I didn’t have one of those blissed out pregnancies that some women do, but I did love my pre-natal yoga class. Besides the fact that it was good exercise and good relaxation, I got to go be pregnant with a bunch of other pregnant ladies. The first part of the class was spent saying how we felt, so the teacher could gear the class to what ailed us. One time everybody started saying what they refused to give up. The woman with tattoos wasn’t giving up sushi. The carpenter wasn’t giving up manicures. I refused to give up soft cheese. Camembert every day was my motto. (I also drank coffee and a glass of wine a day, and Maisie came out fine, of course.) Then we did the poses and vinyasas modified to accommodate our large bellies and got lots of energy and the kinks in our necks dekinked.

The only drawback of the class for me was that during the final relaxation, the teacher would read a poem. She’d let us commune with our fetuses, our third eyes and our narcissistic tendencies to our heart’s content for five minutes, and then, out with the poem, after which we were supposed to zone out again. Everyone else loved this part, but it drove me nuts. Prior to the poem I’d be going, “oh, no, here it comes.” Then she’d read Rumi. And my brain would start up. “Is that a good poem?” “Is that a good translation?” “What about the syntax?” “I wonder if you just switched those two words if it would work better.” We were supposed to meditate on what the poem said, and so of course I’d get onto my little mental soap-box and start railing against people who think of poems as mini-philosophy lectures. It was even worse if she picked a poem I liked. One time she read something by Wendell Berry which seemed perfectly made, a poem of great clarity. I was pleased by it. And when I hear a poem I like, I want to sit up, square my shoulders and get to work, not lie there melting into the ground.

I never relaxed until I got out of the room of warm soothing colors, away from the gentle supportive voice of the yoga teacher, the mystical truths of the poet, down into the street and the everyday world of bitchy, blissful prose.