Inversions

I've worn a lot of hats in my life. For a long time, I was student. I was girlfriend, once, too. Since coming to Asia, I've been volunteer, tourist, worker, and friend; since coming to Balian Beach, however, I've retired most hats and adopted a pink tutu in their place. For the next 2 and-a-half months, I am Olivia's Nanny... and believe me, that's the only thing that matters. Just ask her.

As hard as it was to leave Thailand after my lovely time at Faasai, and as decidedly sucky as it was to have my sleepover in Don Muang Airport followed by a symphony of screaming babies on the flight back to Bali, it felt incredible to return to this island. Walking through the Denpasar Airport, I passed all the landmarks that marked my first arrival here... same men trying to charge me $20 to carry my bags 20 feet, same grammatically incorrect RipCurl advertisements... only this time, I felt like an old pro. I helped a fat German couple get through customs. I identified the driver picking me up, Yande, in typical Balinese fashion—i.e. without any sort of physical description, and without a sign with my name on it. Essentially, he and I walked around for 15 minutes mispronouncing each other's names at everyone around us until we eventually bumped into each other.

He drove us to Balian in a van full of soymilk and edamame, per Alicia's request, and just when I found myself wondering how Bali could possibly get any more beautiful, we pulled into Pondok Pitaya. Of all the scenic beaches I've seen, of all the sprawling rice fields and perfect palm trees, this place puts them all to shame. There is just something about it; flower-lined pathways, tiny huts for meditation, stained-glass windows, crashing surf... and above all, just this incredible feeling of ease all around. I was shown to the "Happy House," and sure enough, there she was: all four and a half years of her, sitting in between the yoga hardbodies, coloring on a piece of paper and munching on organic, gluten-free pizza. Olivia, my best friend for the next few months, and my reason for coming back.

For anyone who didn't get the memo, my new job is as follows: until February, I will be traveling with a couple named Alicia and Oliver, both yoga teachers, and taking care of their little girl while they lead and participate in yoga teacher trainings. In Balian, this means watching Olivia for a few hours in the morning (6:30-9:30 during asana practice) and six or seven more in the afternoon (during philosophy, anatomy, practice teaching, etc). At first, the idea of being up and 'on' at six in the morning horrified me beyond belief; that is, until I realized that it is actually possible to wake rested with the sunrise when your head hits the pillow before 9:30 p.m. In that respect, my life has taken on dramatic change. When I'm done watching Olivia for the day, in the interim between afternoon swims and dinner on the beach, I do yoga in my little loft: a room all to myself that consists of a yoga mat, a tiny bed and mosquito net, a shelf, a fan, and a vase of flowers. In the hours I've spent up there, sweating my face off, I've realized there isn't a single thing I'd put up there to make it 'better.' I don't need anything else. When I’m done with my practice, showered, and my belly is full, I fall asleep. Life is simple.

So the sun rises around 5:30 a.m., I creak over the floor and down the stairs around 6:15; and as soon as I walk out the door and see Olivia's little curly head waiting for me, it begins. Here's the thing: I love kids and have always been good with them, and although I'd never had a nannying job before, I figured my babysitting experience would be more than enough prep. What could possibly be different? In a word: everything. Babysitting, you're responsible for the happiness and well-being of a kid for six, maybe eight hours, and if you get it bathed and fed before its parents come home, you walk away with a wad of cash and relative non-attachment to the whole shindig. Travel nannying, however, is the total entwinement of your life with someone else's--even "alone" time bears the possibility (and probability) of interruption. I walked into my job with Olivia feeling relatively confident, knowing she is both well behaved and a joy to be around... and then I remembered that the last time I spent all day every day with a four-year-old was when I myself was a four-year-old. What does one do with a kid once the games have run out, the stories have been read, and the food has been eaten?

The answer is, you stand on your head. Here's where the really good stuff starts: as per YogaWorks requirements, each week of the training has a different theme. Week 4=Beginning/Prenatal. Week 3=Backbends and Twists. Week 2, the week of my arrival, happened to be Inversions Week. In an asana class, the funny thing about inversions is that it is the point when most people conveniently go to the bathroom; handstands, headstands, shoulder-stands... no matter what's standing, it's not your feet, and that's enough to make most people (myself included) freak out. Even here, where most people are advanced practitioners, there was still palpable fear surrounding Inversions Week. 

When it comes to nannying, however, fear isn't an option. Kids can smell it on you like day-old French toast. When Olivia looked at me after two days together and asked, perfectly reasonably, if "King Philip Algblado had killed the dinosaur in my living room and rescued the fairy princess," I felt pretty sure that I would puke out of anxiety. By day four, however, my answer was "of course, my fair Queen—but HURRY, we must ride the lily pad bus to the medicine woman before the fairy baby's curse becomes permanent!" Living with a kid, especially one whose imagination has not yet been spoiled by Nickelodeon, requires a suspension of disbelief. When Olivia stops abruptly in the middle of the rice field and nearly causes me to choke on my water bottle, it's not for no reason. "Invisible door," she says. In that situation, there are two options: walk around her and keep moving, or pretend to search for an invisible key. Being with a kid, really being with them, requires turning your whole world upside down... and if that world has recently been giving you trouble, all the better. In the past couple weeks, I have played approximately 60 games of Go Fish (usually altering the rules midway to reflect any measure of fairy intervention, day of the week, or underwear color); have introduced myself to complete strangers as an evil queen, baby rhinoceros, stray kitten, and fairy princess; have read at least a dozen picture books complete with funny voices; have run through the pouring rain with a kid under my arm ("PUTMEDOWNPUTMEDOWN...." Pause. "DO IT AGAIN!!!"); and have picked up countless objects, from shells to bracelets, and been forced to see them as something other than what they are. A shell, you must remember, is not only a shell: it could also be a priceless gem of Princess Jasmine, a baby narwhal, or a toothbrush, depending on the game. 

The crazy thing is, within about a week of Olivia, my yoga practice changed dramatically. When I participated in one of the asana classes, I floated up into headstand—effortlessly—for the first time in my life. I found my physical practice reflecting what I'd suddenly begun to feel in my mind: there is no backwards or forwards, upside down or rightside up, so much as there are different ways of looking at the same thing. One day, Olivia looked at me with big, globby tears in her eyes. "Don't worry," she said. "These are happy tears, not sad tears." Why, I asked her. "I don't know... because of the sky? Don’t worry. They’re not sad tears. They just look the same.”

In the truest sense of the word, Olivia is amazing. She has been traveling since she was just a few weeks old, with parents who embody mindfullness, and her imagination is switched ON. She isn't picky, whiny, boring, or shy. When we found two dead cats on the beach, frozen in an expression that can only be described as nightmarish, she simply looked at me and asked, "were they happy before they died? Will someone clean them up soon?" When she was covered from head to toe in red, swollen mosquito bites, she closed her eyes and smiled. "It will be better tomorrow." She's four going on twenty-four, and I'm twenty-two going on two; we both believe in fairies, and neither of us has any problem eating an entire coconut in one sitting. All in all, it works quite nicely. 

That's not to say that we don't have our moments. Every once in a while, Olivia will stop speaking to me altogether—I'll ask her a question, and she'll stare at my bellybutton for an hour. Sometimes, she takes off with no warning and goes tearing into her mother's arms, teary and desperate, and refuses to play with me for the rest of the afternoon. In these moments, I find it difficult not to burst into tears and run to MY mommy... only mine is really, really far away. And when I explain this to Olivia, and we look at the ocean together for a little while, it usually gets better. The moments when she takes my hand and says "let's snuggle and pretend we're princesses" more than make up for the moments when my loneliness bites me, when I forget not to take things personally, or when I am anything less than 100% grateful for the patience and openheartedness that her presence is teaching me.

Tomorrow, it's back to Ubud: the place where this adventure began, and my home for the next month before the next—and final—leg of my travels. I'll miss Balian Beach, especially the schedule my body and brain have fallen into... but in my heart of hearts, I know it's only going to get better. I've done an incredible amount of searching in the small time I've had here. I've deepened my yoga and meditation practice, spending 3 hours at a time on nothing but breathing into my gratitude, and have noticed the corresponding changes in my reactions. During a phone call the other day, when someone casually mentioned that I "always care what others think of me," I realized quite happily that that is no longer the case. I didn't even recognize it at first, but it's true. On a more serious note, when my beloved camera took a tumble down from my loft and broke, my first thought was "Oh—well, I'd been getting too attached to that thing anyhow." My camera fell, but I didn't. I have my health and a wonderful job and a reason to be happy every day: namely, that I choose to be. It's a choice. It's all a choice.

The other night, as I was falling asleep, something occurred to me. I have been lucky enough to have two distinct eras of travel in my life—first Ireland, and now this. In many ways, they have been similar: they have given me time to myself, to get to know who I am, and to live in awe of our planet’s scenery. They have been about living spontaneously and not taking things so seriously. That said, they are also complete opposites. Ireland was all about fun, about eating and drinking and going out every night ‘til the wee hours… socializing, dating, learning to take life with a laugh and a pint of Guinness. Here, my life has swung to the opposite side of the spectrum; clean food, zero alcohol and very few trips ‘out,’ a disciplined yoga practice, and lots and lots of time spent completely alone. My experience there has inverted into my experience here; both interesting, both wonky, and two radically different sides to the person I can feel myself becoming. There’s a middle way in there somewhere, and when I think about home, I feel peace in the idea that I might finally be able to find it there.

So, to conclude: last night, I participated in my very first Kirtan. We came to the yoga studio after hours, surrounded Ganesha in a mandala of marigolds, plumerias, and petals of sweet pea, and all decided on something we wanted to throw in the circle to let go of; it is the full moon, which is the perfect time for the final swelling of feeling before the new moon comes along and cleans the slate. Sitting there, it occurred to me that the Kirtan is probably many people’s version of hell: swaying and chanting to Lakshmi and Saraswati, singing in Sanskrit, and letting the spirit move us. Likewise, if you’d asked me a month ago, I probably would have said that a 3 hour arm-balance yoga class would have been MY idea of hell—and now, it’s something that I have not only done but enjoyed. Life inverts now and again. It’s good to change your mind, to go upside down and physically—or emotionally—let your heart be higher than your head. If we don’t, there’s always the chance that the Hindu goddess Kali will come by and chop off our heads, adding them to her belt, reminding us to let go of our egos and be free. Or there’s a chance that Olivia will ask us to play Crazy Eights for three hours straight, which is pretty much the same thing.

One of my favorite parts of Balian is the warm afternoon rainstorms. Around 2:00, in the middle of a sunny day, a sudden boom of thunder shakes the place—and within about 10 minutes, the entire place is coated in a sheet of torrential rain. Yesterday, as the water pounded the roof, the yogis had reached a peak in the energy of their meditation—I heard them laughing, celebrating from inside the studio. On the couch, Olivia and I were watching Alice and Wonderland underneath a scratchy blanket. Umbrella birds, cards painting the roses red, a Mad Hatter, and a floating cat all danced around in an upside-down world…caterpillars crawled backwards... and I dunno, it all looked pretty normal to me.