The mystery of us
I don’t incline myself to believe in the paranormal or to subscribe to parallel universe theories, but I do believe in mystery and wonder. There is no mistaking that my life has unfolded with a sense of a grander plan than even I had envisioned and if I walk back through and connect the dots they add up to this great narrative I can claim as my own. My own doing. But was it? I came home and spent the last years of my mother’s life with her, I met Tatjana, my mom died and Tin came into our life. There is no doubt in my mind that this boy should be in New Orleans – if you saw him moving to Louis Armstrong and studying the moves of Trombone Shorty, you’d know that he is where he belongs.
Yesterday, I went to see my massage therapist to work through a back problem that has plagued me due to getting older, sitting for long periods of time, and stress. She was digging into my muscles that run down my hips and it was painful, and I was trying to sing like Tin does in bed instead of screaming like I wanted to do, and while she dug, and while I sang, I saw a film clip of my mother lifting me up as a toddler in the air laughing and her laughing and I just watched it and felt this incredible joy coming over me.
I’ve learned from yoga that the hips carry the weight of our emotional territory and that by opening them we unlock so many things that are compressed inside of us. I saw that film clip as if it was a motion picture while she massaged into the density of tight muscle that surrounds my hips. I had that moment yesterday that still makes me smile. But isn’t it curious how mysterious we are, how that film clip is part of me and I am seeing it only now after my mom has passed. It was a reminder that she was my mom and I was a carefree toddler at one time in my life and felt all the security of having a loving parent. And I am that parent to Tin now and he feels secure with me when I’m holding him and he will carry that memory in his hips and in his muscles and even when he is an adult and the worries of the world have made him tight and sore, he will be able to unlock that memory and play back the moments when it was different.