Today I saw that young man again, whom I see coming in at least once a week. We sometimes greet each other as strangers do, a smile and for his part, an awkward turn of the head, not sure if he wanted to extend the smile more or feel rude and turn away from me. We've never spoken. After all, we have a huge barrier between us.
I normally saw him when I was on the treadmill, doing my easy indoor jog that makes me feel I am doing something with the rest of my years. I guess I notice him more than I notice others because his facial expression and gestures suggest to me that he's trying very hard in the most humble way. Here at the gym people around me are either already very buff and trying to look even more muscular, or they are skinny girls surrounding me on other treadmill and aerobics machines. I always feel very different. But I am different. And that young man I saw each week somehow also seemed different. He is rather thin, and he's not white like most of us, and his diffidence mixed with the confidence shown when he was lifting weights or doing crunches set him apart.
But I never spoke to him because, although we are, in my opinion, very different from the rest, we are also very different from each other. My skin not only is of a different color than his, but also of different texture, if I can say.
And today, the first day I am trying on weights, the first day after my revelation last week, is also the first day I see the young man since I took a one-week break from the gym. I am already nervous about the weights, about my attempt to realize my new "dream," but to do so in the presence of the only other member of the "different club" somehow adds greater pressure on me. He walks in, does his usual sip at the water from the water fountain, and walks into the weight training section. He looks at me, and again he seems awkward, more awkward than usual. I guess he isn't prepared to see me in this side of the gym. We greet each other with the same smile. I try to fix my gaze at him, which appears to make him feel even less at ease. He goes over to the far end of the room where the squat machine is. And he becomes absorbed at his training. And here I am, trying to start realizing my latest and possibly last dream.
Last week I returned home with my groceries. I don't usually buy my own groceries. But Martha was sick, the first time since she started working for me. And I wondered why I couldn't buy the groceries myself. I could still drive, and I didn't need to buy so much. After all, if I have been doing all that aerobic exercise, I should be able to do some physically exerting work. But the idea quickly became fearsome, I mean, I started shivering even thinking about the bags in my hands. And then, I would have to carry them up one flight. I do my treadmill very calmly, not like the young girls next to me who jog and read their fashion magazines like cheetahs. Me, I am usually almost walking. I don't want to break anything, but I also want my heart to be strong as long as I live. But maybe carrying groceries, and who knows how heavy they will be, up the stairs will break something.
I spent literally one and a half hour quivering in my armchair by the window through which I normally saw healthy young people walking up and down the sidewalk outside my apartment building. I didn't notice anyone during that 1.5 hours. I was mentally and physically shaking. I even considered going through the day and night without food just so I didn't have to go out and buy groceries and break something in my body that always seemed so foreign to me for as long as I could remember.
I decided to turn on the TV to get distracted. After all, I was also ashamed of my own frailty. I didn't want to hire Martha but my daughters convinced me. They didn't have much faith in me taking care of myself, or maybe they just didn't want to deal with having to come to the emergency room or even better, ID and collect my body. So I needed some distraction from my own emotional distress. There was the usual garbage on TV, which is good. Then there was one of my favorite shows, called "The Odd Box", where the commentator, some British guy, shows you news tidbits from around the world that he finds weird. There's the usual mass weddings and here, there was the first plastic surgery beauty contest. Yes, weird, contest for fake boobs. When those young women needing fake boobs get to my age, I wonder if they could still hold their backs straight. Then along side this was the source of my new dream. In his usual sarcastic tone, the commentator showed a 100-year old woman who was not only lifting weights but also throwing discus and a javelin and that ball you see people also throwing at the Olympics. She's the oldest person (not just woman) to be doing this sort of thing. I didn't care that the things she were throwing didn't go nearly as far as what I saw from last year's Olympic games. I was taken totally aback. I wish I could record that and replay what I saw to ascertain that it was real and not some dream or trick of the camera. That woman was more than twenty-five years older than me, and she was throwing heavy things like an Olympian! She didn't have a shred of fear on her face that she would break something.
I mentioned this to Liz, my youngest daughter. She's a plumb mother of three, and she thought I was crazy to be inspired by this. She said that there are lots of uniquely gifted people in the world. The other day, she said, she read from the NY Times that some really old woman, was she 85?, gave birth to a daughter only to die a few years later. How irresponsible, she exclaimed. And she asked why I wouldn't be inspired to do that. She added that although it was good that I was doing the treadmill and keeping me thin as a stick (though I think it's just old age and healthy food that Martha makes), she thought that I could do no better job shortening my golden age than kill myself with anything more serious than walking on the treadmill.
I felt very lonely afterwards. I didn't go to the gym that week for that reason. But also because despite the discouraging words of Liz I somehow held on to the flame of inspiration in me. I suddenly, for the first time in a long time, before even my husband, Robert, got his terminal illness, I suddenly felt a glimmer of life. I always considered myself fortunate that I wasn't in one of those old people's homes. That I was healthy enough to be walking up the flight of stairs on my own (without groceries). But around the corner, one day, I will not be able to do that. Or at least I thought so.
And here's this 100-year old woman who undoubted could walk up many flights of stairs if she could throw all those heavy things. And I can't imagine I can't be like her when and if I do turn 100. I have twenty-five years to catch up! And no, I am probably won't be throwing any discus or javelin, but at least if I can still be carrying my own groceries at 100, wouldn't that be an amazing achievement?
So here I am. After spending the weekend carefully researching the types of exercise routines for old people like me, and amazingly, I there are other septuagenarians who work out with weights and write about them! Imagine my pleasant surprise to learn that it's not only in fairy tales they say that it's never too late to do anything (except becoming a violin maestro or opera singer). So here I sit in this machine none of whose weights are locked. I am going to use my arms and chest and whatever meager muscles there are on them to pull just the weight of the mechanism that makes the movement possible, no weights attached to it. I look once more at that young man. I wonder if he is laughing at me. I know everyone else in the gym must be laughing at me or worried about me. But I hope that young man, the only other member of the "different club", understands that I am doing the right thing. At this age I am still not sure about a lot of things about myself, and lifting this "non-weight" is one of them.
I didn't end up carrying the groceries up the flight. I did go buy them, but I brought my shopping cart along and when I reached the door to my building, I asked a neighbor to help me. I hate asking for help, but if I were to realize my dreams, I couldn't start with any risk of breaking my arms or back, or worse, fall down the stairs. I am being practical, as always, and perhaps there is some cowardice in it, but perhaps less bravado, too. So now my arms and chest are ready. I push my lifted arms toward each other with only the resistance and weight of the mechanism of the machine between us. And amazingly, I can move my arms together. And slowly I moved them apart. And I try again and it works, but while it becomes noticeably harder, I feel also even more noticeably better, exuberant. My wrinkly arms greet each other at each rep. Then I decide to actually put a pin in the top weight, the lightest weight for the machine. I try again, and this time was incredibly harder. I could barely close it. I feel a little discouraged. I don't think I can ever reach a point where I can lift weights.
I look up and I saw the young man walking towards his dumbbells. I fix my gaze at him, as if I am looking for some acknowledgment from my only teammate in this room full of muscles and smooth skins. He picks up one dumbbell, then hesitates, and puts it back. It's a small one compared to what the other guys are lifting. He steals a look at them, but he insists on choosing a lower weight. He catches my gaze and feels awkward, but he smiles at me. It is a sincere smile, and I return the same. Maybe it's just me, but I think we just told each other that we are different, we are weaker, but we are doing this for ourselves, but our determination must not be weaker than the rest of the people's in this room, or in this world. And then I remember that 100-year old woman, how much perseverance and determination she must have needed.
I took my gaze away from the young man as he works on his biceps. I remove the pin from the machine and I start my second set using no added weights at all. Life starts from here, simple, humble, but at least, it is starting.
