For two months after they moved I was a yoga vagabond,
trying out studios to see if any met the main criteria of a) being on my way
home from work, b) having good teachers and c) good classes. The best any other studio scored was two out
of three. The Yoga Sanctuary at the
corner of Yonge and College was on my way home and had good teachers, but the
classes… well, not so much.
But then I heard that someone was going to re-open the
Church Street studio! And then they
did! As of August 13, I have found a new
yoga home.
*********************************
A very, very long time ago, my father brought home to my mother a
pair of diamond earrings from his travels to Brazil.
Mom wore the earrings constantly. “When you have diamonds, “ she used to say, “Why
wear anything else?”
But then one day she lost one of the earrings while she was doing
laundry in the basement of our old house in Trenton. We all looked and looked for that earring,
but we never found it. I imagined that
it had fallen into the floor drain and been washed into the sewer. It finally settled in the silt somewhere at
the bottom of Lake Ontario.
Mom put the other diamond earring away in her jewel box,
which is where we found it after she died.
She had promised the earrings to me, so I took the remaining earring as
a keepsake.
I never wore the earring, but, when Bruce and I decided
after thirty years of shacking up to finally tie the knot, four years after mom
died, I had the diamond put in a white gold ring. Bruce had a similar ring made with the stone
from his grandmother’s engagement ring.
With our wedding, I transitioned abruptly from a person who
never wore rings to a person with a ring on each hand (we had two wedding rings,
and three wedding ceremonies…. It’s a long story).
And what, the increasingly impatient reader is asking, does
the yoga studio story have to do with my rings.
This:
There’s a pose in practically every yoga class where you
have to stand on your hands, and it hurts if you’re wearing rings. So, before
every class, I take off my rings and place them deep in one of the side pockets
of my handbag.
I did this just before taking my very first class at the
new/old studio. And I absent-mindedly
brought the handbag and my yoga mat and a yoga strap with me when I used the
washroom just before class. As I
gathered all the stuff I’d brought with me and prepared to step out of the
washroom, I heard a “ping” that I assumed was the metal buckle on the strap
hitting the door on my way out.
Most nights after yoga, I have exactly enough energy left to
make my way home, have dinner and conversation with Bruce, watch Jon Stewart/Stephen
Colbert on the Internet and go to bed. It’s the next morning before I sort through
the contents of my handbag and get my jewelry back on.
The morning of August 14, I pulled my wristwatch, my silver
rice bead chain with the little Ganesh pendant, and my gold wedding band out of
my bag. But the diamond ring wasn’t
there.
I thought about that “ping” I heard.
That afternoon, I spent ten minutes on my hands and knees in
the yoga studio washroom, using my blackberry as a flashlight, trying to find
the ring. It wasn’t there.
Recalling that I heard a single “ping”, but not the sound of
a round object rolling, I have to believe that the ring fell out of my bag… and
into the toilet.
Now both of the diamonds my father gave my mother are settled
in the silt somewhere at the bottom of Lake Ontario.
As do most people who marry after thirty years together, Bruce and I had a bounce castle at our wedding. You can just barely see on my raised right hand the glint of the lost ring.
Have a great week!
Karen
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