Yoga

Last Friday at yoga I was depressed and somewhat weepy. We often do partner work and that day we paired up to help one another do dancer's pose. It's what it sounds like: you do an arabesque arching your back and holding the foot that's behind you as you keep pushing it back. Here's what I mean. The help was to critique your partner's form. My partner was one of The Twins in the Back. The Twins are girls who look about 20 and have dark, wavy hair. Usually they partner with one another. You can't blame them; they're perfectly matched by height and weight. Lately they've come with a third girl who's shorter. I'd said hello to them but never talked to them before. They always stay on the back row, in a corner. This time only one of them was in class. She asked me about my head tattoo and I told her I was going through chemo. She said that she went through chemo "in my country." She's from Peru, it turns out, and she was diagnosed with lymphoma at 14. She was in the hospital once for two months. Overall, she had chemo and radiation for two years. It was in Lima, and she lived about a mile from the hospital. She said her family was really close, that there are four girls. She also said it was very hard to lose her hair at 14. It makes you stronger, she said. She was reassuring because I think she could tell I wasn't having a good day, to say the least.

Today in class all three were there, and all in the back. I did partner work with my friend G. I wanted to at least catch the eye of the twin I talked to last week. But I couldn't tell which twin she was.