Christmas in Asheville

It wouldn't be Christmas in Asheville, it seems, if we didn't find ourselves herding chickens.

The same chickens, in fact, who had survived Audrey's hunting expedition in September. It was, without a doubt, our duty to see them safely home, both as a matter of holiday good will and because we still feel kind of guilty about the whole Audrey-catches-a-chicken thing.

Fittingly enough, Christmas kicked off with an invitation from the chickens' owner.

It was the 22nd, a Saturday, and she really issued the invitation to our housekeeper. I saw the two of them chatting in front of the house and thought it was nice that a Spanish-speaking neighbor would take the time to chat with our shy, non-English-speaking housekeeper.

Then she turned to me and Hubby. Her tenant, she explained, missed his home in Mexico and was anxious to meet some neighbors. Now. At this moment on a darkening Saturday afternoon before Christmas.

She was quite insistent.

I explained that I had to take our housekeeper home, and the chicken-neighbor assured me our housekeeper had already accepted her invitation. It kind of surprised me to hear this, but I thought maybe our housekeeper knew the chicken-neighbor. And it wasn't like I had anywhere I absolutely had to be.

So off we trooped, Hubby with The Boy in front, our housekeeper walking uncertainly behind them, and me taking up the rear, so as to be respectful of the housekeeper, who seemed as unclear about what we were heading into as we were.

A man we took to be the tenant from Mexico stood on the front porch with another man, smoking cigarettes and speaking in hushed, relaxed voices. They stopped talking and watched with mild interest as we straggled through the front gate.

Hubby turned to me. "Are we sure this is the right house?" he asked.

My response was not as positive as it might have been.

The man we took to be the tenant from Mexico finally asked if we were friends of the chicken-neighbor. He seemed quite unaware of his anxiety to meet some neighbors.

We made our way inside to find a polite but lost-looking college student seated at a table set with ham and a small cooked chicken. Awkwardness ensued.

I looked out the propped open back door onto the screened porch and admired the chickens peeking inside at me.

I asked if the cooked chicken on the table had once resided in the yard. Our chicken-neighbor assured me it had not.

Hubby and the housekeeper ate some of the store-bought chicken and some ham and some pecan pie.

At some point, our housekeeper gave me the nod, and we wished everyone a happy holiday and set out to continue ours. In the car on the way to her house I asked if she knew the chicken-neighbor. She told me she didn't. I told her I didn't really either and felt released from any responsibility.

Hubby and I failed to return the chicken-neighbor's invitation the next day when other neighbors came by to share The Boy's first birthday cake. No doubt it would have been the neighborly thing for us to do, but I think we were both still a little bit shaken by the awkwardness.

And, really, chickens were the last thing on our mind as we watched The Boy open the first of his gifts on Christmas eve. My mind, in fact, was taken up with a horrifying realization. Both of the gifts we gave him to open were from his aunts -- a tradition Hubby wanted to carry on from his childhood. And both of the presents required assembly.

This fact alone is not a cause for terror. We'd have plenty of time to put them together on Christmas Day, after all.

This year.

But in a flash I saw The Boy at two years old, when he would not calmly examine the box with the toy that required assembly and look at us with a perfectly happy four-and-a-half tooth smile and drool on his chin. Instead, he would scream as Hubby and I, hands shaking from the pressure, struggled to understand the instructional pictures that have now replaced any attempts to explain in clear English how to assemble a toy but have failed to make it any easier. Plainly, Hubby and I agreed, we would have to budget pre-Christmas time for gift assembly in the future.

And therein lay the horror. Exhausted from the effort of buying and wrapping gifts for an expanding family and a child with the bad luck to be born on December 23, I tried to imagine how -- where on earth -- I will find the time next year to also assemble gifts. Of course, I knew. Gone will be Mommy's time for sleep. Which should make for an especially pleasurable holiday season.

This year, however, was proving most pleasant. It was Christmas afternoon, The Boy was upstairs snoozing away the overwhelming fact of three straight days of gifts, and Hubby and I were enjoying the quiet of a house with a sleeping baby.

Then Audrey broke the silence with a strangled cry of excitement and frustration. Across the street, the chickens were taking a stroll down the block.

Our first instinct was to take pictures.

After a few minutes I asked Hubby if it wouldn't be the neighborly thing to put them back in their yard.

"Can you herd chickens?" he asked, quite reasonably.

I recalled how our next door neighbor had rounded the corner of our house with the chicken Audrey caught wrapped gently in her tee-shirt. The chicken had seemed calm and not inclined to peck. After all, I told myself, they let someone reach underneath them to take their eggs. Surely I could just sidle up to them, one by one, scoop them up, and deposit them in the hen house.

Except that, up close, these chickens were really big. Exceptionally beautiful, I noted, as I admired the fluff of feathers above their talons and the way the black and brown melted together over their sharp beaks. Surely holiday samaritanism didn't extend to being pecked and clawed by angry chickens whose walk I was interrupting.

Yet, bravely, I crept closer.

One of the chickens made a run for it. "No!" I yelled, shooing it back onto someone's front lawn. "Don't go in the street!" If that chicken found itself under a car's tire on my watch, I thought, I would forever be branded a chicken killer or, at least, very bad luck for any chickens who happen to cross my path.

Hubby ran ahead to do some reconnaissance. There was an open gate, he said, but could we be sure that was how the chickens had escaped?

We couldn't, but there is only so much one can be expected to do when a neighbor's chickens are taking a Christmas walk through the neighborhood.

So I herded them.

Maybe it's a skill I've picked up in four months of country living. Maybe it was simply ingenuity borne of necessity. Maybe the city girl in me hates to back down.

But I managed to get the chickens to the side yard, where Hubby waited with his hand on the open gate.

"Go home," I said sternly, as one might to a vicious looking dog who you just know will be obedient enough to take your order to heart if only you sound serious enough and wish it to be the case hard enough.

The chickens pretended not to understand.

I made as if to pick one up. I can't say if I would have -- if, say, I would have actually touched it had the chicken called me on my game of chicken. Luckily, it blinked first and ran for the safety of the yard.

And with that example set, it wasn't too hard to convince the others that bolting for the yard was a great idea. They are, after all, chickens, who I understand are not particularly original thinkers.

As for us, Hubby and I felt a little bit less ashamed about all the presents we and The Boy had received from other lovely neighbors over the past few days. Birthday and Christmas gifts for The Boy, cookies and party invitations for us. Just when you think you know how well you picked your new home, you find out the neighbors are even more neighborly than you had imagined.

Hubby and I may not have bought gifts for the other kids on the block, and we still haven't delivered holiday cards because we disagree about the name of one neighbor and want to make sure we get it right before we drop off any of the cards and, besides, now I have to write thank you notes as well. We may, in short, have been unprepared for just how generous the people living around one can be. But at least by herding the chickens home we contributed our little bit of kindness to Christmas on our block.

Birthday Boy

Having a baby is, in some ways, like conducting a controlled experiment testing your unfounded beliefs about cause and effect in your own life.

Like my certainty that sleeping eight hours a night makes me smarter. (Or the corollary that having a baby has made me much, much stupider.) Or my faith that the more I practice yoga the more good things will happen to me. (Hey, it introduced me to Hubby, and I'm sure hoping my Asheville yoga classes bring some focus to an otherwise meandering life. Which leads me to feel quite certain that I will lose my way forever and spend the rest of my life searching for some shred of meaning to my sad existence because I have to miss a week of yoga while The Boy's school is closed for the holidays.)

Yesterday I received a damaging confirmation of my unfounded belief that a bit of indulgence, however deserved, is simply not without consequences.

Curse ye fates! For when is indulgence more deserved than on one's first birthday? When should one expect consequence-free pointless pleasure? If not on one's first birthday, then never??? The thought is too sad to contemplate.

Not that The Boy exactly leads a life of asceticism. Still, when a body is that young and unsullied, parents like me and Hubby tend to obsess over every perceived pollutant -- from the fears of off-gassing that led us to buy an unfinished crib that we got rid of a month later when it turned out to pose a strangulation threat, to our fear of medication that faded greatly once we realized that a simple dose of Tylenol will actually make a teething or feverish or ear-infection-afflicted boy feel much, much better, to our insistence on all-natural house cleaning products except when the chemical ones work a lot better.

For all these reasons, and probably a few more too embarrassing to admit, The Boy approached his first birthday without ever having experienced first-hand the dubious pleasures of wheat and dairy.

In this case, our parental craziness was not without foundation. Among the other joys of breastfeeding The Boy and I shared was the discovery that he had more than a few food allergies -- dairy among them. We never tested wheat because I don't eat it myself, as I have what I like to call a "sensitivity" to it which doubtless belongs above on my list of unfounded beliefs about cause and effect in my life.

Still, Hubby has the dreaded peanut allergy, and it's hereditary, so in this case, I am allowed to harbor crazy fears about food on behalf of The Boy.

But a first birthday is a first birthday, and cake and ice cream were a must. So we invited some neighbors to join us in some afternoon cake eating, and, in the meantime, did the other things that make first birthdays so special.

Like first birthday presents. The Boy chose just one to open in the morning -- a little piano with real keys that make sounds whether you bang them with your fingers or with the little plastic German boy you like to carry around in your mouth or with the wooden blocks your grandmother gave you.

Small toy pianos are also good for hoisting yourself up to standing, an increasingly favored activity that suggests walking is right around the corner. (An event to await breathlessly or one to dread as one spots all the dangers lurking in the house? Discuss.) And when you really get warmed up, you can bang a few times, pull yourself up, and warble away. The Boy, in short, was thrilled with his first birthday gift.

By the time he had figured out how to pull the top off the piano (not a deliberate design feature) the morning rain had cleared up and a perfectly gorgeous, un-December-like day had begun. So, post-nap, we loaded The Boy in the car for a walk in the nearby Botanical Gardens on the UNC Asheville campus.

Actually, even if it had been pouring rain, we would have found an excuse to put The Boy in the car. Because there is one event that accompanies turning a year old that is even more magnificent, of even great importance, perhaps the most exciting thing ever and even better than cake and ice cream.

Turning the car seat around to face forward.

The Boy found this new situation a hoot. He laughed all the way to the botanical gardens. He grinned and clapped and kicked his feet. We wondered if we shouldn't have waited to turn around his car seat until our next ten-hour drive to St. Louis in the spring.

We returned from the botanical gardens with time to open another gift before our cake-eating neighbors arrived.

This one, from Grandma, was a wooden box, full of beautiful wooden blocks, with wheels and a string for pulling. The Boy grabbed the blocks faster than I could put them back in the box in a losing effort to keep them out of the reach of dogs' teeth. So far all are still accounted for, but it's only been a day and the dogs have been out in the yard a lot.

With neighbors came yet more gifts -- a set of construction trucks with the wheels that are a current source of fascination and a musical thing that talks a lot and flashes lights and I haven't figured out. The Boy likes it a lot. I don't think I will for long.

And then there we were, with our new neighbors sharing a glass of wine (with us) and cake (with The Boy). We sure wouldn't be doing this in Long Beach.

The Boy approached the piece of cake Hubby placed on his high chair tray cautiously, as is his nature. A little pinch of cake, another little pinch.

And then he figured it out. Cake is to be eaten by holding great huge pieces and shoving them as far in your mouth as they can go.

Inexplicably, we have no pictures of this joy. We decided it was high time we figure out how to use the video camera I bought Hubby for Father's Day. It has snippets of The Boy at six and seven months that I like to play back for myself from time to time, but the technological challenge of putting them on line for others to enjoy has stymied me. Maybe if Audrey hadn't chewed the necessary USB cable two months ago I'd be more motivated. Or maybe I ought to be more motivated to buy a new USB cable. At any rate, if you want to see The Boy eating birthday cake, you will have to either come visit and view it on the video camera or buy us a new USB cable or wait until his second birthday.

Also inexplicably, we gave The Boy as much ice cream as he wanted. I do not know why it occurred to neither of us to stop after the first bowl. Indulgence is one thing when you can chide yourself with your own stupidity as you find yourself huddled in a cold bathroom at 3:30 in the morning wishing like you've never wished for anything before that you could be back in your own bed sleeping.

The only immediate effect of the cake and ice cream was a sugar rush of which I've never seen the likes before. If The Boy could walk, he would have run laps around the house. As it was, he repeatedly threw himself at one of our neighbors, demanding that she pick him up, then, with a screech of delight, threw himself back at the floor so he could crawl after her and once again grab at her legs and haul himself up to ask to be picked up again. Luckily, her own children are grown and she doesn't have a grandchild handy so she was more than happy to help The Boy out.

And MORE gifts to open after the guests left and before the sugar high wore off. The Boy banged his piano impatiently while Hubby assembled the wooden walker. The second the handle was secure, he grabbed it with both hands, stood, and pushed it out of the living room and into the foyer.

This act would not seem so remarkable if The Boy knew how to walk.

Apparently, he realized that he can not, in fact, walk after he pushed the walker into the front door. At this point, he opted to crawl it back to the living room, a reasonably impressive feat, but not one worth videotaping.

By the time we made it through the animal book with the prominent basset hound puppy and the magnetic animals he might or might not recognize as resembling his bath toys and therefore as being related to the funny sounds Mommy and Daddy make with them when he's in the bath and the electronic drum that is just as annoying when you elect the Spanish option he was too tired to see straight.

So we gave him a birthday bath and he fell asleep drinking his birthday bottle.

Which would be a lovely end to the story of the Birthday Boy. But then there'd be no moral. Not that I need a moral. A wonderful, fun, sunny first birthday is all I need, and I'll speak for The Boy on that as well.

But ice cream and cake, it seems, can hurt one's tummy come nine thirty. And sleeping with Mommy when one's tummy is hurting and one has spotted Daddy saying goodnight before heading for the day bed in the office is not much fun come eleven o'clock. Especially when Mommy's chest is kind of bony and uncomfortable and she is not bright enough to figure out that those screams are borne of rage, not pain, and all you really want is your Daddy.

Or maybe she's just tired and warm in the bed and a little bit offended that she's not good enough for you and therefore pretends not to know what you really want for five or ten minutes.

Ultimately, The Boy spent the night of his first birthday sleeping it off with Daddy while I was the one on the day bed in the office. Which I guess is only fair, since a year ago he'd spent an awful lot of time sleeping close to me.

Besides, it turns out one can get a pretty good night's sleep on the day bed in the office where no babies are kicking you and no husbands are snoring and you can sleep off your own over-indulgence in ice cream and, yes, cake. Because occasionally ignoring your own unfounded beliefs about your "sensitivity" to wheat doesn't mean you can't go right back to them the very next day.

The Gift of the (Aunt) Mary

When The Boy's Aunt Mary met him for the first time, she gave him a lovely blanket she had knit, adorned with stripes of orange and tan and green, just the right size for a baby boy. "His cousin says it's so bright it'll wake him up," she laughed, but The Boy slept quite cozily beneath it.

He was six weeks old then, and by six months, the blanket had become a staple of our lives. If it was a tad chilly during our morning walk on the beach, I tucked the blanket around him in the stroller; his chin shone baby-skin white against it and he looked warm and safe. If he fell asleep in his car seat while Hubby and I grabbed a quiet lunch out, he snoozed beneath it, the stripes wrapping him securely. We went nowhere without Aunt Mary's blanket.

When The Boy and I flew to our new home in Asheville, Aunt Mary's blanket was peeking out of his overstuffed diaper bag. When we explored our new neighborhood, it lay in the basket under the stroller. The Boy grew, and Aunt Mary's blanket settled into lap rug status, still perfect to keep him warm on mountain fall mornings in his miniature fisherman's sweater and wool stocking cap with the football stitched on the brim.

And then Aunt Mary's blanket disappeared.

"Have you seen Aunt Mary's blanket?" I asked Hubby one morning. I was slightly crazed, as I often am when we are trying to leave the house on a cold morning. A few minutes ticks into several minutes, which inevitably become fifteen or twenty as I corral and layer a crawling boy, put on and remove my own gloves ten or twelve times to snap snaps and guide small thumbs inside tiny mittens and pull socks up and pants legs down.

"Nope," Hubby answered. He doesn't sweat going outside in cold weather the way I do. As long as The Boy is wearing a hat, Hubby figures he'll stay reasonably warm.

"He needs something over his legs," I moaned. Although the days here tend to reach bearable temperatures, the mornings can be bitter. Our morning walks to the park, where Hubby throws a tennis ball for the girls and The Boy and I huddle together pretending to enjoy the spectacle, were often nothing more than stubbornness on my part. "I can survive another real winter. I think I can, I think I can . . ."

"The blanket my cousin made him will be fine," Hubby said. His voice carried a note of decisiveness with which I vehemently disagreed.

I became even more certain that The Boy could not do without Aunt Mary's blanket when Hubby returned downstairs with the replacement blanket. It was flannel, not knit. It was a serene green, not bright slashes of color. It was bigger than lap rug size. It would not do at all.

Still, I said nothing. Sometimes it is best to let your partner do some parenting, even if he's wrong.

You'd think the sight of The Boy awkwardly wrapped in a green flannel blanket would have inspired me to find Aunt Mary's blanket, but it didn't. Apparently I was too busy searching for my own lost life.

And so the weeks passed. An unseasonably warm spell was met with relief, as The Boy could be strolled to school blanket-less. Cold days became an occasion for unearthing the sweet collection of blankets in which we used to swaddle The Boy, back in the days when he could be swaddled and leaving the house was not cause for fear of frostbite. And still, Aunt Mary's blanket remained mysteriously absent.

Hubby and I wondered again about it this weekend.

We had taken a drive to Maggie Valley as The Boy napped in the back seat. Maggie Valley, it turned out, had little to offer a family out for a Sunday excursion. If we had been looking to rent a room in a motor hotel where we could sit in a hot tub next to a running stream, we were in the right place, at least according to the hopeful advertisements outside a surprising number of motels adorning the main road. The stream, apparently, dipped and turned to accommodate the maximum number of hot tubs.

Alas, we were looking for nothing more than a cozy meal and perhaps the chance to purchase those last few holiday gifts. Maggie Valley offered nothing to meet these needs.

Eager to extend The Boy's nap, we kept driving, out of Maggie Valley, down the road to the ski slopes and the Cherokee casino.

I noted with some vague interest the snow dusting the sides of the road. Mostly, I was glad it was here, and not on the side of my road at home.

Then I looked through the windshield and saw the same fine white dust dashing horizontally across my line of vision. My line of vision isn't the best -- the only way I can tell it's raining short of getting wet is to examine puddles for ripples of raindrops because I am absolutely incapable of seeing precipitation falling from the sky -- so I figured if I could see the snow there was more than a little bit of it.

The car slid on the icy road.

"It says 'last exit before Parkway,'" I said hopefully as I pointed at a sign on the side of the road.

"Do you want to try the Parkway?" Hubby asked.

Hmm. Higher elevation, windier, narrower road. The Parkway did not seem the wisest solution.

"It's kind of windy," I allowed.

Hubby must have found the weather conditions more than a little worrisome, because he turned the car around and drove back through Maggie Valley instead of wending his way through new, no more interesting but at least undiscovered, towns.

We stopped for lunch in Waynesville, which we had visited before, but which we knew would at least offer food and warmth. And as we wandered Main Street after lunch, we wrapped our arms around The Boy to keep him warm because we lacked Aunt Mary's blanket.

We came home in the afternoon with one more short outing on our list -- a visit to the music store around the corner from our house where we hoped to find a gift for our musically inclined nephew.

Hubby grabbed The Boy and I grabbed myself. We dashed through a cutting wind to the store, quickly discovered nothing there, and walked back in a lull between gusts of wind.

Hubby let out a gasp.

There on the sidewalk, covered in leaves and the dampness of more than one rainfall, was Aunt Mary's blanket.

"Maybe I dropped it on the way to the bagel shop one morning," Hubby laughed.

"I'll bet it fell out of the stroller when we walked to Greenlife," I said, certain now that I remembered exactly when it had happened.

Aunt Mary's blanket is washed now and almost dry and ready to use.

But why the Gift of the Magi reference? What made me immediately think of that story when I first saw the blanket, its fall colors poking out of the faded fall leaves? What, in short, is the irony in the return of Aunt Mary's gift? (What makes the hair combs useless because the wife has cut her hair to buy a chain for the watch her husband sold to buy her the combs? for those of you a bit vague in the classic literature department.)

Well, I thought hopefully, maybe the irony is that although we found Aunt Mary's blanket there will be no more need for it because the winter will continue to be uncharacteristically warm and I will make it to spring without ever once having to wear the Timberland boots I bought in college for the deep, cold Providence snowfalls.

To the contrary, the irony, it turns out, is that -- far from my fantasy of endless warm days being fulfilled -- a light snow fell that night, dusting the ground of our front yard. It looked just like the dusting of snow on the road outside Maggie Valley.

I Visit a Pawn Shop

For most of my life, pawn shops have been a sort of fictional abstraction. They are, to my mind, the places where seedy criminals in police procedurals go to sell stolen watches and down-on-their-luck sad sacks shakily forfeit their wedding rings for a hit of heroin. Or, in earlier, G-rated memories, the places frequented by Andy Capp. Since I was about seven years old when last I read an Andy Capp comic, I didn't understand that he was both seedy and down-on-his-luck and that a comic strip about an alcoholic actually isn't a very funny thing at all.

I imagine in more recent years I've seen real pawn shops -- perhaps driving through a part of L.A. I only ever drove through to get to Dodger Stadium or the Disney Concert Hall. But I surely don't recall getting close enough to, say, look in the window. Even when my apartment at 92nd and Riverside in Manhattan was not considered prime real estate, I'm pretty certain there were no pawn shops nearby. (Off Track Betting, on the other hand, was a mere three-minute walk from my front door.)

But now I live in Asheville. And not only do I live half a mile from a pawn shop, I have, as of last Saturday, been in one.

Before you form your opinion of my neighborhood, I must explain that -- the presence of both a Wendy's and a McDonald's within a quarter mile of each other notwithstanding -- we are at least upscale enough that the store does not call itself a pawn shop. No indeed. It is a consignment store.

I am happily familiar with consignment stores. Consignment stores are where I sell the turtlenecks I received two Christmases ago. A consignment store played a large and cathartic role in my abandonment of a promising career as a law school professor, and I'm sure there are some happy professionals wearing my hip teacher clothes somewhere. Better them than me.

No, when we first arrived here, I was far less troubled by the consignment store with the collection of bicycles in front and the amps in the window than I was by the bleached strip malls up the block. And the aforementioned Wendy's. And the general clutter of nondescript buildings and the sorts of store signs one usually sees in deeply depressed economies that line the main thoroughfare by our house.

I arrived here, you see, straight off the pleasures of Second Street in the Belmont Shores neighborhood of Long Beach. Daily -- or close to it -- I meandered half a mile past well kept beach homes to a stretch of shops and restaurants and happy pedestrians smiling in the sea breeze. Second Street had its share of dusty old stores like Herman's Shoes and the American Cancer Society Thrift Shop. But, surrounded by Peet's Coffee and Banana Republic and Taco Surf, they were funky, not sad.

I failed to find similar charms on my first few walks up Merrimon Avenue last August. Narrow sidewalks dumped me and The Boy's stroller practically into the stream of traffic. My legs protested the hills and the heat. I felt alone and stupid strolling down a sidewalk plainly made, not for strolling, but to provide a small buffer zone between the parking lots fronting the stores and the traffic speeding its way past.

I cried for Second Street. I longed for some remote plausibility to the rumors of zoning plans designed to make Merrimon Avenue more pedestrian-friendly (wider sidewalks, parking lots relegated to the backs of the stores). I imagined myself five years from now enjoying my daily walks in Asheville so much that I no longer missed the smell of the ocean. And I despaired of walking anywhere in the present.

And yet. Slowly, my gluteus maximus adjusted to walking uphill. Hubby discovered some lovely side streets that led more pleasantly to Atlanta Bread Company and the Children's Trading Post. Urban Burrito soothed my ache for Wahoo's Fish Tacos and provided me with a good reason to venture into the bleached strip mall and discover it wasn't such a scary place after all.

These days I don't even notice the Wendy's. I know that jewel upon jewel lies nestled among those nondescript Merrimon buildings: Jus' Running with the owner who pooh-poohed my claim that running destroyed my knees because "you're so slight you shouldn't have any problems with your knees" and thus secured him a place in my heart forever; The Wine Guy, who turns out to be a gal, although she can't be expected to carry Two Buck Chuck; The Toy Box, where they let The Boy play with the wooden train set for as long as he likes without ever pushing me to buy anything (rest assured, however, that my Christmas expedition has paid for a year's worth of playing with the train set). I don't even mind knowing that I will never live a few blocks from a pedestrian thoroughfare lined with elms and charming storefronts.

I am, in short, ready for the neighborhood pawn shop.

It was Hubby's idea. Frankly, I was at the point where I didn't even see it as I walked by. It is located on the downward slope of the walk home, just before we veer left through the park. It has its own front walk, separated from the sidewalk by a set of stairs and a reason to walk up them -- a reason not provided for me by the fast-food restaurant next door. I don't have a burning desire to buy a used bike and I don't like fluorescent lights. Don't even get me started on what my mother would have said if I had told her, growing up, that I would like to visit a pawn shop. On my own, I was plainly on a path that would never take me to one.

But Hubby does have a burning desire to buy a used bike. Many used bikes. I am truly not certain how many used bikes Hubby has purchased because: a) he tends to pull them up on Craig's List to admire them far more often than he actually buys them; and b) when he does buy them he takes them apart and reassembles them into new Frankenstein-like vehicles of his own design.

So there we were, out for a stroll on a Saturday afternoon, approaching the pawn shop. And Hubby's eyes lit up.

I could have refused to accompany him, remained a perfectly content pawn shop virgin for the rest of my life. But it is the holiday season. Besides, he had control of the stroller with my baby boy inside. So I followed him through the not-so-menacing doors.

We were greeted warmly when we entered the store. I fooled myself into believing I might look like someone who is perfectly comfortable in a pawn shop.

Assuming an air of interest, I wandered among the keyboards and drum sets, looking them over as if deciding which one best suited my needs. Unfortunately, as I am not in fact accustomed to wandering among keyboards and drum sets, my shoulder glanced what sounded like a snare drum, and I felt all eyes turn to me.

Trying for all the world to look like it was no big deal, I steadied the drum and turned, just at the right angle to bang my knee against a guitar. It is not a given that I would have caught it, so I counted myself doing very well when I did.

Shuffling my way out of the music section and telling myself I wouldn't have to return until The Boy one day demands his own drum set, I looked around hopefully for gift ideas.

The remote control trucks were actually kind of neat. But until the mortgage catches up with us, I'm not ready to wrap battered used boxes with heartily handled toys for my beloved eleven-month-old. Hubby eyed the leather jackets longingly, but I just couldn't see him wearing a leather jacket someone else once wore. Or a leather jacket at all, but don't tell him I said that.

And the rest was the kind of stuff I might find shopping for empowering under different circumstances. Power tools and dehumidifiers and shovels -- the sorts of things I used to borrow from the men in my neighborhood in St. Louis, when I was a single female homeowner and proud to own my own power drill, damn it.

Now, however, I sit with my baby in the front yard as my husband hangs the Christmas lights and cleans the gutters and rakes the leaves. It's not that I no longer remember how to use a power drill. It's just that I'm more likely to use it building a crib. And it is, after all, so easy to let Hubby do the stuff I don't like to do.

Which means a few things. It means I am a 41-year-old mother who does laundry while her husband tackles the manly chores. It means there is nothing wrong with putting aside the power tools for a stroller and a high chair and a beautiful baby boy. And, best of all, it means I will never have to visit a pawn shop again.

Yogini Again

Most people, I understand, will not be unduly disappointed if they are unable to wrap their feet behind their head.

Most people who know me know that is not the case where I am concerned.

Once upon a time, I lived in Los Angeles, a hotbed of uber-yoga, a place where classes constantly challenged me and no one looked askance when I wandered the aisles of Trader Joe's in stained yoga pants and hair dried into clumps from the sweat. I could take classes whenever I wanted -- no baby, frequently no job, no need to pay because I was an instructor.

Under these circumstances it becomes possible to devote one's life to following the path of yoga. Or at least the parts of the path that one can follow while still living a semi-normal, consumerist life with a sane, non-yoga-addicted spouse.

Ironically, my path led me to a life stripped of yoga classes.

First it was our move to Long Beach. I sampled a few studios and felt lost without the familiar comforts and challenges of the Center for Yoga on Larchmont. I did a little teaching in the ghettoized afternoons before the popular post-work class, but the connection just wasn't there. For a time I drove up to L.A. a couple of times a week for my mysore class, but everyone knows that yoga and L.A. freeways just don't mix.

Then there was the pregnancy. I put together a lovely little practice for myself. Alone. In a room so small I had to take care not to smash my face on the dresser as I bowed in my sun salutations.

Which was fine until it came time for the post-pregnancy yoga. Any new mother who has tried to get back to her yoga practice will recognize these popular offerings: The When Is There Ever Time??? yoga. The What Is That Blobby Thing Between My Swollen Breasts and My Varicose Vein-Covered Legs??? yoga. The I'm So Tired I Think I'll Take a Nap on the Yoga Mat yoga.

It's been eleven months now since I ignored all the medical advice to take it easy for a few weeks after birth and did a defiant bound twisted high lunge in the living room when my mother-in-law was visiting her two-week-old grandson. And while I now have a lovely large room in which to practice my yoga and a view of the trees outside the windows as I bow in my sun salutations and ceilings high enough that I can circle my arms and gather energy instead of bruised knuckles, my practice is not what it once was.

As I mentioned, I miss being able to put my feet behind my head.

Yes, I know the yogi thing to do would be to respect my body's limitations and their precious cause. And, to be perfectly clear, it was worth it. It was worth it. It was worth it.

But I miss that clarity of purpose that yoga brought to my life. I miss wanting to eat healthy foods because I can honestly feel the difference. I miss the certainty of following my heart because I know what my heart really wants.

Hubby tells me I need to go to yoga classes.

I answer that he is stoned if he thinks I have time for yoga classes.

He offers to juggle his schedule so he can watch The Boy while I go to yoga classes.

I say, "Mmhmm" and turn on Reno 911 because I know it will distract him.

I did try a few Asheville studios a few times.

On my birthday, soon after we arrived in Asheville, I went to an all levels yoga class at a cozy little studio in funky West Asheville. It was nice to hear music other than one of the three Krishna Das CD's I faithfully put on when I practice at home. And the teacher was a lovely person with whom I will, one day, I promised both her and myself, go to a meditation practice. (You think I need it??) But sore muscles were not had.

Last month I ventured to a class of something called anahata yoga. The teacher said some nice things about energy but I didn't have to summon a whole lot of it to make it through class.

My options, it seemed, were dwindling.

On a visit to Asheville a couple years ago I took a class at a very scary studio where overly tanned, too-thin, suburban-looking fifty-year-olds kicked my butt in shoulder stand and the teacher frightened Hubby by changing clothes in front of an office window under which Hubby and his brother were parked. I was not anxious to return.

Which left me with . . . only a studio close to me and promising some tough classes.

I begged off because they heat the classes to 80 degrees and I have low blood pressure and a tendency to faint in steam saunas. I moaned about their schedule and my limited time and the fact that I can no longer put my feet behind my head.

And yesterday I went to a class there.

I sweated. I shook. I did not faint.

Today I am taking my sore butt back and buying a one-month unlimited pass.

I have studied the schedule and underlined all the classes I might take in order to make a one-month unlimited pass an economical choice. Most of the classes I have underlined start at noon. This means that I sit unshowered doing a few hours of work in the morning, go to a yoga class during the heart of the day when normal people are eating lunch or plugging away at a juicy work project or doing something that does not involve getting sweaty and sore, and take a shower at two o'clock in the afternoon. And I can't remember why, a few days ago, such a schedule didn't make sense to me.

Which just proves how great this yoga studio is. Because plainly it has me back on the path, where my days are, naturally, structured around my yoga practice.