The Time Between

I was born the middle child in my five-member family; the one between the two outliers. It is an honored place. I had more opportunity to know both of my sisters growing up than they had to know each other. And besides, everyone knows middle children are the best. At least middle children know that.

I am the middle generation of the five with whom I have occupied the planet over some portion of my 60 years. All the greats and grands are gone now; and only four remain of the second generation, all over 90 years of living and one over 100. The fourth generation is complete, and the fifth is multiplying. It is the circle of life.


Autumn is morphing into winter. The season between is coming. The job of the trees is to let go of the effort of green, red, yellow, orange; to let go of their leaves and succumb to the nakedness between flashy fall and bursting spring. There is frost on the car Friday night, when I leave a local theater production; and the Saturday morning temperature is below freezing. I sleep with the windows closed for the first time since I arrived here in early July. When I leave yoga on Friday, a favorite brief view of Mt. Rainier from the highway reveals a new blanket of sparkling white－cold against the blue sky backdrop.

It’s an in between time in our country, too. We reelected a president, which eliminated the time between adminis- trations; but we took a big step toward ending another bastion of discrim- ination. Three states became the first to grant by popular vote, marriage equality to all; a fourth voted down a constitutional amendment that would ban those rights. It’s an in between time. To proponents, while jubilant, it is agonizingly slow work. To opponents, it is frightening. It is divisive. It is uncomfortable.

I exchanged emails this week with a young friend at an in between time she is finding uncom- fortable. She tells me that in her hot yoga class (not something I aspire to) the teacher tells them that the mini-rests between the intense strength-building and energy-exerting poses are not supposed to be comfortable, only still. A time to observe where the pain is and notice its easing as the yogi works it out.
 
I am between; not for the first time. I have had my flashy falls and bursting springs, along with some passionate summers. I expect there will be more. But right now I am heading into winter. My mother asks me Saturday morning what the weather forecast is for the beginning of the week. I have no idea. I can’t look that far ahead these days. My living tomorrow depends on what, that is beyond my control, happens today. Perhaps this time of stillness I am in, like winter, is not meant to be comfortable. But, as in those little between moments in yoga, this time in my life is an opportunity to notice the places of pain among the places of beauty; and to work them out.


It’s not a bad thing, this time in between. I am exploring my inner landscape. Which reminds me, yoga was much better this week; I felt like I challenged my muscles. We did gate, lunges, plank, chaturanga (well, I kind of added that last one) for the first time in this class. So many more poses we haven’t done, but it’s a start. I left the studio with that “I have done a good thing for my body and for my inner landscape” feeling that has been missing since I left Julie’s yoga classes at the Raleigh YMCA. It reminds me that I need to get more yoga into my weeks. If we are not finding that sense of well-being someplace in our life, we need to adjust.

After doing reclining twists and returning to stillness on our back, the teacher tells us, in preparation for savasana (the resting pose that completes our practice), to lift our sacrum just an inch and resettle back into alignment. The word sacrum comes from the Latin “sacer,” which means sacred. I wonder, is the time between our preparation for what comes next, our sacred time of realigning and rebalancing our lives? Are we making space for the time between? Are we taking time to settle into it?

I was informed by my friend Vee who keeps me apprised, that Mercury is in retrograde right now; an event that happens several times a year, when Mercury appears to be turning backward. Gemini and Virgo are signs ruled by Mercury, so if you were born during those months－and I am a Gemini－you will be complaining especially loudly of stuff going haywire. Why would the Universe give us Mercury retrograde? Because to move forward it is sometimes necessary to back up and reconsider, repair, reflect, and reconnect. Mercury forces us to slow down and rethink things.

I treat myself, finally, to a massage this weekend. After a week with an aching back, I finally make the appointment. Immediately after the phone call, my back stops hurting. I guess it was just reminding me that I need to do this good thing for myself. As Dalean massages those spaces in between muscles and tendons, and I experience the working out of pain, I am reminded again of what my friend told me: the space in between is not supposed to be comfortable. But when we sit in those spaces, allowing them into our consciousness, we see the discomfort and then can begin to realign our lives into balance.