peevish mama

Yesterday I went to a yoga class taught by the one and only Crackerjack and I left holding more emotion than usual. I could feel it sitting under the bridge of my nose, almost prickly, settling into my chest, soft and warm. In part, I’m just so grateful to be back on my mat after my knee surgery that I almost don’t know what to do with myself. I am weaker than I was, but not as weak as I thought I would be. The poses all still flow out of me and I am both humbled and comforted by the immutability of yoga. Yoga is still there, yet I come back to it changed in so many ways. But that wasn’t it. I had gone to two other yoga classes and hadn’t felt like I did yesterday. As I drove home, circling our beautiful Lake Harriet, it hit me – I was proud of my girl.

Late winter, Crackerjack took a deep breath and jumped into an intense 6 week yoga teacher training course. Ever the maternal juggler and control artist, it took a huge leap of faith that her family’s little circus train would keep chuggin’ along. She soldiered through the fears, the nerves, the mind-trips of doing something new and challenging and came out ready for something, anything. She’s been teaching for her neighbors on her deck and for her friends in Nanook’s living room and yesterday was my first class with her. It was truly lovely. You can tell she’s in love with yoga, in love with the idea of sharing it with other people, yet she is completely centered and focused. Her music was killing me. Each new song slipping into the next either made me want to weep or dance – and in many ways,  yoga for me is the ability to hold those two extremes in my heart at the same time, to balance and calm myself, yet acknowledge, even celebrate the far reaches (both low and high) of where my heart can go. And that voice . . . that voice that was made for laughing and talking, was also made for teaching and she filled the room with her earthiness, her humor and all her new found knowledge. I have been to many yoga classes and many teachers and some of those teachers have become my friends. But this is the first time my friend became my teacher. And it was something else entirely.

And then Nanook goes and surprises me with a link. A link to her new blog. She’s been thinking about it and thinking about it – in fact, she’s the one who got me all frothy to start mine – and she finally did it. And like Crackerjack’s yoga class, Nanook’s blog is totally and uniquely her. As I greedily inhaled her first two posts this morning, my coffee going cold in my hand, I felt it again – pride. She took a risk and created a spot to put it all. It is not an easy thing to do, but she will be very glad she did. And when she’s ready, and when I get her permission, I will proudly add her to my blogroll. Until then, I’ll be her number one fan – like she was mine.

There’s something in the air, a drum beat sounding in the distance. A lot of the women I know are taking stock of their lives and trying to figure out what comes next for them. Most are emerging from the young babies phase and finding themselves with enough mental and emotional energy to start thinking about themselves again. I think this holds true for the mothers who kept working as well as the ones who stayed at home full time, but it feels a little more loaded for the stay at homes. What’s my “come back” gonna look like? We are thinking, seeking, plotting, planning, trying to figure out how to make this next phase as fulfilling as possible for us. I think we’ve all gained some wisdom in the last decade or so and that wisdom tells us everyone will be happier if we are happy. And so, mamas, find a way to be happy.

After college, as my friends all went off to graduate school and first jobs, started doing stand-up comedy or catering or coffee carts, it didn’t necessarily occur to me to be proud of them. We were all young, doing our thing, struggling to figure ourselves out. We had no choice but to search and the search was painful.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve been thrust back to that phase of life, but now I understand a few more things. I understand that seeking fulfillment takes guts. Acknowledging that you have something to contribute takes guts. Admitting that you wish to be happy, that you deserve to be happy takes guts. And so now, as my friends work hard to redefine their lives, to make sure the path they’re on is the path they want, to be something beyond wife and mother, I feel hopeful, I feel lucky, I feel kinship and I feel proud.