Day One

Last week, I told an agent friend about the proposal I'm working on for a book called YogaMamaMe: How to Be Mindful When Your Mind Is on Your Baby. It deals, I explained, with that period of new motherhood around a year after giving birth when you decide you're ready to be yourself again only to find out that you don't really remember how.

"Great idea," he said. "You should start a blog."

Disappointment over the subtle advice about my chances at publication notwithstanding, I realize now that his suggestion is more cogent than it seemed last night when I was busy crying into my pillow. Starting a blog turns out to be a great way to start blogging about how there's no time to be mindful when you have a toddler.


Who Has the Time?

Groggy from sleeplessness over my lack of a future as a published author, behind on my work after spending a long weekend in Charleston, I spent my morning tracking down new shoes for my son Jake to replace the one we lost on the street in Charleston and a new hair dryer to replace the one I left at the hotel. Replacing the camera that was left in a park in Charleston is very far down my list of priorities. Which should give you some sense of how long my list is, since many friends now believe that someone else has been raising Jake since November, when we last posted pictures of him.

I dashed into the house at 11:40, new hair dryer in hand, new, uninteresting part of Asheville discovered, threw the sheets into the washing machine, pulled on yoga clothes, ignored the insistently ringing cell phone, and hustled off to yoga class. Because anyone who would call her book YogaMamaMe must think yoga is an important part of her day. Sadly, it is now an important part of only three or four of my days each week, a compromise with motherhood that sits mightily uneasily.

On the three-minute drive to yoga (how sad, to have to drive three minutes instead of walking for twelve), I listened to the message left when I ignored the ringing cell phone. It was the lawyer for whom I do occasional work -- the only stuff for which anyone is willing to pay me these days. He had a question that needs to be answered . . . today. Because he is on the west coast and I am in the hills of western North Carolina, his today ends three hours after my today. It seems, however, that my today will end later than I prefer today.

To my questionable credit -- how hard was this call, really? and how much credit should I give myself? -- I did not ditch yoga for paid legal work.

After finishing yoga, I sank into my car seat sweaty and slightly mollified. Maybe, I thought, I can start a new blog and finish my book proposal and maybe, just maybe, get published before Jake graduates from college. In the meantime, I must surrender to the fact that it's time to get a real job.

The message on my cell phone interrupted this almost sane but mostly self-pitying line of thought.

It was Jake's school. Jake, you see, is sporting a boxer-worthy shiner, the result of yesterday's skirmish with the stairs at the Charleston Aquarium. He was having a fine time scaling the heights of a small amphitheater and, bursting with confidence, decided to take on a flight of concrete stairs covered with cheap carpeting. His plan did not take account of the woman carrying a large stroller down the stairs he was preparing to climb, so I helpfully offered an impromptu alteration. Apparently I failed to communicate my intentions properly, so I was pulling him up as he was throwing himself forward. Head met stair. Crying ensued.

Honestly, I thought his emotionalism was largely a result of being wound up and tired and a little bit frustrated, since, as a relatively new walker, he's still getting his sea legs. I wasn't even too offended when he would have nothing to do with my usually soothing hugs and clung to his father for dear life. I had, after all, thrown him onto hard stairs without a single reason for doing so.

It wasn't until several hours later, when we stopped in Greenville for a break from the car and some time to play in a park, that I noticed the shiner.

"What's wrong with his eye?" I gasped.

"Maybe it's from the stairs," my husband Mike said, stating the painfully obvious.

This story was repeated with great, calm amusement for all the teachers at Jake's school this morning. They seemed to believe me. At least, social services has yet to show up at my door.

But the insistent beep of my cell phone after yoga class should have warned me that it wouldn't be so easy. "Jake woke up from his nap dizzy and disoriented. We're really worried about him," the message said. "I don't know if you want to take him to the doctor or watch him at home."

"But there goes my afternoon," I thought, completing the sentence.

Great mother that I am, I did not dash straight to Jake's school, sweaty yoga clothes sticking to my body. Instead, I went home and lit into cheese and tortilla chips. I was too depressed to eat this morning, and I reasoned that if I didn't eat something now I was likely to pass out in the pediatrician's waiting room. (I probably shouldn't point out that YogaMamaMe will include a chapter on mindful eating, since I am not setting myself up as an admirable role model.)

Satiated on salt and fat, I called the school.

"I think he was just hungry," offered the teacher who answered the phone. "He drank a whole bottle of milk, and he's playing now."

No dilated pupils. No vomiting episodes. My child is not in a coma, or at least no one has told me he is. This is why I am starting my blog instead of spending my afternoon watching Lilo and Stitch on the flat screen tv at the doctor's office.

I am starting this blog still in my sweaty yoga clothes with less than an hour until I should be at Jake's school, daily yogurt in hand, so I can feed him a snack and spirit him away to Stride Rite to buy the replacement shoes that turn out to be as expensive as the absurdly expensive ones we lost. I find this post hoc confirmation that I am not as profligate as I or my husband might think unbelievably comforting.


The Yoga Part

So now for the Yoga part of all this Mama angst. I have no time to do everything that needs to be done. I can: a) skip the shower and prance around in stinky yoga clothes pretending that I look young and hip and dewy only to discover at day's end that I look tired and greasy and very, very old; b) I can show up late to pick up my son and pretend I don't know that he starts crying for his mother at precisely 4:12 every day and ignore the fact that I am neglecting his feet even though his back-up shoes are too big and cruelly trip him up when he eagerly takes his still unsteady steps, thus setting him back several stages of development and probably thwarting any chance he has at a decent high school sports career; or c) I can look to yoga for help in maintaining some semblance of mindfulness in the face of this anxiety-inducing crush.

You know what the choice is, since I wouldn't sell many books with a blog that offers anything but option (c).


Pranayama

This, I feel, is a moment for a few simple, deep breaths. In through the nose, all the way into my lungs, past my heart, through my belly. Aha, I have located my seat, perched in my orange Ikea desk chair. Ignoring the way my mind is beginning to riff on how this chair has a tendency to roll down the slope of my office floor as I fruitlessly stretch out my arms in an attempt to continue typing on my rapidly retreating computer, I exhale slowly, watching the breath move up my spine, lengthening it, lifting my heart. Sitting straighter, I have space to breathe, to be still, to let all the things buffeting me recede. I am sitting here in my office at 3:27, and none of the demands on me affect that simple fact. I am breathing, and I am in the moment, and it will all get done when it needs to. Which is not, incidentally, right this minute.


Asanas

When I finish writing this, I will stand in tadasana, mountain pose. I will close my eyes, feel steady and strong, and I will breathe. Nothing is moving me, none of the stuff happening around me can move or unsettle me unless I let it. When I feel steady and calm, I will perhaps do a quick arm balance -- bakasana, or crow pose, comes to mind -- as a challenge to stay steady and calm. Or I could choose a standing balance pose as well (like vrksasana, tree pose) for the same benefits -- being still, focusing, quieting the chatter in my mind, reminding myself that there is, in fact, time for everything that matters.