Pumping iron

I worked out with a personal trainer on Wednesday.

Take your time. That sentence was unexpected and out of character. Breathe.

Really. I did.

See, here's the thing. From age 17 to age 33, I was sick enough with thyroid disease that aerobic exercise was forbidden by my doctor. He told me that walking and yoga were quite sufficient and that getting my already-hummingbird-like heart rate any higher could end badly, like in a coffin. Not having a death wish, I complied. One of the "fortunate" symptoms of hyperthyroidism is weight loss, so it really didn't have a big impact on my figure.

Which means, for all of my adult life, I've been thin (or close to thin) but not very fit.

Now that my thyroid gland is, well, gone, and my pulse is down below 100, it's okay for me to exercise, which I've done, in fits and starts. Yes, I walk every day. And there have been a few instances of jogging. And riding bikes. But it's become increasingly obvious that I needed to do more. Add to the situation my husband and his recent and impressive weight loss (he's down 8 inches in waist size! since October!) that is entirely a result of an exercise program, and it had to happen. I had to take it seriously, which is why we joined the gym. (Learning that my employer had negotiated an amazingly cheap rate with this gym didn't hurt, though.)

(It's worth noting that I really don't like sweating. Just thought I'd put that piece of information out there.)

But the trainer and I met for my fitness assessment. The first few minutes of that assessment included a health history, getting weighed and measured, and talking about fitness goals. That was all completed before he started teaching me how to make those medieval torture instruments work. A few excerpts from our conversation:

Him: How old are you?
Me: 36.
Him: No way! I guessed you to be in your early 20's!
Me: Yeah, that's what you say to all the old ladies.

Him: What is your main goal for this fitness program?
Me: Well, I'm not getting any younger, and I need to stay healthy if I want to stay around.
Him: Okay, I'm going to write down, "To feel and look young." Does that sound right?
Me: .....

After he has me do twelve reps of some rather hideous exercise...

Him: Did you feel that? Do you feel a burn?
Me: .....
Him: Where do you feel it?
Me: points vaguely to an area near my arm
Him: You didn't feel that. :::adds weight to the machine::: Do another twelve.
Me: .... (silent sobbing)

All in all, it went well. Nothing was too painful, and even when he measured my hips it wasn't too embarrassing. My weight was perfectly respectable (even though I did some stress eating before my appointment...I was really nervous about it), and I was able to lift more than the minimum amount of weight on each machine. It was maybe, just maybe, even a little bit fun.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I expected to be in pain. I wasn't. And that concerned me a little. Maybe he'd been too easy on me. Because, honestly, I did more than my share of eyelash batting when the going got tough. And a couple of times I really thought it worked, and he reduced the weight on the machine or reduced the number of reps. Craig and I talked about it, and we agreed that a female trainer might be what I need because she would be less likely to take it easy on me. (And yes, this made me a little sad. Because this trainer is definitely in the eye candy category.)

As the day went on, however, I started feeling it. That soreness. Which is a feeling I don't often experience, but I remember from being younger. It's not exactly painful, or even uncomfortable. But it gets my attention. And it tells me that maybe this guy didn't take it quite as easy on me as I had thought. (Which is good news. Remember, he's cute! And compliments me! Tells me I don't have wrinkles! Yes, really. He said that. Love.)

We're going back today, and this time I'm on my own. I have a little anxiety still about the machines. Will I remember which machine is which? Will I look stupid carrying around my little "cheat sheet"? What if I lose my "cheat sheet"? Will I still be sore enough that the exercises are much more difficult today? Will I eat ten pounds of pasta afterward, negating all my hard work? Can I really keep this up after the kids come back home?

But I'm not going to let those anxieties win. I need to do this, and I like how I feel afterward. I really, really hope that I can like how I feel during. And soon.

Summer reading

I've read a couple of books in the past few weeks, which is not something I can often claim these days. My free time is generally claimed by meetings, rehearsals, family time, or television. In the summertime, however, rehearsals are on hiatus, and there are fewer meetings.

One of the books I read was for an online book club. The book was The Washingtonienne: A Novel, and it was a fun, easy, mind-candy read. Sex, sex, sex, along with large portions of alcohol, bitchiness, and mild sociopathology. It's such a quick read (seriously, one day) that you probably still have time to join the book discussion.

Deeper, however, was my other recent read, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. Elizabeth Gilbert, who is about my age, is a very accomplished author. This very personal book details a year of her life in which she takes extreme measure to heal her wounded spirit after a difficult divorce and another heartbreak on its heels.

That book had been on my Amazon wishlist for some time. While it was there, I read a few conflicting reviews of the book. Not that I'm a big believer in reviews, but one rather harsh review suggested that Gilbert's approach was patronizing to the indigenous people of India and Indonesia.

My take: the first couple of chapters didn't pull me into the story very well, but once she gets to Italy, I was hooked. The India section was interesting because of my history with yoga, and it made me think of my friend Christie a lot. I know she would have enjoyed that part of the story. Indonesia, too, was compelling (if memory serves, that's the section that the negative review really took to task...for what it's worth, I don't agree with that part of the review).

I finished the book while I was at the hotel, so I gave it to my mom, along with Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, which I had devoured a year ago, and she had picked up the last time she visited Memphis. She didn't take it with her (accidentally), and I was a good enough daughter to remember it and bring it with me.

I'm up for more reading, so please send your suggestions. I like Anthony Bourdain and Poppy Z. Brite, when it comes to fiction. Well, I like Anthony's nonfiction too. I pretty much like everything about him. And I like reading about food. So suggest, please!!

And sometimes, they're just awesome

On Monday and Wednesday evenings, Craig teaches a night class, so I'm alone with the kids. It's been like that, just varying evenings, as long as we've had kids. Some semesters he's taught four evenings a week, and when Alex was a baby, he also delivered a weekly paper into the wee hours of Wednesdays.

Which means that, historically, bedtime has been the domain of Mommy.

Craig is a fantastic daytime parent. I've had 8-4:30, Monday-Friday jobs for years. School starts a bit later and ends earlier, which means that Craig's schedule is designed so that he takes them to school, teaches some classes while they're learning, and then picks them up from school (at varying times depending on which after-school activity is happening), then oversees homework, snack, playtime. By the time I arrive home, the homework is usually completed, and it's time to make dinner and wind down.

My kids, even at the advanced ages of 7 and 9, go to bed at 8:00 on school nights. Last year, we tried to adjust their bedtime to give them a little more time, but even 8:30 meant they were dragging in the morning. Those little bodies really need 11 hours of sleep every night. And based on how hard it is to wake them up in the morning, they could probably use 12. But there's no time for all that.

By 7:00, on the evenings that Craig is home, he's pretty much ready to send the kids upstairs. He's been with them through the rush of getting ready for school and running out the door. He's been with them (and helped them) through the mountain of homework. He's been the nag: get your lunch, pick up your backpack, empty your lunchbox, put away your shoes.

And I get the better part of them most nights. I get the sous chef when Alex helps with dinner. I get the long talks with Susie about her friends. The best stories? Are saved for me. Craig often complains that the kids never talk to him. Not that they give him the silent treatment, but that they save the real talks for me.

How do I get so lucky?

Being a working mom sometimes gives me the best of both worlds.

When I was a kid, my dad worked and my mom stayed home. Mom was there for the bumps and bruises, the crying about some mean kid at school, all the daily stuff that's so, well, daily. Dad was the "fun" parent - he was playful and silly and seen much less (sometimes his work took him far away, like Australia, for weeks or months at a time). So seeing Daddy? That was party time!

In our little family, both parents work, but one, Craig of the flexible schedule, is there for the "daily" stuff. And I'm not. Which means that I get to be the "fun" parent much of the time.

But.

I'm still the mom. And that means when someone's sick? They want me. When someone plays a video game that he should not have played and that scared the crap out of him and now he's scared of zombies? (Thank you, Resident Evil. Thanks so much for being so tempting to little boys that they beg and beg and seem mature enough to handle it so their parents relent and then they quickly realize that that game is way the hell too scary for a child.) He wants to talk to me about it. ("Mom, if you were a zombie, you'd tell me, right?") When someone has a problem with a friend, I hear all about it. When someone has a barbeque dinner at school, I'm the one that is begged to attend.

And last night was one of those nights when nothing special happened but everything was great. When I got home, Susie's homework was done and Alex was almost done. She had a stomachache and he didn't feel like it, so we didn't go to yoga. I did, somehow, convince the kids that they needed to straighten up the living room, and I straightened up the dining room.

I didn't have a plan for dinner, and with a girl with a stomachache and a boy without one, a plan wouldn't have helped me anyway. So she got lots of miso soup and he got a hot dog (with the ketchup "wavy, like in the restaurants") and I had leftovers and we sat around and watched cartoons. Then there was ice cream.

Did I mention the massage? Because Alex totally hooked me up with a great shoulder rub.

By the time they went to bed, we had snuggled and chatted and Susie's tummy felt better and Alex had talked to me about his new fear of zombies and everyone went to bed happy and content.

It's nice to be the mommy sometimes.

Yoga part 2

Sorry for the high emotion yesterday. I got carried away answering an email and it turned into that blog post.

But really, I had something ELSE that I was planning to blog about, and I'm going to try to reconstruct it today.

Big breath.

Yoga, part 2: Seven-year-old boys look funny doing yoga.

Clearly, we all know now that I've had an off-again, on-again relationship with yoga (actually it began in college, but it completely didn't "stick" until much later). What I haven't said yet is that, occasionally, I've done yoga with kids. When I taught preschool and we had a ten-minute "gap", I'd sometimes teach the kids a yoga pose or two. Mainly because it was freaking hiLARious to watch their little bodies try to assume the poses. Because most kids? Are totally clumsy. They'd fall down, they'd giggle, it was great.

And at church, when I was on the religious education committee, we were trying to decide what to do with the kids during the summer (usually they do a summer-long, multi-age study that's very "lite" and fun and doesn't require knowledge of previous lessons). Someone (maybe it was me) suggested yoga. Since there are several people in the church who practice yoga, it was a good fit. And I somehow wound up teaching for a Sunday or two. And it was fun. Some of the kids, including Susie, took the practice very seriously. Susie even has a yoga book,
Fly Like A Butterfly: Yoga for Children, that she took with her to church to share with the teacher.

Susie is the athlete in our family. She's got amazing body awareness and coordination. She learned to ride a bike in, um, ten minutes or so. She mastered her Heelys in a couple of hours. So yoga? Comes naturally to her. (And it doesn't hurt that when she was little, like three, she LOVED to watch yoga videos. I had one that was filmed in the Bahamas and she used to watch it before naps.)

Alex, however, is a little more inside his head and less in his body. He's floppy and fidgety and ohmygosh it took forEVER for him to learn to ride his bike and he's finally got his Heelys figured out a month after he got them. But I think his saving grace is that he's not a bit self-conscious when he's learning these skills. He'll try and try and try and fall down and look silly and just not care. And watching him do yoga? Is funny. He earnestly tries. But doesn't have enough body awareness to put himself into a pose correctly. And meditation? Comes as naturally to him as it does to me, which is to say not at all. He and I totally busted each other looking around when our eyes were supposed to be closed. But he also arranged his arms so that we would be holding hands during the meditation and how cute is that?

The part that is so cool is that both of them want to go back. I knew Susie would. Because she's good at it and loves yoga with a deep love. Alex, however, surprises me with his willingness to try anything, even if it doesn't come naturally.

More on that later.

Yoga

Okay, here's a fair warning. You might want to get a tissue. You've been warned. If you hate to read sad stories, um, go check out some other blog that's funny.

Still here? Here goes nothing.

In 1997 I became a mom. Despite my best intentions, I had a cesarean section. It was not easy, and I definitely had my moments of feeling like a failure. After all, my mother had delivered me and my brother naturally (at least mostly naturally) in the South in the early 1970's, which was no mean feat. My mother-in-law, too, had delivered her three children with ease. I had assumed that I, too, would have a glorious natural childbirth experience.

I got lucky and was able to breastfeed pretty easily. The first month, however, was not all wine and roses, and my husband (Craig) spied a flier for La Leche League and urged me to go to a meeting. My mother had given me her old copy of "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding," telling me that the book had good information, but that the ladies of LLL were a bit "culty."

So with a little trepidation, I walked to the Quaker meeting house for my first LLL meeting. I maneuvered my big bulky stroller into the small space and felt more than a little awkward. After all, baby-toting was still very new to me.

The first person I made eye contact with was a young, radiant pregnant woman. She smiled warmly and invited me to sit with her. In a few minutes, I had learned that she was pregnant with her second child and that her first child, Arabella, was a preschooler. I also learned that this nice woman was a writer and was very interested in yoga, and that she was a fallen-away vegetarian. She was articulate and pretty and interesting and wow! She was my first official "mommy friend."

We saw each other often at LLL meetings and even got together other times. She had a beautiful baby boy (who walked at 8 months!) and co-founded the Memphis chapter of Attachment Parenting International. She began teaching yoga, beginning with a prenatal yoga class, which I attended. She brought food to my house when my second child was born, and provided plenty of emotional support when I made the difficult decision to quit my job. When her child was diagnosed with Asperger's, I was there for her as she learned to navigate the world of IEP's and alternative therapies. In 2000, she asked me to be a co-leader of the API group.

Christie was beautiful. That showed all the time. She had a ready smile and a musical laugh. She was gentle and positive. After September 11, she threw herself into organizing "Peace Picnics" at her child's preschool. She was devoted to National TV Turnoff week, which always made me laugh, because at my house, the TV wouldn't know what to do if it were off for a whole week! She was also very talented and disciplined. She landed a major writing contract - four children's books to be co-written with Bill and Martha Sears! She kept that news to herself as long as she possibly could, but when she finally told me, she was ready to burst. It was amazing! (And the books are fantastic! Buy them!)


In 2002, I was working part-time, and Christie asked me to attend her sparsely-populated Wednesday morning yoga class. It was a level 2 class, a little more challenging than I was ready for, but the only class that fit into my schedule. Generally there were two to five women in the class, and we all enjoyed getting to know each other. Around June of that year, I noticed that Christie was acting a little, well, ditzy. And about as soon as I started suspecting, she told me that she was pregnant again. Delightful news! Craig and I had already decided that we were done having children, so another baby to spoil!

Christie decided to cut back to just prenatal yoga classes in September. Which meant I didn't see her every week anymore. I drifted into another yoga class on Wednesday mornings, but it was crowded and the room was always cold; it wasn't the same.

She and I talked on the phone plenty, and still had our monthly API meetings. Except in October, when we both totally forgot the meeting (the fourth Monday had come earlier in the month than usual...we both thought the meeting was the following week). I called her after work on October 28, 2002, and we had a great conversation about our kids, our lives, Halloween costumes, the API group, our shared forgetfulness, and soup. And that was the last time we talked.

My answering machine was blinking when I got home from work on Tuesday, November 5. It was a friend, telling me that Christie had been in a car accident on Monday afternoon. It was bad, but the kids were okay. I returned the call and learned that Christie was not okay. They had taken the baby via c-section. Christie wasn't going to wake up.

Christie was going to die. She might already be dead.

I remember falling to the floor and crying. Once I collected my wits, I called the hospital, trying to get some information. One person told me that she wasn't on the census. Another person said that she was in surgery. I didn't get it. (Craig finally, gently told me what I failed to understand: they were taking her organs, which she was able to donate.)

I attended my Wednesday yoga class the next day, tearful. The teacher had known Christie and was crying, too. I did the poses and cried.

Her funeral was the following Friday. Craig and I attended, and the cathedral was full. The eulogy was delivered by Christie's best friend and fellow writer, Emily Yellin. She read from Christie's journals. Her journals conveyed her passion for writing, for yoga, for her husband, for her children.

I fell away from yoga. Any time I tried it, Christie's cheerful voice, her constant tweaking of the pose, her pretty voice when she chanted, all haunted me. Craig and the kids gave me a yoga mat and props for Christmas, and they pretty much spent all their time in the closet, like most exercise equipment does.

But last night I took the kids to a yoga class. It was a good class: gentle and breath-centered, a different approach than Christie's perfectionist Iyengar school of yoga. But in the quiet, just for a moment, I knew something. Christie would be glad that I was there.