Mimi and Mac
There are two people in my life that are the inspiration for me to work with older people.
First, my paternal grandmother Mimi who lived just down the road from my house growing up. Unlike my house, her house was peaceful. The sun would stream in through her front windows as the two of us sat in her living room, she on an upholstered straight back chair and me across from her, on her pastel striped couch. She would feed the little Franklin stove with firewood and the house would get all toasty and warm. She would ask me questions about my life and in those moments, I felt like the most important person in the world. She would make peppermint tea and offer graham crackers slathered with margarine that I would slowly nibble (to make them last longer) while we played cards together. It’s that sort of warm presence that I want to bring to the people with whom I teach yoga.
The second person I want to thank for getting me here is another grandparent figure, one that I wasn’t actually related to— a man named Patrick McEntee. My mother met “Mac” at the post office where she worked as a clerk behind the counter. When she gave birth to me and my twin brother, he offered to babysit us. He called my brother “Tiger” and he called me “Princess”, which we relished. As we grew, he would pick us up in his blue sedan and take us out to lunch, something we rarely ever did with my parents. He always let us order dessert. Then, in front of the server, he would tease us and say that he forgot his wallet and now we had to go back in the kitchen and do dishes to compensate for our meal. Sometimes after our lunch we would go back to his house and while he took his afternoon nap we watched reruns of I Dream of Jeannie smooshed together on his La Z Boy recliner. While he drove, Mac would smoke a pipe filled with tobacco and we would admonish him for it because we were taught that smoking was bad. He would pay us no mind. Then we would take his pipe cleaners and mold them into hearts and various shapes to amuse ourselves. To this day, when I smell someone smoking a pipe memories flood back to me of Mac and his unconditional love for us.
Back in my hometown in the nineties, you rarely saw older people exercising. I remember the stationary bike in Mimi’s bedroom that my father kept trying to get her to use. I think she used it for a little while, but not much or consistently. She had smoked during most of her life and when she was in her seventies she was diagnosed with Emphysema. Eventually she had to be constantly hooked up to an oxygen tank and would complain about the irritation in her nose from the tubes. Mac slowly faded from our lives as we became teenagers, though I’m not exactly sure why. There may have been a disagreement between him and my parents over an adult subject matter that we kids never really understood. I do remember visiting him in a hospital room toward the end of his life and I’m glad I was able to say goodbye. I was there when Mimi died at her home in the same sunny living room where we spent so many visits. Right before she took her last labored breath she looked at me, along with her other grandchildren that surrounded her, and said, “It is all about love”. Then, ever the Scrabble player, she spelled it out slowly emphasizing each letter, L-O-V-E.
Looking forward, as I embark on this journey toward teaching an older population how to move their bodies within the framework of this ancient practice of yoga, I feel like Mimi and Mac will be right there alongside us as we give attention, presence and ultimately LOVE to the parts of ourselves that need it most.
