Standing

“Will you just light?!” My father would ask, frustrated by my constant movement. When he was home, my father wanted to sit, read the paper and eat a bowl of cereal before work, or watch the news and sip a scotch after it. I was a child of movement – hopping, climbing, fidgeting, looking for the next thing to chase.

I have always craved motion. Not necessarily focused motion toward a deliberate goal. Just movement. The hardest part of Marine Corps training in the hot summers of Quantico, VA was the standing. I’d trade a 5:00 AM obstacle course for a 10:00 AM inspection any day.

Years later, I was drawn to Ashtanga yoga and the flow of the asanas, twisting and balancing, three breaths, then move on to the next one. I had no use for boring mountain pose, just standing and breathing, arms to the side, mind quiet.

I need to react, make progress, shift, adjust. I prefer to move on, move out, move along, or even move aside. Just standing demands an inner stillness that escapes me. When I do have to stand, maybe at church or a cocktail party, my mind is taking inventory of the aches and misalignments; it issues commands to adjust posture, lower my shoulders, and engage my core. Standing can be very busy work.

My father may have been irritated by his antsy children, but he was not one to just stand around either. He was a striver, in the court house and on the tennis court. He spent his summer vacations building our family camp, then doing all the projects required to maintain the little cottage. He was not the one to sit quietly for a bedtime story or to comfort a sick child. That was Mom’s job.

Mom didn’t reprimand us for our jitters. She would shoo us outside, weather be damned, to work our bodies: sledding in the winter, catching frogs and climbing the bluff in the summer. Mom also didn’t have quiet mornings over a bowl of cereal or sip a cocktail while someone else made dinner. Mom knew how to stand. She would have been good at mountain pose

She’d stand at the kitchen counter and make potato salad or stand on sidelines, bleachers, and in auditoriums to watch her children perform. She stood with her irritable husband for nearly 70 years. After her children moved along, Mom stood firm in her decision to pursue a post-parenting career as a church organist, leaving Dad to heat up his own leftovers on Wednesday nights when she was conducting choir practice. We weren’t sure if Dad would stand for it, but he did.

Decades later, when standing of any kind became hard for Mom, Dad stood up and cared for her until he couldn’t anymore. We assured Dad that she would be OK, that we would stand in when he moved on. In his final days, my mother sat with my father (she in her wheelchair, he in the hospital bed). She couldn’t see or hear much; he couldn’t breathe well, but they were content. He reminded her of the summer day when he fell in love with her, sitting in the back of a pal’s boat, her feet dangling in the water. She listened and nodded.

My sister and I stood to the side and watched their goodbye in stillness.

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