Friday July 2nd
My water aerobics class is becoming a study in diplomacy. Two new women joined the group today already sturdy, long practiced water aerobics aficionados. One tiny person, pretty with lovely red hair to her shoulders, stepped into the pool last week. She explained that she hadn’t exercised since Covid and she would go gently as she started. It wasn’t until the end of the class that she told us she was ninety-three. Today as she arrived, she said she was very sore and only wanted to be in the water, not work out. A second new arrival made the same pronouncement, a sore shoulder, a back that needed support. Meanwhile the core group were beginning to run in a circle stretching their legs and arms and getting the adrenaline surging for what lay ahead. I tried to be both encouraging of the fit younger group of women, mostly in their seventies, and keep my eye on and gently encourage the women fifteen years older in the shallow end of the small pool.
I am surrounded by people my age and for the first time in my life don’t have lots of young people to work with or to relate to. We look at each other and make comparisons about age. This woman was a miracle for ninety-three and this one at seventy was not doing so well. We exchange our ages with each other, sizing up the health and fitness of the other. Beauty is no longer a criterion. Seventy is now young as eighty races towards us. ‘Wow you look great’ is the standard compliment, meaning, the level of decrepitude is acceptable. I wonder as I turn eighty if I will suddenly look ‘young and fit’ the ‘for eighty’ part left unsaid.
Class over with everyone intact, the weights and noodles put away, the pool cover, which is heavy and awkward to move and takes several of us to lift, needs putting back in place. Ten minutes later it floats on the surface and a group of tired but smiling women climb out of the pool. Time to push back the wet hair and go home and recover for another day.
