Nose Yourself (My Adventures in Piercing)

The JCC pool has closed, not to reopen for nine long months.

No more built-in Sunday morning play dates.  No more after-school swimming adventures to break up the week.  No more watching Jake launch himself off the diving board before dog paddling to the edge of the pool while I marvel at the fact that in June he wouldn’t even put his face in the water.

I’m feeling sad about the pool closing and the whiff of winter that comes on its tail.  I feel, as I posted on my Facebook page, pregnant with next summer. Only not in a happy way.

Could this perhaps explain yesterday’s nose piercing?

The last time I pierced anything it was just an ear, and the year was 1986 or so.  But there have been tattoos since then, little pieces of artwork, mostly hidden from view but peeking out when I want to see or show them.  These little permanent flourishes have, I’m happy to say, given me great pleasure — especially when exposed at the JCC pool.

There was, however, no rush of pleasure yesterday.

Let me begin at the beginning, when this idea first took hold.  It was, appropriately enough, just before the beginning of summer, when the weather was warming, and I could wear my tank tops, and my nursing bras had all been thrown away.  When my sister-in-law told me she was thinking of getting her nose pierced, I was immediately on board.

It didn’t happen that weekend.  But I spent the summer feeling like someone who could have a nose piercing — a tiny little stud that you may or may not notice, a little signal that having kids hasn’t made me an old woman.  Not a period at the end of a sentence — one image that it could invoke — so much as a signal of a new one about to begin.

My sister-in-law was visiting again this weekend, and this time I had scouted out our plan.  It seemed fitting, to pierce my nose as I was being forced to put away my bikinis.  To signal freedom when I am shaking at the imminence of being shut indoors.

We headed over after LAAFF, the best, most nose-piercing-inspiring street festival in Asheville.  Jake got a dragon painted on his arm, Lily and I shared salted caramel ice cream.  We ate and saw friends and both kids marveled at the unicyclist.  We were surrounded by tutus and body glitter and a celebration of theatricality.

“I hope they’re not closed for LAAFF,” I said presciently as Minnie and I abandoned our children — toddler- and teenage-sized alike — for our own moment of childishness.

“Don’t freak out,” Minnie’s thirteen-year-old daughter said teasingly as she jumped out of the car with her mall finds.

Which, naturally, freaked us both out.

We were therefore — and I’m speaking for Minnie here, but I’m betting she’d back me up — rather relieved when we saw the sign that informed us that the piercing parlor employees were, indeed, at LAAFF, and would be back tomorrow.

“Promise you’ll go tomorrow even if I don’t,” Minnie said.  Because, as it turned out, getting your nose pierced just before embarking on a five-hour drive with three teenagers in the car is not the best of plans.

Neither, I suppose, is heading by yourself into a quiet strip mall as the kids nap to get your nose pierced.  I could have just asked some questions, checked the place out, taken my pulse.  But I didn’t want to admit to these people I’d never see again that I was shaking and nervous.

Instead, I played it cool with the woman whose face sported countless studs in places I did not find particularly attractive.  I chose a tiny silver one from a tray arrayed with nose studs displayed so the big hooks on the end that go into your nose were well hidden.

And, really, it was over before I knew it.  No, for those who are reading this only out of curiosity, it did not hurt.  No, I did not bleed.  And no, I did not feel that rush of pleasure and rightness that I felt after those tattoos I still love.

Instead, I arrived home and talked to Mike with the non-pierced side of my face turned toward him.

“I’m kind of freaked out,” I said.

Mike wasn’t in favor of this piercing idea in the first place, so maybe he was not the best person with whom to share this information.  Instead, as I sat in the quiet house while he headed out to a meeting, I tried to call a few friends who’d get it.  But who’s around to take a call from a freaking out forty-four-year-old with a newly pierced nose on Labor Day?

My panic did subside, but the fact that my nose is not designed for the modest little piercing I desired did not.  Looking at myself head on — there it was.  Turn to profile and there was a little round ball stuck to the side of my nose.  Not exactly what I had in mind.

I tried to tell myself to wait it out.  I tried to imagine it being fun to have others see me with a nose piercing.  I talked to my neighbor who didn’t mention it.  And to an acquaintance at the park.  And the whole time I thought they must not think a whole lot of it or they’d have said something.  Just to be nice.

Look, I love nose piercings on other people.  For me, I felt mostly stapled.

Which is how I discovered the opportunity to practice some yoga.  By piercing my nose I came a lot closer to truly knowing myself.

There was plenty of mind chatter at work obscuring the part of me that knew what I wanted.  “You can handle this for eight weeks.  Okay, six.”  “No one is going to make fun of you.”  “You’ll get used to it.”  “No one is going to look up your nose and see that silver thing nestled right at the edge of your nostril.”  All that chatter went both ways and didn’t really tell me anything.

In the end, I trusted how I felt.  The feeling that this was not me and there was no sense in walking around pretending it was for the sake of not wasting my money.

Plus, there was the moment when Jake asked if I could take it out.  Because who knows me better than my child?

After I put Lily down to sleep, I headed into the bathroom with great determination.  I pushed gently on the piece in my nose.  It moved a little and then stopped.  I fiddled and felt.  There seemed to be a profusion of twists and turns that I didn’t know how to navigate.

I headed to the internet, where the information on removing nose piercings turns out to be surprisingly inadequate.

I headed back to the bathroom.  “I can’t get it out,” I whined to Mike.

He had not grown any more sympathetic in the seven hours since I first expressed my doubts to him.

And so, alone in a house of sleeping family members, I calmed myself down.  I worked slowly and gently.  I didn’t freak out.  And I got it out.  I may even hold a record for shortest amount of time with a nose piercing ever.

It feels sad, the whole experience, like the end of summer.  I’m not sad that I did it.  If I hadn’t tried it, I’d never know.  Because as much as my monkey mind would like to tell me I can figure out anything if I try hard enough, it’s not true.  I would never know what it feels like to have a pierced nose had I not done it.

No, what makes me sad in a strange way is finding out that I’m not the person with the pierced nose.  That I might once have been makes me sad partly because I have grown out of her.  But more because that person I once was had a lot of sadness in her.  In passing out of that sadness, I am left with a residue of someone I once was as well as someone I always wanted to be but never will.

Letting go of who we see ourselves as and fully accepting how we are — that’s yoga.

So, okay, I am that summer person.  I know that in a deep way, in the way of knowing myself to which yoga brings me.  As a person who feels most alive in the summer, I feel sad when it’s over, sad at the prospect of a long winter, and also sad that I feel this way in the first place.

That sadness, in other words — I think that’s my human side struggling with wishes for things that aren’t, the part of my ego that thinks I can control things.  The part of me that searches for happiness instead of accepting that not every moment of life is happy.

And, of course, there’s that part of me that forgets that when I’m searching for happiness I may miss contentment right in front of me, as plain as the nose on my face.

Explore yourself with kapotasana

Kapotasana, or pigeon pose, offers just the opportunity to know ourselves that is sometimes the most difficult.  It taps directly into our hips — where we hold past emotions and hurts — and invites us to release our sorrows rather than hold onto them.  Yet as a relatively passive pose it also gives us the opportunity to distract ourselves, to go into the pose without full awareness.  To practice yoga without taking advantage of the opportunity to know ourselves.

So next time you practice kapotasana make it about knowing yourself. Don’t shy away. Don’t impose what your mind wants to see. Just let go, cry if you need to, and trust.

And if you find yourself ready to open your heart as well, move into your own beautiful expression of eka pada raja kapotasana.