I'm Really Here, Now (Even in Wal-Mart)

First published June 23, 2008

What surprised me as I stood in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina, was not so much that I was standing in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina. The exigencies of a Blankie left far behind at school can leave one in some pretty surprising places. What surprised me was that I didn't really, that much, mind being in a Wal-Mart in Hickory, North Carolina.

I don't mean to offend regular Wal-Mart-goers. Nor am I unaware of the PR campaign they have undertaken, in which, I am told, workers are actually being offered full-time hours and benefits. It's just that I object to the whole concept of bigger and cheaper marketing and sell-me-more-junk-in-one-place. At least Target gives loads of money to local schools and sponsored the Minerva Awards at the California Women's Conference I attended in 2006, giving a good chunk of money to some pretty impressive organizations, like the first women's shelter in California. Reminding myself of these things makes me feel justified in wandering the aisles of Target looking for, yes, bigger and cheaper and more junk to buy.

As for the Wal-Mart in which I found myself, I was nothing short of grateful for its presence. We were 45 minutes into a two-hour drive with a child who, despite my request, had been allowed to take a nap at school, awakening just in time to be strapped into a car seat for two hours. "He only slept an hour!" the apologetic teacher told me, invoking nightmare images of a cranky, tired child who would not, on principle, consider a second nap, no matter how long the car trip.

So, when Jake started bellowing, "Bubby! Bubby!" at the top of his lungs and I uttered, in a voice dripping with panic, "I left Bubby at school!" Mike sped for the next exit in the throes of self-preservation. 

And there, over a rise in the scrubby landscape of gas stations and bad Chinese restaurants, we discovered Wal-Mart and the oversized Bubby I christened "Bubba." ("'Tuck! 'Tuck!" Jake cries whenever the extra weight of all that superfluous fabric stymies his attempts to cradle the entire Bubba in his arms as he is accustomed to do with the two smaller, finer Bubbies we managed to leave behind in Asheville that day.)

My boy sated with his swath of soft polyester, Mike filling the gas tank I had neglected prior to starting on our trip, I reflected on why I felt perfectly okay with my trip to Wal-Mart. The people had been friendly; Mike had traced an unerring path to the baby blankets, avoiding the horrors of powdered soft drinks made of high fructose corn syrup, chemicals, and advertising; and Bubba was sort of reasonably priced. Fifteen dollars, after all, is a small price to pay for the peace of an appeased toddler.

But really, I thought, as I stared back at the legions of cars stacked in the Wal-Mart parking lot, I felt okay being in Wal-Mart because I was feeling so okay being where I am in this world. I could venture outside my usual comfort zone because I have so firmly removed myself from the old zone that provoked comfort-anxieties in the first place.

When Your Path Leaves the Past Far Enough Behind to Let Go

Perhaps you have noticed that I've spent the last several months—maybe, probably as much as my entire tenure in Asheville—in a stormy emotional mood. I've been buoyed by the beauty of my new home one moment—the happy, friendly people! the clean air! the wonderful neighbors!—and crashed on a rocky outcropping of despair over what I'm doing here, how I'm supposed to be a good mother, and what my purpose in life is the next.

The storms roiled in a particularly destabilizing way after my parents left last weekend. In my last post, I wrote about the panic that descended, the primal desire to curl up in a little ball and not face my responsibilities. Because, I have considered lately, the pull was so great to return to a time when I knew just what those responsibilities were, even if they fit me poorly.

We're all on a journey. For some of us, it's a meandering, gentle one. We're in no hurry to leave anything behind because we feel pretty content with where we're coming from. For others—me—the journey has been more directed, more effortful, conscious, needy. I've known for some time that my heart has been leading me away from my origins to a life of less corporate structure, fewer standard expectations, and more beauty.

And I have, in many ways, reached it. I'm writing, in a public, regular, committed way. I have a wonderful husband and a beautiful, laughing baby boy who both daily heal my heart in ways I sometimes didn't know it was damaged. I live in a town where there's room to breathe—both spiritually and literally. I can't remember the last time I set foot in an office building, wore pantyhose, or shifted my shoulders itchily in a suit jacket.

So why, I wondered, was I increasingly longing for the ocean of Long Beach? Why did I feel isolated and alone in a place so full of friendly, accepting people? Why did I profess to be aimless and frightened when I was creating a website where I could share the humor and beauty of motherhood and yoga? Like a chocoholic going cold turkey, I felt jittery and rattled. I considered looking for part-time work in a law firm. I doubted YogaMamaMe. I chafed at fulfilling my appointments with my acupuncturist, preferring to mope gloomily around the house muttering that it didn't do anything anyhow.

It was my parents' visit that brought it all into focus. It wasn't that I wanted to be a lawyer living in Los Angeles on a strict diet of pragmatism and ease. It was that I came from that place and I hadn't quite let go of the ribbon I'd been carrying with me as I wound my way to the far-away home where my heart has led me.

My heart didn't lead me wrong, as I worried in dark moments of hot, fat tears. It was just waiting for me to take the final step and let go of my grip on that slim, safe ribbon connecting me to where I used to be.

Being Present with Where Your Path Has Taken You

In yoga class and in meditation, I used to focus on being in this very moment, a state where everything else falls away. In this mode, asanas become a way of quieting the mind by shrugging off panic over whether you will feel tired in another moment, instead realizing that you are doing really okay right now. Pranayama is a practice of expelling built up anxiety and anger in deep, cleansing exhales. Meditation, I thought, is all about finding some part of me unconnected to anything but this moment of sitting on a mat.

The thing is, without a consciousness of how I am connected to and a product of more than this instant, I ended up carrying the past with me. It was as if each yoga practice was a lawnmower, shaving off the unruly outgrowths of past hurts but failing to deal with the roots, which remained hidden beneath the increasingly fertile soil of my new world. In a way, the healthier I became, the more I allowed myself to follow my heart, the more deeply those roots of the past took hold. What better way to gauge how far you've come than by comparing where you are now—in this moment—to where you used to be?

Some form of this must happen to each of us in motherhood. We all know our children enrich our lives. But we all can't help but recall who we were before having them. We were, invariably, younger and more energetic. We may have had goals that have receded or softened with the imposition of distracting love and protectiveness. We have a million reasons every day to remind ourselves that we really do prefer cleaning up the detritus of flung mac and cheese, washing endless sippy cups, and fretting over what to put in tomorrow's lunch box to those foggy old evenings where we could settle in to watch whatever we wanted on television for as long as we wanted because we knew for a fact no one would be awakening us in the middle of the night with the screams of an ear infection or informing us at 5 a.m. that it's time to play.

Whether it's your child or something else that dropped into your life and sent you with a shudder and a jump in a new direction—a job, a love, a new home—holding hands with the past is so comforting you've probably reached a point where you don't even know you're doing it.

So last week I tried something new in my morning meditation. Instead of settling inside and trying to drop everything else, I am now deliberately conscious of all that surrounds me. The shuffle and click of the dogs' toenails on the deck outside the sunporch where I meditate. The stacks of Rubbermaid containers holding Christmas decorations and old cable wires to long-discarded electronics sitting next to me. The Smoky Mountains surrounding the bowl of Asheville, where I live, far from the ocean.

Being aware of all this and more, I sink into Now-ness with a satisfying hunh. I fit. I don't need the ocean. I don't need a regular job. I'm not skittering toward something, nor even working to shed the layers of wrongness that appended to me during the first 35 years of my life. I'm here. I can let go and Be Here.

For me, it's a lot scarier to be in a place where there's less work to do. Movement entices me. I'm about the flow in yoga, the surya namaskar and the meditation in motion. I'm good at changing. It makes me feel like I'm alive and in line for something fabulous.

But, of course, no yoga practice is solely about movement. The movement is only a way of finding a deeper stillness. Surya namaskar pauses in a long, still, deep downward facing dog. Every asana practice ends in savasana. Pranayama is about the space between the breaths, that exquisite moment of perfect stillness between the inhale and the exhale, the exhale and the inhale, when for one precious moment everything is suspended and you can hear your heart.

I have, I'm now thinking, had it backwards all along. I was using movement to find peace and stillness. When, in fact, it was because of stolen, piercing, fortunate moments of peace and stillness that I was in my beautiful, healing motion. If I hadn't given my heart a clear, quiet stage on which to make its needs known, I'd never have had a chance of finding the path it set for me. Now that it's time for the path to become softer, less direct, more lush and overgrown, I've been shakily wondering how to find the peace and stillness.

Turns out it's all around me, in this place I've made for myself.

Turning Upside Down with Confidence

I've been doing inversions—asanas where you turn upside down—for most of the time I've been practicing yoga. In general, I'd say I'm not afraid to turn upside down, or, for that matter, to be upside down. I am, however, despite my years of wishing it were otherwise, more than a little bit afraid of falling.

The analogy, it seems to me, is apt for this post. I'm comfortable with learning inversions, testing my strength, turning my world upside down. But I'm so tied to the fact that I'm usually right-side-up that I never quite let go of the sensation. It threatens to pull me down, no matter how many little tricks I learn to give me confidence in my inverted stability.

So what I offer today is for you to assess the inversion in which you have heretofore considered yourself reasonably comfortable and decide if you are. Are you so confident in sarvangasana (shoulder stand) that you have no fear of reaching your toes ever higher, moving your hands closer and closer to your shoulder blades? Do you pass through every wobble in sirsasana (headstand) with nary a blink, nothing more than a corrective tuck of your tailbone, a firming of your inner thighs?

Wherever it is that you find yourself clinging to the concept of the inversion but not fully embracing it, I offer you this opportunity to practice with greater confidence. Before you enter the pose, take a moment to be fully present and aware of being right-side-up. When you embark on the pose, leave the right-side-upness far behind. Follow the path to being upside down and savor being there. Release the fear of where you've taken yourself. Embrace your strength and your beautiful, open heart. Know that even if you fall, it will protect you.