The following essay I wrote several years ago, as a celebration of the culmination of many months of risk-reducing surgeries. Reading it now I am grateful again to be on this side of that journey.
The class is called Mixed Cardio and Weights but after ten minutes in the first session, I am convinced it’s really called “She’s Trying to Kill Me.”
I signed up for this lesson in pain as an ambitious start to a new year, resolutions setting a high expectation for change. The class starts at 6am, which means a gruesome wake-up from an alarm set to ring at 5:30am. Yes, it’s still dark out at that hour in January. Yes, at that hour our house of six is still quiet (one of the few times ever). To say I am reluctant to leave the comfort and warmth of my bed to dress in an icy bathroom is an understatement. Curiosity is a terrific motivator for that first class however, so I defy the laws of gravity and make it out of bed, then dressed and to the community center on time.
It is a flashback to the first day at a new school- unfamiliar protocol and a room full of strangers who all seem to know each other. I shrug off my coat and stand behind a station of equipment- a step, and a collection of weights. Within seconds a kind woman explains to me that this is actually her equipment that she set up for herself, that I can set myself up with equipment from the storage closet across the room. She is thoughtful enough to explain a bit about the class so I can select equipment appropriate for me in this level of challenge. I am grateful for her grace, patience and kindness.
The instructor comes in and I guess she is in her mid-twenties. She starts the music that will keep us moving- fast pop noise that is unfamiliar to my ears, ears that have worn the guard of preschoolers for the last six years. A few seconds of pop culture and I instantly feel more tuned in to the outside world.
We warm up and I am following OK. Then the instructor starts the “real” part of the class and within minutes I can feel my heart hammering in my ear drums. The instructor, who clearly isn’t NEARLY as phased as I am at this level of exertion, regales us with a story of one of her four kids. Yes, four and I realize that one, she is older than I guessed and two, she must have had a surrogate carry her children because it is against all laws of nature for a mom of four, and likely at least in her late thirties, to look the way she does.
I follow my classmates as they hydrate between sets of cardio and weights. I am so over-taxed I can’t break the seal on my water bottle.
While I’m standing there I notice everyone is sweaty and I am not. Surely this is not a good thing.
But I survive that first class, sitting in my car afterward for a few minutes in the parking lot (while the sun is rising) to rest my muscles and calm myself. I slog through the day and pass out that night, then live with sore muscles for three days after.
The next week I do it again, and again after that. Before long it’s a pattern and I go, getting out of bed and to the center on time, setting up my station without hesitation, sweating along with my classmates, rehydrating from a bottle I open with ease. Now I love the way I feel after that class for the whole day. I appreciate the muscle groups I didn’t even know I have that are sore afterwards.
Mostly though, I am just grateful this is my problem.
After five fairly significant surgeries spread over 18 months, I am finally cleared to lift, move, run, bounce and regain my strength. The class felt almost impossible at first and is still quite a challenge, but I am allowed to go and I can do it. I am no longer under a doctor’s supervision but am now liberated to care for myself and take better care of this body I’ve been given, to care for it better than I ever have before. I am grateful for my instructor’s persistence, for her bend toward all things painful. I am grateful to be out of bed before sunrise, to possibly entertain my classmates with my ridiculously uncoordinated body, to do double-takes when I catch my oafish self in the mirrors (wondering at times, “Is that a windmill? Oh, no wait, that’s me.”). I will do this because I can- and I am thrilled that I can- even if in doing so I may feel like someone is trying to kill me.