Yoga for Two
A teacher at the yoga studio where I teach put out a call for help: She had to work suddenly and needed coverage for her class. Because she had covered for me several times before, and I had other people covering my class for me for the next two weeks, I felt compelled to answer her call. After I sent the email, however, I remembered: Tonight was the 30th anniversary of my husband and my first date, and we were going out for a special date.
What to do, what to do, I wondered. I had been dreamily planning how we would stare at each other over the dinner rolls and before the salad, reminding ourselves that, despite and perhaps because of all the dishes, kids, fights, messes, illnesses, jobs, cars, pitfalls and mutual forays into exhaustion, we were still in love.
So I wrote back saying I could teach the class if no one else could, but it would be better if she found someone else. As you can easily guess, she didn’t find anyone else: It was a lovely Sunday afternoon in May after what felt like years of winter, and most yoginis I know weren’t aiming themselves to insert themselves inside to teach.
I ended up brokering a deal with my husband: Come to me with yoga, and then we’d go out for our special date, just a little later. He agreed, and we headed out, in separate cars because we needed to leave one car later at the mechanic’s for work the next morning, and one of us needed to run an errand on the way in.
When I got to the studio, I turned on the lights, put in a CD, unrolled a mat for me and a mat for Ken. And I waited. Ken showed up, and we waited together. Despite the big energy exerted to find a teacher for this class tonight, no one but us chickens showed up.
What to do? We did yoga, our mats less than a foot apart, reaching out and holding hands in “Thread the Needle,” and pushing our feet together and holding tight to each other’s fingertips in seated wide-legged forward bend. We downdogged and updogged, warriored and triangled. And somewhere in the middle of class, sitting face to face in Baddhasana, we stared into each other’s eyes, smiling so hard we were both on the verge of cracking up.
Dinner was good, but a little anti-climatic. Yoga for two, a little celebration of how much our bodies have hung out with each other for three decades, was the true anniversary party. Sometimes when you say yes because you forgot to say no, it turns out your yes was the right answer.