Kicked in the Arse By Old Ladies
I hadn’t done a lick of yoga since leaving Atlanta and today when I woke up, something demanded it. I crawled out of bed and walked down to the coffeeshop, and outside, the air was all cool and gusty. It smelled like spring and like invigoration. I remembered suddenly that when I was little I used to lean into really strong winds like this, half thinking that maybe they would buoy me up and hold me. Today felt just as full of potential, somehow. I had all this, this entire Sunday, with which to do whatever I pleased.

I went back and wrote and then I looked at the website of the yoga studio I know about here in Beachtown. Which, today, held only Level 51: Extra Pretzelly Yoga. I’m more of a Level One or Two. I’m not interested in Heat Yoga, or Yoga on Motor Scooters, or Yoga While Hefting 5,000-Lb Weights. I like mine regular and unleaded and without retsin.

So I found another place with a class at 2:00. The studio was in a strip mall that was weirdly white and gleaming, like a movie set of a strip mall. All the stores were marked by colorful signs that looked like they were all made on the same day by the same enthusiastic, amateur Photoshop designer. They probably were. They had names like “Yarn, Too!” and “The Frog Spot”. They were all closed, and my car was alone in the parking lot until a couple minutes before 2:00, when a giant, white SUV pulled up.

Now, I actually have a little theory about Beachtown being the homeland of all white SUVs, since every other vehicle on the road here, is one. This white SUV had a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker on it. Not a yoga person, I thought. But, lo and behold, the woman in her mid-50s who stepped out went around back to her trunk, pulled out a mat and went inside the studio. Then, right in a row, three more SUVs pulled up and I swear, progressively older women emerged from each. I finally got out of my own car, but not without heaving something of a sigh. Not that I was ageist. Except. Well. That I totally was. This was going to be one of those lame, old-lady yoga classes, I thought. Or maybe it wasn’t so much their age that freaked me out, period; it was just that the last yoga class I attended that was populated by folks aged babyboomer and older was … somewhat … lacking. Then again, those were hippies. A social descriptor that clearly didn’t apply to these women, today.

But, I reminded myself, it’s not like I needed some mega challenge; I was never the Flexibility Queen in any yoga class anyway. And besides, yoga’s about the opposite of that sort of competitive biznullshit. Besides, it had been nearly a year since I’d done any kind of yoga. I was going to be rusty; this class would probably be just my speed. At no point did any part of my brain say anything remotely like, “Since you’re so young, you’ll look like a yoga superstar in front of all these older women.” Not one time. Really. When I got to the door, I held it open for the next woman coming in. You know, just to be polite. Respect your weaker elders thing.

The instructor was really nice and started us out doing some seated stretchy things, and I remember thinking to myself that you know, you really get something out of every experience, no matter how far below your best abilities.
Then came the first lunge. Face-down on the mat in push-up pose, then lifting the right arm and left leg out straight. Here’s the thing about the yoga: the simpler the pose is to describe, the more it hurts. Always.

Boat pose came soon after: You are lying on your back. Nice, huh? Now, lift your head and torso up, and also your legs, so that, yes, you resemble one of those paper origami boats. Hold it. And hold it. Till your legs shake.
We did Tree and we did lots of legs-up-in-the-air things and it was good. I was into it, into the breathing and the sinking deeper into the poses and the nowness and the instructor’s voice and even the new-age-synth relax-o version of The Church’s “Under the Milky Way Tonight” on the CD player.

Every now and then though, I’d catch glimpses of the woman sitting to my right. She had a white poof of Mrs. Claus hair. She looked like one of my grandma’s neighbors who might come over and sit awhile on the porch. And she was going way deeper into every single pose than I was capable of. Her Tree did not fall, did not waver. Her shoulder-stand was ramrod straight. She was simply amazing. To my left, was a woman with salt-and-pepper hair who looked to be in her mid-60s. When we bent over our toes, she wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged herself.

So, yeah. I was so wrong with my book-by-its-cover-y-ness. Or I’d just stumbled into the yoga class for ex-ballerinas. Really nice ones, though: after the class ended, Mrs. Claus turned to me, and in a thick, syrupy accent, made a joke about getting some banana cream pie for supper—not in an “Oh my god, that would make me so fat” way, just a joke about how she was craving banana cream pie at that very moment and how nothing was going to stand between her and that pie. At that moment, she really was exactly like one of my relatives. She made me laugh out loud, while thinking: The other customer at Harris Teeter angling for that last pie had just better not mess.