.....it takes a week

Yogis,
Today I am pouring through the pictures I took in the Outer Banks this past week. Snapshots of the individual moments that make up our 35^th annual gathering of families that fill five houses to their brim with adults, children, infants, dogs and memories. Every one of us grateful for this amazing tradition.

Day one is always long. Car rides that begin for some as early as 4:30 am. Stops for gas, sandwiches and the traditional meet up at the farm stand. Feeling successful when making it over the bridge to the island by 10:30 but then sitting in what we call the ‘congo line’ as you literally inch your way up route 12 through Duck. So close……yet so far.

Arrival and unpacking with dozens of climbs up and down the two flights of steps. Everyone giddy. Beach time followed by a delicious salmon and steak dinner to cap off the day.

We all comment how quickly we settle in.

The next couple of days we live hard. Wanting to experience it all! Long afternoons in the sun followed by appetizers and great conversation in the hot tub. Music playing. Lots of laughter. Around eight deciding we better cook dinner even though we don’t feel ready. Later evenings lead to naps on the beach and the eagerness to do it all again.

We all comment how quickly we settle in.

By Wednesday we have found our rhythm. All starting to unwind from whatever life has strung on. Slow mornings. Quieter. Noticing how we haven’t turned on the tv, read a newspaper or listened to the news in five days. Floating in the pool while my grand dog performs belly flops. Detaching from the noise of our world while we watch the sky turn shades of coral as the sun begins her descent.

We all comment how quickly we have settled into vacation.

Friday is our last day. Another glorious weather day. Pelicans glide in formation overhead against the blue sky. Dragonflies dot the dunes. The temperature of the water sits in stark contrast to the hot air. I dunk under for the head rush that follows. Every skin cell awakens and tingles. The breeze picks up. With sandy feet we settle in under the umbrellas. 

Suddenly everything is so clear.

I look around and realize only now have we truly settled. The whole group woven together as one and leaning back in beach chairs looking at peace. Even the kids playing quietly in the hole that was dug earlier in the day which is now being slowly filled by the approaching tide. The moon sits high in the daytime sky and watches over us. Life looks beautiful and we notice.

I always think it will be quicker. It takes a week…...

By stepping back we actually step in,
SARAH

.....squatting down

Yogis,
Summer is the time for slowing down. Softening the edges on the rigid schedule to drop out of that ever present thinking mind and tune into the feeling mind. The one that can actually appreciate all of the smells, sensations, colors and sounds of this glorious season. Often easier said than done.

Not sure what it is this year. Maybe the tumultuous weather which has us running for the relief of shade one moment and undercover from a sudden thunderstorm the next. Could it be the wildfire smoke? The morning headlines or my post-menopausal hormones? I’m not sure.

Here we sit already staring at the end of July on the calendar and I have yet to feel settled into my summer rhythm. I am doing all the things. Weeding my garden, watering the plants, watching the birds and eating tomato salads but it feels a little rote. Distracted. Not the freedom I crave and enjoy in the warmth of the summer sun.

I still had the rental car this week as I tried to be patient. Rental policies no longer allow dogs in the cars, so my daily trips with Phoebe to our favorite woodland spots have been on hold. One day I began feeling trapped and grabbed an hour when my husband’s car was home to head to the woods of a local park. We walked the edges of the field. Starting down through the trees the temperature drop they offered felt incredible. Arriving at the end of the trail I announced it was time to head back.

Phoebe would not hear of it.

She plopped her butt on the ground and faced downhill into the ravine…..her favorite stance for watching the world go by. Oh well I guess I will give her a moment.

It was only then that I noticed the chanterelle mushroom next to my foot. I squatted down to photograph her incredible color and the way she swirls herself about. I now see that a little further down the path there is a whole field of them. I look up and notice the way the tree which has fallen is shedding her bark in delightful wooden ringlets.

Looking over only this small patch of earth I discover more mushrooms and plants. The way the sun dapples through the leaves. The sound of my breath. My own stillness. The quiet. Exactly what had been missing. Seeing the world from a squat…..or a seat….. displays the world on an entirely different canvas. Together we watched for a while as the Universe painted.

Sitting here is like sitting under the Bodhi tree. My mind is mindfulness itself, calm and at ease, free from all distraction.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

I thanked Phoebe and we finished our walk. She was the one who knew. I was the one that needed the reminder.

Squatting down to see,
SARAH

....out of sorts

Yogis,
It all began with a tree limb. Or maybe that was just what got my attention. My car was packed and ready to leave for vacation when a torrential rainstorm threw a small limb on top, causing the back top spoiler to dangle by a wire and leaving dents on the door and roof. It is now three weeks later and I am still driving around in a rental vehicle with an unpleasant smell that drives like a boat.

Next, I was stung by a small bee on the bottom of my toe. No big deal. I get stung at least once a year. I remove the stinger and immediately make a spit poultice of plantain, a weed that grows in most lawns, and put it on to help speed healing. I know the drill……the next morning the whole toe will be slightly swollen and itchy but all will resolve in a couple days. Twenty-four hours later I take off my sandal and notice a small blister. Within two hours it swelled to size of my toe, filled with fluid, sticking up from the top of my foot by about an inch. 

For the next week I can’t put on any shoes other than my minimalist sandals with one thin band across. No running. Yoga practiced and taught without ever touching the top of my foot to the ground. Sleeping with my legs crossed to avoid contact. Everyone who sees it says they have never seen anything like it! My dermatologist assures me that my instinct to leave it alone is the best approach. Blisters create nature’s perfect healing environment. But OMG!

In the meantime I get a call from the realtor that the AC at the beach house is broken. I schedule a first available appointment for 3 days later only to get a call from a tech the morning of the visit asking me what’s up. What’s up?? He had never been to the house and was heading there to diagnose, not fix.  Confusion ensued while renters dealt with window units going in and coming out. Problem fixed. Two hours later…..not fixed. 

Then I begin to cough and proceed to lose my voice. 

We all have times like this. When everything is a challenge and life appears to be working against us. One thing after another after another. It’s so easy to become overwhelmed. To complain. To get upset. To want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head. 

I feel out of sorts. This is where the practice is the most useful. 

Life has a rhythm. A flow. When you are in it, life is incredible! But at times you feel like you got flipped over and are now struggling upstream and getting water up your nose. This is how I am feeling, so as I sit silently to meditate I have been asking to be realigned with the flow. Opening myself to reconnect with life’s hum. Visualizing these current obstacles floating by as I ride the current. And then knowing without a doubt, that they will. 

Meditation, along with yoga and breathwork, are tools we acquire and learn to use for our life’s toolbox. We must use them every day though, especially when life is good and they don’t seem necessary, because otherwise they get rusty. Then when life requires them, you whip them out and make even the most challenging of times contain an inner sense of joy, peace and calm. And humor, of course……

I will admit that on Saturday I did crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head for a bit.

Sharpening the blade,
SARAH

......agenda

Yogis,
This week I held my second annual Camp Nana. Two grandchildren were arriving on Tuesday and would stay through Friday. I decided I needed an agenda. A morning routine and then at least two activities planned for each of the days that would take us out of the house. I figured evenings would be filled with a firepit, one dinner out and bedtime routines.

I had it all mapped out……

I could visualize each day. The trips to the nature center and the mall. Lunch in the eatery. Visits to Glen Echo park and some time at our neighborhood pool. I’ve got this.

Tuesday’s firepit with the roasting of marshmallows went as planned. The agenda though began to go a bit awry on Wednesday. Where I thought the nature center would be a couple of hours, the indoor section has new summer hours and only opens on weekends and with 90 degree heat and air like pea soup, there was only so long any of us wanted to be outside.

We headed home and played a full game of Life.

The trip to the pool was going great. The water pleasant as everyone practiced their floating abilities and perfected underwater handstands. As expected, the lifeguard blew the whistle at 11:45 for adult swim. Right as we headed toward the steps and discussed having snacks while we wait, a large clap of thunder sent us scurrying for cover. Twenty minutes later thunder was still rumbling in the distance. We were soaking wet.

We headed home and played a full game of Life.

One of the mornings I announced to the kids the day’s agenda and my grandson asked ‘what exactly is an agenda?’  I launched into a description, picturing my Xerox days and the importance of agendas,  but as I spoke I was reminded how an agenda should always be viewed as a loose framework. Something that expands, shrinks, changes or is ditched all together as life dictates. Holding on too tight only causes suffering……..as my granddaughter experienced while crying in the car when the heat once again beat us down at Glen Echo park.

We headed home and played yet another full game of Life.

In the game of Life you move ahead, you stop, you lose a turn, your house floods, you end up in a career you aren’t crazy about or you find yourself in debt. But you also have children, win the lottery, make a good salary and never know where you will end up next. Its all in a spin of the wheel…..or in our case the whim of mother nature.

We had fun at everything that did fall in line on our ‘agenda’ but the moments like our impromptu drum party, planting some green bean seeds and watching the bluebirds bathe joyfully in my birdbath would not have happened if we had held rigidly to the schedule. Nor would three full games of Life.

By the way…..I lost all three games, yet I still feel like the winner.

Your turn,
SARAH

.....generations

Yogis,
‘You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out, you put your right hand in and you shake it all about. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around…..that’s what it’s all about.’

I am playing the hokey pokey game with my one-year-old grandson in the beach house we rent each year in Stone Harbor NJ. I had been told that he knows it now. My mom, hearing us, comes around the corner and asks us to do it again. Together we go through the verses and once the final round where we put our whole body in and our whole body out is over, we shout hooray and clap for ourselves. ‘It has now been handed down!’ exclaims my mom.

Suddenly I have images of my mom playing it with me and me playing it with my boys. That’s how it works. Generations……..

My husband’s mom grew up spending summers in Stone Harbor. They then brought him, he brought me, and we have taken our sons there every year. We now have four generations sleeping under one roof.

My parents are now great-grandparents to the four children who were there. The older three would scramble up on the couch with them to hear stories and see pictures on my dad’s phone of his army days. Our newest addition was meeting them and Stone Harbor for the first time Each of the kids introduced year after year to traditions handed down from us to our sons who now model the same behaviors……and even seem to take it up a notch.

This week my oldest son taught his oldest son how to ride a boogie board. Stone Harbor is where he and his two brothers learned and spent hours on end practicing their technique, only coming out when lips were blue and fingers wrinkled. Getting their first high quality boogie board was a rite of passage.

‘Fudgie Wudgie!’ yells the teenager pushing the white cart on wheels down the beach containing ice cream sandwiches, good humor bars and drumsticks. As the kids ate with sandy hands, we recounted the history of who used to eat which ones. The screwball (with the gumball in the bottom) a crowd favorite. Fudgie Wudgie has officially been handed down.

The daily digging of the big hole has been handed down. The packing and carrying of the coolers. How to properly put up an umbrella (none of those cheap plastic ones for this family) so there is no chasing it down the beach on a windy day. How to play Rock in Bucket (which involves sitting in beach chairs on the front lawn of small rocks and throwing them into buckets….harder than it sounds) has been handed down. Grandkids learning to reel in the rod when a kingfish hits and becomes our fish fry appetizer.

Each generation teaches and most importantly role models the behaviors to the one below until it sticks. They then have the joy of sitting back and watching the kids teaching it to the grandkids, and if you’re lucky like my parents, the grandkids teaching the great-grandchildren.

Generations……

What if the hokey pokey really is what it’s all about?
SARAH