My wife and the dog snored as I sat on the floor at the base of the bed in the dark meditating. The book said the body lives in the past, the mind lives in the future, and yoga connects the two in the present. I found myself anticipating what was next. I had begun a stimming thing some time ago, snapping my right thumb and fingers, and did so as I collected my things and left the room.

I left the dining room table set for six in hopes there’d be more meals with our oldest and her boyfriend before he flew home to California. It was mostly about having options to do things together, the table symbolized that. People had written profound things about place settings left intact for a lost loved one; this was the opposite of that, more of a beckoning that we’d make more memories while she was home. Each visit had the same arc, the rise and fall. Soon we’d experience the same with our youngest going off to college in the fall, then coming home for breaks.

It was about having options, being with the ones you loved. Friends, anyone. I had an older uncle, brother to my grandmother, who lived alone and we only saw once every few years. He didn’t drive and needed a ride for family gatherings, and lived a solid hour away in an old coal mining town in northeastern Pennsylvania. Driving there to drop him off was like going back in time, the small storefronts and old homes, the fact that nothing much had changed.

The last time I saw him we were driving him home late one Easter and he asked, would we want to stop for a pizza? But it was late and we had another hour’s drive in the opposite direction and after a big meal with ham and mashed potatoes, pizza sounded awful so we declined, and I realize now he probably never went out with people to do that kind of thing, and it wasn’t about the pizza.

I thought about these things as I walked the trails in the state park with my stick and the mud, my new rubber boots, thinking about the month of January, different angles of light. The more I could get out with other people the better, ideally with my wife: the dog was too old and the kids weren’t so interested. You had to come to them if you wanted their company and that meant reality TV about girl K-pop groups or gay hockey shows, though the sex scenes were tough. It was natural and best for everyone for the kids to have their own lives.

They said addicts just find new things to be addicted to and for me that was yoga. Taking away the video game console and replacing it with a plant, I had an extra hour in my day now and tried to embrace boredom. Not killing other players or pick axing structures made me irritable though. I came back to my yoga mat and felt both calmed and rejuvenated. We were now running Venezuela and I watched an analysis of that. The world was cloaked in pain but we could find some peace in it still. It wasn’t our thoughts perhaps but our relationship to them.

Categories: Addiction, Creative Nonfiction, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, mindfulness, pacific northwest, yoga