My back has been killing me. It’s the beginning of the gardening season, so it stands to reason. I'm a gardener. I ‘warm up’ to the jobs I do for other people by getting my own gardens ready for the new year. I go from a winter of hardly moving, to the work of Hercules without so much as a single stretching exercise. Every year that I get older, it’s harder for my body to make this leap, though my mind still does it quite nimbly. My mind must drag my body behind like a great sack filled with rocks. I know this isn’t good for me, and that one day, I’m going to pay with crippling back pain. As it is, I have to have Ibuprofen available most of the time. Vodka seems to help. Plus, I whine a lot. So far, that serves as the Therapeutic Triumvirate. I know I should do stretching exercises, to say the least, but I have an aversion to it.
In 1968, when I was thirteen, yoga swept the United States. Growing up in Maine, I was largely oblivious to trends sweeping the United States, but I did find out about yoga. I had a paperback with step by step instructions for bizarre positions and poses. On the cover, a woman wearing a red leotard was twisted into a surreal pretzel shape. The author, Indra Devi, seemed so exotic! Like most thirteen year old girls, I was fixated on things from far away. I think I had a worse case than average, though. I also desperately needed to impress my father. In those days, my every breath was spent trying to get his attention and approval.
Carefully following Indra’s instructions, I practiced with dogged determination. I believed that if I mastered those poses, everything in my life would change; I pined for the transformation. I concentrated until I was able to sit in the Lotus position for an hour without moving. I could crouch on all fours and place my knees on the backs of my elbows cantilevering my body onto itself. I was so limber that I could almost turn my head three hundred and sixty degrees like an owl. Once I had conquered standing on my head for unlimited lengths of time, I decided it was time to show my father. My mastery was sure to impress him. Calling him to my room to demonstrate, I showed him Indra’s book. While he thumbed through it, I got into position. Without faltering, I raised myself from the floor into a free-standing head stand. I could have stayed that way forever. The room was quiet. I was sure my father was expecting me to waiver and fall, but I didn’t. I was so proud of myself! I could see him upside down when he spoke. “When you can suck a lotus up your ass, I’ll be impressed,” he said as he left the room. I maintained my pose, but I never did yoga again. Over the course of my life, I have spent a great deal of energy in other ways, twisting myself into odd and unnatural shapes while still trying to breathe.
I love gardening. I love it so much, I do my own and I do other people's. My gardening work for others I call Weeding For Dollars. And I earn every nickle. Every season, somebody says to me "Oh, you're so lucky! I would love to work with the flowers all day!" It's not that I'm complaining (well, yes, I am), but they have no idea what they are talking about. First of all, when you do it for other people, you can't just decide after a couple of hours to knock off when your back is killing you and go have lemonade. You have to continue until the work is done. No matter how hot it may be, how many Black Fly bites you have, rashes, Poison Ivy, leaking hoses: you must continue. Today, it was snakes. Mind you, I'm not afraid of snakes. I've caught many of them by hand. I get a certain satisfaction when I get one behind the head so it can't bite me and feel its sinewy body wrap around my wrist, tongue flicking, staring me in the face. But that's on my terms. I do not like being sneaked up on, or 'snaked' up on, as it were. In the garden where I worked today, there was a nest of Garter snakes. I saw six of them. Though they were all Garter snakes, each one was distinct enough that I gave them names: Mo, Curly, Larry, Groucho, Harpo and Zeppo. I don't know what gender they were, but that seemed to cover all their behavioral bases. They dodged, slithered, writhed, curled and slipped around the peonies and astilbes while I worked. Repeatedly startling me, they kicked my anxiety disorder into high gear. Gardening is very hard work, but it's never been as nerve wracking as it was today! I may have advanced my position from a run of the mill herpetophobe to a full blown ophidiophobe.
