no place like om

Ever wonder how a yoga retreat looks through the eyes of a child?

For years, family vacations meant DisneyWorld or other popular destinations with kid-friendly attractions. But I wanted my kids to have an authentic experience--without cartoon characters or plastic props--so I decided to take them to one of my favorite places: a yoga retreat center in New York's Catskill Mountains. I'd been to retreats before, but never with my children. I suspected that certain things I'd come to take for granted might seem a bit odd to the kids, but I figured I'd show them the ropes, and, I secretly hoped, turn them into little yogis.

The first indication that Mommy had misjudged became apparent when we came face-to-face with a large, detailed poster of the multi-armed god Shiva. "Is that real?" asked 7-year-old Eva, afraid to look up. "Well, you wouldn't see him walking down the street," I said. He was pretty bad, they thought, but that picture of the lady with the skull necklace (the goddess Kali) was even scarier. "We're not going to look," they informed me.

Normally when I travel with the kids, I explain where we're going and what it will be like. But how could I have known that for them, the yoga retreat would seem more foreign than Borneo or Bora Bora? Even if I had, what could I have done? While it's easy to find books like Susie Has Two Mommies, one is hard-pressed to find titles like Shiva Has 20 Arms.

The vacation got off to a shaky start. On the second night we were sitting outside when Eva, feeling cold, went back to the room for a sweater. I waited for her to return--five minutes, 10--but it was taking too long. So I went in to investigate and found her wandering the hall in tears. I dropped to my knees and held her, mystified. She blurted: "I thought our room was number 30, but all the rooms are number 30!" I looked up. Where room numbers should have been, each guest room door had a small, carved "Om" sign. Om did look like 30, I explained, but it is written in Sanskrit. She clung to me, sobbing into my T-shirt. "But Mommy, I don't speak Sanskrit."

The next day, I found the children on the lobby sofa, breathing strangely. "Are you guys doing yoga breathing?" I asked optimistically. Actually, they said, they were trying not to breathe. "We don't like that stinky smell," said 5-year-old Matthew. When I explained it was purifying sandalwood incense, Eva replied, "It smells like dog poop." And since they'd been lectured on the dangers of second-hand smoke, they thought it best to limit their exposure.

There were some positive moments, though. When Matthew saw a poster of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, he nearly fainted with joy. He'd watched every TV show on pachyderms, and we'd recently seen the IMAX film Elephant!--twice. If Matthew had an animal totem, this was it. To say he was thrilled to discover that others joined in his worship of these majestic mammoths was an understatement. Now if he could only find a T. Rex god.

My kids weren't the only ones making surprising connections. One afternoon I stumbled upon two 12-year-old boys deep into a discussion of reincarnation. "I was on the Titanic," insisted one. "Well, I was in World War II," bragged the other. Each went further back in time. "I was in the Civil War" was countered with "I was in the Revolutionary War!" Finally, one of them yelled that he had been alive in the time of the caveman. Unable to come up with anything earlier, the loser glared. At least they knew their history, I thought.

By the end of the week, the kids had settled in and were actually enjoying their modest exposure to yoga. I fantasized that when we got home, they'd tell their friends about the place where grown-ups wore pajamas all day and said not "hello" but "namas day" (Eva's rendition of the Sanskrit greeting "namaste"). So this year, as I'm planning trips to Holland, Ireland and Spain, I don't think I'll tell the kids too much. Instead, I'll let their imaginations be my guide. Because after the yoga retreat, I've found it's actually more fun to take their magic carpet ride.

JUDITH NORKIN is a freelance writer living with her family in Newtown, Penn.

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