When the breath wanders the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still. One should learn to control the breath. --Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Alexis

The ease with which most people breathe never ceases to amaze me.

I lie here at night, and every night, when the dark blankets my room, it's a conscious effort just to maintain the simple pattern of in, out, in and out again. The knowledge that for the majority of humans this is a natural process is enough to make me give it up all together.

When I was small, Stefan would creep into my room at night after the lights had been extinguished. My lone window faced south, and even with the shades drawn, the light entering from the moon was minimal. Stefan knew it was always hardest for me to breathe when the darkness was thick and heavy. Which made nights difficult. On the island, there was no darkness that was not.

Stefan knew things about darkness. And, if he couldn't keep it at bay, at least he could help me breathe my way through it.

He slipped into my room silently, of course -- if he'd been found the consequences would have been immeasurable. I never asked him how he knew; it never occurred to me to ask. At the age of six, it never occurred to me that there was anything Stefan didn't know. That first night, when I was six and he was eight, we both lay on our backs in that dark room on that island that was so far beyond dark. For a long space, Stefan simply listened as I fought for every breath that passed my lips. Then, he took my hand and placed it on his abdomen, took his hand and placed it on mine. He began to breathe deeply, audibly, in and out, in and out, in and out. Slowly, slowly, I could feel myself falling into his rhythm, breathing with him simultaneously until we sounded like one person. And the smothering blanket that was night and darkness and fear and everything I didn't know I'd lost lifted, and I slept.

Until a night on the docks in a small town in upstate New York almost thirty years later, I would have sworn that the weight of my brother's hand against my stomach was my earliest memory.

I lie here now, miles and years away from that terrified child, and even though the moon is full, I still feel the night like an elephant against my chest. Only this time there is no one to keep the dark at bay or breathe for me or even hand me a paper bag. As precious as the memory of my mother's voice is, there are times when I regret the loss of my brother as my first protector.

I splay my hand against my own stomach hoping that it's lone weight will be enough. And, it is then that I realize that I'm not the only one breathing in this dark room. She floats beneath my fingers, and when I breathe, so does she. Only it isn't air that my daughter draws in, it is me.

In that instant of epiphany, of revelation, of love, the pattern is not, after all, so hard to maintain. In and out, in and out, in and out. Breathing suddenly becomes a thing I've always known how to do, a trick I think I've mastered. Because I can, after all, remember my mother's voice. Because my brother's blood runs in my veins and thus, in hers. Because never in all my years pursuing usefulness did I know a thing with such certainty as I know I want this child.

It's such a simple thing, I marvel, as I close my eyes. I still feel the weight of my own palm against my abdomen as it rises and falls, rises and falls. In, out, in, out. In and out.

Such a simple thing, after all.