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there?” Bex asked.
    I nodded. She was always there.
    Bex grabbed one hand, Shadow the other, and we ran toward Surf Avenue, dodging the livery cabs that sped past at all hours of the night and zigzagging through the pervy drunks who milled in and out of the seedy bars. At the old wooden boardwalk ramp near the Wonder Wheel, we ignored the Park Closed sign and rushed to greet the Atlantic Ocean. I took in a greedy breath of salty air and anticipated the relief. The beach would fix everything.
    As I predicted, we found my mother sitting cross-legged on the sand, her flip-flops tossed nearby and her hair tied back with a band. She was a beautiful Buddha, hypnotically gorgeous with olive skin, full lips, and eyes both blue and smoky. Her body, like mine, was tall, long-legged, and hippy like a belly dancer’s, but she didn’t have an ounce of the insecurities that plagued me. She loved her body and it showed. Another’s perceived flaw was her dazzling asset, and thus she was the cause of much rubbernecking in our neighborhood. People fell in love with her at first sight. Even her walk, a danceable jig that made small children giggle, transcended goofy into oddly seductive.
    â€œCan you sign for this package?” Shadow asked.
    My mother frowned. “Your father would have a contraption if he knew you were out this late,” she said.
    â€œIt’s a
conniption,
Mom,” I said.
    The group chuckled.
    â€œI’m always messing up words,” she apologized. “Migraine?”
    I nodded. “Probably an F3.”
    â€œOh. Well, sit down.”
    My mom looked to Bex. “Can you all get home safely?”
    â€œWe could if that was where we were going,” Bex replied with a wink. She pulled her phone from her pocket and sorted through texts, stopping on one that produced a mischievous grin. “There’s a party at Samuel Lir’s house. His parents are in the city at a play. You game?”
    â€œI am,” Shadow said dutifully.
    â€œDon’t wreck his house!” my mother called after them. “His dad is a friend!”
    Bex blew me a kiss. “Feel better.”
    Shadow reached into his pocket and waved his phone. “We’ll post pics.”
    When they were gone, I plopped down next to my mother and leaned back, allowing the water’s roar to blow through my hair. The sky was clear, the ocean an inky black canvas brush-stroked with yellow moonlight.
    â€œI’m ready,” I said as I crossed my legs and pressed my hands together in Anjali Mudra.
    â€œYou are not ready.” She rolled her shoulders and then her neck. “You have to be
here
to practice.”
    â€œI’m here.”
    â€œYou are not here.”
    I growled. Sometimes her Zen was intolerable, especially when my need for relief was so urgent, but she was the expert and there was no arguing with her. At the time she taught meditation and yoga classes on the beach and had dozens of clients, some of whom traveled all the way from the Upper East Side, an hour-and-a-half subway ride, to take her fifty-minute class. She knew her way around the
om,
so I surrendered to her wisdom and clamped my eyes shut. I inhaled deeply and followed her instructions, imagining the air flowing into my limbs, my diaphragm, and my pelvis. I directed it into my belly and guided it down my legs and into my toes until my breath and body were one and the same. Soon I felt a tap on my shoulder.
    â€œNow you’re here.”
    And I was. We got on our hands and knees and pressed the tops of our feet into the damp sand. I eased into the child’s pose and, oh man, that felt good. To this day yoga on the beach is the best medicine for my migraines, better than teas or aspirin or acupuncture. Even better than the Novocain injections I got when I knocked my front teeth out the day I fell off my bike on the Marine Parkway Bridge. Each new pose—the downward dog, the mountain, the pigeon—sent me