Noticing

I am writing this as I sit in the gym. This is not my traditional writing place, but I am early for my much-needed yoga class and knew that if I went home after work, nothing could convince me to go out again.

I am writing with the sort of pen that has a large flower attached to it, so that it is difficult to walk off with. I have borrowed it from the front desk. I do not usually carry this sort of thing around with me.

I am writing on a yellow pad, and my phone is locked up in a locker, secured with a key. I just might write here more often.

I am alone in a cluster of comfortable chairs, breathing deeply, anticipating that my yoga teacher will play a singing bowl for us during savasana, and that she will speak kindly and gently to me. This is something I can count on.

It's been too long since I've been to yoga. It's been too long since I put my gym bag in my car, laid down my mat and myself, and surrendered to listening.

My movements in class are often ambitious. I find myself wanting to be good at this, to try all of the modifications. I have to stop and listen as my teacher reminds me to honor where I am at that moment, to show myself love on the mat.

Even though she says it once per class, at least, I still struggle to nudge myself into child's pose when I am spent, to spend a few moments in restoration.

Summer always takes me by surprise. After what seemed like endless months of cold, I hardly noticed when it was time to shed coats and boots and walk out into the sunshine. Just this week, I was thinking about Noah Gundersen's lovely song "Middle of June" which I played almost every day in the dark of February, with hope. I realized that it was the middle of June, at last, and turned it up in my car on my way to work, opening my sunroof to let it escape into the world.

Oh how pretty is the middle of June. 

Here, at the gym, I take a breath and look around me. I look and I listen.

Oh how pretty it is, indeed.