Just posing

Years ago, my mother-in-law bought us the most darling book, Babar's Yoga for Elephants.

Our favorite regal pachyderm takes up yoga positions to find peaceful moments in his busy life.

It is one of the dozens of books that sits on my son's shelf but one that he does occasionally pick out.

Some of the story line is long winded and he gets so bored, he asks to skip some pages. But what he lives for is the chance to try out yoga poses, as demonstrated by the elephant.

Mind you, he's not quite doing the complete Proud Warrior, but he likes to study the step-by-step poses that Babar demonstrates and he picks out a part of the sequence that he likes and does that.

For his age, I think that's probably sufficient.

What's doubly fun is that his other stuff animals - Mama Monkey and Baby Monkey - join us in the posing. We all take turns trying out corpse pose, or rotated triangle.

We had another fun night getting through the book. In the last section, Babar and Celeste perform their yoga in their worldly travels, by the MOMA, the Louvre, a Greek amphitheater.

There is a page showing the pair practicing cobra, face to face, in imitation of the Golden Gate bridge. It was our last pose of the night and my boy and I were going to try it. We laid on his rug, pushed up on our arms and stretched up our torsos. We looked at each other, happy to be there, happy to see the other one simultaneously posing.

It was a lovely moment of peace and harmony.