9.17.19

“The glute muscle attaches WHERE??”

I was having one of Those Conversations with Barbara the guru trainer at Body Dynamics. Surely you know the kind of conversations I mean. The one where someone says “well, of COURSE you exhale after you inhale. What else could you possibly have thought the pattern was?”

I was having a dawning revelation: I have HOPELESSLY MISUNDERSTOOD MY OWN MUSCULATURE. Like, since before the earth cooled, I’ve been wrong in a really big way.

First – my utterly erroneous assumption:

To run, you throw a foot forward and use the quads (the long muscles on the front of the thighs) to pull you up to that foot. Repeat on the other side. I thought that’s how we were all running.

Second – my equally erroneous mid-education assumption:

To run, Barbara somehow coiled up all her power to her back foot and sprang forward, driving her toes into the ground and using her glutes magically to spring forward like a straight-legged gazelle popping over the cheetah lying in the grass. I thought that’s the secret; that’s why Barbara can run and I can’t. I just can’t do that.

And finally – the correction I finally understood today but it took THE ENTIRE HOUR I was with Barbara:

To run, you throw your foot forward and then the glute on the forward-leg side (whaaaaat??) contracts, forcing the thigh bone to pull back towards the butt.

How’s that possible, you ask (if you’re like me)? If you pull back on the top of the femur – which is already as close to the butt muscle as it’s going to get – then nothing happens.

“Not at all,” Barbara replied. (By this point, she was actually touching me. No one at Body Dynamics, save Gwynn the Gandalfian masseuse, will touch you without fair warning and express permission.) “Your glute doesn’t attach here” (she poked the top of my thigh on the side). “Gluteus maximus attaches HERE.”

And damned if she didn’t reach pretty far down my thigh bone.

Still clearly in the range of my very large posterior but nowhere near where I thought the glute went.

Actually, I’m not sure where I though the glute went; I think I assumed it sat on my backside like a dinner plate, complete unto itself.

BUT NO! It attaches way down the thigh bone, so when it contracts, it’s like wrapping a big fist around your leg and tugging backwards. NO FREAKING WAY.

I stood in the big room in utter stillness, one leg in front of the other like an Egyptian frieze, my hands on my butt. Then, my head wrinkled in concentration, I squeezed the glute of the forward leg…and got pulled up to that foot. The other leg naturally swung ahead and I did it on THAT side.

Barbara wrapped a rope around my hips. “Do it with resistance,” she said, and I dragged her slowly across the open space, wood smoke pouring from my head for concentrating so hard. “Stand up,” she said, “don’t lean over. Relax your arms.”

Of course I was walking like a mime in a high wind. I relaxed and tried some more. I’ll be damned. I’ll be god damned. This is kind of… it’s working!

She let go of the rope and I powered my way across the room, pulling that thigh bone back each time.

And then I broke into a run.

“YES!” cried Barbara joyfully. “NOW you’re moving forward!”

It was weird. Really, really weird. I’ve been in the machine of my body for 59 years and I’ve been using it wrong all this time.

“We’re going to have to go over this again. Maybe two or three times,” I said to my brilliant trainer. She nodded, grinning. “Of course. It’s a big change.”

“I had no idea that’s how it worked.”

“Don’t tell me what you thought was going on; I don’t think I want to know!”

Chicken!

I’m still sort of reeling. I had it ALL WRONG. How strange is that?!

9.16.19

We were six years old and lying companionably across a cellar door – the kind that ramps up diagonally, providing an ideal lean-backer for little kids taking a breather during a romp.

(You know – like the kind Auntie Em pulls open when the twister comes, only this one was on a quiet, sunny street in Old Town, Alexandria in 1966.)

Lisa Schumaier, lying next to me, spoke with the wisdom of six-year-old girls. “What if,” she said, “the color that I see as yellow is the color that you see as blue? How would we ever know?”

“What?” I asked, startled.

“Well, what if I look at the sky and I see a color that I call blue, but it’s actually the color yellow to you, but you’ve learned to call yellow blue?”

I was stumped, and a little horrified. “But the sky IS blue.”

“Yeah, but what if what I call blue is what you think is yellow?”

The sky loomed over me with sudden menace. “And the sun is really blue? In the yellow sky?”

“Exactly!” she said happily.

Half a century later, Stephen Colbert would look into the camera with a mischievous glint and ask “Did I just blow your mind?” But he was long decades away, and I spent an impossibly long time for a six year old – maybe five whole minutes – having my mind well and thoroughly rocked with uncertainty.

Then I decided it was a cool concept but unimportant, since we were all calling THAT color the same thing, even if we saw it differently, and we could let it go.

Of course, that was before I realized that a writer can sit down and think ‘er over, choosing exactly the right words to explain something so the other person could perceive it the same way. Me, I favor the analogy – you might have noticed. I love a good “this thing is like that thing, and here’s why.”

For example:

I lie in my bed having a lazy Sunday morning. (All right – a lazy Sunday afternoon. It’s been a tough week, and judge not lest ye be judged.) I revel in the lazy morning (afternoon) euphoria in my legs and feet.

A warm, benevolent sun is radiating gently in my feet and up my legs, all the way to the hip flexors. Every muscle is perfectly relaxed and at peace. If that’s what the afterlife is like, sign me up.

From the hip flexors up, everything is normal. I feel fine – but not basked in gentle warmth and relaxation. And I’m thinking this is the gift of exercise. You know – running is great because eventually you get to stop. And if I could just explain that to people – if they could somehow get inside my nervous system and experience this utter contentment – then no one would ever again roll their eyes when considering my slothful morning routine.

But what if my morning euphoria is what amazing trainer Barbara – a long-distance runner – feels all the time? What if wonderful neighbor Bob Gaylord, who can barely wait until he gets to run his next ultra-marathon, walks through life with this sense of delicious peace in every muscle AND THAT’S WHY HE RUNS?

What if the color they perceive as yellow is the color I think is blue?!

It’s a mind-freak.

We’re never really sure we understand what it’s like inside someone else’s skin or muscles or eyeballs or nervous system. I have not one but two friends who have recently received absolutely devastating news (the kind that makes you realize that maybe death isn’t the worst thing after all), and they’re both going through their days with the compassion to offer ME comfort upon the death of my mother and my dog.

We never know what’s really going on inside the entire universe that is the person right next to us.

Yes, this blows my mind.

 

9.14.19

You can HEP to Bill Maher – that is, do the Home Exercise Program. For the most part, he’s not a visual comedian. You can lurk in Downward Dog throughout his monologue and never miss a joke; all you need is hearing.

And he’s funny. Snorting during Downward Dog makes the pose more bearable.

So I watch him – well, I listen to him – every week.

Last week in his end-of-show rant, Bill wasn’t picking on Trump or Putin or any of the people I wish I could have a few words with myself. He was picking on me.

His rant was on fat-shaming – which he approves of and wants to see more of.

Bill Maher is snarky. I know that. He’s weird about food, and he’s immensely dismissive of fat people. But he also dislikes religion, and I’m okay with that… so I figured that I needed to let it go. He and I were just going to disagree. In fact, after working with Barbara (my brilliant trainer at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA), I’m beginning to believe that Bill Maher’s view of fat is …

… well, it’s old.

He’s largely wrong.

My blobby belly and broad tail are – it’s true – not particularly attractive. But I can walk down a street without feeling pain in my back. I can grumpily shuffle my way through a mile-long jog. My bloodwork shows better results than it has in decades. I no longer measure my value by the number on my scale. So Bill Maher can suck an egg, for all of me.

I let it go.

And then this morning, I found that James Cordon had taken on Bill Maher on HIS show… and as I watched and started to grin and then began to cheer, I realized I hadn’t quite let it go as much as I’d thought.

I’m going to try to embed the link to James Cordon’s response; I can’t imagine his network will mind. But in case it doesn’t work, you could probably look it up And the most brilliant thing he said was “fat shaming doesn’t work. If it did, there would be NO fat children in schools. And I’d have a six-pack by now.”

Amen, brother.

You and I work so hard to change our attitudes about our bodies and our progress. It’s worth remembering that the world is continuing to try to put you down… so stay strong. We are not alone, and Bill Maher isn’t always right.

9.12.19

Selma had been wandering through the sleepscape with increasing frequency.

The cat wanted something; I don’t know what. No, that’s a lie – I knew what she wanted, but it wasn’t in my power to give it to her. She wanted her brother-dog, but that wasn’t going to happen.

She had food, she had water, her kitty litter was clean. I sleepily offered her affection, but that wasn’t it. Cats pick their way across the nighttime covers as if someone was following and she’d said “Step only where I step – if you don’t follow this winding yet exacting path perfectly, the whole place is going to blow up.”

She’d walk across my head; I’d reach out a sleep-heavy hand to stroke her soft fur, but she’d move just beyond fingertip-on-tail range. I’d go back to sleep. She’d do it again. I grabbed her and tucked her under the covers; she lay still until I stopped petting her. Then she’d slither off again.

Next began the Knocking Things Off phase. (In my youth we had a cat who learned to knock the phone off the hook, knowing that eventually the horrible beep-beep-beep that meant “hang up your phone” would awaken my sister, who would then open her bedroom door to let the cat out; mission accomplished.)

Selma was knocking off hair combs and fingernail clippers. Nothing breakable; I’ve had cats for a long time and have learned this lesson. Once she dumped a glass of iced tea on my head, but now it was just stuff I could pick up tomorrow morning; no need to awaken. “Have at it,” I muttered and kept sleeping.

Then she discovered a pile of photographs I’ve been going through and began to loudly gnaw on them. “Oh, come on!” I said, shoving a pillow into the shelf and over the photos.

Thus foiled, she exacted The Cat’s Ultimate Revenge. She vented her bile by… well, venting her bile.

My sleep was interrupted by the sound of a bilge pump firing up. That “urk, urk, urk” sound that every cat owner knows well. Selly was presenting me with proof that she did, indeed, have plenty of food. And cats always know exactly where the flight paths are; she was opting to vomit exactly where my bare foot would step when I finally got up. (Is it better to tread through warm or cold cat york? I can tell you from experience that both are a very bad start to the day.)

I was cleaning up this morning, dimly admiring the cat’s ability to barf as an expression of annoyance, when it occurred to me.

Wouldn’t it be AWESOME if people could do that??

Let’s say I was on the treadmill and gasping to Barbara. “Four intervals, right?” And she would – as she does – shake her head and say implacably, “Five.”

And I’d just lean over, open my mouth, and present her with my breakfast yogurt and cashews. You’ve annoyed me. Here.

Or the guy at the bank. “You’ll have to come in and sign these papers to access your mother’s accounts, and we’ll have to have them notarized, and then reviewed, and this will take a few weeks.” And I could say “Step over here, brother – I’ve got something I want to share with you.”

As my scenarios got more embroidered for when I’d like to be able to hurl on command to give back some of the annoyance I’d been given, I got to giggling. Down on the bedroom floor with wads of paper towels and just snorting in amusement. And I am NOT a one to find gastro-intestinal humor funny on almost any level – but this one got me.

Venting my bile. Messy… but satisfying!

Selma seems to be feeling better this morning. She looks so innocent and sweet, doesn’t she? Yeah – no. We’re learning our new normal.

9.10.19

I don’t mean to usher you down into this particular rabbit hole with me – I see my role as more of an inspirer than a depressive type – but it has occurred to me that if you die young, then you don’t have to go through watching other people die.

And watching other people die turns out to be … just not at all fun.

So why am I working so hard to remain healthy?

You don’t have to answer. I know. It’s because sometimes deaths are drawn-out and painful. We’re not all guaranteed a super-fast, fully-fatal heart attack like my husband, about two years ago. (It wasn’t his fault that the EMTs revived him so his entire family could gather around his hospital bed for a 24-hour deathbed scene while his body caught up to his brain, which was already gone.)

We’re not all guaranteed a six-week precipitous decline into COPD and dementia before a very sudden and entirely tidy death like my mother, about two months ago.

And so far, the nation doesn’t allow euthanasia, as applied to my dog about three days ago. I took him to the vet because he had a little cough; the chest x-ray revealed very advanced cancer. The vet gave him a few weeks to live, and without seeing him again I gave the order to have him put to sleep. I simply couldn’t face watching him die, too.

So I’m feeling quite shattered. Alone. Terrified that my son or my cat will suddenly go toe-up on me (and if sacrificing my cat would save my son, hand me that bloody Aztec sacrificial dagger, would you?). I really don’t know if I can handle more death right now and still maintain my sanity.

And tomorrow I’m supposed to go running with Barbara. All I can think is – why? Why bother? If I just sit here very still and hold the cat and text the son, maybe I could just ossify and turn to stone and slowly drop out of life and not deal with this shit any more. I’m just so very tired.

I can’t believe I had to kill my dog. I’m becoming a country song.

I’ll be better soon – don’t actually worry about me. I’m a cork; I can rise from anything. At least, I always have. And exercise creates endorphins. I’ll be better able to handle this after Barbara cajoles me into running. Assuming I can get out of bed tomorrow to get to the appointment.

9.6.19

What makes these feet superior? What gives them the right to feel smug towards all other feet? What puts the “high” in high arches?

Oh, like you don’t already know.

I went for a stagger, that’s what. Most people would call it a run, but let’s not get TOO high in the arches.

But wait, you say, because you are very attentive – Pru, you don’t normally run on Fridays, do you?

Well, no. But my last weekend sugar binge has been slow to relax its grip on me; my get-up-and-go got up and went. I actually skipped Balance Class yesterday (which is unheard of; sometimes I don’t make it to class because I have to do something else, but I never, ever give in to the urge to roll over and go back to sleep… except for yesterday). And when I’ve committed to running on my own over the weekend, I obsessively watch the weather to ensure I run on the coolest possible day.

And today it’s SEVENTY-FOUR DEGREES. Lord love a duck, that is some kind of blissful. Tomorrow it’s going to be in the 80s; same for Sunday. So: Run on Friday.

(You might say Fun on Riday if you were whimsical, but “fun” and “run” might rhyme but honey, they don’t go together.)

I had an all-morning meeting today. By the time I got home, it was ALMOST time for the local high school to get out. If there’s a way to make it worse to plod along in a pudge-trembling sham of a run, it’s to do it through drifting rafts of teenagers.

No – wait: It’s to plod along like a sea turtle amidst parrotfish AND THEN HAVE TO SLOW TO A WALK. Huffing and puffing.

So I really, REALLY would rather do my trotting before dismissal.

But I underestimated the speed of high schoolers when the release bell sounds. There I was, stomping along, perpetually confronted by the startled look of horror in the face of the tiny life form who only looked up from the phone at the last possible minute to see that the iceberg was DEAD AHEAD, SIR!

Sorry, kid, I huffed. Or would have huffed if I’d had any spare oxygen.

BUT I made it around the loop anyway, and no adolescents were harmed in the making of this run.

And now I’m sitting on the porch with my feet up, feeling smug. So, THAT’s done.

By the way – here’s the update: 81 is still too hot, but 74 is pretty danged dreamy. If you have to run, I mean.

9.3.19

Barbara walks like she’s going to a birthday party – or she’s heading to the swimming pool on a hot day. She walks with grace and purpose and energy; she’s eager to see what the day has to bring. And it drives me up the wall.

I saw her in the large mirrors in the Pilates studio at Body Dynamics. I was doing the pre-running stretches she’d taught me to do while she changed from her graceful work clothes (the staff at Body Dynamics does NOT dress like jocks; they dress like professionals). We were going running; it was a sunny 79 degrees and there was no way I was getting out of it.

So I’d done my calf stretches (the fibers of my calf muscles pull reluctantly apart like very stiff Velcro) and my quad stretches (the thigh muscles are more like cold taffy; there’s stretch in there, but damn, Sam – it takes a long time for things to limber up) and I was kneeling on this sliding board contraption (they call it something by three initials – the TRX machine or the GPS machine or the UEX machine – unexploded ordinance, which is a highly flattering way to consider my dud muscles) and I was attempting to stretch my hip flexors.

And Barbara reappeared in her entirely inoffensive running clothes.

(Do you know what I mean about inoffensive running clothes? If you’re a non-runner, then you probably do. I’m talking about when people appear in high-performance gear, togged out to tackle an Ironman or a breezy glide through the Mojave; I hate those people instinctively and feel that we are not of the same tribe. Barbara wore a plain old t-shirt and shorts. She looked PERFECT and once again I had no excuse to hate on her.)

(I know – because Barbara and I “follow” each other on a running app – that she’d already run for one solid hour before the sun came up, and I bet she was dressed in high-performance gear for that; my slow and plodding mile-long run-walk wasn’t going to challenge her much, but she certainly wasn’t rubbing my face in it.)

She appeared and I realized that I was ALREADY absolutely exhausted.

I felt like I was made of lead and wet sand while she was a soap bubble, effortlessly floating along. A subtle shimmer of iridescence plays about Barbara. She’s not a glittery person; far from it… but she’s got that brightness to her.

I wanted to lay my heavy head down on the exercise mats and have a nap.

“Why don’t I have any energy?” I complained. It would be SO EASY to jog a mile if I had Barbara’s power plant in my cells. Of COURSE she can run until there’s no time in the day to run farther; she’s light. She’s not made of lead.

“Did you get enough sleep last night?” Barbara is extremely practical.

“Yeah. I guess so. Mostly.”

I’d cringed when my alarm went off; it took me almost 50 minutes to actually get vertical, by which time I was so late that the pre-workout yogurt/nuts/seeds/fruit breakfast was still sitting high and stubborn in my stomach as we were stretching.

So, maybe no. Not so good with the sleep.

“And,” I admitted shamefacedly, “there was an entire weekend of Peppermint patties.”

Barbara gave me the eyebrow.

“But,” I wailed unsuccessfully, “I bought them at WHOLE FOODS!”

Barbara is a mother as well as a trainer, and I could see that she was restraining the motherness of her. “And did you eat the entire package?” she asked.

“Well, not ALL of it…” It was quite a large container. I gave it my best shot.

“Can you throw the rest out when you get home?”

“I doubt it…”

“Come on,” she said. “We’re running.”

And off we went. It was dire. I was pathetic. She drifted beside me, making entertaining chatter about her weekend and mine, about the neighborhood we ran through, about all kinds of things kindly designed to help me ignore the sound of my own huffing and puffing, and I was left to consider just how thoroughly I’d poisoned myself with sugar.

Again.

There are people who suffer from far more damaging addictions than I do; I am daily grateful that I’ve escaped most of the things that hook people through the gills. But there’s no sense ignoring the reality that I am, unquestionably, addicted to sugar. And it won’t kill me as fast as heroin (although I believe they both go after the same receptors in the brain), but it’s really not doing me any favors.

And there are still the Whole Foods version of Peppermint patties in the cupboard; they call them Peppermint cremes, with that spelling that all but screams “there is no actual cream in this; you are eating solid corn syrup and sugar, sucker.” And do you think I’m going to throw them out? Well, I’m going to try… but if I get close, I’m pretty sure I’m going to eat some of them…

Sigh. I’m poisoning myself.

I almost used a photo of the Peppermint cremes but figured that was too damned mean and might make YOU take a nice, healthy trip to your local Whole Foods where you can now buy solid sugar – blame Amazon; the original Fresh Fields would have burst into flames before offering such poison to its customers. Instead, I’m using a handsome black-and-white of a gurner I found on Google images. Isn’t he amazing?

 

8.31.19

Oh, and also fifty-five. For a writer, it’s surprising to be pretty much ruled by numbers. And me so good with the twenty-six letters, too. All vowels cheerfully used.

Eighty-one is not my age… yet. (But I’m going to get there, and beyond – just give me time.) It’s not my weight. (Try multiplying by three!) (Wow – that’s about right. Last time Barbara let me weigh myself, I was 242, with is almost exactly 81 x 3.) (And for a writer – 81 x 3 might as well = 242 exactly. What am I – a scientist?)

(But don’t misplace an apostrophe, man. I’ll land on you like a piano falling from the sky.)

Where the hell was I?

Oh, yeah – eighty-one. That’s the temperature today, according to my iPhone. And 55% humidity. Most people would say that’s about ideal in the Glorious Weather category; just about every person suffering through summer in northern Virginia would see it as proof of a benevolent God. I mean, it’s late August. We’re supposed to be set on “Wet Sauna.”

But I have just huffed and puffed my way around my one-mile jogging loop and I’m here to tell you: Nope. Eighty-one is STILL TOO HOT.

And now I’m sitting in my kitchen in full sprawl, lasering my contempt at my Wicks Away Moisture shirt, draped over the next chair. The advantage to living alone is that all 242 pounds of me can sit in semi-nudity and just exude sweat. It isn’t pretty.

BUT IT IS DONE.

I have jogged/walked my mile – fourth time in two weeks. The theory that this gets easier is clearly the worst kind of bullshit, but every time I do it, it makes it harder to come up with a good excuse next time to NOT do it, and maybe that’s enough.

Here are some scenarios with which I entertain myself while plodding along gracelessly:

• I’m the messenger from Marathon, bringing news of the victory to the king of Greece. I’m going very, very slowly, but why does he need to hear about a victory so quickly? Is he holding off on a stock trade until he knows if his armies won or lost? How rude. Now, if he’d lost, it would have been smarter to send a faster runner, but he won. Hold your horses. In fact, give me a damned horse – I could get there a lot faster.
• I could run from a mad dog if I had to. If the mad dog was crawling. And gave up quickly. Maybe I could run from a zombie. For a little while, anyway. If there were more than one, I’d have to start looking for a tree to climb. Christ – do I have the energy to climb a tree? Everyone in this neighborhood has trimmed off all the low tree-climbing branches. I’d be utterly stranded. Zombie food. This is why I stopped watching The Walking Dead.
• Under the theory that something will get me eventually – cancer, diabetes, Dengue fever (it could happen) – then I choose to believe that every damned mile I manage to stagger around northern Virginia pushes back that inevitable Bad Diagnosis by, oh let’s say one week. If it’s a mile in northern Virginia in the summer, count it as a week and a half. Not very long… but I’ve been running with Barbara for a year or so now. And a year – yeah. That’s a long time. I’d take that.
• I’ll keep running to the next street. Well, maybe that last driveway. How about the shade on the sidewalk – can I make it to the shade on the sidewalk? Nope. Apparently I can’t. Oh, hell – this is a great song to run to. (“Middle of the Road,” Pretenders.) I guess I can stagger along for a few more measures. Christ. Where’s that King of Greece horse when I so desperately need it?? I have an Uber account, don’t I?

I don’t think I’ll ever be a joyous runner… but I might be a joyous granny one day. Or a joyous romance author. Or a joyous winner of Bingo at the VFW hall. And I’ll be forced to admit that running played a part in that.

But eighty-one? That’s still too damned hot.

 

 

 

 

8.28.19

My kid sister showed me something about my own car that I didn’t even know.

My sleek, beautiful little car doesn’t like to have its trunk slammed; it objects. It prefers to have the button pushed and then it will lower itself gracefully into place while I walk to the driver’s door, trying hard to look very cool while this automated wonder happens behind me… but secretly wishing there was someone I could gush to. “Lookit my trunk! Isn’t that awesome??”

But last week, Lexie said “Which button do you want me to push?”

I did a double-take. I’ve had my pretty beast for two years; what do you mean, which button??

She said “This one right here.” Hoot, mon – there was a button RIGHT BESIDE the “automatically close the trunk” button. I swear, it wasn’t there yesterday.

“What the hell does THAT do??” I hollered.

“Closes the trunk AND locks all the doors,” my sister replied.

I was dumfounded. “Gowan!”

“S’true.”

I spent most of the rest of the day feeling like a fool, and like I’d been missing something pretty useful for a long damned time…

…and then today I was working out with Chip at Body Dynamics in Falls Church, VA, and the same freaking thing happened.

No, Chip did not point out the second “close the trunk” button on my car, but he might as well have.

“Chip, after I run with Barbara, the next day the hip flexor in my right leg is unbelievably cranky. After I sit for a while, when I get up to walk, I limp for the first five or ten steps. Can you fix this?”

Chip had me stand up in front of him. That’s all I did – I stood there.

“Yes,” he said. “We can fix that.”

“Gowan,” I said. “You can tell that by looking at me standing here?”

“Well, look. Your weight is mostly on your right foot; your left knee is bent.” I looked down in astonishment; he was absolutely right.

“But – this is how I always stand. I’m standing on two feet.”

“Yeah. I know. Look how far out your left foot is turned.”

Again I looked. He was absolutely right. “Gaw,” I said intelligently.

“The little muscles in your hip flexor area are trying to do the work your right glutes are supposed to be doing. We can fix that.”

I don’t actually remember WHAT he said the cause was; I know glutes were involved, and something about inner thighs. I don’t need to know; CHIP knows. And so Barbara will know, and Gwynn the therapeutic masseuse will know. And they will fix me.

But, seriously, now. I’ve been in that car for two years and never noticed the button. I’ve been in the body for 59 years and didn’t know what Chip saw in mere seconds.

Sometimes it pays to have someone else close the trunk of your car.

Chip didn’t want me to take a photo of him doing something balletic. “Like what?” he said suspiciously. “Like the arabesque you just did.” He scoffed. “I certainly did NOT do an arabesque!” Former ballet dancers have a whole different level of standards. Instead he gave me a goofy pose, which I am delighted to share. (Barbara, working with my fellow Balance Class attendee Rosemary, was standing in the same room. “No, you may NOT take MY picture!” she forestalled me. I don’t know why; she’s got the prettiest alignment of anyone since Chip.)

8.28.19

“You’ve got my sister!” I gushed to Mario. He looked quite startled by this statement.

“In with Gwynn,” I clarified. “She’s getting a massage!”

Mario, one of the Big Brains at Body Dynamics (in Falls Church, VA), looked both disinterested and relieved that he wasn’t being accused of kidnapping. “Oh,” he said – which, honestly, is about the only acceptable answer under the circumstances.

I’d waxed so rhapsodic about Gwynn, the therapeutic masseuse (one of four at Body Dynamics – and I’m sure the other three are just as brilliant) (but how could they be? I mean really) (No, I’m sure they are) (methinks she doth protest too much)… lost my train of thought. Hang on.

I’d waxed so rhapsodic about Gwynn that my sister Twig finally caved and made an appointment. Just in case you don’t keep track of these details (what – you’re not a crazed stalker?), Twig is my sister who says things like “Damn it, I’m going to have to miss cardio tennis” or “I just had the greatest kick-boxing class.” She lives for Orange Theory. Beneath her beautifully tailored, utterly simple wardrobe is one long, springy muscle; Twig could kick your ass but wouldn’t because DARLING how rude would THAT be??

Her inaugural Gwynn massage was at 10:15 yesterday, and I was working out with Barbara at 11 – so when I arrived, I knew that Twig was lying on Gwynn’s massage table, being brought to the very edge of pain and then washed in the euphoria of a muscle that was at last getting oxygen again. I knew Twig was being educated about things in her body that she’d never known before. I knew Twig was prone and near drooling. And I was as excited as a kid on the day parents come to school to talk about their careers.

“My sister’s here!” I crowed to Chip. Chip, who I see on Wednesdays, wasn’t even looking for me. He was eyeing the waiting area for his next client when I all but body-tackled him. “My sister’s here! In with Gwynn!”

“Oh,” he said. (He and Mario use the same playbook.) “That’s nice.”

“You can look at her when she comes out!”

Chip regarded me with a slightly alarmed air.

“To see if she’s like me! You know – is she lordotic? Do her hips do what my hips do? Don’t you want to see a sister? Like a control in a lab experiment?”

Worn down by my puppy-like enthusiasm, Chip allowed as how that might be interesting. “I have a client with six sisters,” he said. “There’s not a commonality among ‘em. All different.”

Huh. At the stroke of eleven, Barbara appeared, and I swiveled my focus to her. “My sister’s here!”

“Are we running?”

“Yeah – come on. We have to run now to get back to catch her before she leaves. I’ve already stretched. Let’s go!”

I gasped my way through my little mile while Barbara trotted gracefully alongside me, a tug boat guiding the Queen Mary. I tried – I tried! – to run a little faster, but even the promise of “My sister’s here!” couldn’t turn my engines up to eleven; it took the same 15 minutes it always takes. I was doing my panting cool-down walk out front of Body Dynamics when we finished (down to that curb cut – touch the curb with my foot; pivot, walk back up – breeze, hopefully, blowing away the thermonuclear level of heat I generate when I jog – past the front door to that curb cut – touch it with my foot, walk back – an anal-retentive ritual that must be observed) and peering hopefully through the windows to see if I could see her. Nope.

And then as I went past – “Oh, whoo-hoo!” The call we all learned from our mother (her “come down for dinner” call) rang along the street and I swiveled like a laser-guided missile. Look! It’s Twig!

I trotted back as eager as if I hadn’t seen her in years (rather than spending the last two weeks at her side cleaning out Mom’s house). “This is Barbara!” I said eagerly. “Hello, Barbara,” said Twig politely.

“Nothing like you at all,” Barbara said. “Not even close.”

And somehow, this made me howl with laughter. Barbara knows what my feet are doing inside my sneakers; she has the most uncanny ability to understand how a body is working purely through her astonishing powers of observation – and she could see in an instant that Twig’s body was completely different from mine. Of COURSE our bodies aren’t anything alike. Something in Twig’s chemistry makes her crave cardio tennis. Something in my chemistry makes me measure every piece of furniture for its potential value in a marathon novel-reading session.

Twig and Barbara were having a friendly, gentle chat while I was biting back a ridiculous grin. I wanted to shout. It was like a lifetime of struggle clarified in one moment. I don’t like cardio tennis because I am nothing like my sister. I wanted to go up to every gym teacher I ever had, every scornful saleslady in a dressing room – I wanted to get Mom’s ashes off the shelf in the hall closet and say I AM NOTHING LIKE MY SISTER! Isn’t that awesome?!

It’s not strength of will (or lack thereof) that has padded my entire middle like I’m swaddled in pink ceiling insulation. It’s not a lack of effort.

I’m just not like that.

I’m so proud of my sister… and I’m so proud of me.

By the way – Twig says she’s a total Gwynn convert. Her massage was amazing. TOO RIGHT, IT WAS! This photo is of me (on the left) and Twig in the “fascinators” she cleverly made for us for a luncheon of the Smithsonian Women’s Committee. Twig is off-the-charts creative.