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You’d think I’d have learned my lesson when I looked at my butt in a mirror at my sister-in-law’s house while four months pregnant.

You would, in fact, not be expecting too much to think after that shock I would be smart enough not to look at my butt in a changing room mirror at a Nordstrom in Charlotte when I am ten months postpartum.  When I am forty-three years old.  Or ever, for that matter.

Some explanation is required.

How I Found Myself Looking at My Butt in a Changing Room Mirror in Charlotte

It was all about a change of perspective.  A last-minute escape from yet another frigid cold weekend with the same round of indoor play spots.  Health Adventure:  done that a million times.  Game room at Asheville Pizza and Brewing:  kind of scary.  Indoor playground at the mall:  even scarier.  Living room at home trying desperately to distract Jake from asking yet again to watch The Backyardigans:  over it.

So Mike came up with a lovely idea.

“Want to go to a hotel with an indoor pool in Charlotte this weekend?” he emailed one day from work.

Charlotte, as those who know it will no doubt agree, is generally not what I would consider a vacation destination.  A lovely enough place, especially if you dig suburban life.  A good five to ten degrees warmer than Asheville, which is tempting only during a freakishly cold winter such as this one.  And, yes, home to several hotels with indoor pools and weekend specials, which was, as they say, the tipping point.

More importantly, Charlotte has a Trader Joe’s.  Three of them, in fact.  And while I spend most of the year saying as soon as I have a day free I’ll grab Mike’s iPod and listen to This American Life and Fresh Air as I breeze down the interstate for the two-and-a-half hour drive to get … groceries …  I’ve yet to follow through on my vague plans.

Charlotte is also home to an Ikea.  Which excites Mike more than me.  I love the concept, but the made-up Swedish names jumping out at me from every item and the brain-frying-ly strong smell of sticky buns tend to freak me out.

Nevertheless, Lily needed a rug for the cold over-the-front-porch room that is the only one with space for her crib.  And I have strangely coveted the tomato red shag rug named Hampen for months now.  So I eagerly accepted Mike’s proposal.

And yet, exciting as the prospect of our weekend in Charlotte seemed at first, both Mike and I equivocated.

There were the rumors of snow and ice coming Friday afternoon.  “I wouldn’t mind if it were just you in the car,” Mike said.  “But I don’t want to make the drive in that weather with the kids.”  Which came out sounding more sweet and concerned than it seems right now.

And we would be missing a birthday party, a play date, tantalizing ways to pass another cold weekend in Asheville.

Then, some time on a snowless Friday afternoon, I decided to go for it.  At 4:30 I booked our hotel — chosen based largely on the fact that the one picture of the pool online suggested that there were windows to the outdoors so I wouldn’t feel like I was spending my vacation weekend in an underground parking garage that happened to sport a big cement pothole filled with heavily chlorinated water.  At 5:30 I ran out to pick the kids up from preschool, leaving behind a house with clothes for a family of four spread across several beds.  At 6:30 Mike arrived home to find me harriedly throwing snacks in front of the kids as I tried to figure out how many Z Bars and jars of baby food we needed to survive two days away.

And by 7:30 we were, to my great pride and amazement, in the car and on our way.

It was seeming like a particularly fine idea when we settled into a nicer-than-we-can-usually-afford hotel room, Jake conked out from the car ride, Lily chilling in my arms as I read a book and waited for her to drift back to sleep.

And then, first thing Saturday morning Mike informed me that he had contracted the stomach bug that briefly afflicted Lily on Wednesday.

To my credit, this time I did not growl something utterly unsympathetic.  On the other hand, neither did I feel inspired to see the value in the change of perspective a weekend in Charlotte was meant to bring.  Not when I had to single-handedly wrassle two small children with different napping schedules, different eating schedules, and no quiet room in which to chill, unless you counted the one in which my poor husband lay feeling guilty for doing this to me.

But, being able to access a yoga state a mind a bit more easily when I wasn’t blanketed between the same four walls I see every morning, I pulled the kids together for a little “adventure” to Rite Aid for pretzels and ginger ale.

And it was in RiteAid that I encountered, once again, the joy of surrender.  We weren’t in the store five minutes before we stumbled upon the DVD display.

This in and of itself was a gift because a few weeks ago we lent our car DVD player and Jake’s favorite DVD’s to his friend Daniel and, while Daniel’s parents had returned the DVD player, it took them a little longer to separate out Jake’s DVD’s from the detritus of their trip and return them.  Hence, Jake spent much of the drive to Charlotte sadly moaning, “I want to watch Mama Mirabelle,” while I subjected him to old episodes of Sesame Street from the early ’70’s that inexplicably contain a warning that they are intended strictly for the entertainment of adults, not for young viewers.  Which makes me wonder what damage someone determined has been done to the adults like me who watched these very episodes as young viewers.

At any rate, being the sort of parent who would return the DVD player but take a little bit longer to return the DVD’s myself, I bore Daniel and his parents no ill will.  Especially when I discovered a Backyardigans DVD at the Rite Aid.

This was no regular Backyardigans DVD.  This was one with a special, extended episode having something to do with robots that I came to particularly love when — after a few back-to-back viewings — Jake grinned at me and said in an appropriate three-year-old robot sort of monotone, “Robot Randy, on the move!”

“Ah,” I thought as I ran through the aisles of Rite Aid collecting more necessities for our two-day vacation.  “Gifts come in the most unexpected places.  I should write about this.”

Except, of course, I was on my way to crashing in front of that dressing room mirror.

The descent was neither swift nor direct.  There was, after all, that Backyardigans DVD to pop into the computer every time I needed to return to the hotel room to recoup.  Mike wasn’t too miserable, and I even sort of envied him the luxury of sitting in a comfy armchair in front of a sunny window reading books all day. And for every moment that seemed to approach crisis, there was an unexpected bit of pleasure around the corner.

For example, Jake’s meltdown at California Pizza Kitchen when he couldn’t displace Lily from my lap led me to rush him out of the restaurant, his pile of barely eaten mac and cheese left behind because I had to choose between waiting for the waitress to box it up and Jake setting off the fire alarm by hanging on the fire exit door precisely because I told him not to.  And that led us into a very great independent bookstore with an awesome children’s play area.  As I chatted with local parents about other places to take the kids and Lily showed me the EduAnimals set she would like me to buy her for her birthday and Jake brought me about a hundred wind-up toys to try out I felt as if, once again, the decision to take this trip was a good one indeed.

It was here, in the mall with the California Pizza Kitchen and the cool independent bookstore, right across from our hotel (though, shamefully, we drove because I was not about to lug my children across the acres of parking lot in thirty-four-degree weather even if the sun was shining) that I saw just how the Universe had rewarded me for not overthinking the decision to take off for the weekend.  The aforementioned Nordstrom.

I am not, I hasten to explain, advocating shopping as some sort of yogic reward.  To the contrary, malls and big department stores have begun, in the past eight yoga-practicing years of my life, to send me into panic attacks rather than the ecstasies of acquisition they used to inspire.  Not that I’m not prone to a little fantasizing about how much better my life will be now that I own the cute black Tahari cardigan with the flowered piping on the collar that was marked down sixty percent at Neiman’s.  I just start to seize up the second I walk away from the cash register.

But this weekend the Nordstrom was a gift.  Because my sister is getting married in a month.  And was sweet enough to ask me to be her maid (I can’t say “matron”) of honor.  And would probably like me to wear something nice when I precede her down the aisle.  Which is a tall order when you live in Asheville where opportunities to purchase hiking boots and Columbia fleece jackets abound but formal wear is pretty much unavailable.

So, that evening — after a second round of blissful pool-going with Jake — at Mike’s insistence that he was up to it, I left the kids with him and headed back across the expanse of parking lot.

I poked into Neiman’s first, picking up the Tahari cardigan in a moment of I’m-on-vacation distraction and trying on a lovely but hideously expensive dress before heading — already somewhat edgy and worn — into Nordstrom.

Here, I encountered a saleswoman with whom I hit it off, a bunch of okay-looking dresses, and an utterly scrambled brain that suddenly couldn’t figure out what would be proper attire for my sister’s wedding.

It was in this state that I entered the dressing room and disrobed in front of those three-way mirrors that are awesome when you are dressed in something crisp and new and standing on your bare tiptoes pretending to be wearing high heels but are dreadful — I repeat, dreadful — when you are in your skivvies.  This is because a three-way mirror offers you opportunities to view your body from new and heretofore unknown angles.  Perspectives you are thankfully spared when squinting at yourself from across the bedroom in your simple, slightly warped to make you look thinner mirror at home.

Age, Bodies, Aging Bodies, and Yoga

This is what I discovered that night.  That from the front I’m doing pretty okay for someone who had a baby ten months ago.  Wrinkly little marsupial pouch beneath the belly button and maybe a little more in the imaginary saddle bags sitting on my hips than I’d like, but a reasonable start on returning to my pre-pregnancy glory days.

I also discovered, to my horror, that from behind I am forty-three years old.  It’s not that any part of my back is particularly bigger than it used to be.  And I’m not stupid enough to suggest that I need to lose weight or anything.

But a whole lot of my back … sags.  Droops.  Looking at it, I tried hard to push away the images of elephants’ knees that kept drifting into my consciousness to sit side by side with my backside.

I know, I know, there is this thing called gravity that separates out the pert new breasts of a sixteen-year-old from the wizened milk bottles of a mom who’s nursed a few babies.  And the highlights I’ve been putting in my hair for twenty years now have become less about having fun and more about adding some artificial shine to hair I didn’t think could get any worse when I was a teenager.  Hey, teenage Melissa.  It can.

There is just something really sobering about seeing what forty years of walking upright can do to a body.  Even though it is perfectly natural and there is beauty in age (other people’s) and I wouldn’t give up my two pregnancies and two beautiful kids even for the smokin’ bod of Kristen Bell.

It just made me feel sad.  Suddenly I saw a forty-three-year-old me at my sister’s wedding, not some twenty-something version of me that I pull out whenever I imagine myself dressed up for some fancy event.  I saw that age will do what pregnancy didn’t.  I saw that the grace with which I tell myself I will age is not some future concept, but something that is happening to me right now.

And then I couldn’t get out of the mall, which made it all much, much worse.

As I ran, sweating, under bright mall lights past Hollister and Janie and Jack and the Gap, I struggled to find the yoga.  I told myself that if I feel beautiful inside I will be beautiful outside.  I told myself that I am beautiful outside and my mind and fluorescent lighting are messing with me.  I told my husband that I know this is all ridiculous and I have nothing to complain about but it doesn’t keep me from feeling bad.

None of which helped, particularly.

So I did what you sometimes have to do — I weathered it.

Sometimes yoga is about passing as gracefully as you can through the discomfort until you come out the other end and take another look at yourself in, say, the dressing room mirror at the Saks Off Fifth at the outlet mall where I found an awesome dress for my sister’s wedding on Sunday.  And you think, “What was my problem?  I look pretty okay.”

And then, when you’re feeling pretty okay, you head into a yoga class on Monday.  And you feel more okay.  And even though by definition the asana practice is making your body just a little bit leaner and stronger, you move past that superficial benefit of yoga and you find your inner beauty, the inner peace that allows you to stop criticizing yourself and your thighs.  Or your back, as the case may be.

And now I’ve gone to a yoga class every day this week — back to a routine I put aside for the past ten months until I was ready to put Lily in daycare early enough in the day to avoid having to sit home with her while she naps and I try not to feel jealous of all the people at that very moment taking the challenging classes I love.

Finally, five days post-Nordstom dressing room mirror, I get it.

I don’t want to look at my back in a mirror, any mirror.  I don’t need to examine myself critically for signs of age that I must fight off like Xena the Princess Warrior.  I don’t need to think about how easy it would all be if only I believed in plastic surgery.

This time I spend in yoga class brings me inside, to my inner beauty.  It shuts off the chatter in my mind that criticizes, pushes, tells me I’m never good enough.  It tears me away from the pretty pictures I paint of myself as a lure toward an unattainable goal that will leave me feeling inadequate no matter what.

Instead, I find the beauty in moving inside this body, with all the badges of living that gravity and pregnancy and life have brought it.

Leaving Your Body to Find Your Inner Beauty — The Sandbag Visualization

Yesterday I returned to the challenging yoga class I used to go to twice a week right up until the day before Lily was born.  And I discovered something really beautiful that I have learned since my pre-pregnancy kick-ass days of taking that class.

I discovered how much better my practice is when I don’t try too hard.

Instead of forcing my body into places it can barely go, I let it move into the version of the pose where the beauty exists for me.  Instead of pushing myself to go deeper into the physical side of my practice, I eased up and fell into a deeper version of the psychic practice, the part that surrenders, observes, connects to something bigger.

And, in this state, I fell right into a really lovely visualization practice that the teacher offered us with savasana.  Even if you don’t have a regular asana practice or have your own favorite way to practice savasana, this is a wonderful meditation to try sitting quietly.  Or in bed before you go to sleep.  Or any time you feel wound up and hard on yourself and freaking out about growing older.

Give yourself this gift and see if it doesn’t bring you back together with your inner beauty.

Sandbag Visualization Instructions