Magnetic Life: Drawn To Analogy

A few years ago, my hair got curly.
Of course, I figured this out over a few weeks because I had never heard such a thing was possible at all, let alone for a grown woman.

The first hint of this evolution happened on the first trip that Jason and I took together. Portland is a completely different climate than Tucson and when my regular haircare routine resulted in the biggest hair I had ever seen, I blamed weather and thought maybe the last time I had highlights that my stylist used some funky chemicals or overdid it. Science, you see? I blamed science for the crazy hair that resulted in a silent, wide-eyed Jason searching for something to say as I pointed at my head and stared back, just as dumbfounded.
I did start to perfect the up-do on that trip...

A few months of bad hair later, I was certain I had been tainted by chemicals, that it just was a stage I had to endure and in a few months it would all be grown out like some super-secret bad perm I had gotten in my sleep.

Then I started working from home.
AKA I stopped grooming like normal humans do before work.

It went like this:
Wait too long to shower, shower between conference calls, sit with wet hair on next call/s, go to restroom later and stare at reflection trying to figure out how there could be curls hanging from my head.

I have this memory of being at the YMCA with my mom when I was (to quote her), "nine going on nineteen" and her saying to some other adult in a voice rife with playful regretlike disappointment, "She has STICK-STRAIGHT hair. I have to perm it or it just hangs there."
I did not want perms. I wanted that stick straight hair, hello do you know who else has stick-straight hair? Barbie and all her super-cool friends. (while we are at it, if you see any childhood photos of me, please assume I didn't want that hair. I did choose the glasses and stupid hats for school photos and certainly could die of embarrassment for THOSE choices-- but I didn't have any say in the short sides or perms.)

Of course, having realized as a grown woman that suddenly, when left to it's own accord, my hair wanted to curl, I was stunned. I still often am.
Did my mother wish-upon-the-world hard enough? Is it some sort of cosmic force? Maybe you don't understand how many times I heard her mention that stick-straight hair as though I had an unfortunate birthmark...

A high school friend told me that hair can curl with aging, just like it can go grey.
If those are my two aging-hair-options well thank you universe, I fully appreciate my good fortune.

Then I read that major life events can change one's hair, i.e. having a baby, menopause, surviving trauma, etc.

The timing of my hair curling is literally exactly when Jason and I began our romantic relationship, as in the timing wherein we both became very aware that there was more than we had previously given credit to going on. We had been undeniably magnetically drawn to each other for a year but never entertained what it meant or that it could be more than a nice friendship.

So maybe it was aging and maybe it is somehow genetic but then it's worth noting that both of my parents seem quite surprised by the curls--not that they're geneticists but I didn't exactly get a "oh that happened to my sister" kind of reaction from anyone. Despite the list of possibilities, I have come to see my curls as my bodies reaction to falling in a kind of love it has never before known, perhaps so frustrated with my brain's reluctance that it decided for me to scream it from the rooftops. My hair had a Tom Cruise on Oprah's couch reaction. My hair came sprouting out, affected by the chemicals (hello science, you are all over my love-blog) and reactions in my brain, unable to just act like everything going on in there was the same as always.

My hair is right. And even my brain knows it.

Serendipitously, this morning I was planning out the week, what I need to do and organize and working on lists as Jason watched a track meet** and Melanie asked if I wanted to go to yoga.
My beautiful Sunday morning - lists, track meets, Jason, planning- just exploded into perfection.
Naturally, I went to yoga and left Maryn and Jason to enjoy some breakfast and time together.

The word of the day was hope, which is a word I have been thinking a lot about lately anyway and she wove it into arm balances beautifully. I find myself struck, as yoga often does for me, by the poignancy of this. I have been to many classes wherein I learned a thing or two and I have been to some classes that really made me feel like I learned something tremendous. There are some classes where you hope you do some amazing pose you have never done before and some that you leave thinking that you can't wait to do that pose again.

My jobs have been themselves a series of yoga classes. I have learned to be unafraid of new situations, new studios, new teachers, new poses. I have learned that sometimes I watch someone do an amazing pose and in the process I learn things that will be applied later. Sometimes I realize poses and tasks that were once daunting are now part of a routine that I understand. I know that I will be better for the restorative classes and relaxed days at work, that all the while I am learning when I surround myself with high quality teachers. When a teacher starts talking about or shows us a new or challenging arm balance, I am so excited and energized by the learning, the trying, the tweaks and revisions that even if I arrived to my mat exhausted, I am overcome with energy. Moving forward in yoga, in running, in life and at this point in my career will require that thrill of new pose. This means, I need/want/crave a teacher who is qualified to break it down into doable pieces and excited to teach me to succeed, open my heart, be who I am/can be, do what I am not yet aware I can do. This means I want the possibility that I will fall on my face because all the while I will be set up and careful, the risk will mean that growth is inevitable. I want to grow and learn. The difference between any of us and the person who is rocking the mind-blowing arm balance is that the rocker has done the work, has practiced the other poses, has learned to plant their hands, instinctively set their foundation and activate bundas, the rocker has been practicing every part and tweak and even if it is their first time in the crazy-cool balance (inversion, etc), they have been working towards this-perfect-moment.

You see, I have been working for many years. I have a lot of work to do and I want to. I am so excited to try the arm balance because I want to risk falling on my face. Let me get back up, let me try again, let me do things I have never seen before--passionately, purposefully.

**shout outs to Boaz Lalang, a Tucsonan himself, David Rudisha and Kip- because when you do amazing things, when you are awesome, when your life is anything but mediocre, when you do the work and take the risks-- you deserve shout outs

Basically the question I am pondering as I work on my first blog entry is: why blog?

Well, I want to.

I wanted to long, long ago but haven't yet (until today!) and I basically therapize (red underline, I see you and choose to ignore you because I like that word and people know what I mean, made up or not) in emails with people who, like me, love getting intensely real in email and then just hitting send. Soon, someone you don't know well knows some real stuff about you and you're bonded- the mere experience helps me figure stuff out. I have grown some amazing relationships through my willingness to write (including but not limited to my romantic relationship). Naturally, blogging might have happened long ago.

I did have a friend who said she would make fun of me mercilessly if I blogged. A few years later I realize she wasn't a great friend anyway (and how silly this all sounds for a grown woman to say) and I will probably blog about this in many forms over the course of my blog-life but it's a reason I didn't start.

Maybe I missed the boat. Or I was afraid I did? Maybe I didn't want to band wagon the blog thing? Whatever the reason, today will be my first post.
And then it's ON.

I do have a plan and it goes like this.

Tell my stories. When I was a little girl, I daydreamed about someday telling the story that it seemed no one would believe. That dream is little different now. I have therapized (twice, one post- I'm committed to this word) through email, I have been to therapy and the entire book writing process seems different now. Maybe if I had been writing all along, I could recapture the process, which I think is where the real story lies. Since I have kind of been doing so in a series of notebook and journals, I'll draw on them to blog and then altogether here I'll either have some memoir or at least something organized.
Either way, it will get out of my head and I will undoubtedly learn a thing or two.

Analyze. I like to ponder how running is like life. And how much it can help life. The same goes for yoga in a different albeit similar way. Both of these things motivate me and make me think. How does the yoga teacher seem to choose topics and words-of-the-day that completely somehow mirror what is going on in my life and how these epiphanies sometimes change my day, my mood of my entire being.

Write lists. I love lists. So here's a little list- I love lists, I love running (let's clarify- I love to run and I love the sport - everything about running from elite, famous runners to talking about it to doing it) and I love yoga (again, let us clarify- I love practicing yoga, thinking about yoga, challenging myself, getting into new poses, the peace that comes from my own poses and abilities, the community, the abounding love, joy and intention of yoga. I love yoga.) I am so tempted to write a list of things I love right now but that can wait.

I am currently pondering the juxtaposition of my intentions and choices (to run, practice yoga, be a thoughtful and loving parent and partner) and the things life thrusts upon me (an actively using, alcoholic mother, a father I have almost no contact with, a sister I have a facebook and emergency situation only relationship with, a pretty decent stretch of relationships which ended in infidelity) and I am trying to make sense of it all. I want to be intentional. I know I can learn a lot from the world and the people I meet and from running, yoga, blogging. I know I can be better. And I really, really want to be better.

My ongoing quest and intentions are to be : generous, grateful, gracious and kind.
And from this point on, I will blog.