This change in mothering is palpable.
I can see how we undergo shifts without realizing it — the swarm of activity, the always-looking-forward, the haste to fill in gaps with "must-dos." I can see how we take a half-second to look back and are shocked by how much has changed, how time has gone by. I, too, have been haunted by it, am haunted even now by the swollen belly of years that have passed and all that has happened in them. I am fearful of loss and exhilarated by the possibility of even more bliss, and I find a kind of thud of emptiness in those time-spaces where I don't know what's going to happen. I can see how we try very hard to stitch together moments because we don't know if we have the time to stop and feel the fabric it's made of. It's cliche, this tendency to thrust forward, but we come honestly by it.
Daily asana makes a critical difference in dragging that inertia. Ujayii breath does many things; one of these things, I have realized, is that it slows time and brings the awareness to the tiny machinations of one moment passing into the next. With it, we can feel the vibrations of change. Like sitting on the floor of the car's back seat, only inches from the road (my sister used to sit there when she was little, and carry on conversations with herself while I watched in awe at her peculiarity), the friction of movement, the bumps, the low hum of contact between tires and the journey are all so much more tangible than they are from the front seat, where the grown-ups talk. My teacher has written, "Ashtanga Yoga is swimming lessons for life's changing river. You begin to stroke, kick and glide with power; with the ability to direct yourself within the continual sweep of life's flux. You find your bearings even as change cascades down, upon, around and within you" (Garrigues, "The One-Year Anniversary"). I might even suggest that as the practice helps you to flow with the river, it also helps you to become the river.
* * *
When my daughter was a newborn, there were many times — more than not — when only her mother could calm her. My partner said that it was because she smelled breast milk that she sought me out. I resented this claim, but secretly believed it. I have watched over the last several months as she learns where and how to find comfort, and I have suspected that with the end of breastfeeding she would no longer need me to soothe her in the same ways.
But it is all much more complicated.
As she grows, she grows more and more indignant with me, using a glare in her eye and tightening her face and body as she hurls baby-talk profanity at me; she's hungry, she doesn't want to sit on the floor anymore, she doesn't care that there are sleepy seeds in her eyes, she doesn't feel like having her spit-up-covered shirt changed, she isn't interested in the f-ing tree or bird or dog because she's tired and needs to sleep now. I take these frustrations seriously; I try not to take them personally...but, of course, the more she gets to know her mother, the more she means them personally. And it is for this reason, I think, that we can begin to really know who we are when we see ourselves reflected in our children.
And yet, while this child seems to be increasingly willing to show me when I am not giving her what she wants/needs, she is becoming more attached. Specifically attached. She doesn't want me to leave when I drop her off at school; she clings and leans away from the arms of her teacher and tells me with her furrowed brow that she doesn't want to have someone else hold her. In the middle of the night, she wakes up crying (a bad dream, a cough, a sound) and wants me to hold her for just a minute before laying her back down. Together we share my cereal in the morning and boogie between bites at the deliciousness of soy milk and honey, she laughs at my stupid antics, she falls asleep when I sing to her, she looks when I point out something beautiful and reflects the glow of amazement back to me, and we talk and talk and talk and talk. I have come to know in the last several weeks that I can hold and rock and speak to my child in a certain way and she will be soothed. Not always — sometimes she is inconsolable. But a whole lot of the time, she sees a path toward ease or fun or adventure when I stretch out my arms and ask her if she wants "up." It's a lot of ego, and humility, and grace, and anxiety all sort of wrapped together, and it amounts to my fragile, raw understanding of myself as mother-to-this-child, this specific child. Her one and only mother.
And I'm fairly certain that it's not the smell of breast milk that makes it so.
Works Cited
Garrigues, David. "The One-Year Anniversary: Pattabhi Jois in Seattle." Ashtanga Yoga. 2003. Web. 4 Feb. 2010.
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