Health update and Gratitude

(Currently I am sitting in the lobby of a pulmonary unit in a hospital, waiting to experience a “methacholine” challenge.  I am looking forward to getting out of this waiting room, because like all medical waiting rooms it has a TV blaring in the corner.  And as usual, what has been chosen to blare at patients is news.  Anxiety provoking, rapid talking, flashing pictures of disasters and human pain over and over.  The drama filled news for all of us sitting as we wait for procedures that we don’t want, for conditions that we are anxious about, that leave results hanging in the air for days if not weeks.  I wish we’d rethink the whole TV thing.  Why not give us pens and paper?  Glue and markers? Books?  Crosswords and puzzles?  Anything but TV. )

breathing test booth.  the test took 1.5 hours. 

Health Update:  (at the conclusion of the above mentioned breathing test, I was diagnosed with a reactive airway disease.  I have no other info yet.  It could be asthma, eosiniphilic bronchitis, COPD…it will be a while before I know.  Likely it stems from EoE).
The bone scan was normal.  The agglutination test to visualize actual Brucellosis bacteria in my blood was clear.  Blood work to test for latent TB, thyroid problems, and other markers for disease was normal.  Dr. Clear, who ordered these tests, felt that much of my symptoms were toxicity from the antibiotics, and thus he took me off of all antibiotics at the end of August.  Dr. Clear doesn’t expect that we will see each other again any time soon.   He said, “I think you’re doing well enough that I don’t need to see you again.”   The most welcome sentence I have heard all year.
Brucellosis:  I want to share this with my friends in the West Bank where Brucellosis is much more common than here in the states.  I have a friend there who is an expat.  He tested himself for Brucellosis because of my story and because he had some strange symptoms.  The clerk told him that Brucellosis is very common in his area.  By my friend’s own account, he has eaten PLENTY of the unpasteurized cheese that I ate, so he had cause for concern.  Thankfully his test was negative, too.  So perhaps caution is wise here, but panic is unnecessary.
EoE:
I still have EoE, but it seems to be in remission.  I am eating well on a very restricted diet.   I have added in 2 seed-like grains which keep me from feeling bored with my food:  amaranth and quinoa.

I have cut out most nut butter, but not nuts entirely.  This is mostly to reduce the load on my liver as the liver has to process all the fat from nut butter.  I am on a gut healing protocol given to me by an MD which includes anti-inflammatory capsules (herbal) and a strong probiotic.  I have added in a good amount of fermented foods and am soon beginning to make my own.  I have cut back on caffeine and sugar, although sugar is one thing I am still working on (hard to let go of raw honey and bananas).  I HATE stevia, so that’s a non-starter.  I use cashews, cinnamon and coconut to get my sweet cravings met through food.  But I still eat raw honey.
Chronic cough:   I have been coughing for nearly a year.  EoE patients often have asthma, and vice versa.   Pulmonary and esophageal diseases often interact with each other, or one leads to the other.  As I mentioned above, I was diagnosed with reactive airway disease yesterday morning.
Body Pain:  I hurt all the time in my ribs, and very often in my legs.  Lyme maybe the culprit here.  But somehow it feels more manageable than it used to.  Maybe the fact that I am exercising again is helping (elliptical added to my yoga).  Exercise and yoga asana and pranayama make the pain almost go away.
Lyme:  This one is hard for me to write about.  As you know, current Lyme tests are antibody tests.  They can tell you if you’ve been exposed to the spirochete bacteria that causes Lyme, but not if you have an active case of Lyme Disease.  You can tell if your body is in an IgM response stage or an IgG response stage, but again not if there is active disease.   I had an IgM response, so my body was mounting a defense against Lyme when I began antibiotic treatment.  There are also other things that routine tests miss, such as the plethora of other tick borne infections that cause illness.  Lyme disease remains the only tick borne disease commonly tested for.  You often have to find a LLMD to go further and test for variants of the Borrelia spirochete and the many “co-infections”.  VERY costly.
Also,  there is a lot of misinformation among…everyone.  I hear about people all the time who are denied a Lyme test if they don’t have the classic bullseye rash (I never had that, and I have Lyme).  They are told they probably don’t have to worry if they don’t see the rash.  In my case, the real problem was that you cannot tell by my serology whether or not I have active Lyme disease or/and how long ago I was exposed.  Also, my positive test was equivocal, and some doctors have questioned whether I have some other thing going on in my blood that could cause a false positive.
This is why many doctors treat Lyme clinically.  That means treating on basis of current symptoms rather than serology alone.  I used to think this would be a very foggy way to go, but now I think it’s the only smart way to treat.  Here’s why:
My story is that in the midst of all the EoE suffering, I got bitten by a tick.  That tick tested positive for Lyme (I brought it in in a baggy and they sent it off to a lab) which means it could have transmitted the spirochete to me.  So that is a reason to treat, in my opinion (though not in everyone’s opinion.  Many would wait until symptoms appear, but in my case I was already so ill all the time I decided not to wait).  But I also asked for a Western Blot at the same time (just day or so after I was bitten by this tick so too early for it to be relevant to this bite) because I wanted to know if I had an existing Lyme infection that could have been a player in the sudden illness with EoE.  The infection I was testing for would have been decades old, since the last time I was bitten by a tick that I remember was easily 18 years ago and I spent the ensuing years in Texas where my outdoor exposure was limited due to the heat and it’s not a huge den of Lyme disease there anyway.  The Western Blot was positive.  So I have Lyme, right?  Maybe.  Probably…but not certainly.  At the time I thought I was certainly suffering from Lyme disease, as Lyme disease can contribute all kinds of gut symptoms and that was the locus of my distress.  But there is reason to doubt.
First, my symptoms were consistent with EoE, not typical Lyme.  I was not clinically presenting with Lyme.  Second, my Western Blot was not unequivocal.  It was positive, but at least one of the bands was not typical of a sure-thing Lyme infection (there is an art to reading tests like the Western Blot).  Third, there are cross reactions and false positives with Western Blot tests and, at the time, my serology was looking strange:  WBC was consistently low for example.  And talk about false positives.  I tested positive for twice for Brucellosis and was even being treated for it when the third test finally ruled it out!  So yes, false positives happen in antibody testing.  So I began antibiotics for the Lyme.  I felt better at first.  I thought I was treating correctly because I felt better.  But then I started to slide downhill as we began rotation of antibiotics and as weeks went by.   It turns out that antibiotics can create a feeling of getting better at first because they can initially act to suppress inflammation and then later that effect diminishes and the patient feels worse either due to the disease or the toxicity from the drugs or both.  But I didn’t know that, and I thought that as I “got worse” it was due to Lyme.  So I did 3.5 months of antibiotic therapy, not getting better, before getting exhausted and toxic.
Finally, the Lyme infection I might have is potentially 2 decades old.  Since I am not clinically presenting Lyme symptoms, I probably don’t have active Lyme and maybe I never did, at least in my recent memory.  I do remember a period of less than wonderful health in my early 20s around my first tick bites, but then again I was a waitress in a big city working crazy hours to pay rent and dealing with some other trauma in my life.  In this light, one could say I got the wrong treatment.  Which totally sucks both in terms of how much it hurt me physically, mentally, emotionally and how much money it cost us.  My doctor was VERY expensive and didn’t take insurance and this basically wiped us out.  And the drugs left me with a terrifyingly real case of candidiasis.  Which is kind of terrible and is completely due to antibiotics.
But here’s another way to see this, and this is the way I see it.  There are no mistakes.  Only opportunities to grow and learn.  The antibiotics may have helped treat the Lyme I may have been exposed to in the recent tick bite or in the past tick bites.  With the mega-doses of abx, maybe I hammered those spirochetes.  Plus all the testing my LLMD did resulted in me knowing that I have a particular genetic mutation that inhibits a detoxification process in my body which is an important thing to know (this is the MTHFR gene and it is important in methylation).  AND, and this is important to me, what if a decades old Lyme infection actually is a culprit in my current EoE situation?  I can’t say that there is anything that has convinced me to rule that out.  My doctors don’t think so, but I really believe it’s connected.  No, I KNOW it’s connected.  Lyme is a nasty little bug that attacks all your body systems.  Your brain, your organs, your joints and bones.  It has staying power, hiding skills, and lurks in the body everywhere all at once and can evade medicines.  It is immune mediated, it is inflammation causing….it is a really yucky bug.  I believe in a connection between EoE and Lyme.  So that leaves me… completely on my own at this moment in my health.
In terms of treatment I am waiting to feel that I need anything further.  I am waiting to know for certain that my body needs my help.  I did 3.5 months of heavy medicine.  I have modified my diet massively.  I am exercising again fairly regularly.  I am able to care for my kids with more patience and energy than I could when I was newly sick with EoE (and whatever else).  Things are so good in comparison to those days!  Things are getting better all the time.   I am breathing.  I am so grateful.

Growth. 
This illness has given me deep understanding and empathy for those who suffer with chronic illness.  I understand the pain now, and how bodily pain is just the tip of the iceberg.  I understand the layers now, the anxiety of illness, the depression, the exhaustion, the alternating rage and the acceptance.  The way it changes life on all levels.  Your roll in your family, work place, and friendships changes.   People see you differently.  You cancel appointments without enough notice.  You may feel you have to lie about why you are canceling.   All of this causes isolation.  You grapple with depression, fear, and of course pain.  Pain is more than pain.  It changes the way you move, the time you go to bed, the things you focus on, the things you can do and eat and read and hear.  I get this now.  But here is what I also know:  the breath can literally move you out of pain.  It can move you out of darkness.  It is THE key to vitality even in the midst of disease.  And when you couple breath with movement that is enhanced by breath as in specific yoga asana, you can support the body AND the spirit to move into a better place.  Think nyasa, mantras of wellness that you yourself design, think spaciousness in the body, expanding internally to embody the reality that you are more than your disease, more than your diagnosis–thank you Tammy—more well than unwell.  The breath is almost limitless in its ability to reconnect you to your inner peace.

Things I love.  The gratitude I feel.

Grateful for…

these guys.

 

fall leaf piles to play in!

Sufyan conquering his fear of this climb.  So proud!

Fearless Laila

Learning new skills.

Beela on the playground with my kids.

Beela being such a patient, maternal dog with my little ones.

 

sensory exploration with paint

My friend who let Sufyan try her real camera.

friends for my kiddos

friends who like to paint

Halloween ghosts made by my kids!

 

the kids playing and creating things while I do 30 minutes of elliptical machine

the love they share, even though they bug each other a lot right now.

my exuberant 3 year old Laila dancing in fall weather and fall leaves

The first time the kids made a recipe all by themselves.  Sufyan read the recipe, Laila and he dumped and mixed and tasted it all…Gluten-free and dairy-free, these almond flour chocolate chip cookies are divine.

sharing with them my love of nature.  There is no better playground.

My friend Joy, who is an amazing artist.  She gifted Sufyan this incredible painting that he absolutely LOVES (we all do) and agreed to trade me for a painting that Faris and I love (trade me for yoga classes in her home)

 

This time in my life is so full of love.

 

lighter

What does it take to get a couple hours to myself?

Wet, cold weather.  Kids and mom stir crazy in the small apartment.  Passing a pleasant day by playing in the car, making grocery shopping a big event complete with lunch at a “real table” (says Laila) and (they can hardly believe it) cookies.  Texting friends funny pictures of myself stuffed in my kids’ car seats as they pretend to drive our parked car.

stuffed in Sufyan’s car seat

Someone texts back hinting that I need to socialize with people older than 5 more often.  Oh, yes.  Yes I do.  There is a cold drizzle.  It’s early bath time.  One more hour until Baba comes home.  I have a mom date planned tonight.   I am going out with a friend for a glass of wine at a wine bar in the center of town (where all the women are beautiful and all the salaries are above average).

To orchestrate:  I prep the kids all day that I will be gone for dinner and bedtime routine.  There are tears and then excitement.  There is preemptive nursing.  The kids are bathed early.  PJs are set out.  Baba comes home and takes them out for distraction noodles.  I use the time to get dressed.  On go my favorite boots (black leather with small silver buckles, knee-high).  Black tunic dress.  A very long vintage costume necklace that I bought when I was 19.  Vintage inspired coat with peter-pan collar.  I actually put on make-up including Stila eyebrow powder which requires the coolest little stiff angled brush to apply.  I won’t exactly fit in at the town center, but I will look like me and that’s the point.  Well, a cleaner, more stylish and distinctly better put together me.

The plan:  since we only have one car and that car is currently out at a noodle house, my husband will call me when he’s on the road, at which time I will go outside and wait in the cold and damp dark-like a thief-for my beautiful family to go inside and start bedtime routine without me.  Then I will slip into the still warm car and drive off to freedom.  If they see me…I’m toast.

Gah.

My friend cancelled our mom date.  No shmancy little wine bar for me.  No sitting at a glossy table with a new red wine to enjoy.  Why not go alone, you ask?  Well I thought of that.  In fact I looked the wine bar up and they have live “bar cams” and what I saw did not look like a place to go alone and enjoy the vibe.  Did I mention it has bar cams?  Bar cams.  I don’t know whether to be impressed or depressed.

 

So here I am, at a strip mall coffee shop drinking hot chocolate.  While the place lacks soul (the cup sleeve is sponsored by Orbit gum.  I know this because of the piece of free orbit gum glued to it), it’s a brush with life outside my small sphere so I’ll take it.  It feels good to be out.  It feels good to be just me.  I can pass as a writer sitting here with my lap top.  I can pose as a woman who always wears vintage jewelry and black leather boots.

*update*  I just discovered I have dried glitter glue on my chin.   My cover is totally blown.

Over it

After my last post I am feeling lighter.   I have folded the experience into the mix and am moving on.  Thanks to everyone who sent kind emails, made supportive comments, and refrained from making non-supportive comments.  There is no negative thing about my involvement that anyone could have said that I haven’t thought, anyway.

One thing that is certain, I would not change the fact that we lived in Palestine.  It is an amazing, vibrant, and fascinating place.

Deciduous

Fall is my favorite season.  The leaves, the weather, the colors.  Fall smells good.  Burning leaves smell good.  Cold air and damp earth both smell good.  They smell like my childhood.  One private delight:  every fall I get visceral flash backs to being 16 and smoking Djarums or Nat Shermans and feeling pretty damn alive.  I’m one of the lucky ones who never got in the habit of smoking anything, but for those times when I couldn’t resist the drama, my cigarettes either smelled delicious or looked like they were invented by an unicorn.

Yet another reason to love fall:  my kids playing in the leaves, under bright red and yellow canopies of leaves.

First Halloween

Don’t get me wrong, my kids eat sugar.  It’s just that we try to avoid sugar in the following forms:

1) candy 2) fruit juice 3) large amounts.  Sometimes bake cookies an we eat them.  Sometimes I take them out for a cupcake at THE MOST AMAZING CUPCAKE PLACE in the world.

BUT do we ever let them just have a piece of normal, every day, run of the mill candy for the helluvit?  Never.  My kids don’t get candy on a regular basis and given our dental history, that really shouldn’t be surprising.

So, when Sufyan and Laila found out that there was this thing called “Halloween” when adults would be handing them candy in exchange for 3 little words,  they were in disbelief.  Then they tried it, and it worked.  Every time.  By the 2nd successful “Trick or Treat!”, they were so giddy about the presence of such glorious sugar in their possession that they were visibly giddy.   The following are mostly photos of Sufyan, because he was the most stunned by this development and he made the most amazed faces:

they just found out that they will get to ask for AND receive candy. Today. Right now. Go.  Sufyan is like, “SERIOUSLY?”

Happy dance! He cannot believe that there is actually candy in his bag! I mean, people are just handing it to him. CANDY!

still in absolute awe.  THERE IS A LOLLIPOP IN THIS BAG.

LOOK! Look at this! It’s happening again! That guy is just giving me CANDY!  CANDY!!!

and this. This is also candy. And also mine.  I have CANDY.  LOOK.

Laila.  Quietly amazed like she doesn’t want to break the magic candy spell someone cast over this day.

Laila and Sufyan, here’s to many more Halloweens together.  I love you with all my heart.  I love you both so much I can’t fit it into words.  Seeing you have fun makes me happier than anything else in my life.  Now go brush your teeth.

Weeping and a-wailing, the Farmer in the Dell.

I can’t decide whether to go with how much this clip makes me love them (limitless, boundless, huge love), or that it’s just friggin’ hilarious.

(the lyrics are partly from “This Train” and then that’s Sufyan playing slide whistle and coming in at the end with “Yip Yip Yip”)

Parenting Thought for Today: Mother/Phoenix

How intense it is, becoming a mother.  Lately whenever I look at any woman with her children I think, “That is a woman who has gone through an incredible transformation.”  She has passed through the eye of the needle.  I wonder what she was like before she had her children.  I wonder what it was like for her to shed that pre-child identity.  How hard was it to rebuild a sense of self after self became “mom”?  I’ll give you a hint:  it starts with “really” and ends with “effing hard”.  It’s more than a new role.  It’s more than a lifestyle change.  It’s more than more work with less sleep.  Essentially, everything you once were is burned away.  What you don’t gratefully, willingly, happily feed to the fire will be useless to you (for now).  It’s beautiful, and it’s so hard.  Life is ashes for a while after child birth; your “self” fed to a fire burning around the clock, fueled by the most primal raw love and urgent connection to something at once huge and infinitely small and delicate.  From your own body came this baby, and now with your own body you will protect, nourish and grow a child.  Without food or sleep, you transform into a being that can exist on sheer willpower and love.  Talk about a tiger mother.  So that the house may fall around you, but not on you.  The waves crash to either side.  “Nobody ever asked me if I thought I could be everything to someone” (Ani Difranco).   “I’m a mother!  Treat me like a mother.” (Chrissie Hynde).  And then…the raging fire becomes a hearth.   You start to remember about food and sleep and frienship.  Your baby gets older.  The crisis, however beautiful, is over.  Now for the marathon.  Now you are a phoenix.  How to rise up from this ash?

Yoga Thought for Today:  light

Yoga continues to be my super glue.  It’s a safety net, too.  I am getting myself out to a yoga class at least twice a week and in combination with home practice it’s becoming consistent and lovely.  I know myself through yoga.  I have awakened again on my mat.  This one thought keeps whispering to me as I practice:  you are a being of light.  When I remember it, I suddenly find that sukha in my asana.  True, lovely ease.  Effortlessness.

Here’s to ground under our feet and air in our lungs and prana in our many bodies and light throughout our being.

Growth, a dilemma, and some ass grabbing yoga.

DOUBLE RAINBOW!

This was over the road on the way to a yoga class recently.  Beautiful.

And here, it has to be shared, is another lover of the double rainbow.

Let there be growth
Last post I wrote about the yoga class my kids took while I sat outside the door.  We went back to the class a second time and I couldn’t take any pictures because (drum roll, please) I WAS IN THE NEXT ROOM DOING YOGA.  Why didn’t anyone tell me this was possible???
However I couldn’t concentrate because I kept expecting to see them at the door crying (and they did come get me twice but only once was there tears). I analyzed every chirpy little kid voice emanating from their yoga room.  Mama was having separation anxiety, too!
So, a big advance in independence for all of us over 2 days of yoga.  There were other significant events during the last week, too.  It was a massively important week.

This week in milestones:
1.  We made friends with another mom who has 3 under 3, and had a successful play date.

new friends!!!

2.  Sufyan faced his 4th dentist (with great success given his past trauma and good news about his teeth)
3.  Laila got her first teeth cleaning and was absolutely amazing about it.  Climbed into the chair, picked “bubblegum flavor” and resolutely got the job done.  She’s so much like me it’s startling.  If I have to face something difficult, I am prone to just marching into it jaw set, head down, sleeves up and very much alone.  Just like Laila.  Laila didn’t talk to me until it was over and when it was done she was beaming with pride.

4.  We toured a preschool.  The word “school” brings one of my children to instant tears, so this was a big deal.  While we probably won’t be sending our kids to a school any time soon and perhaps we will home school as we originally thought, it was good for us all to see that school is not a scary thing per se.  I got to see what a well run, well intended preschool looks like inside.  It was very sweet, very safe, and truly looked like it was designed to love and care for children.  Now I can make a more informed choice about home school.
5.  Whatever happened to Saturday night?   (oh how I love to reference my RHPS days…)  Baba had the kids alone for the evening on Saturday.  While Sufyan has been without me for bedtime maybe 7 times in his life, Laila never has.  While my dynamic duo fought tooth brushing like it’s a unique kind of torture, I was attending a yoga event followed by a drink afterwards with a 2 fellow yoga teachers.  I got home after 1:am, sneaking in like a teenager after curfew and cursing this new American trend of “Hookah”.  Gah.  My memories of conspiring with girlfriends at the bar over a drink are frozen at age 23, thank goodness, because this reality would ruin them.  At age 37 I have learned that talk-yelling over music hurts my head, I can easily spot the wolves, and I can’t tolerate the smoke.  However, I enjoyed the company.
6.  Sufyan has begun writing words and drawing faces!  In the past he’s only been interested in free form coloring (what you could call scribbling if you don’t mind the connotation).

If I tried to encourage him in drawing a person or shape he’d set down his marker and be done.  We actually worried about this because from about age 2 onward, pediatricians ask about skills like drawing and I have lots of friends whose kids like to draw faces and shapes.  But all of a sudden it’s there for him.  Boom.  Growth.  It’s all good.

“Relax.  There are no educational emergencies.”
Since we have moved and moved and moved them all over creation, the kids and I have become a self-contained unit of 3.  This is not always a bad thing except that we each have needs that cannot be met within the circle of 3.  I need friends, Laila needs playmates and my undivided attention (something she never gets) and Sufyan needs social interactions and ideas that come from a source besides his mom.   It’s apparent that the time has come for turning outward from this secure connection we have to each other.  The problem is that we are late to the game, it seems.

It’s our timing.  Just when Sufyan may have been ready to explore the world outside our home, we left to a new country where the movement from nest to world was  made so much more difficult.  Then the crisis of Sufyan’s dental surgery hit us and we left Palestine in a hurry.   This was followed 2 additional surgeries while in Austin and in the midwest, leaving Sufyan in need of recovery time instead of “Let’s start school now!” time.  Living in the midwest, knowing we would not be staying, we didn’t even begin to look into any kind of school because at any moment we might be gone.  My approach has always been to take it slow, and it’s always been in the back of my mind that we would home school our kids for their first years at least.  But now that we have had so little social interaction and are needing friends and finding ourselves in yet another new town trying to set up new friendships (SLOW going)…home school is looking less appealing because it feels like more separation from the world at a time when we need connection.  How do home school moms deal with this issue?  Do moms who homeschool find it isolating?  Or do they find sufficient social gatherings via homeschool networks?  What is the safety net for not isolating and helping your children gel with their peers?
I have applied to a homeschool network here and after 2 weeks my application is “still pending”.  Meanwhile, we toured a preschool found that at Sufyan’s age the only classes open are 5 days a week.  So because of our incredibly strange timing, my son would have to go from tenderly beginning to reach outside his comfort zone to a big shove out into a classroom 5 days a week.  I’m not going to do that to him.  And yet…how am I supposed to fill his need for community?  Yoga classes.  Yes.  2 times a week.  But then what?  Surely he is not the only 4.5 year old who still prefers smaller groups and his home to a classroom.  But where are these elusive other mothers and families?  This has been my frustration and my worry.   It actually keeps me up at night.  The only thing I know for sure is that while I feel the urgency to change things for him and for Laila, I refuse to give in to fear and just foist the world on them in an unthoughtful way.  As my homeschooling resource site says, “Relax.  There are no educational emergencies.”  And still…the pressure to fill needs that cannot be filled by being home together all day every day are mounting.  And then there is Laila.  She is not ready for preschool, but she too rarely has time alone with me.  I want to focus on her brilliant, creative, energetic self.  This lack of time for her needs to change, which points to Sufyan needing to branch out for a couple of days a week for her sake as well as his.  But then we are back at the beginning:   no options for a boy his age aside from 5 full days a week.  Even classes at the community center, at Little Gym and the like require the child his age to be independent.  He refuses to do a class without me or at least Laila.  I am at a loss.  Anyone ever been in a similar situation with their kids?  What did you do, ultimately?  How did it work out?

Found Object for Today:  this one hurts.  It’s the mistake you can’t unmake.  Found in 2008. 

I’m forry for asking you out.  I made a mistake.  I shouldn’t have done that.  god i’m so stupid!  I know you don’t like me.  And we’ve been friends for so long.  Guess you did the right thing and saying no. You can find someone way better then me.  I’ll…see you later.  Bye.

Parenting Thought for Today: on being stuck in the past vs  valuable keepsakes

I have trouble getting rid of things that the kids have outgrown, or have drawn for me, or things that have meant something to me and to them.  I keep these things, knowing that when I am 80 I will press them to my heart and be grateful to be flooded with the memory of this precious time when my children were my world and I was theirs completely.  I know that I will close my eyes and inhale the scent of Laila’s first winter jacket and remember her cherubic face encircled by it’s silly maroon fuzz.  I will hug Sufyan’s tiny shoes, the ones he took his first steps in, to my chest and shake my head that he is grown.  I will still have on my walls at least one drawing from each of them, one painting, one scribble which encapsulates a moment of complete absorption in childhood and mothering.  These years have been the hardest and the very best of my life.  I know I will be so glad I kept these mementos.  But…this is ridiculous. My kids are only 2 and 4, and look at this pile of boxes full mostly of other boxes full mostly of keepsakes from Sufyan and Laila!   It’s getting out of hand.  Seriously!  What am I going to do?  There is much discussion out there about moms over-photographing moments and ironically losing the moments to the very act of preserving them.  But what of moms like me who are going to have to rent a storage unit just for their kids’ paintings and old shoes?  I am now actively carrying the past around as if it’s as important as our now.  What do you keep?  What do you and how do you throw things away?  *tears*

Yoga Thought for Today:  on a weird adjustment

Sufyan says, “Hands Off, Mister.”

Sometime, someplace in the last year I took a yoga class.  I won’t say where this class was, or when it was because I don’t like to tell on my fellow yoga teachers.  However, I am sure many teachers and students will relate to this little story.

I was at the end of a long “flow” class in which I was the only new student in this very full class.  The teacher hadn’t acknowledged me, hadn’t asked my name or connected with me in any way.   It had taken a supreme effort for me to get to class, and I was prepared to enjoy the class for what it was no matter what.  As the class neared completion, the teacher still had made no connection with me though he had been joking with many of the other students.  So I was kind of in my own world, eyes closed and enjoying my practice, in seated full forward bend (paschimottanasana), when ALL OF A SUDDEN I felt 2 big hands grab my butt!!!  One on each cheek.  The hands lifted me up by my butt to what felt like a foot in the air, rolled my thighs inward and butt cheeks outward (I am hesitating to use the word that best describes the sensation because it’s too graphic.  That word is “spread”), and set me right back down on parts that one normally does not sit directly upon and which I can now say I prefer not to sit directly upon.  Bottom line, as it were, this adjustment felt to uncaring in the extreme.  It felt aggressive.  It felt more like an attack than a help!  I had no idea the teacher was behind me, I had no idea he was going to adjust me much less lift me by my butt, and when he set me down again he stalked away so fast that eye contact (had I not been too humiliated and weirded out to make eye contact) was impossible.

Yoga teachers, we’ve all been there.  We’ve all made errors in approaching students from time to time.  We’ve all been more or less caring in our words and actions, more and less thoughtful, more and less artful.  I know I’ve made mistakes…oh yes I have.  I’m not holding anything against this teacher.   Instead this is serving to remind me of the story behind every person/student.  The teacher’s crude handling of an adjustment reminds me that everyone has a story.   Everyone has a “how I got here” story that matters as much or more than the teacher’s game plan.  In the context of the teacher’s own story, an adjustment like that might demonstrate their power and their own proficiency at adjusting.  It might, in other words, boost their ego.  BUT it doesn’t take the student and their story into account.  I was in that class to release stress, to reconnect to myself and my path, and to let go of something that’s been plaguing me.  Not necessarily to go deeper into paschimottanasana at the expense of my dignity and my, ah, lady parts.  So all I’m saying is to remember the student, be kind in your touch, and touch only when it’s invited.  There is no harm in asking a student for permission to touch, to adjust.  Particularly when that student is completely unfamiliar to you.  Oh, and in general:  never sneak up behind your student and lift her by her ass into the air.