At the Dr's office yesterday I sat across from a woman who had probably attended a Good Friday sermon. She had on a straw hat, tan skirt, jacket, thick support hose and orthopaedic shoes. Her ankles were thicker than the top of her calves and she sat primly with her purse in her lap. Her face was so strong and weathered it could have been on Mt. Rushmore, but her body was a little stooped and frail. That face could have carried any body through another several years. It had the hardness of a strong man's face and wisdom of a woman's.
I wondered when my ankles will be wider than the top of my calves and if I will be as strong when I reach what I guessed were her nineties. She was accompanied by a daughter or niece who I imagined was about my age or younger. She was dressed for church, still soft, round and tightly packed in all the right places as she guided her elder with the utmost care. The woman holding her up may have had youth on her side, but the woman in her nineties was clearly the strongest person in the room.
We smiled at each other, chatted a bit and wished each other a Happy Easter as she departed and my name was called. The imprint of her face must have touched many people as it did me. I mused about her and the cycle of life all day.
As a young girl, I was always critical of my body, which was too chubby, too round and even when I tipped the scale at an ideal weight, I was never happy with it. That is, until I had my children. In my early to late thirties, I had a body I was proud of because I thought it had done something remarkable, so the minor stretch marks I got from two consecutive pregnancies and my changes in shape morphed into a new attitude from self-criticism to genuine acceptance. I carried that attitude with me from that time forward, despite number gains and losses on that dreaded scale. I don't think I have lived a single day since I was thirteen that I have not thought about my need to maintain a healthy, mobile body. Whether or not I do anything about it is an entirely different story. I can remember laying on the couch watching a Jane Fonda workout tape.
I have had periods of time where I walked an hour and a half every morning with hand weights and a heart monitor on to make sure I was at the ideal number for burning calories with no results. At other times, I've slimmed down without any changes in habit. I have "plateaus" that hit about every decade and my body has "failed me" or I have failed it in significant ways. I am less focused on size than health, and becoming a smaller size has never been a motivation for exercise or eating right. Activity (whether you call it exercise or training)helps a person's mood, energy level, internal health and overall attitude toward getting dressed in the morning. I have had very real medical issues, weather conditions and occupational interferences that have affected my level of interest and motivation for doing the right things every day even though I think about how essential it is to actually do it.
Yesterday, I tried on a pair of jeans and my behind looked pretty good in that rear view mirror. Somehow the structure of the denim and cut of the britches were kind to me. Then I tried on a pair of light gray cotton sweats and the mirror told a different story. I have acquired one of those bottoms that women in their fifties get. There are valleys in the middle, hills at the hip level and pouches of sand at the creases by my legs. I wondered when I got this butt.
I've been feeling it coming on, but somehow what used to be a peach shaped body part has morphed into something that looks more like a pear--not even a good shaped pear, but one that has been cut in two with a flatness at the center and the contours I have described. I am not surprised, but it was somehow an unexpected sight to join the ranks of middle aged women who are identifiable in large part by the shape of their booties.
I am honestly not that vain. I would rather have good looking skin, a face that conveys a youthful attitude and be energetic and mobile than to have the perfect body for someone at my stage of life. I have never particularly worried about wrinkles and there are easy coloring solutions for gray hair. I figured those are signs of life I have earned with my own sweat and blood and a little bit of help from others. But I miss my big, peachy butt. It is so ironic because it is the part of my body I never liked, always wished was smaller, yet over the past several years I've taken comfort in it because it balances out my top heaviness.
No matter how big or small I've been, I have always been proportionate and thank good genes for that little blessing. Yeah, my legs are shorter and stumpier than I would like them to be; in fact, I am shorter than I would like to be, but have seen this world from my barely five-foot-two place and cannot imagine seeing it from any higher. I am now intensely aware that sitting at this computer is flattening my butt even more.
Maybe my entry into "rehab" will be an entry back into a fitness routine that will work for me. A long time ago I had a neck injury and the treatment consisted of getting hooked up to a traction machine and getting some kind of ultrasound therapy to stimulate nerve conduction. A few years ago, I injured my back and the treatment was to get on a treadmill and do stomach and yoga ball exercises, all of which were entirely unexpected--you mean your therapy is to make me exercise? It worked, though. Physical therapy had come a long way from "treating" a passive patient.
I will find out Monday at noon what is in store for "knee rehab". It would be nice to heal this thing and maybe get an exercise routine out of the deal. And maybe a more peachy butt.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
I hope it goes well for you Bam. You have more than likly had pain for so long you have forgotten what it feels like with no pain. I wish you well.
ReplyDeleteAs far as changing shape, well I can tell you you're not alone. As you well know. However it gets better with age I think. Not necessarily the shape of things, but I guess the way you feel about it. I don't know what happens, but look forward it, because it's nice. Best of luck to you. Hope you can feel better soon. We will be thinking of you.
Good to know, Mama Sue:) ha! I think maybe I'll put a few pictures of peaches in my kitchen. Thanks for the encouragement.
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