It’s Great to Be Back in the Swim

I don’t know their names, but I know the names of their sons, daughters, even their grandchildren. I don’t know where they live, but I know they have gardens and housekeepers. I know where they bought their bathing suits. I know when they will stay home cooking, and I know when they go to the doctor. I know a little about their mothers, almost nothing about their husbands. And I know that I have missed them.

For months, this circle of women, all at least 30 years older than me, have talked to me, around me, over me. They meet three times a week to take an exercise class in the pool at the gym I belong to in the San Fernando Valley. My workout ends the same time as theirs.

It’s here in this small locker room that a group of women unknowingly send off to work this 30-something completely reassured. Kids will grow up, go to college, have boyfriends and girlfriends, become artists, actors, executives. Work will be fulfilling and challenging. Houses may get too big but we will move to smaller, more cozy places. Books will be read and remembered. Mothers may get sick and even die, but their memories, not to mention their recipes, will remain vivid.

They compliment each other: You did well in the pool today. You look great in that color. It never sounds forced or artificial.

They talk about religion, foreign countries, trips, the economy. Mostly, though, they talk about their families, sometimes even each other. They are quick to laugh. They are warm, friendly. When one feels dizzy, they crowd the small bench and sit with her until she’s fine again. When one drops an earring, everyone drops to their knees.

But there is one thing I’ve never heard them do: Complain.

They never gripe. About anything. Not even about the weather: We need the rain, they’ll say on a particularly dismal day; the pool feels great on this hot day.

Sometimes I think my friends and I fall into a litany of complaint far too easily. We’re tired. The weekdays are jammed. The weekends too busy. We need haircuts and haven’t got time to get them. We worry about our jobs, our marriages, our children. Sure, our kids are still in elementary school, but we don’t know where they’ll go to high school. We don’t exercise enough. We eat too much sugar.

So when I’m in this company of older women, I listen. How did they get through all these years and come out this strong, this healthy, this able?

Sometimes they include me in their conversation, sometimes not. Sometimes, I’d rather just get dressed and get out, rushed as usual, to get to work. And then one will compliment my outfit or tsk, tsk that I’m running out with wet hair on such a chilly morning. Sometimes I take my time, captured by their conversation and their lively minds. It’s a good way to begin the day.

But for the past three months, the locker room has been empty. The pool was being tiled, cleaned and drained. I would see the signs on the gym doors that the pool still wasn’t ready and I would know--another day without those women. I seemed to be spending far less time in that cramped locker room.

When I think about other health clubs I’ve belonged to, here and in other cities, only one other comes close to this one. The downtown Washington, D.C., Y attracted an early-morning group of journalists, congressional aides and others whose conversation attracted me in a similar way. But I was much younger and more interested in career talk than anything else. I remember leaving for work from that locker room a little more anxious, unsettled about my future.

Not so here. And last week, they all returned.

It was as if they had been there yesterday. They picked right up where they left off. The conversation didn’t stop until finally I couldn’t help myself. “I’m so glad you are all back,” I said as they hushed in various stages of dress and undress. “I’ve missed you.”

They stopped talking and looked at me. Could I really have missed them? They seemed surprised.

Yes, I really did.

And when I left the gym that morning, I felt better than I had in weeks, months, even. Three months, to be exact.

*

They never gripe. . . . Not even about the weather: We need the rain, they’ll say on a particularly dismal day; the pool feels great on this hot day.