I’m not sure if my klutziness is due to nature or nurture, but even as a kid I was hopeless. In those days Little League teams were off limits to girls unless, like my friend Alicia, you were really good and your parents threatened to sue somebody. The only “sport” generally available to East Texas girls at that time was baton twirling, and neither my parents’ budget nor priorities included a spot for me at Miss Tammy’s School of Tap and Twirling. It’s a loss I live with every day, and I suppose it’s pointless to speculate how differently I might have turned out if I had been allowed to train with a true baton professional. But the library was free, so I took what was available to me and became a reader instead of a majorette. I spent evenings and weekends sprawled across my bed, exercising my brain instead of my body.
In my early twenties, I tried to “go for the burn” in aerobics class but flamed out after only a few months. In 1990 Ted and I visited Yosemite and went for what we thought was an easy morning walk. The guidebook failed to mention that over the one-mile distance, the trail rose one thousand feet vertically. Though I was newly pregnant, I managed the mountain without requiring an airlift. But that hike lasted me nearly twenty years. Another time I tried to show Sophie how to do a cartwheel. She was five and I was thirty-five, and this was a big mistake. My legs got over alright, but I felt like the two ends of my body were coming apart somewhere in the middle. I spent a week on the heating pad. To add insult to injury, Sophie later told Ted, “Mommy shouldn’t do cartwheels. She doesn’t even know how to ride a bike.” I did too know how. I had a blue bike with a flowered banana seat when I was five and I didn’t use training wheels, so there. Just because she had never seen me ride didn’t mean I didn’t know how. I think she believed me, but I’m not sure I’ve ever actually proved it to her.
A little over two years ago I had a life-changing moment. We were on a family vacation, and Ted grabbed a pair of jeans out of the hotel room dresser. He put them on, then looked puzzled. “These jeans are too big,” he said. I took a closer look and realized he had picked up my jeans by mistake. I came home and joined a gym.
The first time I went in the club, I was worried it would be full of young hotties working out in spandex and full makeup. I was relieved to note that I was younger than most of the patrons and no fatter than others. I thought, “How hard can this be?”
I started with a Pilates class so I wouldn’t sweat. I could barely touch my toes and certainly couldn’t do a push-up, but I congratulated myself because, technically, I was exercising. The class was apparently so easy for the other members that few attended and it was soon cancelled. I moved on to Yoga, again with the not-sweating in mind, but felt like a fool when I fell over during Warrior pose and banged my knees and elbows on the floor going from Down Dog to Cobra. And people say yoga is relaxing. Step class was worse, and I found myself slinking out before it was over. That wasn’t exercise. It was choreography.
Finally, I tried a Bodysculpting class. The instructor at first told me it wasn’t a cardio workout, but looked at me and reconsidered. “For you, it might be,” she said. I started out using three pound hand weights and couldn’t isolate a single muscle in my body. Everything hurt, so I wasn’t even sure what part was supposed to be sore. My only goals were to keep moving and not faint. By the end of the hour I was drenched in sweat and could barely stagger out the door.
Every week I watched the clock during class, thinking to myself, “Why am I here? I hate to exercise. I’m a book person, not an athlete. Smart people don’t really need this, do we? ” Then one day I heard the impossibly thin woman with thirty pounds on her bar compliment the very pregnant woman next to her, “I’m an Obstetrician and I’m so glad to see you here working out.” I went to get heavier weights.
The shame of quitting class early while all the old ladies and pregnant women were still moving and holding 10 pounds in each hand was enough to keep me there for the full hour most days. Eventually, things got easier. I was still a pitiful specimen by anyone’s standards, but I stayed on until my exercise pants got so loose I risked a wardrobe malfunction with every rep.
Fitness has been a long time coming, but now I’ve lost forty-seven pounds and have been exercising more or less consistently for over two years. I’ve worked up to fifteen pounds on the barbell (with the bar and clamps it’s close to twenty, so give me a break…) And although some days I have to talk myself into going to class instead of sitting home reading, I think I have turned a corner. A couple of weeks ago I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day and instead of eating a carton of Bluebell, I found myself at the gym burning off steam. Then I ate the ice cream.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a total klutz and many of the grannies still out-lift me. But I can do ten push-ups in a row now. We won’t talk about that part on the back of my arms that still jiggles, but I’m getting sort of buff in my biceps and shoulders and sometimes I even wear a tank top just to show off a little. So I don’t forget how far I’ve come, I keep a snapshot from that fateful vacation on my refrigerator door. It’s fine with me if my husband wears the pants in our family; I just don’t want them to be mine.
