Practice

All of the steps I have to go through before doing yoga on my mother’s kitchen floor: convince her, move furniture, vacuum, assure the dogs it’s fine. Then, listen to her knees crack as she rolls around by my side, a sixty-eight-year-old roly poly bug, pill in pink pajamas. We love the same poses. She used to be able to do this, she tells me.

We lie flat together. As the video transitions to an advertisement for healthier water, she says this is so good. Tomorrow we will move to the carpet in the basement, in front of the gas stove, since her yoga mat is so thin. I try to keep from moving until the five minutes have passed—still haven’t heard a snowplow. In corpse pose I notice all the dust we missed, in the corners, under her Christmas tree. The dogs still don’t understand, licking our faces, biting our hands.

No one tells you about exercising with the elderly. I hide inside the hood of my sweatshirt as it falls over my face. I leave my hair in front of my eyes so I don’t have to see what she’s doing. Somehow our bodies used to fit one inside the other—two nesting dolls. Now, we are almost equal-sized lumps, windshield wipering our knees into one another like flacid battering rams. She will keep getting smaller while I keep getting larger. I would keep her safe inside me if I could. 

*

I like when my mom says oh fuckey when we’re doing yoga together. It usually means she’s about to tip over. During relaxation, she flicks my finger—a six-foot-tall gnat buzzing at my side. I try to tickle her armpit, but jokes on me, she says—she lost all feeling on that side after her surgery.

I try not to go shirtless in my mom’s house. I feel sad that I have two breasts when she only has one, while at the same time, I wish that I had none, while at the same time I wish none of it felt like such a big deal or even something worth taking note of. There’s a round band aid stuck to the inside of her shower curtain liner. It’s been there for four years.

I imagine someone peeking inside the basement window of her split level. She is watching television in front of the fire alone. She is collecting the biggest pinecones I have ever seen. She is arranging rescued blue glass bottles from tallest to largest, all of them leading down, down, down, to a framed photograph of my youngest brother in diapers on a beach.

It is snowing where I am with her, but it’s warmer than where I usually live. This feels like a treat—the sun—until I feel whiplash on my face from wind across the open fields. I wanted to say where I normally live, but nothing is normal now, including the fact of my being here. Last time, the only thing I wanted was to be with her. Now, it’s happening again and here I am, unfolding each day like brittle paper.

*

The dogs go wild when we do yoga. They are on the floor with us, biting our hair, between our hands when we bow down. We shout, they bark, and Adriene smiles on the flatscreen—oblivious. My mom thanks her for anticipating her soreness and I see how easily a relationship begins.

My mom wonders why I lock the bathroom door behind me. I wonder why she keeps a bar of soap in a dish filled with cloudy water, so soft that it collapses in my hand when I try to grab it—solid only to sight.

When the practice ends, my mom looks down at me. I can see up her nightgown—thrifted, with another woman’s name scrawled across the tag. She asks what I am doing. Yoga, I say. I am incredulous, while also knowing that the odds are high that one day I will open a door and ask her what she is doing. And she will not answer.

The floor itself will have no significance to most readers unless I say this: It is where they found my uncle, body crumpled, days later. I want to say that his was the first body I ever saw dying, but they’re around me every day. We all know this—my mom, Adriene, me, the dogs nipping at our fingers—but somehow still, we practice.

*

Practice. Act. Pace. Race. Ice. Pact. Pie. Pit. Price. Pat.

My mom says blah blah blah to the screen, then tips over. Each time we forward fold, I check for Covid toes. Should J come over? she asks. This could mean three different people, and I want none of them in our space. This cold basement—these layers of carpet, mat, blanket for her knees. I could make a study of the songs she sings herself. I could stay another week.

*

A list of things my mother has given me during week one of the second pandemic winter: terra cotta bird-feeder, vintage refrigerator jar, wool socks, boot cleats, my grandmother’s birdwatching book (after dragging it out from the garbage and brushing coffee grounds off the cover), waterproof baby books for bath time.

She’s tried to give me other things but I can’t bear to think of her living alone in the house without them. I only said I liked them because I want her to know that I love being here.

She doesn’t think we worked hard enough yesterday. She wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep. So today we will walk along the salt-slicked road, and she will tell me about all her neighbors. Then, we will ready the house, but I don’t want to think about what for.

*

I hope she knows I’m suffering, my mom says, standing with her hand on the kitchen island while we drink our first cups of coffee and count each limb the wind knocked down. But later I’m the one swearing at the screen while I jam my hips into the floor. What season was this filmed? I ask, as I look outside and tell myself—again—that time does not exist. How could it, when each morning I meet a new person, another self I still have time to be.

*

J watches us on our “yoga papers” and then she wants to show us how the bridge goes up and down—a real happy baby. I don’t want her to remember this as women working out, so I tell her we are getting strong. We are feeling good. She doesn’t want to do it unless it’s on the list, so we write it down and cross it out. Also on the list: Snow angels, make pizza with grandma, read. It seems like I’m picking the most poetic things but I’m not, the whole list is like this, I swear—stickers, walk the dogs, paint rocks with Aunt Erin.

I show her how to roll the mat, then explain how I am going upstairs to write my next book. Kids can learn anything fast, anything you show them.

Today my mom said I’m glad she knows how I feel, and asked me to put yoga on her phone for the upcoming vacation. Of course I am hatching more plans—daily check-ins, encouraging texts, quizzes about what Adriene said that day to see if she’s keeping up. She can already do more scissor kicks than day one. She can already navigate to the next video on her own.

*

It’s seven days later and I can’t find the face again—the one I saw in my mom’s popcorn ceiling.

*

Today before yoga I was almost squashed by a 90-inch cabinet. The neighbor and I both bloodied. Before admitting defeat I reminded her that there was a smear of red across her face—no one should pick up their kids in that state. I still have trouble keeping my own face soft.

In Florida, my mom & L roll back the rug, clear the living room to work out together before they hit the beach. It feels safer than the exercise room, she says. I can’t imagine either of them doing any move correctly, but I guess that is the point of practice. L likes the sound of Adriene’s voice, so I tell her about the meditation series. Personally, I feel like there’s something to be written about how she softens herself over time, becomes more palatable for us—prettier, stronger, better outfits—tries to assert more control over her vocal chords.

But some of my favorite moments are when that all slips away. When Adriene is tongue-tied, or fucks up, or fucks up then mentions that she just fucked up. Or sings, or smears “something” across her belly, when surely we all know what “something” could mean.

*

I want the washing away of every broken stick, dog shit pile, salty muck sloughed off the road. I want to watch through my window, surrounded by books, flakes fall against the balsam firs. And every hour, I want to move the car and shovel until I sweat right through my shirt. This poem is a prayer in which I conjure the second Monday of a brand new year. In this essay I will.

I want you to know I was here, but I just have nothing to say. I feel lucky, but also like I want to cut the too-tight ends of my sweatpants right off. Does age recalibrate? I don’t want to be anyone-else-absorbed—a sun that fades in and out instead of going up and down.

*

Can you believe there are just things in the sky? my mother asks me, as we stand by the french doors looking out over the lawn. Up there, existing. I focus on scuffing up the floor so she won’t slip when I leave.

The morning she left for her mastectomy, I crouched inside a dugout behind my mother’s house. I wept as fog lifted over the field. She returned to me in pieces, and even then, the worst days were still to come. At the good spot, we search the beach for heart-shaped rocks to bring home for J. My mom shows me her pile, asks me do you think they’re good enough? Perfect, I say, to every single twisted, weathered, smoothed-over stone.