It is an uncertain time, unclear if nighttime lingers, or the morning has arrived. I am alone, and it is the moment of decision. Before I plan, or deconstruct something that has already happened I am motionless in my bed. This is another morning to do what has become habit.

Early Morning

Start here

Tribeca wasn’t called Tribeca when Peter asked me to stay at his loft while he and Jane went back to Liverpool to see family. Colorless buildings in the bowels of downtown Manhattan defined this neighborhood which only came alive with office workers and financial wizards during the day. Sandwiched between office buildings and cement monolithic parking garages residential pockets of hipsters, artists and the newly married that could dole out cash for enormous vacant spaces were moving in. Cavernous lofts smelling of shoe polish and bologna sandwiches from factories and workers that once occupied these spaces became the new de rigueur house and garden hot spot. The stage had not yet been set for what would become an amalgam of literary and artistic types to set this once nameless neck of the woods on fire.

Jill and his shadow

The space was white, including the painted floor. There was a bed, a dresser, a table, no couch and all of Peter’s tools sitting idle in one half of the expansive room. I hadn’t gone out with Victor the night before as I had for weeks on end. He was a charming European photographer that I met through Peter and Jane. Seemingly, my house sitting gig included him. Continuous nights of touring Manhattan with my enthusiastic handsome guide and being introduced to so many people left me feeling ragged and wanting to be alone. I begged off, and spent the night listening to the fears inside my head. What was I doing with all these people? What as a twenty something could I bring to this party? No matter. I fell asleep and woke up when it could have been day, or it might have been night.

Negative/Positive

The streets of New York weren’t filled with properly attired runners then, and nobody was sauntering through the streets with yoga mats under their arms on their way to class. VCR’s were new and the ubiquity of cell phones was unheard of. Actual street sweepers kept the streets clean, and I might have passed him sweeping as I slowly jogged by, but for the most part the streets were empty. It was early on a Saturday morning.

Once or twice around the block was all that I was willing to do. In those days women were on the verge of sweating, still more inclined to simply perspire, as the ordinary athlete had not yet come of age. The rest of the day was unplanned. Probably see Victor. The pain began as the type that makes you wonder if you really felt anything. For close to an entire year I had been running a low-grade fever, but paid almost no attention to that symptom. Hardly around the block at all pain swathed my entire body and dropped me to my knees, a scene out of a movie. The street cleaner had come and gone, leaving me with no one to ask for help.

My protector

My parents were out-of-town, my older sister lived in California, my younger brother was fifteen, and left to his own devices in the basement while my parents were gone. With that I called my younger sister, at the time, one of New York’s finest and thoroughly experienced with keeping her cool and handling emergencies. The lights and sirens of her brethren transported me to her house in Queens, but I don’t remember how I got to a hospital in Brooklyn.

Bound to You

My fallopian tube had twisted around my uterus. The early 1980’s still had us referring to female body parts as “down there.” I didn’t come from a “let’s have that talk honey” type of household, and high school hygiene class didn’t cover that material either. Ergo, I didn’t really know what either of those things was, but it hurt like a m_____f_____ and the emergency surgery to remedy the problem forever altered the course of my life.

Not Laughing

My groovy Manhattan gallivanting came to a screeching halt, and I was back in Brooklyn. Feeling a little like John Travalta’s character in Saturday Night Fever, I knew there was something on the other side of the bridge, but for the foreseeable future I was back at my parents house, grateful for their love and round the clock care.

Seeing Red

Surgery wasn’t laparoscopic when my fallopian tube came fist to cuff with my uterus. I was cut right where they needed to cut, and wasn’t able to move for months afterward. Occasionally someone would call from “the city”, but for the most part I was completely disconnected from what just weeks earlier seemed so important.

Transparent

Once I began to walk I ventured only as far as my front stoop, (stairs in front of my house for the uninitiated) and sat quietly for hours, waiting to recover. After weeks of sitting outside I noticed the unshakable routine of my gorgeous, Mad Men type neighbor Delores. She stayed inside during the morning, then would slather up with her alchemist concoction of baby oil mixed with iodine to enhance tanning, and sit in her grassless backyard, bikini clad with a three sectioned foil reflector aimed at her face, moving it out-of-the-way just long enough to take a drag of her perpetually lit Newport.

She was a veritable bomb shell and the only woman within fifty miles of my house to wear a two piece bathing suit. She was about 5’10” tall, sometimes a redhead, sometimes a brunette. She had the swagger of Sophia Loren, and the bravado of “Anita” from West Side Story. Delores didn’t fraternize with the local ladies. She was polite in a stand-offish way, and for the most part kept to herself. In the late afternoon she would dress in skin-tight “peddle pushers” and Laura Petrie type flats to go marketing. I knew that, because she always returned with one or two bags of groceries. My six person household’s weekly marketing excursions needed a U-Haul to transport our groceries; I wasn’t sure how Delores managed to feed her family of four bringing home only the food she could carry.

Hang Tight

She must have noticed me too. After weeks of a throw away, “how’s it going?” she asked me why I was home again. Her achingly beautiful daughter had become absorbed into a sex, drugs and rock and roll life style, the pitfalls of which often landed her back home under the protective wing of her equally beautiful mother countless times. Having grown up around Delores my whole life she knew that once I left for college I never planned to come home again. She wanted to know why I was back in Brooklyn.

Black Birds

A few days after she heard my story she came to my house. That had never happened, ever, not before, and not ever again. Jesus was more likely to resurrect than it was for Delores to come to your house for a chat. I’m not even sure if she knew my mother’s name, but there she was standing at the door. She spoke with the subtle purr of Grace Kelly in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. She handed my mother a book but didn’t say much. The paperback was bright pink and pictured a woman wearing a leotard on the cover. The exact title has long since been forgotten, but the content advised how not to get cellulite.

Not Sports

My family did not play football on Thanksgiving. We didn’t set up volleyball nets at the beach, and my people are basically tailors not sailors. I had never seen anyone I knew personally exercise. In fact, I don’t think that word was in use. I can remember calisthenics being said, but not exercise. This was back in the day when pasta was called macaroni, and Jack LaLanne wore a jumpsuit on TV.

Hold On

Delores might have been spending the mornings inside exercising. I just assumed that she was inside cleaning, because that’s what the women I knew in my neighborhood did. I had no idea that it was possible to affect the shape of one’s body by moving and being discriminating about what you ate. The term working out might have been said in gyms meant only for men, but those words had not yet been coupled for use in everyday language.

Pop

That book became my bible. It had very little text. Mostly it was a guide, a step by step visual manual with instructions on how to recreate the movements of the sleek and beautiful woman pictured on the cover. It admonished the reader (participant) to never drink anything carbonated. “Little bubbles in the bottle, little bubbles on the body.” The only thing I drink with bubbles is champagne, and I am cellulite free.

Words to Live By

My parents offered me the room they had been using as a den for my recovery. I cleared a space on the floor, opened that book and used it everyday for months in an effort to reverse the unwelcome effects of my fallopian tube-ectomy. That book made way for Jane Fonda’s exercise book, which led me to daily use of her video tape when that became available.

Basic Black

For more than thirty years I have worked out, almost every day. Only put on hold after the birth of each of my daughters, and after the more than ten operations I have had for different reasons, on different body parts.

Once Around

What began with rudimentary calisthenics expanded to include lifting weights, practicing Power Yoga with Bryan Kest, Pilates, boot camps by celebrity trainers , using kettle balls, balance balls, bars, bands, ropes, hula hoops and more, swimming laps, taking classes, Tae Bo, Zumba, Kundalini, and aggressively riding a bike. Words like crunching, blasting, training, and sculpt are all woven into my vocabulary.

Every day

My gym membership has been renewed annually for more than a decade, during which time I dated one of my infrequently hired trainers, made lasting friendships, had my beautiful Tag Heuer watch stolen from my locker, and been noticed by fellow gym rats. I have also done my fair share of glancing over at a handsome guys working out next to me. On occasion I will go to the gym when I want to stare at sweaty guys working out. Perched far enough away on my own elliptical trainer so as not to have to interact with them. But most of my workouts are still done by clearing a space on the floor of wherever I am living.

One at a time

Delores didn’t know when she gave me that book that it would set a course for the way I live my life, and neither did I. It began as a way to undo something that had been done to me, but became something I do for myself. Each morning workout begins by me making the decision to start, and to finish. I don’t always have that same follow through in other areas of my life. But without exception and with no excuses I do this. Everyday. While the physical rewards are obvious, what began as a way to have a more flexible body has led me to have a more flexible mind. I’m not always able to meet the physical challenge I set for myself, but I don’t judge myself on the outcome of my individual workouts, more so it is a process, and that is what I have come to love.

I am a 2nd child, this was my second child

One, Three, Five and me

I am not one of those women who walk out of the hospital fitting back into her skinny jeans after giving birth. It took at least a year each time for me to become petite again. Nothing but doing the work made it happen, nothing made it happen in less time than it took, and nobody did it for me. Not after the birth of my kids or after the many times I spent months not being able to workout because of an injury or a surgery. In my day-to-day life I make every effort to achieve obtainable results without forcing a solution, however I don’t negate what I’m feeling anymore. Metaphors from the gym put into practice, sometimes, not always, but I try.

Hold On I’m Coming

It is that same philosophy of enjoying the process which I attempt to be the trellis upon which all my efforts rest, but that doesn’t always happen. Noted author Louise Hay says “the inner creates the outer.” And while I’m hopeful that from the back my “outer” will always look like a twenty something, I am more determined to have my “inner” strength be the support upon which I rest.

Finally Peace

Julie Friel – http://www.centralelements.com/Julie_Friel/artwork.html

Detail of clown from Cats Don’t Want Friends – Jill Slaughter

Photography – Jill Slaughter