Taken.

I was nearly kidnapped when I was five years old.

Yes.  True story.

The woman turned out to be a convicted felon who was caught trying to nab another five year old a few days after she attempted to swipe me.  They found that little girl huddled, whimpering, wearing a wig and strange clothes, in a department store dressing room.

Maybe that’s what she would have done to me.

It’s so easy to get lost, to get taken, if you’re not careful.

I was merely playing with my big sister in the hat section of Boscov’s, a small department store in central, rural Pennsylvania, where I grew up.  My sister and I loved trying on all the different, fancy, grown-up lady’s hats, adorned with feathers and sequins and bows.  We’d twirl our way over to the mirrors, talking in funny, lilting accents, pretending we were rich, famous, sophisticated, smoldering in our dressed-up wares.

My mother always stood close enough to hear us, far enough away to not really see us.  That afternoon, she was at the counter, paying for new pants.

When my sister was off at the mirror, and I was alone in the hat racks, a woman approached me and asked if I could help her.  Dutifully, cheerfully, I agreed.  She said she was shopping for her granddaughter and wanted to buy her a new winter coat, and I was about her granddaughter’s size, and would I be oh so helpful and kind and try on this here coat to see if it fit me?

I vividly remember putting that coat on.  It was pink and blue.  I can hear the sound of the zipper as she pulled it all the way up, to my nose.  The snap of the buttons across my chest almost hurt.  I can even feel the scratch of the hood that she yanked over my head and the tight, choking pull of the hood strings she tied snugly under my chin.

I remember thinking I’d miss seeing whatever hat my sister had just put on.

And then, she took my hand and started leading me down the store aisle, saying she wanted to show me how pretty I looked in this new coat and how she had another one in mind that she wanted me to try on.

I followed, uncertain, confused, barely seeing past the hood flopping into my eyes.

“Mom?  Someone’s taking Hannah,” I heard my sister call.

I was only five, and I have a laughably bad memory of certain patches of my childhood.

But this?

This I remember clearly—seeing the great, sunny span of windows and the front door of the store, gaping before me like an open mouth, ready to swallow me whole, and the aisle suddenly impossibly long and wide, and the woman tugging at my hand telling me to hurry, and the coat weighing hot and heavy on my small body, and hearing my mother shouting, “Hey! HEY!  What do you think you’re doing with my daughter?!”

They didn’t catch her then, because she let go of me and ran out the front door.

But, they did nab her a few days later, when she tried a similar stunt.

It’s so easy to get lost, to be taken, if you’re not careful.

I was lucky.  I was found, before I was lost.

I rarely think of this bizarre, little story.  But, last night, in my soggy yoga class, I thought of it when I said to myself: “Don’t get lost.  Stay put.”

It’s easy to wander off in a yoga class, especially one that lasts 90 minutes, involves intense heat, humidity, stretching, and discomfort.  The slightest distractions can become major diversions—that woman’s cough becomes a volcano and that man’s breathing becomes a hurricane.  The heat suddenly becomes a potential death threat.  The teacher’s voice becomes the scrape of a fork on your plate.

Your mind wonders.  You drift.  You forget your place, there, in the room, in the asana, in that one, still moment.

You are lost.

Lately, I’ve noticed my slow but substantial collapse in the floor series.  I struggle mightily during the spine strengthening sequence, and then, when I come out, it’s literally all I can do to last through those final 20-odd minutes.  I simply want to die.  Okay, maybe just throw in the towel.  But, still. It always feels so dramatic, so substantial and trying.  I give in, let go, and lose myself.

Last night, when I settled into the first, deliciously long two-minute savasana, I caught my eyes flicking across the ceiling, uncertain, wary, slightly panicked, and heard my jagged breathing and heartbeat.  A pause.  I suddenly remembered this story from my past, this almost kidnapping of that small self.

And I thought, urgently, encouragingly, ”Don’t let your mind grab your body.  Don’t let it steal you away. Don’t get lost.”

It wasn’t my sister who called out my name.  It wasn’t my mother who swooped in to save me.

This time, I clung to my self, with my own two hands, fiercely, lovingly, and then placed it in the good, safe keeping of my practice, my yoga, me.