Tuesdays at 2
By Daphne Morgen, Oakland, California, U.S.
His girlfriend tells me, “The yoga mat is set up, he has blocks and a cushion and a strap. He’s just getting his yogalicious pants on.”
She leaves the room, and I watch myself in the Facetime video on my computer screen. I step back, adjusting my mat and checking my notes, handwritten on a piece of paper beside me.
I see my dad enter the screen wearing his grey jogging pants and a long sleeve shirt, and he smiles when he sees my face on his computer.
“How are you?” I ask.
He pauses and nods his head, “Good, but stiff. My neck hurts, I’ve been sleeping a lot.”
I observe his posture as he sits cross-legged on his yoga mat, stooped and slightly leaning to his right. My dad was the epitome of strength and health growing up. We used to hike in the hills of Northern California; I remember as a little girl he would race me up to the top. When I became a competitive cross country runner, he would take me to the trail the week before a race, and we would run it together, noting the areas where I’d need to pace myself, the turns and corners to speed up at, or be cautious of.
“Let’s take a big inhale, and a deep exhale,” I tell him, as we breathe in together.
I lead him through a series of poses, some that he is able to do, and others that I have to abandon and quickly modify. After 30 minutes, we return to our seats, and I ask him how he feels.
He tells me, “Good, better, more relaxed.” I can see that he is smiling, which is hard to see on a face that does not allow his muscles to show emotion. But I hear his smile. I recall a moment, one of my earliest memories, sitting with him at our home in Canada, at the kitchen table.
“When I grow up, I just want to marry you,” I told him. He laughed and kissed me on the cheek, and I thought to myself, “He is my best friend.”
We meet online every Tuesday at 2 pm to practice yoga together and check-in. It’s bittersweet, as it always is. My deep love for him mixed with the pain of seeing the latest Parkinson’s symptoms. We sit silently looking at one another’s face, smiling inwardly and knowing, both trusting, our love.