My relationship with my daughter was going really well. She had boomeranged back home six months prior. She was working, she wasn't staying out too late or loud, and only one of my favorite necklaces had disappeared, having been last seen in the vicinity of her neck. We shopped together, went drinking together, and gave each other honest opinions about the wisdom behind wearing jeggings. And then we pushed it too far.
"Will you come with me to a Body Shred class?" she asked me one day.
"Good god, no," I said. "That sounds horrible." Maybe it was all those Criminal Minds episodes I had been binge-watching, but I pictured blood and Band-Aid wrappers all over the shiny, spotless, hardwood floors of our gym. It was quite the mess.
"It's just strenuous exercise," she said. "I want to go but I don't want to go by myself. Besides, you've been to lots of exercise classes at the gym."
True. I have reached an age where I've tried everything at least once. In the early '80s I took an aerobics class with my friend Karen. This was pre-Jane Fonda, but that didn't stop us from putting on magenta-and-turquoise legwarmers and matching headbands. My leotard had a belt. Owning and not renting that outfit was the only thing that got me to finish the six-week class.
Over the years I followed that up with an assortment of post-Jane aerobics, Jazzercize, yoga, Zumba, hip hop, Pilates and spin classes. But none of them evoked the need for stitches or skin grafts.
I went. Of course I went. The mother-daughter relationship is stupid like that.
I knew I'd be the oldest one in the class. What I didn't know was that the teacher would be a third my age, young enough to be Jane Fonda's great-granddaughter. Sitting there facing the class with her legs twisted like a braided pretzel, she looked around the room and her gaze stopped at me. I looked like I was the class Room Mother.
"Ladies, remember, set your own pace. You want to push yourself, but know your limits, listen to your body." I could have sworn she winked at me. What did she know about the sounds my body makes?
So we got started. I had been foolishly optimistic when I picked out the hand weights - two heavy and two light, the instructor said - but that's pretty relative. It wasn't until we had been bouncing around for five minutes or so and she said "OK, grab your light weights!" that I noticed Malibu Barbie next to me had chosen my light weights as her heavy ones. Crap. I had not paid enough attention to the color coding. It was too late to go switch. The weight rack was across the room and - what are we doing now? Putting our knees where? Touching our what? I threw down my heavy-light weights with a clunk and tried to catch up.
There were no breaks. No breaks, I tell you. She was trying to kill us. Or rather, she was trying to kill most of us and finish off the survivors by dehydrating us so that we might crumble and blow out the window. Occasionally I'd look over at my daughter and we would both roll our eyes. But even that hurt after a while.
I was falling behind. I was brazenly taking forbidden water breaks like a death row inmate who has lost all hope. What did I have to lose? Was this instructor not aware that women my age have internal organs barely hanging on? That between the telescoping uterus, the dropped bladder, receding gums, and crepey skin pulling away from the muscle, if I'm not careful I could be a pile of internal organs and a skin suit on the gym floor. I don't even get into bed fast. What makes her think I can do lunges, pushups, and kicks - both donkey and butt - without stopping to strap everything in?
Then, in an effort to inspire us, the instructor began to shout out scenarios that might give us the motivation to do another set of what seemed like a death march. I knew she was talking directly to the mom in the room (me) when she yelled at us to "save the burning baby." Apparently an upper floor of a pretty tall apartment building was on fire and there was an unattended baby up in there. I don't know where the actual fire department was, but it was up to me to run - with knees as high as I could get them - up a long fire escape ladder with no water breaks until I got up to the top and got my hands on that baby, at which point I had to do 10 squat jumps to distract and entertain the baby until the firefighters took over. "Don't let the baby burn!" our instructor actually screamed. Oh now, come on! That is not fair. I'm sure the baby will understand that my thighs are killing me right now. And my lungs are in such a state I could burst into flames myself.
No one else in the room seemed to be having trouble. Not even the girl with a cast on one arm. "I'm modifying these side planks," she squealed, smiling as she levitated on one pinky. "Hope that's OK!" Her broken arm was performing better than any of my perfectly healthy limbs. Although when I say perfectly healthy you know I don't mean that literally.
Yes, I was falling behind, but I hung in there and thought I should get some credit for not being taken out mid-class on a stretcher. I knew all my efforts were in vain and that my face was the color of the fire extinguisher when the instructor looked right at me and said, "You can modify, you know." I glanced out the door to see if the gym legal team was gathering in the lobby.
"I am modifying," I wheezed. "I'm modifying . . . as fast . . . as . . I can." I turned to my daughter and said, "Have we been in here, what, three hours now? Is it time to go shopping and drinking yet?
"It's been twenty minutes. We have ten more minutes to go," she said.
Jane would have never done this to me.
