loose change

i forgot to write my monday piece last week. i’d been thinking about it all weekend & even on monday morning! but the afternoon rolled around and it had been kind of a busy day and in all the excitement i just forgot. i’ve missed two pieces now! but it’s okay. to maintain a positive practice of writing it seems better to let go of missed mondays.

i went to a yoga class with my dad when i got off of work today. it was a restore class, so really low impact and high benefit. it’s the first class i’ve been to since breaking my wrist–i was really happy to be invited, and i’m happy i showed up! a successful practice for me hinges on gratitude. i’m thankful that i showed up to class today, or i’m thankful for everybody else who showed up to practice today, or i’m thankful to be able to breathe and feel my body.

restorative yoga impacts my body very passively. the deep, slow, stretching is good, but i never feel like it’s making a big difference until i leave. today i felt lighter. i felt as though i had created more space in my body.

in practice, i try to separate my thoughts from my mind and instead allow them to exist outside of my body. i had some cool thoughts today. i felt very connected to the people around me: i’d realized at one point that i was facing the opposite direction of everybody else, and for a split second i felt very self-aware, very much like an outlier. a second later that feeling was very inconsequential. who cares! i thought about sam’s mantra as we wrapped up class, about being the rock in the river while it runs over and through you.

some of the thoughts floating around me pertained to deep insecurities, and not just my own. i thought about everybody, about how we all carry things around, how we all have inner thoughts and inner feelings that we keep to ourselves; the has anybody noticed my unibrow? did anybody hear me fart? do i look foolish in this outfit? did i say the right thing just now? do i sound like i know what i’m talking about? am i really doing my best or could i be doing more? is my best enough? am i a terrible person? i think i am relatively open about my insecurities. i worry out loud quite often. i cannot keep them a secret! but i am this way about many of my deeper thoughts. maybe i am an oversharer. at the very least, i’m an eager sharer. i cannot hide many things.

in my most immediate community, i see my insecurities reflected back to me through my actions. my tells are not what i imagine them to be: my lack of self esteem is witnessed in my relentless apologizing, my self-questioning, my indecision, my anxiety. these are not the insecurities that i tell anyone about, they are the roots. even when i feel like i’m showing up confidently, these little habits are the cracks in my facade that people notice whether i mean to draw attention to them or not. i’m lucky to have people close to me who will point out comments that feel very harmless to me. the i shouldn’t have done that or the i wish i’d done this differentlys.

near the end of the class, i looked outside of myself in a very surprising way. maybe it was because my dad was across the room from me. we’d met at his office before class, and had just been catching up. does ten years feel like a long time to you? i knew why he was asking–it’s been ten years since the divorce–and i’d just done a similar sort of mental reckoning a few weeks ago. i told him yes: i was fourteen, and now i’m twenty-five. the distance isn’t marked by time for me, it’s marked by emotional evolution and inevitable growth. i feel so far away from the girl that i was, and i feel so much of her within me.

all of this culminated during savasana. i’d reached the point of thought observation without analytics. i thought about my life as it is today through the lens of my parents in 1998. to be clear, i placed myself within their shoes, or i tried to. and what an obscure frame of mind! i was so surprised to have arrived there.

all of these worries i carry around on a day-to-day basis felt so inconsequential. all of my concerns were very refined. is she happy? is she eating enough? did she get enough sleep last night? do her shoes fit her well? is she warm enough? do you think she’s making friends? does she feel safe?

it was such a lovely little reminder that i worry i’ll forget once i’ve put it to paper and published this piece. i didn’t ask to exist, i was wanted to exist. it’s not my fault that i’m here, it’s a good thing that i am here. i am wanted here. and i am warm, and i sleep okay but i sleep in a cozy bed, the same one i slept in when i was fourteen, and i try my best to nourish myself adequately but sometimes forget to eat in the chaos of it all, and i have so many shoes that i love, and i have the greatest friends in the history of friend-having. per all of the concerns i can imagine a new parent might have, i am a smashing success.

i’ve thought a lot and written a lot about how we are all learning, all of the time. how we aren’t that different from the kids we are raising, we’re just a little hardened. and i’ve received the advice time and time again: to cherish the little girl i was, to keep her close to me, to do her justice, to treat her kindly, to treat myself kindly. but i’ve never had such a feeling like the one i felt tonight. it was a fleeting moment, but it resonated. none of us asked to be put on earth. sometimes the most we can do is wake up every day and be open to learning more.

i drove home and phoned a friend to check in. while on the phone, got a call from john henry calling to catch up. right as i answered the call, got a text from katie mcgee, who sent me a 2005 supplication from bobby’s kingfish album. turned onto my street feeling so, so warm.

in other News Since I’ve Last Written:

i started playing guitar again

june gloom has settled in just a month and a half shy of being on time

sam and i are still coming up with new variations of the same Perfect Sandwich, this weekend’s featuring stecca, boursin, chipotle bitchin sauce, honeycrisp apple, salami, and avocado

g is still Perfect

therapy is proving to be less imminently attainable than i’d originally hoped

physical therapy is proving to be a necessity

a student observed today that i’m “just a tall kid with no money”

i snuck a single scoop of the rori’s serious dark chocolate ice cream out of the school fridge today while the kids were in PE to satisfy my last-day-of-period cravings

there is a LOT to be said for a sunday afternoon nap

friends make the world spin round!

on a final note, today is earth day. tough to explain to a bunch of seven-year-olds. offhandedly i’d remembered it this morning, so i announced it: it’s earth day today! only to be met with a chorus of groans. ughhhhhhhhhhhh now we have to all go pick up trash!!! today is the day we have to go walk around and pick up trash! mind you, i said nothing about trash. maybe on earth day last year they had to do a trash walk, and must’ve really internalized it, and associated earth day with dirty labor instead of clean chores. whatever happened, it obviously didn’t really work: the reason for picking up trash was never cemented for them.

i dropped it. at the end of the day, i brought it up again. i asked them to reflect on a moment they’ve had where they felt connected to nature, connected to the earth, where they felt appreciative of the nature that exists around them. one of them mentioned playing in the snow. one of them expressed gratitude to be able to drink clean water (this is a classic one-off that they pick up on around thanksgiving time, when they’re asked to express what they’re grateful for). one of them said it was seeing the poison dart frogs in the santa barbara zoo. one of them, with enthusiasm, said one time i was on a trip and in the COOLEST hotel and in the pool with a WATER SLIDE!!!!!! we lined up for dismissal and i sent them home, not very certain that i’d instilled a new appreciation for our planet within them.

kids imitate what is modeled to them. the world that these kids grow up in is so far removed from our natural world. they are encouraged and persuaded by everything around them to dissociate from it, even. they look forward to rain not because it sustains our ecosystem, but because school might be canceled due to flooding. they look forward to going home not to go to the park or play outside, but to watch tv. i can’t blame them for lacking environmental awareness. we all lack it. it’s the direction our society continues to move in. i’m guilty of turning a blind eye just as much as the next person. but their answers today made me think more deeply about the ways we can model our appreciation for the planet to the next generation. it made me think about the undercurrents of our changing environment, about the earth that i grew up in. twenty years ago is not that long of a time, but it’s long enough to watch an entire climate shift. it’s long enough to understand that the world in which these kids are raised is not the same.

and a lighter note, a conversation between one of my students and i this morning:

miss mosby do you drink drugs?

i didn’t really answer this. just kind of looked back at him with a raised eyebrow, which is standard for our conversations

do you know janice? did you know that janice was dead when she was 27?

again, can barely even understand what he’s saying

you are 25 and you are not drinking drugs? that is how janice died.

this time i say very candidly, what on earth are you talking about, who is janice?

janice!!!! janice joplin!! (pronounced janeese joaplin) who was the musician!!! do you know her?

are you talking about janis joplin? how do you even know this?

i have a book that says about her!!!!! she died because she was 27 from drinking drugs!!! but miss mosby do you go on the black market?

we are always learning, all of the time!!! thank you for reading today and thank you for forgiving my lack of words lately. i am very much afloat. sending love to every corner

xxo, r