Kangaroo Redux

(Written over a week ago, but interrupted before posted.)
The living room is littered with books, a Hello Kitty rolling suitcase, wooden food items, a squeaky steak dog toy, lavender toddler sandals, a few magazines (Bust and The New Yorker), and a Fisher Price camper from the 1970s with occupants (my play things saved by my mother and passed on to my daughter). No matter how much we clean and organize, the status quo is mess.

The baby (who is now 2 years old) is napping. It is Sunday. The work week starts again tomorrow and includes a dreaded business trip to Indiana. We are approaching another new year celebration, and I barely wrote since the last one. Quick, reflect on the year past: Was I kangaroo-like in my grounded-ness and leaping? And before I even have time to answer that, what animal shall I strive to emulate this next year? No, but first, reflection.

I was grounded in the sense that I felt surrounded by my daily life. I let go of the stresses of work whenever possible to be with my daughter. I talked to my mother almost every day, as we each separately moved through the first year after my father's death. J and I slowly expanded our circle of friends here. I struggled to stay in touch with my friends from New York and elsewhere, battling my growing phone phobia. As a partially remote employee, as well as a long-distance daughter, I spend more time on the phone than I would like. I have gone from an eager phone conversationalist to a reluctant one.

Did I leap enough? I tried to follow the leaps of O's development, and K's own teenage leaps and bounds. I'm not sure I was always successful. I think it was less a year of sudden, notable leaps, and more a year of daily, constant leaping.

I still think the kangaroo has a lot to offer as a model. Maybe I'll keep it for the decade.

108 hops

On New Year's Day I participated in a yoga session involving 108 sun salutations. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Two and a half hours later, with sore shoulders and wrists, I did feel I had accomplished a feat to usher in the year. The number 108 (4 x 27) is apparently very important in Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Japanese Buddhism. The fact that this New Year's challenge was constructed around a number, a mathematical proposition, felt like some homage to my father.

I had ample opportunity to contemplate the parts of the sun salutation that I am less proficient at, or comfortable with, including the hop to the front of the mat. I have always found the hop (from downward dog to standing forward bend) to be awkward. My feet splay outward so they have a tendency to hit my hands instead of landing neatly between them. I worked on different approaches to this during my 108 practice opportunities. I began to recognize the value in putting your weight well forward onto your hands in advance and kicking a bit with the heels. I started to think of kangaroos.

The night before, I was pondering the advisability of selecting a different totem animal each year. Perhaps the kangaroo should be my animal for 2011--a mama kangaroo who makes giant leaps while carrying her baby in a pouch, with big feet to stay grounded and strong legs to propel her into the air. I have been brainwashed by acting workshops and Philip Pullman books into believing that I need to identify a single animal that best represents my essence. I find this limiting. Why can't I be one animal one year, and another the next? One animal in work, another in play? Since I identify with sea creatures, can I never be a wolf?

For 2011, the kangaroo it is, but for 2012, the field is open.