advice from your yogamama

Ok that’s it, I can’t even look at my sweaters and winter blacks (tneck with yoga pants) for another minute. I have a jones for pastel colored frocks, and gauzy blouses. I wanna see the earth poking up green. I got cabin fever, and I need a heavy dose of spring. If I have to don my winter coat one more day I will scream. Where are the snowdrops I visited in Berlin’s spring, back in February?

I want a Spring that has sprung. I want to go from snow drift to 50 over night –I want it all sunny and to have hope again. All us gray ghosties that have been hibernating in our houses will get out and about. Once again my streets and sidewalks would be crowded and children’s voices could be heard on the block again. For six long months we have been bundled in parkas and now, now, now, we need to be free.

If I hadn’t spent the weekend in Los Angeles, warmed by the 70 degree days, maybe I would not feel this desperation. Walking along Venice beach as the sun was sinking into the Pacific, I could smell the world again. So coming back here to ground frozen into chunks put the lid back on my sensory world. I hadn’t really meant to spend a mere 3 days in La La Land for a family life cycle event but, you know, we are the people who Show Up. Life cycle events are NOT vacations, they are whirlwind marathons of invading hordes who bear a DNA connection to you. You SEE your relations, as in visually, though depending on the speed and number of events, what you usually manage is a series of shared memories of mutually attended affairs with logistical conversations and soundbites over cocktails. We savor the memories and look at the fabulous pictures and it tides us over until the next time we manage to be in one state/nation. In the end, going west gave me extra hours, since I got up at 5 am each day, and Mission Accomplished. The west coast web of friends and relations is well woven and healthy.

Much to my children’s disappointment we did not buy any souvenirs of our non-vacation. I think my new rule is you have to be away at least 5 nights before you need another piece of stuff to “remember” it by.

Another rule of mine is if the clan is gathered, you must take it upon yourself to gather all the gnarly children together with an elder and make sure a picture is taken. This is a thankless task. No one will appreciate it until at least one of the people in the picture has died. You must, in this day and age REMEMBER TO PRINT THE PICTURE. In this digital age it is so much more fun to email them all over the planet and post them to a blog, but you will deny a future youngster from the unadulterated joy of paging through an album or leafing through a box of crumbling photos on a rainy day and tracing the connection of family through the lift of a smile, or angle of a nose. I have a 10 year old computer that has a bunch of baby pictures I can’t access without the help of a very expensive service bureau. HEED MY WARNING. Print the good ones. Throw them in an acid free box and tuck them away for a decade or so. Trust me, you will thank me.