“ ‘Crone,’ really?” Julia exclaims. She herself is dressed in a tailored white shirt today, and cuffed stylish jeans.
“Crone, yes,” I say to Marilyn. “I love that idea. Instead of bemoaning the fact that I don’t have the skin of a twenty-six-year-old, I can look in the mirror and say, ‘Wow! Look at that! I have pretty great skin for a CRONE!’ ”
“Yes,” Marilyn says, smearing brie and peaches on a baguette. “It’s very important work.”
“You know what they say, ‘When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple!’ ” I exclaim, throwing my arm out like a badass Lady of the Canyon.
Julia puts both hands on my shoulders: “I’m sorry, Sandra,” she says, “but you’re not quite that old yet. We’ve got Madonna. Jane Fonda. Even Betty White. No one is wearing purple.”
“What about Golda Meir?” Marilyn asks, waving her brie to the wind.
“Come on, people!” I exclaim. “I’m tired of trying to be young! Why should I even have fitness goals anymore? Every time, I get really excited about a Groupon ‘bikini boot camp’ thing with rock-hard pecs and six-pack abs, but four weeks later I’m burned out over that nonsense. I’ve repeated this cycle a zillion times! When do I get to give up?”
“You’ve got to use it or lose it,” Andie says.
“If I make it to my eighties?” I push on. “You’re supposed to gain weight. That’s right. Things flip. If your blood pressure rises, it’s better for your mental alertness.”
“Have you heard about Renee?” Julia asks, eyebrows up. “She’s sixty-eight and winning surfing competitions—huge spread in AARP magazine—”
“Yeah, maybe when I’m sixty I’ll get the short fabulous silver hair and I’ll start training for half marathons!” I’m practically yelling now. “But the back half of the fifties are the readjustment years. Hashtag Menopause. Isn’t this time for a pause?”
“So true,” Marilyn says with a nod. “My daughter Clare signed me up for this gym, but the classes are so confusing. If you come in sneakers, everyone’s barefoot. If you come barefoot, everyone’s in sneakers. Finally, I found my grail: ‘Cardio-Broadway!’ I was all set to do ‘Wilkommen, bienvenue!’ from Cabaret. But no. This was all about Kinky Boots and Hamilton. Who has time to fly to New York to see that?”
“And all that yo-yo dieting,” I say, slathering peach/brie on my Costco baguette so vigorously I feel sure it will count as cardio. “Sure, I can deny myself for weeks, doing only the nonfat Greek yogurt, anorexic chicken breast (don’t you feel like even the organic chickens, now, are anorexic?), the—blech!—steamed broccoli. But now that my children are no longer toddlers on my lap at Chuck E. Cheese’s, with that horrible wine grotto— One of the boons of middle age is that my divorced partner and I can Yelp some new gastro bistro and see a frisée of salad topped with a gleaming fried duck egg or pasta with pancetta and white truffle oil. Even with a Tuesday Groupon, no one can afford this but people over forty-five, so if we don’t eat it, who else will? The New York Times food section always has big pieces on how to make your own pasta, and I’m thinking ‘Who under the age of forty-five is reading this, and who still gets to eat pasta?’ ”
“Heh heh, I know,” Andie suddenly says. “The other day I actually thought ‘In order to eat fried chicken, I’m going to have to murder someone, go to trial with poor legal representation, end up on death row, and only then will I allow myself to order a last meal of fried chicken.”
“Why would I want to be young again?” I ask, sawing like a Viking into the Camembert with cranberries. “God! Just look at what my girls are going through! They have to get up at the armpit of hell called 5:30 a.m. At 6:30 a.m. in the inky blackness, Sally pushes open the chiming car door and wails, ‘Ohhhhh! We have to run today. Timed miles!’ The last time Sally joined hands with two classmates and exclaimed, ‘For Narnia!’ before the buzzer went off, she ran a six-minute mile and threw up! Jesus!
“And that,” I say, chawing on my baguette, “that is the fantastic thing about being middle-aged. I’ll never have to do an exercise I don’t want to do ever again.”
“How about a personal trainer?” Julia asks.
“Oh,” I say. “A couple of years ago, I stupidly paid a personal trainer to make me do things I didn’t want to do, ever. Stephanie would say things like, ‘Do ten burpees’ and I would actually try to do them. Idiot. You know what I would say now, at age fifty-six? I would say, ‘You want me to do a burpee? You’re fired.’ Or better yet, ‘You want me to do a burpee? I’m notifying my attorney, ophthalmologist, dermatologist, and anesthesiologist and I’m having them fire you. I’m unleashing my inner Leona Helmsley.”
“Honey,” Julia says, “you have to keep evolving. You have to keep trying new things!”
“Things that are new now blow,” I tell her. “For instance, last winter, Charlie’s family invited me to join them on a ‘fun ski day’ in Vermont. Did I know how to ski? Technically, yes, I last skied when I was eight, which felt recent, although in fact—and that is the continual amazement of midlife—that was actually like a hundred years ago.
“This became clear when I was handed a pair of modern ski boots. A typical ski boot used to have laces. This thing was like a pressurized canister that used gravity to swallow my foot whole, causing hydraulic bolts to snap shut around my chubby calf, making it feel like it was being Skilsawed in two. Upon being handing skis and poles and a helmet, I realized I couldn’t walk. Forty minutes into my ski adventure, like a beached whale, I literally couldn’t get out of the building.
“It was then that I first put on what I call my ‘ski face.’ All around me were pod people behaving as though skiing was a perfectly normal—even fun—activity. I alone knew it was not. The most sensible course of action was to lie down on the dirty carpet next to the hot chocolate machine, crying, so a team of Army engineers could chopper in and unspring me from my cruel leg traps. And yet, maybe the skiers would turn on me if they smelled fear. I would pretend calm and enjoyment, even though I had no idea in what direction the slopes were or what on earth I would do when I found them.
“But me on skis is not great either. Instead of a skill level of five or four, I’m like a minus ten, meaning I need a team of sherpas not just to carry me up the hill but to push me out of the way of actual skiers.
“Even getting to the bottom of the bunny slope seemed impossible. How do you walk uphill in skis? I kept sliding backward and careening into other people, including some five-year-olds. Fortunately, all five-year-olds are excellent skiers—a Lilliputian team of them helpfully pushed me toward the rope tow.
“The attendant handed the rope tow to me. I grabbed it, but it jerked forward with surprising strength and I was literally now being dragged spread eagle forward over the snow. It’s amazing how many things can go wrong so quickly. Later I do a face-splat off a chair lift—they actually have to shut the whole thing down for ten minutes. Bottom line: snow is not fun!”