Just hearing her voice and the barrage of throwback, PG-rated Midwestern colloquialisms at her faulty FaceTime connection filled me with joy. Golly gee willikers!
I realized just how deeply I’d missed this best friend* since she left for graduate school on the East Coast five months ago.
Of course, there was a hole. This was my go-to-gal for the year and a half before she moved away. After 15 years being out of touch. Seeds planted in a fast friendship Freshman year of college.
I nestled into Butterscotch for the handful of spare minutes we had before the special Thanksgiving Day yoga class started. I kept guiltily looking up to check the digital clock on the stove. I knew she was taking time away from her family on the holiday.
Scared to see the time and simultaneously relieved to see many more minutes left. Somehow conversations with best friends transcend time. Somehow one minute lasts 300 seconds.
And I was grasping for every extra-long minute.
When class started streaming, it was immediately just like Sunday mornings once-upon-a-time last year, the two of us sitting on our mats front-and-center before this favorite yoga teacher in the attic studio.
Even through a laptop screen the adorably youthful and yet wildly wise teacher immediately enraptured all of us with her quotes from Mark Nepo, her giggles, her rhetorical questions. It was as disarming as always.
“What does enoughness mean to you?”
“What keeps you from the energy of gratitude?”
“Who are you and what would you do without the grasping?”
Between still breaths of meditation, quiet moments of guided journaling, and fast flows from hard-to-harder-to-hardest poses, I noticed how connected I felt. To the teacher and all the invisible classmates, including my best friend.
Not only could my body remember what it was like to flow together in-person, I sensed the presence of my best friend right there in my apartment.
Sitting propped up on the pastel Mexican yoga blanket—a hand-me-down from her. Touching the thick pulpy pages of my journal—a gift from her. Surprisingly rising up into Baby Grasshopper pose—in her colorful hand-me-down yoga leggings.
I also noticed: I was wearing my favorite hand-me-down sweater from my sister. Another best friend’s art on long-term loan hung on my wall. Near the fancy french armchairs from my childhood home.
I was surrounded by the energy of my relationships. While it was not as immediate, as close, as I’d prefer them to be, it was enough. It was plenty.
As we took our final closing breaths, hands pressed together at our hearts, there was less of a hole. More of a whole.
According to the Yoga Journal, “Namaste represents the belief that there is a Divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra. The gesture is an acknowledgment of the soul in one by the soul in another.”
That we are all connected.
That we are always connected.
No matter what keeps us apart.
May your holes feel holy this week.
Love,
Jules
*Some people might have one, superlative best friend. I have nine, currently. It is a different type of connection with a different type of friend. One that transcends time or distance. And doesn’t go away, even if it is discontinued. I wish that we were as loving, as kind, as giving, as honest, as attentive to all of our friends. To anyone that we interact with. But, we’re not there yet. For now, we gratefully practice with our “best” friend(s).
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