Ruth Goldstein heard me from her porch next door and called over, "You okay over there, Pat?" I straightened up, my lower back making that familiar creaking sound, and shouted back, "Just having a moment with my hamstrings." She laughed too. At seventy-one, you earn the right to laugh at yourself. It's one of the few perks.

I'd been a librarian for forty-three years—forty-three years of hunching over desks, reaching for books on high shelves, sitting in meetings that should have been emails. My body had kept a precise record of every hour, written in the language of stiffness and ache. When I retired three years ago, I thought I'd travel, garden, finally learn to play the piano. Instead, I spent the first six months discovering all the ways a body can hurt when you stop moving regularly.

That's when I saw Evie Stone doing something odd on her porch one morning. I was walking past her place on River Road—one of my new retirement habits, walking before the day got away from me—and there she was, moving slowly through what I later learned was called a sun salutation. She wasn't young, wasn't flexible, wasn't performing. She was just... moving. Breathing. Being.

"It's never too late," she said when she noticed me watching. Not in a preachy way. Just a fact, stated plainly, the way you'd mention it might rain later.

Yoga at seventy-one isn't about touching your toes. It's about what you learn on the way down—and the kindness you show yourself when you can't get there. —  Patricia "Pat" O'Brien

So I started. Not with classes—I'm too old and too stubborn for classes. I borrowed a book from my own collection (the Ravenswood Library doesn't have much, but we have three yoga books, which tells you something about this town). I watched a few videos on my laptop, the ones that said "gentle" and "senior" and "all levels," which usually means "for people whose bodies have opinions."

My sun porch became my studio. It's not fancy—just a small enclosed space with those old wavy windows, a worn rug I've had since 1987, and in winter, a space heater that sounds like a small aircraft taking off. But in the mornings, when the light comes through those antique windows and makes everything glow golden and soft, it's perfect.

I started with five minutes. That's all I could manage without my knees staging a formal protest. Five minutes of gentle stretching, some breathing, mostly just standing and noticing what hurt and what didn't. The first week, everything hurt. The second week, slightly less everything hurt. By the third week, I could touch my shins. Small victories.

Here's what they don't tell you about yoga when you're older: it's less about achievement and more about conversation. Every morning, I have a little chat with my body. "How are we feeling today?" I ask my hips, my shoulders, my stubborn left knee that's never forgiven me for that fall in 1998. Some days they're chatty, willing to bend a little further. Some days they're cranky, and we negotiate.

Rosa Delgado, who lives across the street and notices everything, asked me last month if the yoga was "working." I thought about how to answer that. My hamstrings are still tight. I still can't do whatever fancy pretzel poses the videos show. But I sleep better. My back doesn't seize up when I reach for books on the high shelf. I can get down on the floor to play with my great-nephew and—more importantly—get back up without assistance.

"It's working," I told her.

The practice itself is simple. I do cat-cow stretches on my hands and knees, moving with my breath, listening to my spine. I do gentle twists, standing poses where I hold the window frame for balance. I lie on my back and hug my knees to my chest, rocking gently side to side. Nothing Instagram-worthy. Everything necessary.

Some mornings, Tom Richardson runs past my house around 6:30, and he'll wave at me through the wavy glass windows, me in my ancient sweatpants doing something that probably looks more like standing still than yoga. I wave back. At this age, showing up is the practice. Everything else is just details.

The best part isn't the stretching or the breathing, though those matter. The best part is that for fifteen minutes each morning—I'm up to fifteen now—I'm not the retired librarian, the widow, the woman whose knees predict rain. I'm just someone being gentle with herself. Someone learning, still, at seventy-one, what her body can do when she asks nicely instead of demanding.

Last week, I touched my ankles. Not my toes, but my ankles. I stood there in my sun porch, autumn light streaming through wavy glass, my fingers wrapped around my ankles, and felt unreasonably proud. Ruth heard me celebrating and called over, "What happened?"

"Ankles!" I shouted back.

"Good for you!" she yelled. And she meant it. That's the thing about getting older in a community like this—people understand that ankles are worth celebrating.

This morning, at 7:12, I stood in my sun porch and reached for my toes. I didn't make it. Maybe I never will. But halfway down, with the morning light making everything golden and my breath steady and my back not screaming at me, I realized: I don't need to. The practice isn't about the destination. It's about showing up on the mat—or the worn rug from 1987—and being present for whatever my body has to say.

Tomorrow I'll be here again. 7:12, or close enough. The sun porch will be waiting. My body will have new opinions. And I'll listen, stretch gently, and maybe, if my ankles are feeling generous, touch them again.

At seventy-one, that's more than enough.

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