One of our former trainer’s favorite expressions is “Motion is Lotion.” There hasn’t been much outdoor motion lately, with the temperatures hovering around the single digits and lower for almost a week now. So, I’m particularly grateful for the exercise regime our current trainer has constructed for me that saves me from becoming a complete winter couch potato.
Amy was here for her weekly sessions with me and Rosellen – an hour apiece – and I’m still feeling a bit of a glow from our workout. She does a really satisfying combination of yoga and strength training, with an emphasis on building the capacity of my hips to walk with less discomfort. And for every person of a certain age, improving balance is a key issue.
I never imagined that I would have a trainer who worked with me at home. It feels so Beverly Hills, but we’ve come to consider it a medical necessity. We don’t drink or smoke. We don’t buy expensive clothes or jewelry. That’s how we justify allowing ourselves this indulgence.
The training sessions alone would yield only marginal benefits without follow up on my own time. I’ve told this story before about a friend who completed a course of PT, for which he thanked the therapist. She replied, “I should be thanking you. You’re the only patient who actually does the exercises I prescribe!” Same deal with the trainer. I’m the ultimate good boy. I never took piano lessons, but I would not have lied to the teacher about practicing between lessons. In fact, I’m so habituated to doing the work that my body feels weighted down if I’m inert for any length of time. It’s the way I felt in my running days if my schedule didn’t allow for running almost every day. Sometimes a little bit of compulsiveness can work to your benefit.
I’ve asked Amy to incorporate as many balance activities as possible. Falling is every older person’s living nightmare. She’s pointed out correctly that there are elements of balance in many of our yoga poses, but she’s also supplemented those with additional activities that highlight balance. So far, so good. I won’t say more for fear of jinxing myself.
Working with a personal trainer creates lots of opportunities for conversation. Both Amy and her predecessor Lisa are fascinating people. I would almost be willing to pay for them to come by just to talk. Rosellen’s sessions follow on the heels of mine, and I hear a lot of chatter coming from the area of the mat. There’s less in my sessions because I’m trying hard to focus on the exercises, but even so, I’ve learned a lot about her six children, her admirable community volunteering and her complicated relationship to her Mormon faith. It’s a lot more rewarding than talking to a Peloton.
From time to time, I like to update you on my reading. I just finished reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I took me a long time to get through its 550 pages, this time not just because of my chronically slow reading pace but also because I was sure not going to drag that doorstop of a book to the Dominican Republic where I confined my reading to long-neglected and easily portable magazines.
Demon Copperhead is a contemporary take on David Coppefrield transposed from dark and sooty industrializing England to an Appalachian backwater, territory very familiar to Kingsolver. I read the Dickens so long ago that I can’t say how closely this book follows the outline of the original. It’s a virtuosic book, delivered with a marvelous ear for local language and culture. Rosellen put the book down after a short try because she found that very language off-putting, but it was one of the attractions of the book.
Demon (his nickname) is a small boy at the outset who becomes trapped in the foster care system after his mother dies; his father died before he was born. I’m not going to go through all the twists and turns of his life story, but by the end we see him as a young man in his twenties, who has shaken off his addictions and is poised to break through all the hillbilly stereotypes against which he is committed to do battle. I gather that critics have problems with the relatively happy ending which they find inconsistent with the rest of the book and with Dickens’ original.
One of the things I admire about the book is Kingsolver’s ability to nail the voice of a boy and, later a young man so accurately. I’m fascinated by cross-gender narration. It’s something women writers tend to do better than men. One glorious exception is Colm Toibin who does a marvelous job of representing his women characters in three books I’ve read – Norah Webster, Brooklyn and Long Island. Toibin and a few other male authors aside, women definitely rule when it comes to crossovers.
In any case, I loved Demon Copperhead and I think many of you will too. Just settle in for the long run.
