The World Has Shifted

First published on November 8, 2008.

My baby will be born in a world where an African American man is President.

My twenty-two-month-old son will grow up knowing nothing but a President who is black and a Governor who is a woman.

Overnight, everything has shifted.

My children live in a much better world than the one I grew up in.

My first inclination, after I voted two weeks ago (ah, the joys of early voting), was to berate myself for not bringing Jake with me.

"This is huge," I thought as I filled in the tiny bubble on my ballot.  "This is historic.  Jake will be angry with me one day for not making it possible to say he was here."

Of course, to Jake this historic moment bringing tears to my eyes would have been nothing more special than spending half an hour in line at the library hemmed in by a bunch of strangers.  Much in the way that my dim recollection of being herded into the school cafeteria in 1974 to watch Nixon resign on a tiny black-and-white television is now worth not much more than my being able to say I saw it.  Which is cool and all, but not, frankly, an especially cherished memory.

But I'm now thinking, after some time and distance, there is something I do cherish about the fact that voting for Obama wouldn't have felt historic to Jake.  In that beautiful, pure way of toddlers, he would have had no idea there was anything historic about it.  Because—I think with deep, deep gratitude—he does not know a world so full of hatred that, not so long ago, black people couldn't even vote, and hardly dared dream that one of them might one day be President.

How lucky he is to live in such a world.

Dreams of My Children

So little stock did Jake put in what was happening that he saw nothing wrong with launching into one of his middle-of-the-night cries for Mommy where he refuses to tell Mommy why he needs her so badly on the eve of Election Day, when Mommy had to be up at 5:30 for a full day of poll observing.  Needing sleep much more badly than an explanation, I brought him to bed with me hardly putting up a fight and tried, unsuccessfully, to sneak out without awakening him and, consequently, Mike.

Much as my husband might need his sleep, my country, I reasoned, needed me more.  So at 5:45 I dumped Jake in Mike's half-asleep arms and set off to help make history with my son's abandoned cries of, "Mommy!" ringing in my ears.

I was, consequently, inclined to miss him a bit more than usual as I watched people who had never voted before, people who still seemed uncertain that they were as welcome to vote as the rest of us, file through the polling place in a panoply of joy, suspicion, excitement, grumpiness, and even some wonder.

As I sat, I occasionally rubbed the baby kicking in my uterus, as if to remind it of where we were and what was happening.  I thought back to seeing the Dalai Lama while I was pregnant with Jack—experiencing a place and a feeling that would reach to my baby and fill him with peaceful, love-filled energy to bring with him when he came into the world.

Then Mike called to tell me he and Jake were visiting the chickens at Warren Wilson College.

"See the chickens?" he asked Jake as I listened from the corner of the preschool gym where I was spending my day.

"Dog!!!" I heard Jake yell.  Later in the evening he did assure me that, "Daddy, see chickens!  Daddy, see cows!"  Sober, wide-eyed nod.  "Daddy, see pigs!"

This, I thought with joy, is my son's world.  Seeing farm animals with Daddy while everything around him shifts seismically and he stands in the middle, unknowing, uncaring, poised to have as his frame of reference something so stunning to the rest of us.

I took him back with me after the polls closed, to see the final precinct count and to show off his impressive, fist-pumping, "O-BAM-A!" to the people I had met during the day.

"You can say you were there," I smiled to him on the ride home, although I knew he would be sound asleep before it was all really over.

And so, today, he woke up in a world that looked so much the same to him and so very different to me.  A world in which it will be easier for him to understand that we are all connected, in which he will not have to overcome preconceptions and prejudices and baseless hatred to reach that simple realization.  He will, without thought or effort or struggle, come to a place we journey to through yoga—a place of unity and love and an understanding of the humanity—and the little bit of whatever god we believe in—inside every one of us.

To all of you who have brought my children this gift, my deepest, sincerest gratitude.

Adho Mukha Svanasana—How Downward Facing Dog Can Change Your World

In My Daddy Is a Pretzel, Baron Baptiste describes adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog) as a chance to look at the world in a different way.  (Yes, I now find my yoga wisdom in children's books, though this one was written by one of our great modern teachers, who probably understands that there are days I can absorb ideas no more sophisticated than those my son can grasp.)

Usually, I think of the true inversions—headstand, handstand, shoulderstand—as the ones that shake up my world, literally turn it upside down.  But adho mukha svanasana strikes me as being so very perfect for this day, and the days to come, in which the wonder of the world's shift continues to stun us.  

It is, for regular practitioners, a familiar pose, one we come to many times during an asana practice.  Often, it is a resting pose, a place to regroup, turn inward, assess.  And, unlike the fleeting flip-flop of the true inversions, it offers us a place to stay and ponder and savor our new perspective for as long as we would like.