Wham! Blam! Kapow!

The day Ada died, I had two more hours of the Anusara workshop to do. Heaven knows I'm committed to my yoga, but there are limits.

Still, one of my teachers had asked me to teach two of her classes that night. I'd said yes the day before, before I'd known that my dog was sick.

So, at a certain point in the afternoon, I wiped my tears, squeezed into yoga clothes, and went to teach two classes.

Teaching in the studio where I'd been a student for eleven years felt almost forbidden. I kept thinking, Is this allowed? Am I really supposed to be up here in the front of the room? Jake, one of the students in the second class (which had been my class for several years until recently), looked at me as he unrolled his mat and said, "Are you teaching tonight?"

"Yep!" I said.

Another student from the back of the room added, cautiously, "Have you done this before?"

I laughed. "Yes."

I led the students safely through poses, I challenged their bodies, I cracked jokes and made references to the German yoga teacher I'd had in Mexico whose mantra was, "Hold za poose, doon't hold za breath."

And then I went home and thought, Oh my God, I just taught at Seattle Yoga Arts! Oh, my God, my body is in such pain from the workshop! Oh my God, my poor dog is dead!

I wanted to think about it all, to write about it all, but instead I fell dead sleep.