Naked Yoga and Pickup
Trucks
I don’t even know where to begin;
so much is swirling around me. I ended a
3 week stint of being very ill with God-knows-what. Remember I work in an infectious disease
office which has me constantly checking if my headache is some Ebola-Viral
Strain brought in. Or perhaps hordes of
germs and nasty’s that banded together in an air duct and decided to start a
new cult that landed in my ear canal.
Trouble breathing, intermittent fevers, chills, waves of nausea, aches,
a thirst that caused my living room to look like a recycling factory, and a disorientation
that I can only describe as a 72 hour acid trip.
Somewhere in all of this my
oldest son turned 17. His father had
graciously offered him the use of a sedan.
Awesome yes. Then I had found a cerulean
blue green Ford Ranger Pickup truck locally for sale. Long story short, we went to look at it, we
haggled, and we bought it. It sat at my
dad’s for a bit until my little angel took his driving test and his father
graciously picked up the insurance.
To tell you what it felt like as
a single mother who had gone through being totally broke-ass in the last few
years to being able to buy my son a vehicle with an engine that actually ran…well…there
are no words. NONE.
The look on his face when we
shook hands and he knew it was real was one of sheer gratitude. And the hug he gave me full on and true
mirrored that gratitude in my own being.
It was a privilege, just as it is a privilege to be his mother. He is a cosmic child, a Pisces. The truck may be something of a work in
progress – there are things that need to be fixed, maintained and taken care
of. He gets it. And honestly having divorced a wealthy life,
a materialistic existence to dance with fear, financial insecurity, and a
sometimes the always exhausting search for self, truth, justice yada yada –
that was all I ever truly wanted. The
boys to get it. The intangible IT. To know that the Self is the true North on
the compass of this journey. And they
get it. The realization of that box
being checked off in my brain made every tear, every heart palpitation, every
doubt at 3AM in the last 10 yrs of single mom land worth it.
I’ve often looked at my life like
some big celestial book. Hard to ground,
always being rewritten, rethought, rehashed, and broken through. There are chapters, pages, sections, acknowledgements,
indexes, flashbacks, notations, metaphors, suspension of disbelief, quotes, and
the list goes on and on. But I woke up
the day after my son’s birthday and realized with quite a shock that a chapter
ended without my knowing it. After
driving them to school for a large majority of the time (anytime I could when I
wasn’t up at the crack of dawn flying to work)
I was no longer needed. (Read
STAB IN THE HEART, PUNCH IN THE GUT)
Though this is completely normal,
so I am told, well folks …I just wasn’t ready.
It was a pink slip from the HR dept. in SINGLE MOM INC. that I didn’t
see coming. And I felt foolish. And I felt strange. My child was up early, heating up his truck
to drive he and his brother (built in co-pilot) to school. I managed a fake strong smile and heard them
close the door, get in the truck, and drive away. Maybe it was a spoke in my menstrual cycle, a
blip in the moon, daylight savings come early, ebola-H1N1 viral diarrhea ebbing
away but I was breathless and bummed.
But this is what I have spent the
last 17 years trying to accomplish in raising them…for them to use their wings…or
in this case a pickup truck. It was
swift. It was fast. And then I smiled a
real smile and understood once more the concept of Bittersweet. It’s sweet and it sucks.
I looked around this house that
suddenly felt way too big and eerily quiet and realized my role will always be
Mom, but there there is a spin off in the making called Crisy. My body held me, my mind set me free, and a
hope was once again born. Ok so the role
is morphing a bit…The mama bear pushes the cubs from the den a bit to get them
ready for life. But those cubs, the children
of single moms, teach those moms so much about themselves. I think subconsciously I had been preparing
for quite some time...but still when that next page of the chapter was blank I
wanted to throw the book against the wall.
I vowed to be good to myself, to redirect
some of the energy that I’d been using on making sure teeth were brushed, shoes
were tied, bagged lunches were ready back to myself. The boys have mastered the
art of self-care, and they can cook, and by the way do laundry. It seemed selfish to redirect this energy, but
it also seemed correct….
I stripped off my clothes to
shower and while the water was running to heat up, I walked into my closet to
grab the outfit for the day. And there,
like an old friend, was my yoga mat; which oddly enough is the same color as
the pickup truck I bought my son. Funny
those little things when they hit you…those little clues that are so easily
missed.
I ran my hand across it and
picked it up. I shut the water off and
spread the yoga mat on my bedroom floor.
I was stripped down on a few levels; I had been sick and weak for a
while, I was completely naked and alone, I was emotionally delicate and deeply
reflective. All in all I was ready to receive
Peace. I did a deep relaxation and an AM
yoga series by Rodney Yee. I became
aware at the state of my body-mind, I breathed and stretched and arched. It was both subtle and spritual.
At the end of the series you sit
in seated meditation (I always do this with my hands in a traditional prayer position.) I began gently rocking and praying and
thanking. I sat like that for a long
time. Then I was ready to stand up. I lit the candles in my bathroom and showered
in their flickering light. I was ready
to face the end of that chapter – and maybe the beginning of a new one.
I’m always gonna be Mom, I’m also going to be
Me. Page turned.
Namaste
