Entry #685378, added on 01-26-10 @ 10:59 am EST
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I've been doing yoga. Well, I've done it twice, but it counts. Yes, it feels good, particularly after I've finished, like I'm floating on top of a cloud while my body settles, like sand to the bottom of the lake. My wee one has taken to doing it with me since there's virtually no way I can do it in private, and even this morning she asked if we could 'please mom! can we please do yoga tonight!?', to which I laughed and said something to the effect of 'sure'. She is very good at it, actually, much more coordinated than I am, and she finds it hilarious when I fall over, which I have done a few times. The dvd I have of it is set in Jamaica and it's meant to be a muscle strengthening/stress release exercise, but I have a feeling that I'll need something more intense if I want to have a body like Jennifer Aniston's at some point. The fact that I'd allow myself to think I could come close to that makes me laugh, but a few years ago, thinking about myself eating healthy and doing yoga was also laughable, and yet, here I am. I am still wearing the danish-weight I mentioned in the previous entry, but as those danish were so delicious, I think the extra weight was well-earned and I'm not too concerned about it. It'll come off if I continue to focus on fueling my body with real food. Also, it should be noted, that after both one-hour yoga sessions, I slept like a rock. Normally, I flutter between sleep and wakefulness a few times during the night, but last night I was out for nearly nine hours. I'm thinking yoga is the right thing for me. So far.
A couple weeks ago, two days after the Haitian earthquake, I saw my neighbour, Elimene (I think that's how it's spelled) walking along the street with the neighbourhood kids she takes care of, and she broke into a big, toothy smile and waved when she recognized me. I waved back and made the appropriate faces at the children who were also waving emphatically, despite having no clue who I am. I came home that night and told M. that I'd seen her, and that I hoped her family had been spared from the quake in Elimene's homeland. He said that he believed that they lived outside of Port-au-Prince, that they would have been nowhere near the chaos. Then, last week while standing in the drugstore buying my fiftieth highlighter of the schoolyear, I looked at the local newspaper and saw Elimene's face looking back at me. I grabbed it and read the story quickly, learning that she had lost a few nieces and nephews, that her sister-in-law is missing and that her mother had been found but had a broken leg, fractured skull and was missing several fingers. I went to school and emailed the link to M. who immediately mentioned it when I got home. I said I couldn't believe that I'd seen her at the park and a few times on the street and every time she'd been beaming and pleasant, like she'd never known loss or catastrophe.
'Do you expect her to stay in and cry her eyes out?' he asked.
'Well, yeah, I would,' I answered honestly.
The thing is, I am impressed as much as I am shocked by her capacity to carry on. Not that crying or dissolving into a puddle of despair would accomplish much, but it would likely be my reaction to this kind of news. I know that Elimene lived there and had been accustomed to a certain degree of hardship until she met her husband, a soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces, but her ability to be positive despite real bonafide drama is foreign to me. Maybe.
The few times I have been in a dramatic situation, though, I seem to remember some kind of internal force taking over. The deaths of grandparents were met with a stony resolve, in fact, when my grandmother died, I actually went to the morgue to see her body, and then after that, I went and bought all the clothes for her to be buried in, including jewellery because I knew that's what she would have wanted. When my grandfather died, I went to his room at the senior's home and sat on his bed with his body until the coroner came a few hours later. I was eerily calm and bore no resemblence to one of those paid mourners. When a tornado flattened half of the city I was living in years ago, I sort of developed a matter-of-fact philosophy about it all, which probably came easy because my house hadn't been levelled. I find that most of my most 'unhinged' moments come in anticipation of things rather than after the course of events has occurred. I also tend to feel terrified and sad when things happen to other people, mostly because I'm happy it didn't happen to me but know that it could have. When it comes, though, when the bad stuff finally happens, you just find a way to coast along to get through it. I would assume this is what Elimene is doing. So, in all honesty, I don't know that I'd do things differently than Elimene. I can't say for sure that I would stay home and bawl my eyes out in a dark room. There's nothing truly practical in that, and when it comes to catastrophe, it is best to stay practical.
I'll probably do more yoga tonight. I'm hoping it'll be my heroin.
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