Stay
This was the piece I wrote for the 2015 Listen To Your Mother Portland show. I was careful this time to not reference anyone's vaginas ... but there's always next year. You can watch the video of my reading below (find my fumble!), and watch the entire Portland show with the whole incredible cast.

It’s a Wednesday night in North Portland and you are a goddess of the moon. You are carefully outfitted in bendable lycra, and a top that won’t fall over your face when you head into that first downward facing dog. Your kids are at their dad’s house, and you take a moment to whisper a prayer of gratitude. “Thank you, divorce goddess, for granting me this late night yoga class.”
You stretch
back into child’s pose, forehead to the orange mat, the one that bears the transferred
newsprint remains of a toddler’s art project from long ago. You breathe and set
your intention for the next 90 minutes of serious mom-time vinyasa. You still
don’t really know what it means to “set your intention” but enough yoga
instructors have said it so you trust it must mean something worth doing. Your
intention: to be present. Your body is here and accounted for, held in by
technical fabrics, but willing the mind to quiet is like asking your kids for
the 17th time to not talk while chewing or to refrain from farting
at the dinner table.
The yogi opens
the class with a calm and smoky reminder to stay present and you think “Holy
shit she’s a mind reader! What else does she know?” and then you chastise
yourself for already drifting away from the present you had committed to just a
second before. You remind yourself to stay.
“Stay, mama,
stay.”
The yogi
coaxes your class through their cat cows; inhale as you point your ass toward
heaven, exhale as you pull your gut into your spine. Repeat. Regret your choice
in underwear. Mentally acknowledge the laundry that sits wet at home in the
washing machine, where it’s been since the night before. Inhale.
“Stay.”
How “stayed”
can you possibly ever be? How can you stay when all of the other minutes, days
and hours are somehow simultaneously holding you together, pulling you apart,
and swimming all around you, like an army of lotus blossoms adrift on your
tranquil pond? How “stayed” can you be when you chose divorce and agreed to
terms that life without one person meant a sacrifice of 50% less time with your
kids? You didn’t stay. You left.
The yogi
shushes your mind as she asks you to come to a deep squat, elbows to the
insides of your knees, hands at heart center. “This is how we should go to the bathroom,”
she reminds you. You consider removing the toilet from the downstairs bathroom
in the home you rent, and you wonder how easily the children would take to
squatting over a hole to take a poop. Then you remember camping trips and know that
they would take to it with swift expertise.
You move from
the squat to bakasana, crane pose. You lift your toes off the mat and hover,
supported by your forearms and fall promptly on your face. You suck at crane
pose. Bakasucka. But at least you showed up right? Isn’t that half the battle?
You’re halfway to something. Halfway. 50/50 split.
You wind into
eagle pose and choose a point on the wall to stare at so you don’t topple over.
Again. The yogi believes in story time and takes the class on an adventure through
the birth of Ganesha. One version of the story, she clarifies. Of how the
goddess Parvati wanted a son and how the gods finally granted her one. But her
husband Shiva was off in the mountains meditating and was left out of the kid conversation,
which is kinda what happens when you go off to meditate in the mountains for
NINE years. So when he did come home from his long sit-and-think in the hills,
there was this kid at his front door, and the kid did not know Shiva, and Shiva
did not know the kid. And when the kid wouldn’t let Shiva in, Shiva cut off the
kid’s head, of course. When Parvati heard what he had done and Shiva was like
“oh shit”, she threatened to destroy everything in creation. So Shiva pleaded
with the gods and was like “uh, what now?” and he was instructed to go into the
jungle and bring back the head of the first animal who presented itself to him.
So Shiva did as he was instructed and a short while in to the jungle an
elephant was like “Here, take my head.” And Shiva carried home the elephant
head triumphantly, stuck the head on his kid’s body, and a deity boy was born.
And the whole
time that the yogi is impressing upon you the knowledge of yogic history and
you’re searching for clues as to how it will help you master an unassisted head
stand, you can’t help but think “How the fuck can she remember all this? I
forgot to put on deodorant. I have to make a list every morning that includes
“eat lunch” and “find the cat”” and she’s able to remember detailed goddess
folklore whilst tangled in an impossible pretzel.
Exhale. “Stay,
mama.”
You ease into
a pigeon pose and lament your tight hips. The hips that opened up for birth
like automatic sliding doors at Target on a Black Friday zero dark morning, but
with slightly less pushing. Now they’re like a rubber band that’s been left to
bake in the sun.
The yogi
chants “Exhale deeply, audibly, like a bellows fully compressed.” The man to
your right exhales deeply, and then lets fly his bellows, audibly. Only nose
hairs react. You and your class pretend you’re so focused that you don’t notice
the stink. But if your 6 year old daughter and your 9 year old son were here
right now they’d be pink-cheeked with tears in the corners of their eyes as
they fought to contain the giggling intensity of a million carbonated bubbles
pushing at the top of a lidded bottle. But they’re at their dad’s tonight,
remember? And this is mom-time vinyasa.
The yogi
gently leads the class into camel pose, a back bend. You’re good at this one,
and you lean your head back, shaking it slightly to overcome the sausage roll
of neck fat that has recently moved in. She asks you to feel how your heart has
opened.
You feel it.
She lowers the
lights and nurtures you into savasana. “Be present,” she reminds you, “and
breathe. It’s all about the breath.” You breathe in and feel a warmth surround
your heart, you breathe out and for a brief and blissful moment, you are fully
present, connected all at once to your intention, your choices, your
circumstances, your body, your heart, and your family. You are whole. Your
family is whole.
You roll to
your side and come to a comfortable seated position, hands returning to your
heart center. The yogi leads the class in a collective “Om.” Then she lowers
her head, and you lower yours, and you whisper your closing prayer of
gratitude, “Mama stay.”
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