Urge For Going

I'm on round two of the Whole 30 right now, this time with my son, and one of the many awesome things about being on this diet is the quality of sleep I get. Night before last I slept nearly 8 hours without waking up once, which is pretty much unheard of for me, and last night I slept even longer with just one brief wake up. So good.

This morning my friend and I were supposed to go to hot yoga together, but she decided to bail because unlike me, she wasn't tucked into bed with a book at 9pm. (So good. Love that I'm feeling settled enough right now to read -- I often find that I can't -- this is probably also partly a result of being on the Whole 30.) But I decided to go anyway, and saw a couple of people I knew there. Mostly though, as you do at hot yoga, I saw myself. In the mirror. And I heard the teacher's message about incremental change. About not forcing anything. About being where you can breathe.

I decided this would be the year that I stopped worrying about when my hip is going to open up so I can get lotus on the other side. This year I will just show up and practice, knowing all the time that the incremental change is happening. Or as the founder of Ashtanga says, "Practice and all is coming." Yeah it is.

At the end of class, this particular teacher always sings to us in savasana, and today, this is the song he sang:

I awoke today and found
the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky
then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row

I get the urge for going
But I never seem to go
I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

Last night at my son's soccer game I was talking to a woman about her desire to travel and be adventurous, to live by the ocean, and her husband's desire to be a homebody and work in the same lab he's worked in for 20 plus years. She said she didn't know what would happen when the kids leave home.

I told her I too had gotten the urge for going, many times, but haven't gone yet because my babies are here. I also told her about the man I had, who also got the urge for going, and so he went:

I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling's heart could win
But when the leaves fell on the ground
Bully winds came around
Pushed them face down in the snow

He got the urge for going
And I had to let him go
He got the urge for going
When the meadow grass was turning brown
Summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

Yes I did, have to let him go, that is. After talking with this woman, I was reflecting on how the things I thought I wanted/needed when I was with the New Englander, marriage, another child, are not things I really want or need anymore. She said: "You scared him away!" Maybe I did, but if I did, it was for a reason. Some part of me must have known that the only way to communicate the kind of commitment I wanted/needed from him was to insist on those things. They seemed SO important to me then -- to be able to have a child with this man I loved so dearly, to be able to marry him -- but now neither one seems important, with him or with any other man. I simply want love, companionship, presence, adventure, laughter, passion, comfort and ease. For now, I'm doing my best to offer all of those things to myself, my friends, and those that are appropriate to offer to my children, offer to them.

Somewhere along the way, I have faith that I'll get the urge for going, and I'll be able to go wherever it is my heart desires:

But she's got the urge for going
So I guess she'll have to go
She gets the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
All her empire's falling down
And winter's closing in.
And I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
And summertime is falling down...