Here’s the big news of 2010:

I’m going to New York!  Without my children.  Alone and FREE!  Will everyone survive?  I hope so.  Am I ready?  Hell yeah.

Yes, this country mouse is headed to New York City, as us Vermonters call the Big Apple.  If all goes well, I will take the train down from New Haven on Friday afternoon and spend the weekend attending an Ashtanga Yoga workshop at Kula Yoga Project, a funky, fun, creative vinyasa studio downtown.

I have heard about this place for years and have only dreamed of going.  Now the dream comes true, if I have the guts and the good luck to carry it out.

Perhaps there are 2 camps of readers:  those who think I’m a cold, heartless mother who would abandon her young children and husband for a self- indulgent weekend of yoga.

And those who wonder:  Would she just quit worrying and go study yoga already?

T. has been telling me to “Book a Yoga Training” for months now.  And for one reason or another, the timing has not been right.  But now the stars have aligned and everything’s coming together.

A and C and T will be fine– they may even thrive in my absence.  I’ve told them I’ll bring back bagels from New York.  Or maybe some kind of interesting cookies.

But I wonder what will happen to C’s “snackies”?  I was lying awake at 5 am today, my heart flooded with sadness, thinking that this trip could be the end of nursing.  Will I come back from the city to a weaned toddler?

Somehow I don’t think it will happen so abruptly, if neither of us want it to.  And if it does, it was meant to be. But I’m not ready to cut off that relationship over 48 hours.  I need some talking about the process, talker that I am.

Today I said to C:  ”Can you have cow-milk in a sippy cup when I’m gone?” and she looked at me blankly.  She tells us daily, “I’m Two and a HALF!”  (in a few weeks).  A big, strong strapping girl who sometimes wears Elmo panties rather than a diaper.  She’ll be fine.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to all the forces that have conspired to make this trip possible.  Especially my beloved husband, without whose generosity and encouragement there would be no traveling at all.

My old fearless sense of adventure, so strong in my early 20s, is welling up again.  ”Anything could happen,” I used to think. Maybe that still holds true.

Tags:   ashtanga · Doug Swenson · Kula Yoga Project · New York · Yoga · yoga workshop3 Comments