Chapter 1
Benefits of yoga: energy regulations. Yeah, I was still waiting on that one. Stronger bones. If that was the case, why did Doctor Hunter give me supplements to take on my last well-woman visit because my bone density test recorded early osteoporosis?
I groaned as my hands rotated up to warrior two pose. Helped you focus, yeah right. The sarcasm was so loud in my head that I had to look around to see if anyone heard it.
“Bernie.” The soft whisper of Peaches Partin circled the space above everyone’s warrior pose in the beginning yoga class that Iris Peabody had insisted we take. “Focus by looking down your arm and past your fingertips.”
Was that Peaches’s way of telling me to stop looking around? Mmhmmm… which brings me to another reason I was given to try yoga: increased happiness. The only thing bringing me happiness was the fact I was going to be able to watch Clara, my granddaughter, this afternoon while Julia, my daughter-in-law, went to the doctor for her checkup.
Which brought me to the next reason I was given: helping me sleep. That wasn’t working. I was always up at night worrying if my premature granddaughter was thriving or how her early birth was going to impact her growth. I loved her no matter what, but it was really the stress I’d seen on Julia’s and my son, Grady’s, faces that always told me they only wanted the best for little Clara.
Apparently, focusing down my arm made me a little wobbly, which sent Peaches right on over to steady me.
“I thought this was supposed to give me good balance?” I asked her.
Iris Peabody laughed. Peaches didn’t find it a bit funny.
“Focus,” Peaches whispered and gently let go like I was a kite about to take off in a gentle wind, only to me it felt like a tornado.
Which brought me to another reason I was sold on the whole idea of yoga: improved muscle strength. I’d like to see it. The only muscle strength I’d gotten was sore, achy, and spasmodic, not to mention how much ibuprofen I’d purchased since I’d let Iris talk me into this crazy activity.
I was a walking mail carrier. I walked miles upon miles a day. By the end of the day, my feet did ache, but nothing a good Epsom salt foot soak didn’t take care of. And I’d started to go over to Jenny Franklin’s since I’d heard she’d been doing hair and nails in her basement.
She sure did give a good foot rub along with a bang-up toenail paint job. Plus, I liked to help out the small business owners in the area.
My stomach gurgled. A little belch drew up into my esophagus, reminding me what I’d eaten at midnight while worrying about my granddaughter. This brought me to the two final reasons I’d decided to let Iris talk me into contorting my fifty-year-old body in ways that shouldn’t be twisted.
Yoga helped with your digestion. Now, keep in mind that Iris was the owner of Pie in the Face, the local bakery. Not only the proprietor, but the baker. And to beat the band, she suggested this yoga class over a freshly baked maple walnut crumb cake that just so happened to be surrounded in cinnamon, walnuts, and brown sugar with brown sugar crumbles on top. And I couldn’t forget to mention how it was also smothered in a vanilla bean Vermont maple glaze that was to die for.
We would both gobble up a much larger piece than we needed of the delicious sweet-baked good with a big cup of ice-cold milk to wash it down.
Yoga helped you lose weight. I slid my eyes down to my gut that had started to become a little rounder than it’d been in years past.
My eyes moved across the room as Peaches told us to move to reverse warrior. Lucy Drake’s thin, streamlined body fit perfectly in her fancy yoga pants and sleeveless formfitting top. The Tranquility Wellness water bottle Peaches sold with the logo on it was sitting half-empty on the floor next to her hot-pink yoga mat.
Her long hair flowed down her back, making her a stark resemblance to the poster on the wall promoting a new yoga wear line Peaches sold in the Tranquility Wellness shop. I pushed back my stick-straight auburn hair, pretending it didn’t look like a big grease pit. Though in the back of my head, I knew from the long day of walking and sweating that I didn’t look as fresh as Lucy.
“Last rose of summer,” I moaned as I tried to sink deeper into the pose Peaches was telling everyone to do.
“What?” Iris asked, staring forward.
“Nothing.” I looked down at my wobbling thighs, begging them not to collapse under me. Then I made the mistake of using my peripheral vision to see Lucy Drake, stiff and holding her pose as though she was a goddess statue.
I bet a big old juicy hamburger and large fry from supper last night wasn’t sitting in her gut like a big brick like it was mine. Her stomach was nice and flat. Everything about her wanted me to snarl and gnash my teeth. Her good looks, her popularity from hosting her own morning radio show on WSCG, our local station, and now that she’d snagged Mac Tabor, the most eligible bachelor in Sugar Creek Gap, it was hard not to be envious of her.
Which made me wonder what Mac Tabor had seen in me. We dated for about a year before I had some sort of brain fart, thinking I wasn’t in love with him after he asked me to marry him. Well, sort of. He’d sprung it on me like a big surprise. I didn’t like surprises.
We were moving right along. Doing just fine as we enjoyed each other’s company and wham! He wanted more. More than I could give.
I’d just moved into the new house I’d inherited from one of my mail route clients and gotten a new dog to add to my already ornery cat. I’d left the only house I’d ever known and loved by giving it to Grady and Julia so they could raise Clara and give me a whole bunch more grandbabies. That was stress.
Also, I’d found a couple of dead bodies in the past couple of years, and that didn’t even add to the stress in my life. Sweet Clara’s early arrival to the world was the biggest worry I had, so Mac had decided it was the perfect time to pile on me this whole notion of moving in and getting hitched when I was just fine with the companionship we’d been sharing.
To make matters even worse, Mac had been my deceased husband’s best friend and around me all my life. Not that dating Mac made me worry about what Richard would’ve thought because, truth be told, Richard had cheated on me our entire marriage, which I didn’t find out until ten years after he was killed in a car wreck, and this woman had shown up in Sugar Creek Gap.
Talk about a life changer.
Still.
Here I was, trying to hold a reverse warrior pose while Lucy Drake looked like a Zen queen.
Too bad she wasn’t next to me, I might’ve lost my balance and knocked her over.
“You know you’re not so subtle.” Iris eyeballed me from underneath her long curly brown and somewhat gray hair.
“You look like you were in a windstorm.” I couldn’t help but point out how her fancy bun she’d so desperately tried to create on top of her head had fallen with each pose.
“Ha. Ha.” She smiled and went back to reverse warrior.
“Back to warrior two.” Peaches began to guide us back to standing, where we finally made it to the floor flat on our backs. “Close your eyes and place one hand on your heart while the other rests on your stomach.”
Now, this was a pose I could get into.
“Inhale a long deep breath through the nose, then gently, in one long steady stream, release it out of the mouth while letting your eyes gently close.” This was the part where Peaches walked around and placed a blanket over us. “Let your mind wander. Let your thoughts come and go without putting any sort of detail into them.”