home and explain that while I’m not a beginner, I haven’t done yoga in years, and apologize in advance for the pitiful downward facing dog she will observe in a few minutes. She politely laughs and asks me about my daughter before sharing that she, too, is a parent. A mother to a ten year old who is spending his first time away at a summer camp in Frost Valley. She muses about his fearlessness and how this is her favorite age yet. As she struggles with the AC first, and then the Bluetooth, I take in the space. A one room studio with bare white walls and a wooden floor. Only one side of the room is covered with windows. Each sill houses a leggy pothos plant that is soaking up the quickly fading rays of light.
I gather some blocks and a strap while the rest of the class, two people to be exact, trickle in. I’m struck by how small the group is. Suddenly, I miss the city. How at any given moment, you are lost in a wave of people. Constantly reminded of how many narratives are living at once. I feel vulnerable when I take up too much space. Always preferring to be hidden in the back. I slowly unfold my mat in front of the window, in line with the other two students.
I instantly feel relieved as I firmly plant my feet on the light blue vinyl. As we bend into downward facing dog, my dread falls away as gently as the loose bits of hair that fall down the nape of my neck. Maybe motherhood has granted me with a new sense of confidence and nimbleness. I no longer care how my body folds or if I look awkward in the sequence of poses. I welcome the flux of adjustments and even laugh as I struggle to get it right.
While moving into child’s pose, the instructor explains that while not entirely comfortable, this is the position that many babies like to fall asleep in. I, of course, immediately think of my own baby. How I always miss her in the rare moments that we are not together. Even in this hour of freedom, when I so badly need and want to be by myself, I yearn for her to return by my side.
How do fleeing mothers cope with the absence? Do they constantly feel as if they are missing a vital organ? Or do they pretend as if their body never changed?
Moving back into downward facing dog, it dawns on me that I cannot remember hearing my daughter’s first cry. Other moments are as vivid as the day they occurred. As if I had just given birth yesterday. As we move into warrior pose, I recall the burn of the ring of fire. How her shoulders felt, shifting as one came out, and then the other. The gush of relief knowing that she was finally in the world. How the midwife placed her onto my lower abdomen, back first. Her black tuft of hair, unexpected. I wondered why she wasn’t on my chest, crawling to my breast like all of the books I had read in pregnancy stated would happen. I looked at my husband after he cut the umbilical cord. He sat speechless, eyes full of wonder. “What do you think?” I kept whispering. The song of my first words to her sing out as I shift into tree pose. The echo of awkward hellos. Repeated over and over again because I read that the baby should hear your voice. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Motherhood is a constant state of grief,” a friend stated one early morning as we watched our daughters play. I nodded understanding exactly what she meant. Mothering is the art of surrender. Constantly adjusting and readjusting to new waves of life. You celebrate the first step while simultaneously mourning the last crawl. How strange it is to see someone grow so quickly before your eyes. How terrifying to watch your heart move so swiftly outside of your body. Motherhood has taught me that in order to receive, you must let go. Even when you don’t want to.
Jenn walks over to each of us. Slowly adjusting us into our final pose. Reminding us to breathe. “As you change shape, what are you noticing?” How age feels in my body. I am finally at the point where I no longer feel young. Some days I dream of waking up as a child again. Not in order to change the path but to savor it. To tend to and soak up the moments of growing into me. To curl up alongside my grandmother and tell her thank you. To ask her the questions I’m still afraid to know the answers to.
As I lay in child’s pose, I drift in between a half-awake, half-sleep state. I see my mother walking towards me. Her auburn hair waves in the wind. She is wearing red lipstick and a black and white floral knee-length dress. As I run towards her, she bends down, arms ready to take me in. She squeezes against me as if she were gone for months. Maybe even years. As if the absence couldn’t be true.
The bond between a child and mother, despite how strong or frayed the threads may become, seems to be everlasting. Like a Strawflower cut from the earth and placed in a vase. It remains full of color. It refuses to fade.
When my instructor sings out her final om, I slowly lift open my eyes and take my time to rise. I leave the studio taller and filled with dopamine. Eager to return home and bend back into the shape of my daughter.
"Motherhood is a constant state of grief... You celebrate the first step while simultaneously mourning the last crawl" my heart <33
This is such an incredibly beautiful piece of writing, it spoke to every cell! I know deeply the strong push/pull of the invisible thread between myself and my babies — at the same craving some space to reorient myself but at the same time never wanting them to be too far away. I have also felt the shift in my yoga practice (along with everything else in life!), the outward shape seems less important, I now seem to move from some place within and I feel *everything* a whole lot more... And yes to the many layers of surrender — I find it to be a constant unravelling and softening of my edges as I learn that despite all the holding, sometimes I need to let go...