I Watched her walk past for the third time. Proprioception not an issue. Her left hip danced forward to the tune of the swing in her right leg. She had long, beautiful chestnut coloured hair. Of course she did. She was the girl from Ipanema.
Except we were in a field, in Henley, at a yoga festival.
Each time she passed I smiled at her and she smiled back.
Finally, I called out to her. I wasn't sure if she would be friendly, but I took the risk. She was friendly. I asked her about her walk. She said, brown eyes large with surprise,....:'' what walk...it is how I walk!! ''
I said it was sexy.
She stopped and looked at me. ''Darling'' she said, as she faced me, ''it comes from my womb'', ''it is the goddess in me''. She was very close, facing me, looking me in the eye. She was from overseas. English people don't stand that close and look you in the eye to see who you really are....not generally anyway.
''Darling'' she said....''you are a goddess''....she placed her hands on her lower abdomen, ''We are all goddesses''. She placed her hands on my lower abdomen. That's all I remember. Her words floated past but her meaning has stayed......I couldn't repeat what she said, but I knew what she meant by the very obvious lack of it in me....she felt her womb to be a nexus of sensual power and knowing, the seat of a royal lineage going back royal generation to royal generation......a place of wisdom and pleasure, a font of creation and all things loving, sexy and uniquely feminine....
Which it is....., of course!
I knew what she meant by the lack of those things in me.
True, thanks to lockdown my hair hung down my back too. Grey at the edges maybe, but due to some fluke of mid life hormone trickery, thick and bouncy. I had on a swanky coat. I had smudged my eyes in a attempt to make them look sultry.
Or so I thought.
But as the girl from Ipanema stood there, womb to womb, eye to eye with me - all I could feel was a small bloke called Ted looking out at her from where I stood.
I couldn't drum up that sensual knowing, the power of being women, that this young women oozed 'till the wet festival grass gleamed in response...
I had made humans. Three beautiful humans. But right then, I felt like a small bloke called Ted.
It wasn't the first time.
At a yoga workshop with the dynamic women of Womb Worship, Uma Dinsmore Tuli, I had introduced myself as the mother of three boys and amid all the goddesses in that room, the sound of my voice felt to me like the echo of masculinity, the reverberations that spoke to a lack of Goddess, of Womb Wisdom, of Divine Femininity....
I had left that workshop with Ted decidedly in tow, and Ted and I had met our wonderful (male) friend, lover of all things female, at a chichi wine bar. I am ashamed to say that two glasses in, this non drinker became rather honorary with the man at the next table. More in touch with his femininity than I, I judged him to be worthy of my bad behaviour and took pleasure in pointing out, as we left, that there was no 'th' in Hatha, 'Ha Ta' I said into his ear, 'Ha Ta'!
Such are the consequences of feeling like a small bloke called Ted;
In the absence of one's own female deliciousness, the missing tone of softness and world creating knowingness, one may feel honorary and sharp, like a small bloke called Ted on a cold and grey day.
I am hoping to see the girl from Ipanema at the festival again this year.
I am intending to expose my sad 'Ted' condition and express my desire to find my Inner Goddess.....
I will report on the success, or otherwise, thereof.