It was one of those rare moments, the kind that wrecks the rhythm and predictability of each day and casts a shadow on tomorrow.
I was into the last 10 minutes of my step-aerobics class feeling better than I looked.
Sweat had dampened my hair and leotard until both were sticking to my body.
With the worst of the workout behind me, I was enjoying a natural high, courtesy of my endorphins. I felt healthy, vital, invincible. But my euphoria was short-lived.
She arrived without fanfare, a tiny woman, her frail frame supported by a cane and sheer determination. She looked to be about my age.
I was shaken by her vulnerability-and suddenly conscious of my own.
I watched her surreptitiously in the mirrors lining the health-club walls. Her pace was slow, deliberate, requiring all her concentration.
She was a fish out of water, her movements jerky, in sharp contrast with the smooth flow of activity all around her.
Studying her reflection, I was reminded of my first visit to a state fair. The house of mirrors there had distorted my image, elongating my torso, scrunching my head and neck, putting ripples in my legs and arms until my reflection was a far cry from who I really was.
I welcomed the end of my workout but suddenly felt much older than my 42 years.
The woman with the cane joined the next session, a toning class, easing herself to the floor with great difficulty.
Within moments she was unable to keep pace, her arms and legs coming down as everyone else’s were going up.
Occasionally she stopped flailing completely, lying still as if to catch her breath, then beginning again.
The woman remained in my thoughts throughout the day, as did a mixture of emotions-curiosity among them.
“I wonder if she had a stroke,” I suggested during dinner conversation that evening.
I was thinking of my last pregnancy. The possibility of a stroke had loomed as large as my abdomen when I developed gestational diabetes, then high blood pressure.
I had felt I was 63, not 36, that last trimester, burdened with a body that time and mother nature had seen fit to relegate to the ranks of invalid.
I had welcomed not only my son with open arms at the end of those nine months, but a new lease on life, feeling smug that I had somehow cheated fate.
“Could be multiple sclerosis,” my husband said of the disabled woman.
“You guys are so morbid,” my daughter interjected, her 16 years providing a safe cushion of invincibility and optimism.
“Maybe she’s just recovering from an accident,” she added, drawing from her own experience-fairy tales and made-for-television melodramas.
I did not reply, feeling a sense of loss rather than logic.
“As far as I’m concerned, you can pull the plug if anything awful happens to me,” my daughter continued. “I don’t think I could handle being brain damaged or a quadriplegic.”
“How about adolescence?” my husband asked her. “Hasn’t that been pretty awful?”
“What’s a quadri . . . quadri . . . ?” my son asked.
“. . . plegic,” my daughter finished the word and explained its meaning to her young brother. She couldn’t resist a light-hearted retort to her father’s zinger: “But it’s not as bad as old age, huh, Dad?”
“I don’t think any of us can really say how we’ll handle adversity, until we’ve been down that road,” I said, recalling my own initiation to life’s hardships at 12, when my father left and my mother suffered a nervous breakdown.
I had tried several halfhearted attempts at running away, frightened and overwhelmed by circumstances that had moved beyond the realm of expectations.
“Well, I don’t intend to arrive anywhere in a wheelchair,” my daughter said.
I wondered later, as I searched for a place in the refrigerator for the leftovers, how many of us ever really intend to be crippled or disfigured; plan on divorcing when marrying; expect anything less than a perfect child; anticipate cancer or AIDS; welcome unemployment, retirement and old age.
I noted the schedule of classes for the health club hanging on the refrigerator door. Suddenly I hoped I would see the woman with the cane there again tomorrow and learn who this courageous woman really was. And perhaps I would discover what makes some people accept life only on their terms and others embrace life without conditions, not allowing fear to stifle progress.
