On Tuesdays in the summer, I go to an outdoor yoga class at our gym. We lay our mats down by the gigantic pool, under the water slide, and do yoga as the sun goes down and the stars come out. It’s an interesting study in contrasts, and somehow encompasses how I see my suburban life.
Last night, for instance, I noticed:
– The pool is surrounded with prairie plants – long grasses, blue flowering sage, pale green hydrangeas… and signs that say: “NO FOOD IN THIS AREA” behind hundreds of beach chairs. Also, fancy umbrellas.
– The pool had just closed and even though school has started, there were a few moms with their kids in the locker room, stretching out the summer by being at the pool on a weeknight, now cleaning up to go home and get ready for the next day.
– There was one large man, probably tired after a long day, who just couldn’t seem to get himself out of the poolside hot tub. The lifeguards practically had to take him by the hand.
– Yoga class is mostly young, thin White women, but like our area, about half the members of our gym are Black, South Asian, and Hispanic. Still, the poolside yoga class is more diverse than the ones I used to take in the city: men and women, some people of color, and all ages, including a older, curvy, married couple who look more like people I would run into at The Olive Garden than in a yoga class. They like to banter with our teacher, a tiny, pixie-like woman with a spine of steel.
– The night noises of little bugs and cicadas are our soundtrack… and so is the gym’s music channel. When the Beach Boys’ “She’ll have fun fun fun till her daddy takes the T-bird away” came on last night, I had trouble not singing along while I was doing my poses, and pretty much could no longer discern what the teacher was saying.
– We also were serenaded by the constant drone of I-55, which is literally right next to the gym, there at Weber Road. At the end of shavasana, the final resting pose – which is almost like taking a little nap – the teacher started sounding her beautiful gong, probably from Thailand or something, but my first thought was that I was hearing the brakes of a big semi on the interstate.
– And the full moon rose against the night sky… over the water slide. (Here, over the gym facade and a life guard chair.)
