peevish mama

No two times on my yoga mat are alike. Sometimes I feel fluid and strong. Sometimes I feel creaky and old. I wonder if I look any different on the outside. I know that when my body doesn’t move the way I wish it would, as seems to increasingly be the case, I fret. I think about aging, about my inevitable, slow decline, about becoming something that is anathema to me: still. I move so that I can keep moving. I want to have dance parties with my grandchildren and not just be the stiffy grannie who amuses everyone. I want to get DOWN.

I’m especially preoccupied with all of this because I recently found out that my ACL repair of a few years ago did not take. It’s unclear whether another surgery is the best option. The only thing that I know is that someday, I don’t know when, this knee will hurt. And maybe it will hurt so much and for so long that I will need a replacement – which I know isn’t the end of the world, but oh my god. I find myself doing a lot of magical thinking around the knee – Would I switch bodies with that person? That person? – trying to intuit what other kinds of health issues I would be inheriting along with their seemingly intact knees.

Crazy, I know. But isn’t it nice to know that things haven’t changed much around these peevish parts?

Yesterday my yoga teacher said something along these lines: our bodies are how they are and what we have right now. It was a different beast twenty years ago and will be a different beast in twenty years from now. We take care of them so that we can use them to communicate with the people we love. We take care of them so we can feel good. Because if we feel good, we can be good.

It made me want to cry. And it made me want to write.

You must watch this video about the A-Z’s of Dance. It’s so inspiring.

And hello again. We have some things to catch up on.