Elle Potter

gloves or mittens?

I picked up a little polka-dotted mitten that was inadvertently left behind by a sweet blonde three-year-old as I walked through the park.  She saw me walking toward her and said in her most grown-up-voice, “Oh, hello.”

“Hi sweet one.  I think you dropped one of your gloves,” I said, displaying the mitten.

“Ah, yes.  That is my glove,” she replied, taking the mitten from my hand and leaving me smiling at how adult she sounded.

The rec center was closed when I arrived at it, so I turned around and began my chilly walk back home, passing once again the little girl and her mother, who was kneeling down, trying to clip the mittens onto the little girl’s jacket.  The little girl’s sister was about six and busied herself by pacing back and forth a very precise and imaginary straight line.

The mom looked over her shoulder at the older daughter.  “Where are your gloves?”

Without looking up from the imaginary path she was on, the older girl replied, “I don’t have them.”  I was impressed that she was so blunt.  I would have tried to make up a story if my mom had asked me – even at the age of twenty-five.

There was a moment of pause as the mom first gave her full attention to completing the attachment of the youngest girl’s glove.  She leaned back onto her heels and zipped up her own jacket.  “Well, when your hands start to get cold, don’t be asking me where your gloves are.”

The older daughter looked up from her unseen balance beam at her mother.  “I won’t be asking where my gloves are.  I’ll KNOW where my pockets are.”

I didn’t mean to, but I laughed aloud.  “She’s awfully resourceful, ain’t she?” I said, smiling at the mom.  She must have been proud that her daughter has her own way of seeing things.

– – – – –

I sat down to eat my lunch at Whole Foods after I taught class last week.  I flipped open the Boulder Weekly that had been left behind on the table I was at and landed on the horoscopes.

“Just because somebody doesn’t always love you the way you wish they would doesn’t mean they don’t love you the best they can and with all they have.”

It was one of those sorts of sentences that stop you mid-salad-crunching bite.

It’s perspective.  It’s HOW you allow yourself to be loved and how you allow yourself TO LOVE.  I know I’ve loved before and not had it reciprocated the way I always imagined it would be.  And I’ve been loved before and not reciprocated it the way they had hoped me to.

It’s that little girl without the gloves.  She knew that being cold was a possibility, but her way of finding warmth was different than the idea her mom had.  As long as you know you’ll find the warmth you need, you have to do it the way that best serves you.  For her, she didn’t want to lug around the mittens.  I completely understand that.

For some, love might mean persistent attention.  Consistent affirmation.  Continued abolishment of doubts and insecurities.  For others, love may mean the opposite of that; it may be considered an agreement unspoken.  Doting is seen as unnecessary.

And what happens when those two sides collide in a partnership?  Well, honestly, it can be like dating a very whiny puppy.  Or, on the other hand, like dating a ghost.

I’ve dated both.

Maybe it’s got something to do with your preference of mittens to pockets.  You either keep it to yourself or keep your reach outward.  Both ways provide the warmth necessary to continuing onward.

We all have different ideas of what love is, what love does and what love means to us each individually.  I suppose what it comes down to is making sure that we can keep ourselves warm – that we have what we need to feel loved, and that those in our lives understand if we prefer mittens to pockets.  At the same time, it’s important to remember that there are a number of ways to stay warm.

What is it that Rumi says?  “Let the beauty we love be what we do; there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”  And as my teacher Shannon puts it, you can either kneel carefully and artfully, or you can trip and fall on your face.  But something leads you to love, and when it happens, it happens fully – no matter what the journey you took.

I’m a mittens kind of a girl.  I like to have something to keep me warm but still give me the opportunity to reach out and hold someone else’s hand.   It’s hard to do that when the other person’s hands are burrowed deep in their pockets – but I’m thankful to have someone to at least walk alongside.  As long as we’re both warm, I’m happy.

show-off

I could start this out by saying “I’ve never been much of a show-off…” but I know that would be a lie the second I wrote it on the screen.

I’m a bit of a hobble-yogi right now.  Hurt my left knee.  The knee that’s always been a problem – the one that I’ve also apparently been hyperextending all of my life.  I had no idea!

But because I pulled one of my quadriceps, which in turn hurt my patellar-something-something across the front of my knee, which was already a little wonky because of the hyperextension… anytime I fall back into the old habit of how I stand (Hip jutted out to left, lock left knee.  Hold for 75-90 seconds, switch sides.  Repeat) I receive an insta-reminder that THAT’S NOT GOOD FOR YOU.  That hurts.  Don’t go back to that habit.

How did I hurt my knee?  Ah, well, that’s where “show-off” comes into place.

I’ve had the incredible pleasure of modeling for a fantastic photographer friend of mine, Shannon Marie Casey.  One day, she and a friend were playing with lighting options in the studio.  I went from one pose to another, giving them something to light.  I was playing around for the most part, and decided to try full Natarajasana while the two photo-pros were discussing lights.  Miraculously, both of my arms reached back over my head and I was holding my left foot in the fullest Natarajasana I had experienced in my life.  I felt like an ice-skater, a cover of a Yoga Journal magazine – like images of the practices of so many yogis I have admired for a long time.

Because it simply IS a breath-taking pose, we came back to it time and time again in the photo shoot.  I was so thrilled to have achieved the shape, I came into it as many times as was asked of me.

At some point, I was no longer being as mindful as I had been.  My body was finding the end-point, but skipping along without being mindful of proper alignment.  And this must have been when I pulled my quadricep (or later, when I got home and was still showing off).

This isn’t the first time in my life that I continued doing something over and over again because I thought it was impressive to everyone else in my life.  I worked 60 hours a week with not a day off for eight months once.  At first I did it because I enjoyed it, it kept me busy and made me feel like I was doing something with myself – but I realized long past my burn-out point that I had only sustained that schedule because it impressed those around me, too.  It was a way to hide the fact that I wasn’t happy doing what I was doing, but at least I was successful in the sense that I was doing SOMETHING.  And because I don’t know WHEN exactly in that practice of too much work I actually tore something, like you know, my heart-strings, I was just suddenly hurting.  And I had to completely STOP and step away.

That’s what I’m doing for now.  The habits that I find myself falling back into are no longer sustainable.  They hurt.  They actually physically hurt.  I can’t hold myself up in this way anymore.  And so, I’m learning a more mindful way to do it.  I have to take a lot of breaks from standing, I have to sit back and elevate the knee, and spend a lot of time doing some new muscle-pattern-building techniques (taught to me by Chris Muchow, the most incredible yoga fixer-upper EVER)… and that exhausts me in a new way.  My leg is sore STILL, but at least this sensation is because of the building of good habits.

Because of all things – I have to be able to stand up for myself.

mildly melodramatic (who, me?!)

I walked into work on Tuesday with the new black ink cartridge in hand.  I had been waiting for what seemed like an eternity to finally get hold of the right cartridge for the printer at work and finally be able to print out a number of documents.

I opened the little front door and awaited the printer to obediently make some little mechanical noises.  But nothing happened.  I looked at the little screen on the front of the printer.  No words.  No lights.

Oh great, I thought.  It is freaking broken.  Of course it is.  I kept cursing inwardly, wondering why, oh why, did this have to be so difficult?  I sat down on the floor in front of the printer and pulled it out from its little cave beneath the desk.  Crawling amidst forgotten tangles of cords that lead from this to that, I began to carefully attempt tracing the cords from the back of the printer, taking into consideration that perhaps the machine had come unplugged.

It was like a cornfield maze, not knowing what cord went to what and a number of them just simply disappearing off behind trails of more cords.  It was tedious and starting to hurt my knees, kneeling in exploration like that.  I pulled the printer off of my lap and kept myself from slamming it back onto its little stand.

I stared at its blank expression.  Then I saw the one thing I had not taken into consideration – the POWER button.  Power button pressed, a hum of recognition from the printer, and the piece that holds the ink cartridges shot over to the right.  I put the new cartridge in, closed the front door and allowed the printer to align itself.

I suppose perhaps I make things a little more complicated than they need to be. Perhaps I have a tendency for the overdramatic.

How many times have you misunderstood the words someone says to you and reacted immediately to your misunderstanding?  I can’t even count how many times I’ve read an email too fast on my Blackberry while eating lunch and completely misread what was being said.  Lunch would be ruined as I sat and stewed in anger at the message.  By the time I get to my laptop to re-read and prepare a response, I would see that I had missed the point entirely and that the whole email was actually a compliment or a thank-you or something sweet.

Many meditative teachings say that we choose how we react.  If we take that extra second to step back and feel out the situation, ask ourselves why we’re feeling the way we’re feeling, experience the sensation of the emotion, and THEN react, we’re more likely to act in a mindful way (aka, avoid calling someone an a-hole or throwing something across the room in blind rage).

But that’s really part two.

Before you experience the reaction of your own heart, you have to take in what is going on around you.  You don’t want to spend your time over-reacting, let alone over-reacting to something that didn’t even actually happen.

All I’m saying is the whole world isn’t against you.  And when you take a moment to realize that, you’ll see that a lot of reactions you have are defensive.  I felt like the printer wasn’t working and that it wasn’t working because someone else had broken it and not taken the time to fix it.  I immediately assumed that I would end up having to spend the remainder of my workday trying to fix it and it would take away from everything else on my to-do list I had yet to get to-done.

It sounds silly, but think back to the times when you’ve overreacted.  Could you have brought a new level of compassion to the situation – not only on your own behalf, but toward the rest of the world?

All the details are ready to be set into motion.  It’s just a matter of turning on your sense of acknowledgement to the things that are going on around you and your participation in the present.

I’m living in a White Christmas

As a child, Christmas Eve’s Eve was spent at Great-Gramma Dorothea’s house, Christmas Eve at my mom’s side, and Christmas day at my dad’s side.  Each space had its own tradition.  There was always cheesy potato cassarole at Gramma D’s, handmade pillowcases at Gramma J’s and silly shenanigans with my younger cousins at Gramma Potter’s.  There was a very specific agenda we followed each year, and looking back, I cherish those memories.

After my family moved to Colorado in the middle of my eighth grade year, the holidays were a little different.  Kansas City was a long way away, and so my mom, dad, sister and I began our own little Christmas traditions.  I’ve never spent a Christmas Eve without my family.

This year, my sister is spending Christmas Eve with her boyfriend and his family.  She’s going to pick me up from our house on the way out to Mom and Dad’s in a little bit.  My roommate Lara is having dinner with her family at their house.  For the past quite-a-few-hours now, I’ve been sitting in the reclining chair wrapped in my bathrobe, watching White Christmas play continuously on television.  I ate a lavish holiday meal of frozen pizza dunked in a ranch/Cholula blend and cried at all the commercials.  At one point, I finally gave up trying to figure out how Vera Ellen’s waist could possibly be so tiny and drew a hot bath.  I sat in the tub with the bathroom door open, White Christmas playing in the front room, “Santa Baby” radio playing on Pandora, and singing at the top of my lungs.  Now I’m sitting in my bath towel drinking a rum and coke, right back in my reclining chair in front of Bing and Rosemary.

Making new traditions isn’t always a bad thing…  And who knows what next year will bring.

Was real-life sepia in the 1940s?

My mom sent me a picture via text late one evening.  At first glance, the woman in the picture was me; but I never remembered having bouffant hair.  Upon further inspection, it turned out to be an image of my grandmother in her early thirties.  And our resemblance was striking enough that even I was initially confused.

In the 1940s, someone in the Potter family had a home video camera.  The film of family and friends had been stored away for ages and had recently been transferred to a DVD.  This Thanksgiving, I spent the afternoon sitting on the couch watching over an hour of silent footage of family nearly seventy years ago.

My father ran commentary on the film to point out the folks I never met, such as my great-great-Aunt Willa Dean and great-great grandpa R.J.  It was fascinating to see the faces of those I never knew, yet recognize very specific features in their faces and body language that still stand out in our family today.

What tickled me most was seeing the family I am familiar with in my lifetime, such as my grandpa and great-grandma.  To see a lanky boy of about ten, with ears sticking out and an obnoxious grin that just screams ‘trouble’ and realize it’s the same man with the white beard I’ve known all of my life is a little difficult to process.  But then I’d see the same twinkle in his eye when he laughs and recognize it through the shaky sepia film and know without a doubt who it was.

I have heard for a long time about the apparent similarities between my twenty-year old cousin and my great-grandfather, Harlan.  Harlan has long been a startling and intriguing mystery – the hard-working and successful man that everyone speaks of with deep respect and awe.  Because Harlan had passed away by the time I was born, I only have photos to draw from; but the resemblance to my cousin is striking.  Same nose, same hairline, same stature – same genes.  There’s always been something about my cousin that makes me think of him as an old man in a young kid’s body and I have, in my curiosity to know my great-grandfather, envisioned that my cousin is the window to our family’s ancestors.

At one point on the screen of my parents’ television, there’s a giant American flag hanging from the ceiling of the front porch of a quintessential mid-West 1940s home.  A man walks out of the front door and down the stairs of the porch, under the flag.  He’s in a suit and tie and he turns his feet sideways to take each step down.  Of all the men in the group he joins, he is the only one not in a hat.

Almost unnecessarily, Dad points out, “There he is.  There’s Harlan.”

As Douglas Brooks is one to say, what is it that you recognize when you look at a photo of yourself as a child that allows you to identify the image without a doubt as that of yourself?  Considering that is not what you look like any longer and that it’s an image of you – not actually you – it’s a phenomenal event.  We never truly see ourselves face to face.  Even when we look in a mirror, it’s the reflection we take back.  There must be something beyond the skin, beyond the shape of the eyes, beyond the crooked smile that we’re able to point out as ours.  We’re never able to look ourselves dead in the eye other than through the means of some external thing to point back at us.

Seeing my great-grandpa in action and seeing the marked mannerisms of my cousin gave me chills.  I do know my family.  I do know the million different parts of me.  I recognize them as parts of my own heart.  It’s from those parts that I piece together who I see myself to be – the inheritor of strength, dignity and laughter.

thanks-for-giving

A few Thanksgivings ago, my cousin and I began a tradition of sitting down to write out our list of Gratitude.  Last year, I had the idea of writing Thank You notes to a handful of people who had so sweetly brought new breath to my life.  I never finished (or started) these Thank You notes, but I did go through my phone’s address book and text various “I’m grateful…” messages.  Many of the people I decided to text were folks I hadn’t spoken to for a long time, but the feeling of knowing I was putting it out there to those that I love, had loved and had nearly forgotten filled me with the most overwhelming sense of gratitude.

This year, I’m grateful for those in my life who roll their eyes at me when I say “I don’t know,” “Maybe,” “I’ll try,” or “I don’t think I can.”

I’m thankful for the kind of smiles that make my heart beat sideways.

I’m grateful for my first ever real-life voice lessons.  And grateful that the noises that are coming out of my head are finally beginning to sound more like music and less like quacking.

I’m thankful for gingerbread cookie scented candles.

I’m thankful for warm farts in the cold car.

I’m thankful for every tear I’ve shed in the company of those I love most.

I’m thankful it’s time to drink egg nog, wear sequined dresses and dance to Santa Baby on repeat while decorating the house.

I’m thankful for songs that make me cry.

I’m thankful for songs that make me dance.

I’m thankful for songs that make me think of you.

I’m grateful for bubble wrap.

I’m thankful for inner body bright – in more ways than one.

I’m grateful for fancy champagne and family dinner nights.

I’m grateful to be an Omie.

I’m thankful that when I called Roz the other day, she remembered who I was the second she heard my voice.

I’m thankful that my voice is growing stronger each time I sit down to write.

I’m thankful for all the little bluebirds.

I’m thankful that I’m continually in awe of the company I keep.

I’m grateful for my talented friends who are boldly chasing their dreams.

I’m grateful that I was able to spend the weekend sitting with Douglas Brooks.

I’m thankful for the color green.

I’m grateful for tall drinks of water.

I’m thankful for Lime’s frozen margaritas.

I’m thankful that I can collaborate scrubbing the toilet with mid-day dance parties.

I’m grateful for overwhelming cookie-baking-binges and for the emotional relief it brings me.

I’m grateful for the students who teach me.

For instance, a note a student slipped me today after class; “There is no control in life.  Wherever you go, wherever you hide, there’s risk.  People pay for control even if they have none.  Safety is the greatest risk of all because safety leaves no room for miracles.  And miracles are the only sure thing in life.”

I’m thankful for handmade “I Believe In You” cards mailed to my house.

I’m thankful for late night text messages, random I love you phone calls, and accidental Skype conversations.

I’m grateful for voicemail systems that allow me to talk for five full minutes.

I’m thankful that those I love, love me enough to allow me to listen to my heart.  Even if they don’t know the song it’s playing.

But I hope we get to sing together soon.