Power of Balance

For years, the little piece of paper that confirms my certification as a yoga teacher has done little more than gather dust in the drawer of my nightstand. Now that I am permanently "in the system" at Lululemon, my fifteen per cent teacher discount unquestioned as long as they are too polite to ask whether those size 4 shorts are really for me, I could not imagine why the little certificate would ever again see the light of day.

Sure, I have taught some yoga over the years, but I never really intended to turn it into a career. For me, a very reluctant and skeptical latecomer to the practice, yoga always seemed more of a vocation than a vocation. Teacher training, in fact, almost ruined it for me, blurring the line between the mercenary and the passionate. Not only did I resist teaching, but I abandoned yoga entirely, for a while, anyway.

A couple of years ago, when it came time to dust off my law degree and my various lapsed bar memberships, I included my yoga teaching credentials on my resume. I kept the email address that identifies me as a "yogi," willing to take the chance -- insisting on it really -- that some prospective attorney/employer would not find it off-putting. Whether by design or by accident, it's worked out, and I've landed on the four corners of my wide yoga feet, balancing my renewed law practice with all the other pieces of me, even the ones that don't come with diplomas or certificates or any additional letters of distinction to to include on my resume. The things that really define me.

Yesterday, at an untimely funeral (are they ever really timely) for the wife of an old friend, I saw several people I had not seen in about twenty-five years. Some had been in their early forties back then when I was in my late twenties, and they had seemed so old and so wise. What struck me as most odd was that I am now much older than they were the last time I saw them, when I was just a young lawyer thinking they had all the answers. After a moment they were all recognizable to me, their faces the same except for some tightening around the lips, some webbing around the eyes, and lots of gray. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could swear it generally took them an extra few moments to recognize me. My metamorphosis, to them at least, is probably far more drastic -- as if I had gone from babyhood to adulthood over night. I have decided to go with other theories though -- their bad eyesight? their dementia? The alternative is too demoralizing, and the funeral was demoralizing enough.

As tangential as I felt -- I had drifted away in the past few years, even from those with whom I had initially remained in touch -- I stayed after the service -- went to the actual burial, went to the "shiva." We stuck together, the group of old work colleagues, making idle conversation. For the most part, we avoided asking each other what we had been doing for twenty-five years.  I extracted myself to spend some time with the aggrieved -- my old dear friend and his grown-up children, married with kids of their own. I think it was more for my comfort than for theirs. They were mourning something concrete, something easy to identify. I was trying to figure out how twenty-five years went by so damn fast.

Dusting off the yoga teaching certificate after all, I am teaching yoga this afternoon to teenagers. Though they are students in a "special" high school, they seem no more or less "special" than any of the teenagers I have known over the years. I approach teaching teenagers the way I approach teaching anybody. I assume they can learn whatever it is I have been hired to teach them on line, or from a book or DVD. I might be able to give some of them some extra tips on how to achieve a perfect downward facing dog, but that's not really the point.

Today, while I guide them through some physical contortions, I hope I will teach them something about santosha -- my favorite of the basic tenets of yoga. Santosha. Total contentment. Not to be confused with unadulterated happiness, certainly not with perfection. When one of my old (and older) colleagues asked me the dreaded question about what I'd been up to for twenty-five years, my response was, I'm sure, excruciatingly vague, except for the part about liking where I've landed, and not wanting to change a thing. Santosha. It took a while, but maybe that's because nobody told me about it when I was a teenager.

Bye Birdie, For Now

At midnight, I had busied myself with all sorts of house straightening, undoing some of the disorder I’d managed to overlook — repeatedly and without much effort — for months. A taxi would be picking us up in less than five hours, and I had not yet packed. I was delaying the inevitable; tossing my things into the three square inches of space allotted to me in one of the suitcases would make it official — the end of summer, the resumed emptying of my nest.

I didn’t even mind the loud dissonant medley being belted out by the small crowd of “besties” gathered in my daughter’s room. College sophomores now, they will continue to send each other off this way for the next week or two, faces slowly disappearing from the obligatory selfie until there’s nobody left. Everything will suddenly seem tidy again, and very quiet.

As her summer break wound down, I began to wonder how the three and a half months of renewed togetherness that had seemed so daunting back in May had flown by so quickly. She denies it, but I can tell by the way she looks at me that she’s worried about how I’ll get by on my own. She thinks I’ll flounder without her guidance. I’ll manage without the guidance; it’s her proximity that I’ll miss. Our morning walks to Starbucks, even when we barely speak. Our tap dances around each others’ moods. Our occasional dinners together, squeezed in between other plans. Figuring out where she hid her keys so I can juggle the cars in our narrow driveway. Cleaning up the mess from her occasional baking episodes, because she really believes I enjoy cleaning the kitchen. Limitless private jokes, an uncanny tendency to say the same thing at the same time.

Life leaves an indelible thumb print on the fast forward button. A bleary eyed woman approached me at my New Orleans hotel this morning as I was getting coffee. “Did you just drop someone off?” she asked. I guessed right. It was her first. Her son no longer needed her, and she would just be hanging around today, killing time until the late flight she had booked — just in case. I reassured her, told her he’d be fine. What I meant to tell her was she’d be fine, but I don’t think she would have believed me.

This year, the drop off was just an aside. I am here for a few days, and we will enjoy the city together, one forkful at a time. After only eight months here, she seems to know the New Orleans like the back of her hand, even the potholes that keep turning my insides into gumbo as we tool around in our rental car searching for our next meal. Last year, I was worried. Worried about whether she would make friends, whether she would be homesick. This year I am worried that waiting for her stored boxes might interfere with lunch.

With the image of her hometown besties gathered in her room still fresh in my mind, I hung out for a while in the dorm, enjoying the newer crop of friends. If there was a midnight serenade, I missed it, having escaped long before that to the relative quiet of my hotel room. There is nothing for me to do this morning, except wonder about breakfast.

Sayonara, Japan, For Now

Dinner at Ike's

I visit Japan in the summer because my son lives there. It's far, but at least it's not the moon.

When he first moved there, three years ago, he lived in a small town called Himeji. Again, not the moon, but I often wonder whether it's all that different. There was a Starbucks in Himeji, one that claimed to offer free wifi, but I quickly gave up on cracking the secret access code. In an entire week, we met one other American  family there -- missionaries, there to straighten out the nonbelievers, I suppose. I didn't mention I was Jewish.

A year later, my son moved to Kobe, a beautiful city not far from Himeji but far less like the moon. As alien as everything about Japan still seemed to me on my next visit, I was feeling a bit more  comfortable by then. I was almost starting to understand what drew him there. Almost.

It's been two years since my last visit, and I finally got a few things a bit more right. The hotel I picked, based upon a vague neighborhood recommendation from my son and cost -- much less than the uber luxury hotels with available rooms, much more than the "love" hotels with available rooms stocked with sex toys. Just a tad more well planned than throwing a dart at a map, really, but as it turns out, it's a lovely hotel in a beautiful part of the city. I nod several times daily in a kind of fish-out-of-water-solidarity when I pass other non-Asians. Most are European, but still, we take comfort in our shared foreign-ness.

The other night, my daughter and I joined my son and his friends/work colleagues for dinner. One of them was moving to Tokyo; it was a surprise goodbye party. The party was held in their Cheers, the equivalent of my favorite neighborhood watering hole in Midwestern suburbia, where it feels as if you are home, among family. The place is owned by a Canadian of German extraction and a Thai American. It occupies the top two floors of a small commercial building in a trendy area of Kobe. shirtlessness. I am mesmerized by the way he moves in the tiny hot space, an artist at work, his masterpieces simmering.

The first level is a bar, crowded with young regulars who don't seem to mind, or even notice, the close quarters or the noise. Outside is a metal stairway where folks can go for a smoke. Upstairs is a dining area with a large varnished wood table at one end and a smallish kitchen at the other. Between them is a narrow space with counters and high chairs on either side. The slanted windows on the outside wall offers a panoramic view of the street, ablaze with flashing neon. Ike, the Thai American, is in the kitchen, shirtless, a backward baseball cap on his head. He apologizes for his shirtlessness.

Ike takes care of this motley crew of twenty-something and thirty-something Americans, Europeans, and Australians, all teachers at an international school. There is only one native among them, but she is an exotic mix of Spanish and Japanese, so foreign also, in a way. They are energetic, bright, irreverent, diverse. One came to Japan to do some traveling; eleven years later, he is still here, with a wife and two children. One, a striking tall beauty from Milan, came four and a half years ago to find herself, and I wonder why she could not find it in Milan. One, a

young gay man with a sharp sense of humor and a flair for a good story came here from Brisbane because, well, why not? They all refer to Ike, the owner and chef, as "Mom." He is only thirty, but he has found whatever he was looking for, and I am content to rely on him as my stand-in.

I told Ike, that first night, about my quest for some storied Kobe beef. He insisted that we come for dinner the next night, and he would cook for me the best steak I had ever eaten. It wasn't really Kobe beef, but it was steak from Kobe. He warned me I would have to eat it rare, which was a little scary for a gal who prefers her steak to look like shoe leather, but at least he wasn't forcing me to eat fish that was eyeballing me from the plate.

The steak, oozing pink and practically mooing, was unbelievable. So was every other exotic mix of ingredients he prepared and served to us as if we were all his children, home for dinner. Home, in a  cramped duplex restaurant in a trendy neighborhood of Kobe, which is not as alien as, say, Himeji or the moon but pretty damn close.

I promised Ike (and threatened my son) I would be back, maybe in spring when the weather is a bit more humane. I might never feel completely at home, might never understand the lure, but I will continue to visit Japan as long as my son lives there, and as long as Ike is doing the cooking.

Where's the Beef

It's difficult to feel at home in a place where they don't sell shoes in your size.

For the third time in as many years, I find myself smack dab on the other side of the planet, wandering around Japan in blistering heat and wondering whether I am violating any serious social conventions and where I can find a more comfortable pair of shoes. Odds are, yes, and nowhere.

Even early on a Sunday morning the streets and the subway are teeming with people. It's easy to pick my son out of the crowd, with his curly hair and green eyes and considerable height advantage. He resents it, sometimes, when people here treat him like a foreigner, even though he speaks the language and embraces the culture and seems at ease with all the unwritten rules. I, on the other hand, am grateful when people here treat me like a foreigner. It gives me a free pass on the nuances; I can get away with saying "thank you" when, for some reason, "excuse me" is more appropriate.

My comfort level has increased after three visits. I know not to cross when the light is red. I know that I might have to carry my empty water bottle for blocks before I find a recycling bin. I know that as long as I keep moving forward in a straight line the bicyclist speeding up behind me will eventually go around. I know that if I bow back deeply at someone it could lead to a spine numbing, never-ending cycle of forward bends, so I have cultivated a brief nod. I can get away with it -- the Japanese expect our disrespect and excuse our ignorance. There is an upside, here, to having frizzy hair and big feet.

Each time I have visited Japan, I have done so in the company of one of my daughters, both of whom happen to be vegetarians. We discovered early on that vegetarianism is uncommon here, often incomprehensible. My son has learned to explain the situation more fully, ever since he witnessed the look of horror on his sister's face when a mystery sea creature bobbed to the surface of her meatless soup. We scour the pictures on restaurant menus, searching for evidence of creature body parts. We breathe a collective sigh of relief when a bowl of noodles is, in fact, just a bowl of noodles.

I have had enough. I am in Kobe, home of the famed Kobe beef, and I want some. I have yet to see it on a menu, but yesterday I noticed a burger joint not far from our hotel. I am as sure as I have ever been of anything that a big Kobe burger will finally make me feel at home here. It will remind me of my favorite watering hole back in my little Midwestern suburb, where everyone knows everyone's name and I don't worry about saying the wrong thing because everyone says whatever they feel like saying and no matter how many times I promise myself I will branch out and try something new I always end up with a burger, and a good burger always makes me happy.

A long day of wandering in the blistering heat left me with a few blisters, and I am stuck with them because they don't sell shoes here big enough to fit my feet. But they sell bandaids (though they are a bit odd looking), and as soon as I bite into that burger, I'll be feeling no pain, and maybe I'll even feel like I'm home.

Cityscape

It's not all that different from what I'm used to, the Starbucks on the corner of Columbus and West 73rd. The music is a little loud, maybe a bit more edgy. The prices are a bit higher, but the coffee tastes the same.

The seats aren't particularly comfortable, but I don't think folks who live here are inclined to sit too long. I am just visiting, though, so I sit, oblivious to the hard and overly narrow metal chair, and I watch the city wake up. Though it is ridiculously early on a Saturday, I can tell it will be a beautiful day. The sun, invisible to me so far, is bright enough to turn the patch of sky between the buildings lining each side of Columbus a pale blue. A young man wearing a "Camp Canine" tee shirt walks by every few minutes with two different dogs in tow. A small cluster of yellow taxis builds up at each red light, the Korean grocer waters down the sidewalk outside his tiny shop across the street. I stare at the rows of dark green buckets filled with flowers of every color. Last night, I watched a young man stop there to pick up a bunch. They were yellow. A young woman emerges now, her arms laden with long stemmed white bouquets.

The passersby are as multi-colored as the flowers. It is impossible to pinpoint the character of the neighborhood -- only that it is filled with characters. A man walks by, a book open, his lips moving as he mutters. From where I sit, the words appear to be Hebrew, but it is Saturday morning and the man's head is uncovered, so I make no assumptions. The dog walker smiles at me on his umpteenth pass. He is all business, but he must have been struck, finally, by the unfamiliar and unmoving shape in the Starbucks window in a city that is always changing, and always on the move.

As I write, my mom texts me to ask if it's weird, being in Starbucks in the morning without my morning Starbucks buddies. Weird that she would ask me that as I sit here wondering what they are doing now, a thousand miles away, these people I have known only a short time but who have become as much a part of my daily routine as my grande blonde with room for cream. Sometimes we chat, sometimes we all sit quietly buried in our own electronic devices, but we notice when someone is missing. And we notice when there is a newcomer, although we pretend not to.

In the little Starbucks on the corner of Columbus and West 73rd, there is no evidence of a "usual" crowd. I cannot imagine coming in here one morning to find my grande blonde with room for cream waiting for me, to be greeted by name by everyone behind the counter. It's not that anybody is particularly unfriendly; it's just that the landscape is too busy, and it moves way too quickly.

The dog walker appears, this time without dogs, and comes in for a coffee. We nod at each other, and we both move on. The patch of sky has become a deeper blue. The Korean grocer has gone inside. More dogs, more taxis, more people of every color.

I am here for only a short time; there is no time to linger. I will go buy some flowers, and I will try to keep pace with the parade of characters

in my old home town.