Moms Don't Have Time To Page 6

  Now it’s spring and perfect rowing weather—sunny, cool, only the tiniest breeze. As I wait to hear when rowing will start again, I can’t help but reflect on all the real barriers the pandemic has thrown in our way. What a waste it is to be held back by obstacles of our own making, fears of how silly we’ll look or how we’ll compare to others. One day life will resume again, and there will be glorious new failures to pursue—if we let ourselves.

  Karen Dukess is a former speechwriter and the author of the debut novel The Last Book Party, now available in paperback.

  Want to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others? Try Tree Pose

  JAN ELIASBERG

  How yoga finally helped me silence my nagging inner voice.

  I’ve been practicing yoga for twenty-five years. I know this precisely because I took my first class when I was pregnant with my now twenty-four-year-old daughter.

  I was not one of those blissed-out pregnant yoga mamas. I was cranky and hyper-focused on all the things my bloated body, my bulging tummy, and my swollen feet wouldn’t let me do. I’d been a Type A exerciser, pounding the pavement and sweating like a sinner in church. I liked the challenge of a really tough workout. But loss of cartilage in my knee combined with twenty pounds of pregnancy weight ruled out that kind of exercise. So when my pregnant neighbor asked me to go to a prenatal yoga class with her, I couldn’t find a reason to refuse.

  As I waddled into that first class I inwardly rolled my eyes at the sylph-like women with luminous skin and not an ounce of body fat, holding their tiny, perfectly rounded bumps like expensive accessories while twisting their limbs into impossible poses. But still I went back the next day, and then the next.

  As I waddled into that first class I inwardly rolled my eyes at the sylph-like women with luminous skin and not an ounce of body fat . . .

  The class would begin with everyone announcing her name and due date. And almost every day there would be an empty space in the circle of yoga mats; one very pregnant woman would be gone, only to reappear a couple of weeks later with a newborn for the class to coo over. Soon, the familiar faces of my due date cohort disappeared. My neighbor’s due date arrived and two days later she wasn’t in class; her husband called the next day to tell us they’d had a boy.

  My due date came and went. A week later, the teacher herself could barely conceal her concern. I was already scared about labor, but my classmates’ free-floating anxiety made it infinitely worse.

  Finally, after a nudge from my ob/gyn and thirty-six hours of labor, Sariel arrived scarlet-faced and screaming into the world. In the aftermath, my body was bruised and I could barely stand up to push the stroller down the street. But remarkably, I missed yoga. As soon as I could walk, I went right back. I almost couldn’t help it—I was addicted to the total sense of contentment and ease I felt at the end of class.

  Everything that yoga addicts proselytize about is true: Your muscles become longer and leaner; your skin looks better, and day-to-day crankiness becomes the exception rather than the rule.

  Here’s what they don’t tell you:

  That chattering, nasty little voice in your head that constantly compares your body with other women’s bodies finally shuts the hell up. I no longer hear the distracting static of my brain insisting that I have to lose five pounds before I’ll really be okay. All I think about when I’m on my mat is how grateful I am that my body can achieve these remarkable shapes, or some approximation thereof.

  I no longer hear the distracting static of my brain insisting that I have to lose five pounds before I’ll really be okay.

  You will also have fuller and more complete access to your emotions. The amount of effort and stress it takes to keep feelings under the surface starts to ebb away, leaving nothing but the feeling. Many is the time I’ve burst into tears in a yoga class; no one gives me dirty looks, they’ve all been there, too. The teacher might come over and put a gentle hand on my back or might just let me cry until I’m all cried out. It’s a glorious feeling of release.

  In yoga you practice all the skills you start to lose as you age: Tree pose improves your balance; pigeon pose improves your flexibility, and chaturanga dandasana (holding plank or push-up position) is fabulous for bone density. Strength, flexibility, and balance—those aren’t just the skills we need for aging gracefully, they’re the skills we need for living gracefully.

  They are also wonderful skills to practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rolling out that yoga mat marks a time and space for a ritual that feels sacred. Whether I’m live-streaming a class, playing a prerecorded class with one of my favorite teachers in a subscription series, or just moving through opening asanas on my own, everything in the outside world always melts away.

  Concerns about my daughter living with friends in Brooklyn fade. Panic about book sales dissipates. And loneliness, the most difficult part of this self-quarantine, is redefined as peaceful solitude.

  Jan Eliasberg is a director, screenwriter, and author of the debut novel Hannah’s War.

  After My Daughter Died, My Son Took Up Rock Climbing

  SUZANNE FALTER

  One slip, one mistake, and my last remaining child would be gone.

  Not long ago, my son Luke sent me a video from his first climb in the Sierra Nevada. The video shows him breathless, paused on the side of a mountain wall, eleven thousand feet above the ground. He shouts, “ahoy there!” and points to his climbing partner’s sliding-X anchor, noting that it’s not redundant. “Luckily, my mom doesn’t know what redundancy means,” he says with a laugh.

  No, but Mom has Google, and Mom found out.

  According to Climbing: From Gym to Rock, an anchor that is “not redundant” means there is nothing to back it up if it were to fail. One slip, one mistake, and my last remaining child would fall to his death. Luke reminds me that he is a certified professional climbing guide. Still, I worry.

  Not long after his sister Teal’s sudden death in 2012, Luke decided to become a serious rock climber—the sort who climbs thousands of feet at a time and dreams of working for Yosemite Search and Rescue. He’s twenty-four, an adventurer with a wild mountain spirit, a sharp mind, and nerves of steel. And he scares me to death. I once asked Luke if his desire to take up such a dangerous sport had anything to do with Teal’s death.

  “Yeah, something like that,” he said. And I have to admit, that makes sense. After all, there is something strangely freeing about a massive life upheaval. When life shakes you to the core and you’re reduced to rubble, the things you value most become abundantly clear. Suddenly, there is no holding back from what you love, just as there is no more wasting time on things that hardly matter. Life gets pulled into a swift, clear order that you can’t un-see.

  When life shakes you to the core and you’re reduced to rubble, the things you value most become abundantly clear.

  Teal knew this secret long before she died. She was an epileptic born with a deep and passionate love for travel. Armed with her meds, she made her way fearlessly around the world, traveling mostly alone with a backpack. And she did this even though she suffered a grand mal seizure on a beach in Ghana, and another near seizure in a hostel in Marrakech. Whenever she had enough dollars in her pocket from waitressing, she’d suddenly be off again, flying off to Dublin or Bangkok.

  Though she died at the impossibly young age of twenty-two, Teal managed to wander around most of the continents. It was, quite simply, what she had to do. “Mom, seriously—my epilepsy is no big deal,” she’d insist.

  This is the same voice Luke uses when he says, “Mom, seriously—climbing is incredibly safe.” It’s that all-knowing voice of unreason, the one you hear loudly when you’re, say, under thirty. Yet, it’s also the voice of unbridled desire. And it’s the one I have to heed if I’m going to get along in this life.

  Still, I worry for Luke, just as I worried every time Teal headed off to farm in Belgium or to backpack through Southeast Asia. How could I not? When my daughter was alive, there was always a phant
om rapist in my imagination who would pick her up on some back road in a country where she couldn’t speak the language. My imagination would stew for days about a possible terrorist attack on a train, or a collision when she was off riding a bike somewhere. It didn’t help that Teal resolutely refused to wear a medical ID bracelet, just as she was reluctant to tell the various roommates she lived with about her epilepsy.

  Ultimately, these children of ours have to grow up to do what they’re going to do, whether it suits us or not.

  Her philosophy was nunc vitae. Life is now. In other words, quit worrying and get on with it.

  As it turned out, Teal did have a few close calls, including being hit by a car while riding a bicycle in Texas, and talking her way out of a near rape in Thailand. But each time she walked away unscathed. And each time she didn’t tell me about it until much later.

  You could say that Teal prepared me for Luke’s high adventure streak. These days, when he’s not climbing, he’s skiing trees in the subzero backcountry. At night. With a headlamp. Or he’s pursuing his other hobby, working in the back of an ambulance hurtling through Vermont’s frozen, snowy roads. Last Christmas, I gave him a cheery tea towel that says, “Every day do something to terrify your family.” He liked that gift.

  I try to keep in mind something I learned when Teal was in Ghana as a seventeen-year-old. She was there, ostensibly, to teach English, but really she was there to quench her ceaseless thirst for global connection. One night, I called her when it was well past 11:00 p.m., and her hostess answered the phone. Maria was a generous, large-hearted Ghanaian whose business it was to sit all day long in her plastic chair in front of her house, greeting her neighbors and looking after the girls who stayed with her. Though our lives were vastly different, she had some sterling advice for me. When she told me that Teal was out with her friends, I got alarmed.

  “But it’s well past eleven!” I protested. Maria gave a long, warm laugh.

  “Oh, mama,” she chuckled. “You worry too much.”

  There you have it. Ultimately, these children of ours have to grow up to do what they’re going to do, whether it suits us or not. They have to make good choices and bad choices and in between choices, and we are left to soothe, when necessary. Mostly, we’re just meant to cheer them on.

  Should I have been more protective of Teal? Should I have somehow anticipated she might suddenly drop dead, even though I never knew such a thing was even possible? No and no. This is the messy, uncertain, awkward, and difficult flow of life. Sometimes it’s just plain heartbreaking.

  In the end, Teal’s death had nothing to do with her adventure streak. She had a cardiac arrest in a locked bathroom in her San Francisco apartment. The cause will never be known, though it is possible she suffered from a rare condition called Sudden Death in Epilepsy, which randomly strikes one in a thousand epileptics.

  So life goes on. Luke runs up mountains until he dry heaves, and I watch from a distance, fiercely loving him. I let go, trusting him and his mad desires, just as I once trusted Teal’s. Twenty years ago, I watched him climb everything he could find, including the poles on the IRT while it rattled along at high speed. Just as I let him climb then, I must let him climb now.

  Suzanne Falter is an author, speaker, and host of the podcast Self-Care for Extremely Busy Women. Her many nonfiction books include The Extremely Busy Woman’s Guide to Self-Care and The Joy of Letting Go.

  I Don’t Want to Work Out. I’m a Lorelai

  CHRISTINA GEIST

  Here’s the truth: I have very little interest in working out, at home or anywhere else, despite the fact that I now have plenty of time. In my 1980s childhood, my mom drank Tab and Diet Coke but cooked us real, homemade, healthy meals every night. Many parents smoked in my generation, and few walked around in workout clothes all day, but we all turned out just fine. I don’t know if moms had time to work out in my youth. Even if they had the time, they just didn’t. Judging by the TV moms I loved most, Alice Keaton, Carol Brady, and “Ma” from Little House on the Prairie, not a single American mom burned a calorie before Jane Fonda released her first tape.

  Fast-forward to 2020. Here I am. A mom in a generation of maxed-out moms. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends since well before the quarantine. I was raised to have it all, with no glass ceiling. As a result, I have been actually trying to do it all, as in all of it, while maintaining a solid marriage, a strong core, a balanced diet, and some kind of mindfulness practice.

  Here I am now. A mom in the quarantine era. Figuring out how to manage my newfound anxiety while continuing to run two small businesses, while homeschooling two kids, once we get through these two weeks of “spring break” and it’s no longer acceptable for them to spend the day with Bart Simpson.

  Here I am now. Worrying about my kids’ physical activity levels while suddenly inundated with images of my fellow moms working out more than they did before. There’s my friend teaching a yoga class by Zoom. There’s my husband clicking into the same Peloton I used to prop up my phone while on Instagram. There are my home weights, sitting on my nice little home yoga mat, gathering dust.

  I don’t know if moms had time to work out in my youth. Even if they had the time, they just didn’t.

  Here I am now. Certainly thinking about working out. But, somehow, not doing it. It’s not that I don’t want to work out. It’s not that I don’t have the time. I have plenty of time. It’s just that I will prioritize almost anything else that can be considered “work” over working out.

  My days go something like this:

  8:00 a.m.: I wake up. I put on workout clothes.

  9:00 a.m.: I go to my desk, and sit down and do work, in my workout clothes.

  12:00 p.m.: I take a break from work. But, instead of working out, I find myself toasting two slices of rye bread so the cheese will melt perfectly over my turkey. I add the mayo and a side of barbecue chips, while still in my workout clothes.

  3:00 p.m.: I have a break from work. This is a natural time to work out. Yet, I have this uncanny ability to find other “work” to do instead. I proceed with dusting the bookshelves and organizing the books by height and color, showing my daughter how to make a photo album (remember those?), going to put laundry in and then completely reorganizing the entire laundry room and cleaning supply cabinet, realizing then that I could iron that pile of napkins, and then passing by the toy area and sending my nephew a movie of his favorite truck bin because he misses visiting us, which gives me an idea for a little children’s story I can write and share on my Facebook Live, which reminds me I should defrost the Italian sausage for dinner.

  6:00 p.m.: I’m now cooking dinner. In my workout clothes.

  7:00 p.m.: I’m sitting at the table enjoying that dinner with a glass of wine, in my workout clothes.

  8:00 p.m.: I give up and take a shower.

  8:30 p.m.: I settle in with my twelve-year-old daughter and our beloved TV friends, The Gilmore Girls.

  It’s not that I don’t want to work out. It’s not that I don’t have time.

  Halfway through five of Lorelai and Rory’s seven glorious seasons, I’m reminded that Lorelai (the mom) has never burned a calorie or gone running in a single episode. She is too busy running her own business, while surviving on coffee and a truck driver’s diet. My daughter Lucie and I have been joyfully bingeing the show throughout the quarantine era, watching Rory and Lorelai hit Luke’s diner for pancakes every morning and crunch their way through a full bag of chips on their couch at night. We adore these crazy women who never exercise, and often treat ourselves to an extra episode on our own couch at night.

  “Should we watch one more, Mom?”

  Sure, why not. We’ve got plenty of time.

  I have plenty of time.

  Christina Geist is the author of Sorry Grown-Ups, You Can’t Go to School. She is also the founder of Boombox Gifts and co-founder of True Geist, a branding firm.

  The Retro Workout That Changed My Life

  DYL
AN LAUREN

  How aqua jogging keeps me in balance.

  I don’t believe in deprivation, and I’ve never been successful with “all or nothing” diets.

  As much as I love the taste of candy, I also love its vibrant colors, interesting textures, and the happiness that just looking at the stuff can evoke.

  I taste test all the samples that come to our offices at Dylan’s Candy Bar every day. For this reason—as well as many others—scheduling time to work out is crucial. I love exercising because it builds muscle and burns fat, but I also find that after a long day of work, exercise clears my head, reduces my stress level, and gives me a high that makes me feel accomplished. I love running long distances in the park, playing tennis, biking for miles on country roads, hiking, or hitting the gym if I can’t get outside. (In fact, while writing this essay I’m typing on my BlackBerry while climbing on the StairMaster—the same way I wrote my book, Dylan’s Candy Bar: Unwrap Your Sweet Life!)

  I dislike sitting still for long periods of time; I prefer to multitask and keep moving. Having two athletic older brothers and a tomboy mother was probably key in shaping my active lifestyle. When I can’t find the time to work out or if I’m injured, I feel crazed like an animal in a cage, almost overflowing with pent-up energy.

  I don’t believe in deprivation and have never been successful at “all or nothing” diets.

  Injury has long been my worst enemy. When I was nine years old, I sprained my knee while waterskiing at camp and had to use crutches for nearly the entire summer. I was devastated to miss out on all of the fun sports like tennis, soccer, and volleyball. I was instructed to swim as much as possible to help rehab my leg and stay aerobically fit for when I recovered. As much as I didn’t like the idea of swimming in the frigid and mysterious water of my camp’s lake, I forced myself to do it because I had no other way to get exercise.