Well, 31, It's Been Swell

I know, you've had it to the gills with New Year's Crap. Me too. The blessing and curse of Capricorn is the intimate ownership you have over the calendar. Your year is wrapped up in The year (or perhaps vice versa).

My year ends tonight.

I started this year, this 31, in the most unusual place. I made a rash decision in November that if I was going to be a yoga teacher then I must start with professional development and start tacking things onto my resume. So I enrolled in a little prenatal teacher training, thinking that surely I would never actually teach prenatal yoga, I would just learn about it. Who would ever want to study prenatal yoga with me?! I have no babies (unless you count the birds, which I do not).

The wise instructor (pun intended, for those of you on the inside) started the training by saying, "You've all been a mother in another lifetime."

I think it stopped my heart.

Mama and baby gorilla

Now, I'm pretty impervious to the fru fru yoga speak, because I'm a very Type A linear thinker. I can organize you into (and out of) a brown paper bag. Probably one-handed, in the dark, while listing all of the helping verbs. No yoga teacher teacher is going to mush me up and let me think for one second about my past lives.

Except that I totally bought it. It was an epiphany in the most resounding way. If I were writing a religious text now instead of a blog, I would say that God appeared in the middle of a field, and then all of the tall grass parted and showed a clearly outlined seven-lane freeway with signs "THIS WAY, IDIOT."

(I'll stick with blogs, I get it).

I tapped into my incredible birth-knowledge-trust-fund that I'd set aside in college and started dealing out prenatal yoga and birth-bits like it was the newest fad. Which, when you're 31, it actually is.

All the while, as I was building my little business and following my North Star and all that, I sort of let it slip that I wanted to be a mother. It wasn't the pheromones of my dear clientele, but the same arcane sense that the teacher spoke of in her welcoming speech. 

You've all been a mother in another lifetime.

YES, my body said. THAT's it.

My body whispered to my mind, which made a very clear and efficient list:
- no soul-crushing job
- husband gainfully employed
- husband bringing in benefits
- extensive knowledge of all birth things
- afternoon naps - home ownership
- pet ownership
- lady parts

These seem like logical prerequisites, don't they? Well according to all of the romcoms I've ever seen, (and my mother) this is The List.

Just. One. Problem.

Lists, as it turns out, don't make babies.

So far, my exhaustive research into the scientific literature coupled with the fertility patterns of my friends and frenemies on Facebook do not point to a specific cause except to say that my list was waaaaay off (aside from the lady parts... that does appear to be a requirement).

So tonight, at the fringe of 31 I come back to the words of my instructor: you have all been a mother in another lifetime.

When I'm 32, I'll try to remember what it was like.