CHILD’S POSE

CHILD’S POSE

     In the natural, visible world, it all looks hopeless to my tiny princess self..

     Small things are disappointing—I can tell we are on the cusp of mealy peaches, it being mid-August.

     Miserable things abound—the weather forecast predicts weeks and weeks of heat still to come. This is so wrong. I am not exactly wedded to being beaten down on by the sun. Whoever is in charge of such things should cut off all sweltering days on Labor Day—“All right, everyone, you’ve had your little fun. Now go inside and pick put a cute sweater.” But no. The devil is sitting in the shade these days.      

     Sorrowful things: We have a slo-mo human tragedy unfolding in my family, like you may very well, too, because, not to repeat myself, but the world is too sad by half. You get old and it feels like there is a sniper in the trees some days. Respecting their privacy, I’ll just say a relative is staying with us while he receives brilliant medical care.

     And five alarm fire things: 82 days till the midterms, which our catering cart stowaway is working to skew or cancel, and everyone is busy elsewhere with last ditch vacations and school starting up. I want to rouse everyone into action, like Jason Robards out on the New York City street at dawn, in “A Thousand Clowns”, urging his neighbors to come out for calisthenics. But we are worn out by the heat, and busy. Simultaneously we note that life is so time-consuming, and not much seems to be happening.

     So why do I feel breezes of hope? Go figure. It’s not Julie Andrews running on the hillside in The Sound of Music. Mine looks more like a creaky person getting down on the floor and going into child’s pose, the folded position in yoga where you stretch and curl back into a restful origami shape, almost a fetus. A huge, ploppy fetus, head bent to the ground, resting.

      Don’t get me wrong: I don’t yoga, although I have certainly meant to for the last ten years, but I do rest in the Child’s Pose at the gym, after I dutifully do my two saggy, trembly planks. Looking at me from outside, you might think I am bowing down or surrendering, but the opposite is true. I am protecting  myself, finding a moment’s refuge, thinking small, and gearing up.

     Small hope means that I not go crazy with the craziness around me, that I keep centered, ish, enjoy what I'm given. I recognize the madness out there, take deep breaths and try not let it strangle me.

Complaining aside for the moment, I have hope that the summer is right on schedule. Even though it is the only season I could do without,  the earth can’t. It needs the pollination, all those decomposing dead plants and flowers getting recycled into the soil for the next generation. The horrible insects are spreading pollen, burrowing, loosening the hard earth, recycling, feeding all the guys we actually like—birds, butterflies, bees.

      I watch my family and closest friends take care of our ailing person just down the hall, and this fills me with the peace that passes all understanding. I experience utter amazement at our species’s capacity for tenderness, resilience, and generosity. My husband and I forgot to make a dinner plan last night, and then out of the blue—if you believe in out of the blue—a friend texted that she was headed over with low-sodium green chile stew and cornbread for our person. A sick person cannot possibly polish off a soup pot of stew, so we all sacrificially pitched in and helped. Our person ate two bowls, patted his stomach.

     Love is sovereign here.

     I have hope in God, in Goodness, in Good Orderly Direction, in Grace Over Drama, in Gus, the Great Universal Spirit, and in the ACLU. I send them money to fight Trump’s efforts to mess with the elections. This action gives me hope, as do his polls, worst of any president since Richard Nixon’s in the days before he resigned. Overcome by the vapors, and his own inflated reputation and intellectual limitations, he has the soul of a trapped rat, tiny pink eyes alternately flickering with evil, and closed dreamily in slumber at the Resolute Desk.

     A lot of us are in child’s pose these days, waiting for the quiet blessings of autumn, but people who do not take time off from fighting the good fights are engaged, are focused on the right things — local elections, state elections, congressional elections, door to door canvassing where they can meet independents. The Resistance is alive and kicking, with some obvious problems—divisions, fundings, etc. When my son was ten and we were driving to my weekly teaching gig, he asked why my students even wanted to write. I said it was because we all have a creative spirit buried in there past the to-do lists and bad self self-esteem, and it wants expression. I told him that writing can help us make sense of ourselves, help us understand the human heart, and life.

     “Oh, I already know all about life,” he responded. “Pretty good; some problems.”

     In child’s pose, you kneel, and sit back onto your heels. Then you fold yourself over your thighs. Your head rests on the floor, so that it is lower than you heart, which is how it should always be. Your arms lay on the floor at your side, and you rest until you’re ready to rise.