SOMETIMES IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS in life. I hope you'll allow me to indulge by telling you about a time period that doesn't lend itself to much of a story, but is still special.
At my high school, we were required to sign up for clubs. I signed up for a community service group led by our history teacher, which was okay, usually. Most of what we did in junior year was clean out the basement storage units for a sale where we would put the profits toward a good cause. Not terribly fulfilling.
The following year, another faculty member took over. She liked me, and encouraged me to run for president even though I didn't want to be president. Presidents of groups had to attend student council meetings every week. And did I have what it took?
But on election day, she nominated me anyway, so I had to stand up and talk about what I would bring to the table. When a girl who didn't especially like me named Talia saw I was running, her eyes widened and decided to run out of nowhere. Of course, she won.
Danielle, on the other hand, joined a choral group. This could have been interesting too, but they often ran past lunch, and that wasn't an option for me.
Eventually, we found a new interest in yoga, which was by far the most fun. I had only previously done some yoga at Quaker school, near the end of the year once. While the eighth grade went on their traditional trip, the rest of the upper school would participate in a non-graded, nontraditional unit, as it were. We discussed spiritualty and beliefs in sixth grade, where I had tried yoga. It was interesting enough.
Because we didn't have a traditional gym class, we all chose a different athletic option for four days a week. Field hockey would have been nice, but according to the school "the sticks were too dangerous." So I started out with a simple option of working out in the weight room, which was boring. The following year, though, a yoga instructor would be coming to campus. Danielle and I signed up. Even if we didn't like it, we would be together.
And we did enjoy it. Some of my fondest memories were of lying on our mats, talking about random things before class started, in the dark. One time, I was regaling her with the story of how my family was driving back from a Baltimore weekend. Desperation drove my dad to pull over and use a Port-a-Potty, named Mr. Bob is On The Job. We kept laughing right up until class started.
Because yoga was classy.
Not that we didn't work hard, because we did. We took on some difficult poses, including one where we had to lie on the floor and put our hands underneath us, sort of like a plank position. One day, we even tried headstands. It took a while for me to get this pose, and the teacher spent lots of time working with me while everyone else waited. It was mildly embarrassing, but mostly just annoying. But this was a minor setback. We signed up again next year.
After a day of classes, I'd de-stress by visiting my favorite Mario fansite, or occasionally, a Titanic fanfiction site. I'd also get changed for yoga, which only entailed getting into a comfy, well-fitting pair of yoga pants and a random Tshirt that would also be my evening outfit. At 3:45, it would be time to start heading out. Yoga this semester, though, would take place at a building across the street. It used to be a hotel back in the day, though we weren't sure why---there was nothing in the area, unless you were an Olympic horse rider or liked golf. It looked more like an old house.
The room itself was sunny and warm and could definitely pass for someone's living room without furniture. Yellow walls enhanced the new-age pictures on the wall, what few there were. Thin gauzy, white curtains were tied around the windows. Shelving on the wall to my right displayed various knickknacks and a clock that you could use to keep an eye on the time with, and a tiny bathroom was behind it. Although some poses would give me the urge to poop, I resolved never to use it. A bathroom right there would draw attention to me, wouldn't it? To my right, where I usually placed my mat, was a brick fireplace with some little candles.
We started off by playing a name game. We would clap and jump and point to someone else, while saying our own name, so our teacher could get to know us. She had an interesting name, too: Ferebe, a new-agey name that fit the profession. I would start. "Morgan!" I'd say, pointing to Shirley. "Shirley," she'd say, pointing to Sandy. And so on. From then on, we were our own little community, most of whom were willing to be relaxed and quiet because that was the kind of people they were. Some people weren't sure about this at first, but liked it.
I was delighted further when Ferebe started playing Enya. Enya! She was the artist who Mrs. G played for us, back in kindergarten! I also learned that that song I loved was called Orinoco Flow. There was plenty of other relaxing music, too. Some of the lyrical songs featured older guys singing about someone named "Krishna," but I was never in it for the religious aspect. To me, it was relaxing, and a good chance to get off campus.
Some days, we'd mix things up. We'd come in and Ferebe would announce, "We're going to play with the wall today!" And so we'd do poses against the wall, our legs using it for stability, though I could never get my butt flat against it as much as I tried. One day, we also took our yoga poses outside on the back lawn.
On Fridays we had another tradition. We would draw a card and teach the class a certain pose. Sometimes I would cheat and draw a different card if I saw my pose was too difficult, but I usually made the best of things.
Ferebe would tell us we were doing a good job anyway, and a good time was had by all. There was no body-shaming ourselves here. "We love our bodies!" Ferebe would say, meaning it.
We always started off by sitting cross-legged, or "on our sit bones," as Ferebe would say. We'd rock around like that, but we'd also sit there, meditating in a sense, breathing in and breathing out. After that, we'd work into the poses. You had to love the easy Child's Pose for a breather. I could never master the back bend, which required you to place your hands and feet flat on the floor while you lifted your back into the air, into the shape of a semi-circle. We transformed into warriors and rolled all over the floor.
During the last five minutes, we got to lay on our mats and just relax. This usually worked. But as semesters went by and we had some rowdy girls join us, this became more of a problem. Some girls would start laughing at whatever thought popped into their head. Emily, who also joined yoga with us, once started a discussion about global warming, which frustrated Danielle to no end.
"I just wanted to relax!" she'd tell me after a session ended like that. (Most often, though, she'd distract some of us by fiddling with the tea candles on the fireplace.)
Ferebe would hand out peppermint and lavender essential oils to all who wanted them, years before they became "a thing." She would provide bolsters and, for me, a pillow because my head refused to rest comfortably on the carpet. We'd enjoy the music for a few minutes. There was a certain scene I'd envision of a brunette, wavy-haired girl running through golden fields, but usually I'd just pay attention to the music itself.
And there was still one more tradition. Ferebe had her own script of sorts, and as the end of class would approach, she would invite us to deepen our breath, wiggle our fingers, and more. Then when we sat up (eyes still closed) and finished the lesson, we would find a dark Dove chocolate on our mats. These were the same ones that Grandma and I often shared together, and I would smile as I unwrapped the wrapper with words of wisdom written inside. A lot of students shared theirs. Then we rolled up our mats and walked back to campus.
We couldn't help feeling grown up about this, or at least I did. In eighth grade at Quaker school, it was a tradition for the eighth grade class to walk into town, with a parent's permission. The night before, I asked them if my note was ready. I was promptly told no, because I was going to my grandparents' house afterward. Never mind that they lived in town. Excuses, excuses.
They were always "excusing" me from birthday parties for random reasons. They wouldn't let me go to Julia's roller skating party because I didn't know how to skate, even though I wanted to give it a try. They wouldn't let me go to Jacob's bar mitzvah, because there was an Adventure Princess event that day that I didn't want to go to (whitewater rafting). They excused me from the end of year 8th-grade Williamsburg trip because "the drive was too long" at 6 hours. So if walking to school from yoga and back was my first independence endeavor, so be it. Besides, I enjoyed the walks in the cool night air. I even felt more relaxed about being back at school. Like I could deal with anything.
We looked forward to going to yoga every week. When other students complained about going to sports, we looked forward to it. In fact, we complained about Wednesdays, our day off, because we missed it (Wednesdays were days where your family could come by and take you to dinner instead). When Emily joined, she really liked it as well. On days when she wasn't enthusiastic, sort of like how Ally could be in our Curves outings a few years prior, she could always sit in Child's Pose for a bit, a favorite of mine. We weren't pushed to do anything. We were supposed to get graded, but I doubt that Ferebe was harsh on anyone.
Not everyone felt as strongly about yoga as Danielle and I did, though. In the later sessions, there was a lot of chatter during class, and during rest time, that Ferebe's quiet energy didn't always have control over for long. One day, Ferebe's son arrived in the parking lot for some reason and she went to greet him. During rest time, some of the louder girls (this was a later semester) all ran to the window to see if he was attractive. Given that we were at an all-girls' school, boys were a novelty. We only ever saw them when two quasi-nearby boys' schools came to do projects with us on Community Service Weekend, and none of them ever acknowledged my existence. Then...."EWWWW!" "He's ugly!" "Really?"
I sighed, attempting to relax as we were instructed to do. This wasn't always easy in the last sessions. Ferebe was always kind, gentle, and accepting. And that was the behavior, little beknownst to her, that she could get.
Around then, I was reminded of Parvati and Lavender in the Harry Potter series. The two Gryffindor girls loved attending Divination class with Professor Trelawney, though some of the other students were skeptical of her methods. Danielle and I loved the class, and the mood of the room could even be compared to Trelawney's classroom: airy and calm and new-age-y. But we enjoyed it. Who cared if others didn't? Ferebe and I had birthdays days apart and both enjoyed being Pisces babies. And she was Facebook friends with Danielle, too.
We had a good few semesters of yoga, though it was no longer being offered to us there by the time I was a senior. I kept bracing myself for the semester we couldn't come anymore, and kept my final Dove chocolate saying from what I thought was our last class (we actually had 3 more semesters left to enjoy). I did attend a pilates class there with another woman in my senior year, who was lovely, but not Ferebe.
I knew I should be excited about the prospect of graduating, and I was. But I also couldn't help being sad at leaving the yoga studio forever.
The day I truly knew that it would be my last time there, I breathed in the smell of lavender, soaked up the pale sunny walls, and tried to memorize the weird printed image of someone morphing into different poses with a tye-dye blue and pink background, like the Vitruvian Man meets Yoga Studio. On our way out, I kept peeking back for one last glance until I finally made myself step out the door. Our beloved yoga room was right behind me---I could practically touch it---yet I'd never be there again. In the spring, I signed up for tennis with Alexa, and that could be fun. But it didn't provide the calm and community that yoga did for us.
I heard from Ferebe later, too. I was in college, and she messaged me--she hadn't forgotten we were both Pisces babies. I thought about friending her, but was it too far in the past now? I thanked her, and she ended that reply with "Be well, my princess." To me, those words were symbolic. I decided that friending her would, in fact, be too awkward now. So I let it go.
Why am I telling you a story about nothing? It's the little things that make up your stories. Look around. Have you appreciated the color of your walls yet today? Or the smells of the garden lilacs? Like the yoga studio, one day they will be gone. (Figuratively and perhaps literally. I can't find any evidence of the business on Google or anywhere. Perhaps they're no longer around?) . As in stories, life is in the details. Find something you like---a sanctuary, an activity, a hobby---and appreciate it. Write it down. You'll want to look back on it fondly. I do.