Hail comes followed by heavy rain, pocking, flattening and bruising everything in its path. Over and over again. My neighbor says it's also because the night's have been unusually cool. The veggies in the garden just aren't taking off this summer. And there's a bunny - Cottontail Hoppy Neuman - outvoted three to one, she stays, I'm told. She eats my soft, chewy carrot tops, nibbles the outer leaves of my eggplant and two dragons tongue plants are gone. Completely vanished. My husband talks of building her a hutch, my husband who's talked about finishing our basement for five years, still untouched. I roll these words about a hutch around my mouth in circles. I sit back in the golden light of the day sipping a glass of icy prosecco and watch this little bunny resting in the grass with her heartbeat puffing her delicate bones, unfazed as my boys dart past her, and I say out loud but to no one, Well, this is not the rabbit I had in mind.
I made it to my yoga class this week. I slipped in and unrolled my mat next to the wall, the exact same spot I sat the very first time I came to the studio, to this class. I sat comfortable and in quiet, so grateful to be back after missing the last three weeks. The poses were some of the most intense yet, or maybe it's how quickly the regular work of yoga slips away when even just a short amount of time goes by not practicing. I felt faint-hot and could not clear my mind of someone who I've been letting get to me in the worst ways you can let someone get to you, but I continued on with the yoga, all the while thinking this class must be close to over, right? And then something happened. My teacher's beautiful voice, language strung together like pearls, took over. She talked about setting our intention for the rest of the day and week (and always if I accept this yoga as the diving work of God, which is my intention.) To rise up and meet adversity with grace. The face of the person I've been inner-battling came into focus. So did the bunny and my slow growing vegetable plants. Clear. And I realized what I'd really been missing the last few weeks: a teacher.
It is the end of another summer day, blessed adversity and all. The honeysuckle blazing, even if all of the thyme and pansy flowers - beautiful color has been eaten up by the bunny. I sit on the porch with my knees pulled up to my chest and watch my boys all messy with sweat, bug spray, sunscreen, dirt, ice cream rivers and chocolate goatee. I stare at the life in them and, as Mary Oliver says, And now I have finished my walk. And I am just standing, quietly, in the darkness, under the tree.
Empty the breath, begin again.
