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 Here they come, charging up the hill, lumbering in their sport utility vehicles and their minivans, the mommies and daddies. They have babies and toddlers and in a moment, they will reach the Hockomock YMCA where they will sling the sleeping infants over their shoulders, rush into the building, and leave their offspring in baby classes. It is still dark out and although they are dressed for city jobs, the parents look as sleepy and almost as young as the infants. The majority of the mommies and daddies will hurry down the hill to park those huge vehicles at the train station. Many of them will sleep all the way into the city, pretending to read newspapers, while their adorable children toddle sleepily around in the care of tender young babysitters who are not much more awake than their charges.
I am privileged to watch this parade of somnolence because I am now a member of the Y. It is the one club which I actually attend, three times a week for an hour class in very, very low impact aerobics. Not that I am not a member of other clubs. The Appalachian Mountain Club has accepted me, the Audubons have welcomed me into the ranks and I am still securely attached to the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Nevertheless, it is at the Y where I actually converse with my fellow members, all of which are attempting to shake out the effect of aging, sedentary lifestyles, injuries and whatnot. Me, too. I want to be, as the title of our class puts it, Fit Over Fifty. No city clothes for me. I have a Mickey Mouse tee-shirt, some bulky socks and a pair of inordinately shiny tights. Those clothes weren't easy to wear out in public, not at first. But now I am really ready to go, shamelessly attired in spandex and Disney art work. If you are to appreciate the revolutionary nature of my actions, you must know that I have never before willingly performed any excercises of a group nature. My high-school gym teachers gave up on me and gave me a bow and arrow and a target pinned to straw, just to keep me from running into my fellow students during calisthenics. My sense of right and left have, since then, if anything, grown weaker, as have my larger muscle groups. Nevertheless, for the very first time in my life, I am prepared to hop and skitter along with some other folks, doing what are surely calisthenics even though they are called something else these days. I want to be fit. I have inspected my physical being and found it woefully short of fitness and in consequence am finally willing to put some serious effort into leaping and bending in the company of others. Videos don't work for me, since I tend to wander off. My stationary bike, while quite remarkably effective in general terms (I have stationary-cycled all over Britain and am heading for a stationary Tour de France) leaves some areas quite untouched. So I am determined to give the Y a try, plunking down my membership money and my mornings three times a week. I have been at it for over a month. Some of my classmates have been in the very same class for five years or more. Two of the members of our class are astoundingly fit already, fitter probably than the instructor. Most of us are not. Three of us are men and the rest are suffering the post-menopausal distortions which cause a certain amount of bulge no matter what we do. Some of us are considerably over fifty and some of us will never see seventy again. We are, however, an extremely cheerful bunch of oldish people bouncing and stretching (now put your right hand on your left ear and bend at the waist while your knee goes up, up, up!). Ginger, our instructor, has a few old injuries herself and is not too fussy about our form. We had some substitute teachers who tried to speed us up but it was more or less a lost cause. We are on the way to being buff old people but we are not ever going to be all that quick. Except for those two unreasonably athletic ladies who are annoying evidence that we could get buffer if we tried, we are glad just to make a reasonable stab at following Ginger in her routines. All of this is very daunting at first. The music is especially dismaying since it includes a disco version of the Hallelujah Chorus and a very suspect rendition of something from Madame Butterfly. Nevertheless, it bounces and we bounce, more or less on the beat, not very precisely but without running into each other, and we pass the time of day while walking briskly around the room together in a dizzying circle. There's a lot of competition for the better mats and the lighter weights but it is all very friendly. Nobody loses their cool in our class and we are sympathetic and not too inquisitive if somebody is missing for a week or so. Sometimes it is a trip to the hospital and sometimes it is a visit to Paris or Florida or Portland and sometimes we just cannot quite get there. Meanwhile, the sleep-deprived mommies and daddies are probably dreaming, when they get the chance, of a retirement in which they may peacefully nap and read and watch mindless TV. For once, my indeterminate, in-between, nameless generation is about to lead the boomers. They may see a rocking chair before them, a gentle, easy decline. No such luck. Stretch that hamstring, now change legs. Down on the floor and UP in the air! And fourteen more! To the side! To the back! To the wall! Reach! Calf stretch! Bend! March! Again! To the left! To the right! Flex! Point! And again! And again! And what's more, they might even enjoy it. I'm told you do learn to like it after a while. And six more! Switch legs! Now, grapevine! |
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 Jean Blake White is a regular contributor to The Meadow.
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