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Today I did leg lifts or leg presses or leg somethings with a machine that requires me to lie on my back and push a large metal plate into the air with my feet. The weight was 350 pounds.
I’m not sure whether that is terrific or not, but to me it is a magical, impossible event. That I am even in a gym seems unfathomable—although I must finally admit I am indeed now a “gym rat”—minus the sweatpants and sweatshirt. Whatever I arrive wearing is the workout outfit of the day. The only thing I change is my shoes.
Gyms have always seemed like places that people I don’t even understand might go to—to do things with bars and balls that create a lot of sweat without accomplishing something useful like stacking wood or seeing something beautiful like the view from Mt. Battie, or the old buildings of downtown Bangor or Houlton on a midsummer’s morning walk.
My idea of physical exercise was, at one point in my life, dancing, and at another, splitting wood, growing food, mowing a field of overgrown timothy grass and dandelions. To pay money to sweat in a room made no sense to me. Until I found myself—I’ll spare you the long story—with a body that wouldn’t do what it had always done painlessly, without conscious thinking: bend, move, lift.
One day I wandered into the cavernous gym that was at that time in the basement of my apartment building, and there was a young man who asked how he could help me. “Not a thing you can do about this one,” I said, as I did a show-and-tell of my limitations—limitations that lingered even after physical therapy—turning my head an inch in one direction and then an inch in the other. “Besides I’m way past the workout stage. I wouldn’t know what to do with all that stuff.”
I walked away. But the next day there I was again. And there he was again, asking me the same question.
I was sure there was nothing to be done for me, but he would not, could not, see it that way. I was watching someone lift an impossibly big barbell when the young man held out a very small hand weight to me. I must have taken it because there it was, and its mate, too, one in each hand hanging limply by my sides. I put them down and laughed.
“Really, no thanks, I’m good,” I said.
“You don’t look so good,” he said. And then he picked up the two weights I’d put down. “Like this,” he began, holding his arms against his sides, curling the forearms and the weights. “Let’s start with these.”
And so I took the weights and moved them up and down. He adjusted my arms gently, cheered me on. “That’s great. Perfect. You’ve got it.”
Well, I didn’t have it. I knew it and he knew it, but what he really knew was that I needed a cheerleader who would help move me along the path.
I don’t lift the big weights and no one will ever say I have a six-pack, but my cheerleader has convinced me that anything is possible.
Thanks, J.P. This rep’s for you.
Annaliese Jakimides will be reading along the East Coast this summer in conjunction with the essay collection About Face (Women Write about What They See When They Look in the Mirror). In July, she will read at the University of Maine at Presque Isle in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Echoes magazine.
I’m not sure whether that is terrific or not, but to me it is a magical, impossible event. That I am even in a gym seems unfathomable—although I must finally admit I am indeed now a “gym rat”—minus the sweatpants and sweatshirt. Whatever I arrive wearing is the workout outfit of the day. The only thing I change is my shoes.
Gyms have always seemed like places that people I don’t even understand might go to—to do things with bars and balls that create a lot of sweat without accomplishing something useful like stacking wood or seeing something beautiful like the view from Mt. Battie, or the old buildings of downtown Bangor or Houlton on a midsummer’s morning walk.
My idea of physical exercise was, at one point in my life, dancing, and at another, splitting wood, growing food, mowing a field of overgrown timothy grass and dandelions. To pay money to sweat in a room made no sense to me. Until I found myself—I’ll spare you the long story—with a body that wouldn’t do what it had always done painlessly, without conscious thinking: bend, move, lift.
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One day I wandered into the cavernous gym that was at that time in the basement of my apartment building, and there was a young man who asked how he could help me. “Not a thing you can do about this one,” I said, as I did a show-and-tell of my limitations—limitations that lingered even after physical therapy—turning my head an inch in one direction and then an inch in the other. “Besides I’m way past the workout stage. I wouldn’t know what to do with all that stuff.”
I walked away. But the next day there I was again. And there he was again, asking me the same question.
I was sure there was nothing to be done for me, but he would not, could not, see it that way. I was watching someone lift an impossibly big barbell when the young man held out a very small hand weight to me. I must have taken it because there it was, and its mate, too, one in each hand hanging limply by my sides. I put them down and laughed.
“Really, no thanks, I’m good,” I said.
“You don’t look so good,” he said. And then he picked up the two weights I’d put down. “Like this,” he began, holding his arms against his sides, curling the forearms and the weights. “Let’s start with these.”
And so I took the weights and moved them up and down. He adjusted my arms gently, cheered me on. “That’s great. Perfect. You’ve got it.”
Well, I didn’t have it. I knew it and he knew it, but what he really knew was that I needed a cheerleader who would help move me along the path.
I don’t lift the big weights and no one will ever say I have a six-pack, but my cheerleader has convinced me that anything is possible.
Thanks, J.P. This rep’s for you.
Annaliese Jakimides will be reading along the East Coast this summer in conjunction with the essay collection About Face (Women Write about What They See When They Look in the Mirror). In July, she will read at the University of Maine at Presque Isle in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Echoes magazine.
