Embracing my foolishness, my creativity, my strength, and my knowledge
By Mia Bremer, VAN Contributor
Kipitaaki, translated from the Blackfoot language, means “old-lady” or “old-coyote.” Kipitaaki is a legendary figure who shows up in other native cultures under different names. She is often portrayed as a foolish being or even a troublemaker, but she is also a benevolent creator who frequently helps people or teaches them important knowledge. Molly and Zeonia were two old coyotes whose lives intersected mine. One, a Broadway dancer from New York, and the other, a preacher’s daughter from Mississippi. Each showed up in my life by way of the other, without ever meeting, and altered my being.
Molly
The first time I saw Molly Lynn she was climbing the stairs from the basement of The Sweatshop fitness studio where I was interning as a personal trainer. Over her shoulder was a sleek, green road bike. Already in her 80s, she was a remarkable sight in black spandex and a Tour de France cap fitted over her short grey hair. Even at five feet tall, she was a looming presence.
Molly was a dancer on Broadway in the 1950s and 60s. It was there she met Joseph Pilates, the originator of the popular exercise method people flock to today. Some of her fellow dancers were taking classes from him using a crude contraption, using springs and pulleys that morphed into what we now know as a Reformer. Sixty years later, she continued to teach his method at The Sweatshop as a master Pilates trainer having become a legend in her own right.
The day before my first session with a client, I was doubting myself. What did I know that my clients didn’t? Molly, with decades of experience and a streak of kindness under her tough exterior, told me this: ‘You only need to know a little more than the person you’re training. That will be enough to start.’
It was 1994, and I decided to turn my part-time job as a group fitness instructor into a full-time personal trainer gig through an internship at The Sweatshop. But the day before my first session with a client, I was doubting myself. What did I know that my clients didn’t? I was green, far from an expert. Molly, with decades of experience and a streak of kindness under her tough exterior, told me this: “You only need to know a little more than the person you’re training. That will be enough to start.” It was exactly what I needed to hear because I could guarantee that what I knew was truly only a little more. I had to trust that it was just enough—and it was.
Molly lived in a historic Victorian with tall-ceilinged rooms that she inhabited, elf-like, and, over the years, had filled with dusty antiques, colored glass baubles, broken seashells, and yellowing paperbacks. Her old St. Paul neighborhood overlooked the Mississippi River. She was a brilliant eccentric, taking daily laps around the square in front of her house and sipping tea with neighbors on her stately front porch. She was also compassionate and driven and, at the age of 80, would not consider retirement. She understood there were many under-resourced old people just across town who either didn’t drive, couldn’t afford a health club or were afraid to start a fitness routine. To help them overcome these barriers, Molly created Senior Exercise Lifestyle Services. (SELS) — a non-profit that would provide in-home fitness services to the homebound.
The business was a great success. As the sole provider, Molly didn’t have enough time to see all the seniors requesting her services. But there wasn’t enough income to hire more trainers. She had an idea.
Molly arranged a meeting with the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners and, armed with a brown paper grocery bag filled with colorful fitness bands, she arrived at City Hall where she waited outside the hearing room on a cold, grey morning wearing Lycra bike shorts and an oversized sweatshirt. Her goal was to convince the county to fund personal training sessions for older adults living at home through Waivered Services for Seniors.
As Molly described it, she was ushered into a room full of smartly dressed mostly-men who sat against the far wall in a fluorescently lit beige room. The commissioners were arranged alphabetically behind high desks adorned with gold name plates; each desk perched on a “U”-shaped platform that edged the far wall. Molly stood in the center of the room looking up at them, a shopping bag at her feet. She began to describe her idea, telling them how important it was for older adults to keep exercising, that movement would keep them independent and help them control diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure and eventually, save the county money on ER visits and hospital stays.
They listened quietly and asked questions in a tone that suggested Molly was hard of hearing. She wasn’t. She was, however, worried that she wasn’t making her case. She asked permission to approach the bench and, standing on tiptoes, she made her way down the row, reaching into the bag and offering one of the brightly colored elastic bands to each member.
She led them through an impromptu class that was very different from the commissioners’ idea of a senior workout. By the end, they were sweating and laughing. They understood that anyone would feel better if they got a chance to exercise with Molly.
“Would you mind,” she asked, “joining me down to the floor so I can demonstrate?” The commissioners couldn’t deny this feisty, child-sized woman with deep-set wrinkles and an even deeper conviction for her cause. She led them through an impromptu class that was very different from the commissioners’ idea of a senior workout. By the end, they were sweating and laughing. They understood that anyone would feel better if they got a chance to exercise with Molly. The vote was unanimous, allocating money to allow low-income elders to receive personal training sessions twice a week if they and their social worker agreed. Molly won.
She continued to run SELS with a staff of three trainers, including me, and a board of devoted directors until signs of dementia appeared when she was near 90. Until then, we had worked hard and provided exercise training for dozens of seniors living alone or in low-income housing throughout Hennepin County. And the impact was not only felt with the client’s physical well-being; it also affected their emotional health.
The feeling of accomplishment our clients shared as they went from being unable to climb the stairs from their basements, unable to do their own laundry, to taking the stairs regularly and regaining a sense of independence which, to others may seem like a small thing, but to an 85-year-old woman living alone in her family home — the house where she raised her children — the ability to wash her own clothes made her feel more herself, the one she was inside.
Eventually and reluctantly, Molly decided to move East to be near her son. Her thoughts were coherent most of the time, which is why it scared her so when she felt her grasp on reality slipping. She started having trouble writing legibly, though she still drew like an artist. The pictures she created for her clients showing how to do a stretch were as beautiful as any depiction of the human body I’d ever seen. Her handwriting, however, was tiny and illegible, short, black scratches that embarrassed her. She often dictated her notes to friends who typed them for her clients.
During my last visit with Molly, she stopped mid-sentence and started crying. She was always tough and stoic; it caught me by surprise. Would I be crossing a boundary if I put my hand on her bony knee? I sat with her in silence, noticing for the first time the dust that had settled on the ornately carved baseboards and listening to the echo of the curved, wooden clock on the fireplace mantel. I waited.
We were not friends, but colleagues. We admired each other for what we brought to the relationship: my marketing and technical skills, her connections to people who could support our work. We talked frequently but shared little of our personal lives. This moment of vulnerability was new and disorienting. Like a foreign language, I tried to find words of comfort, but none came. Instead, I tried to understand.
Finally, she said, “I’m scared, Mia. Of what’s happening to me.” I reached forward, lightly placing two fingers on her outstretched foot lying on the ottoman in front of me. “It must be scary,” I said. She nodded. I gently rubbed my hand over her ankle. She let me do it for only a moment, then sat back up as I quickly did the same. We went back to our business talk. I never saw her again. The board tried to keep SELS going, but without her, and with dwindling county funds, we lost momentum.
At one of the hardest moments of her life, Molly was a tough old coyote. Yet, for me, the lesson in her brave moment was to summon the courage to voice my fears, not when I think I can conquer them, but when I’m afraid I can’t.
Zeonia
Zeonia Hubbert was named after her mother’s two favorite flowers: Zinnias and Peonies. When I met Zee, she had five teeth left in her mouth. She refused to wear the dentures provided by medical assistance, which she said felt like two blocks of wood; they never fit properly and rubbed her gums raw. The fact that she was toothless did not keep her from smiling widely and often. “Stop that, Mama,” her grown children would chide. “You’ll scare the children.” Which made Zee smile even wider.
A former elementary school teacher from Mississippi, in her later years she lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis. The walls were covered with newspaper and magazine clippings of her favorite people: Bill Cosby (before the troubles), Barack and Michelle Obama, Chris Matthews (whom she called “my boyfriend”), George Stephanopoulos, Tyra Banks, and Morgan Freeman. Eventually, she would add clippings of my fitness columns, which I wrote for the local Good Age Magazine.
I trained Zee twice a week. Her apartment was small. That didn’t stop her, however, from accepting the donation of a recumbent bike from one of Molly’s friends, which, once it was installed in her bedroom, left a two-foot swath of carpet alongside the overflowing closet for her to navigate.
While Zee warmed up on the bike, she’d fill me in on the family. Either her son’s girlfriend had pulled Zee into some new drama, or her grandson had stopped by to see his granny and eaten the leftover chicken breasts she had cooked for the week.
She listened to my instructions politely and then did whatever the hell she wanted, lovingly calling me “teacher” like a favorite student who got away with things by way of her charm.
She listened to my instructions politely and then did whatever the hell she wanted, lovingly calling me “teacher” like a favorite student who got away with things by way of her charm. But, like a good student, she worked hard at the things she cared about. Her exercise routine would put people decades younger to shame. She could do a dozen push-ups on her knees, hop up (with the help of the couch arm) from the floor for twenty squats and back down for a plank. No matter how difficult the move was, she tried it. Zeonia taught me not to give up – on her or on myself.
One example of her grit was her goal to represent Minnesota at the State Democratic Convention after realizing that the 2008 election may be her last chance to be part of a historic event: the election of our first black president (even though she was afraid that if he won, he’d be assassinated). With no money or car, she convinced a volunteer from the local caucus to pick her up for each meeting. When she was elected to the convention, she hitched a ride to Mankato and stayed in a hotel room for the first time in her life, navigating that new city alone.
When Hennepin County was about to cut funding for SELS, I asked Zee to join me at a budget hearing. She arrived dressed in her finest burgundy velour pantsuit and faux-silk turban (she also loved Barbara Streisand).
When Hennepin County was about to cut funding for SELS, I asked Zee to join me at a budget hearing. She arrived dressed in her finest burgundy velour pantsuit and faux-silk turban (she also loved Barbara Streisand). She adjusted her wood-block dentures and rode with me downtown to stand before the commission. Realizing she couldn’t coherently make her case wearing the horrible dentures, she slid them out and stashed them in her purse just before taking the stand. Not only did she talk about the benefits she’d received from her twice-weekly workouts, but she also entertained them with stories of being a 19-year-old teacher in a one-room schoolhouse that sat in the middle of a Mississippi cotton field. She told about being tasked with educating the kids who were reading far behind the level of the others; the “clucks” as opposed to the “blue birds” and “cardinals.” She made them laugh until they cried, and then just made them cry. They applauded at the end of her testimony. When the budget was approved and services were extended, it was Zeonia who single-handedly persuaded them.
One day, I showed up for our workout, but she wasn’t home. I walked through the halls of the apartment looking for any sign of her when I heard a loud cackle coming from an open door in the basement. Inside, I found Zeonia standing next to a washing machine piled high with laundry as a terrified-looking, grey-haired man pushed past me out of the room.
“What in the world is going on?” I asked.
“I’m just doing my wash,” she grinned toothlessly. “That new fella stopped in to see where the laundry room was. I let him know that when I’m doing the wash, I do ALL the wash.”
“Huh?” I said.
She girlishly fluttered the bottom of her faded housedress around her knees. With a wide grin, she said, “I told him I was going commando!”
It is because of her southern lingo that my husband, Clark, and I still “mash the button” to cross the street at stop lights. It is because of her that I have watched all of her favorite Tyler Perry movies. It’s because of her that I will try to grow old with dignity, but not so much that I won’t occasionally, if the situation arises, remove my front teeth to scare the children.
Zeonia died at the age of 86. Rest in peace, dearest Zee; old coyote. I hope you were going commando, as only you could do, on your last day.
A New Coyote
I can’t name one moment or a single event with either of these women that changed me, but change me they did. Maybe it was their perseverance under circumstances so scary and challenging that many of us would give up and not be blamed for doing so. Molly’s dementia that she acknowledged and managed, not just for herself, but for those around her by researching and finding a memory care facility on the East Coast, where she chose to live in her last days. She would not be “put-down” but would, instead, oversee her life until the very end. Or Zeonia, whose income fell short of her needs month after month, yet she always found a few dollars for her children, all working to make a better life for themselves under difficult circumstances.
They taught me humility and the fierce need to be okay in the world. I once had Zee for lunch and a movie at my house (Madea, of course) and served chili. A few days later, I found a small red pile of chili bean skins under her chair in the kitchen. I realized that, without teeth, she couldn’t chew the tough skins, but her pride didn’t let her tell me that. She also didn’t want me to be embarrassed because I’d served something she couldn’t eat. She was proud and kind. Zee taught me that I could be both at the same time.
These two old coyotes taught me to embrace my foolishness, my creativity, my strength, and my knowledge. It’s harder than it sounds. They made it look easy.