Retirees Pity Me during Water Aerobics

Retirees Pity Me during Water Aerobics

These decaying bodies barely covered by black lycra have bobbed and bent and flexed for over a year with me as I’ve instructed them in the community pool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

They’ve complained affectionately if the blue water is less than seventy-eight degrees and called me “Sweetheart.” “Take it easy on us,” they teased if I ordered one more set. Chores or Kevin’s visit the coming weekend were on my mind when I shouted ski or curl or push, churning chlorinated water.

Now, I’ve still bills to pay, chores to do, Kevin’s coming visit, but I obsess if my brace looks stupid stuffed beneath my new turquoise tankini. It’s vanity, really, working to hide it from these men and women —some taking similar bursitis, arthritis, and pain medications. But it’s ugly, like the perm I begged my mom for in seventh grade. The two-week home trial stuck, and months of hiding the frizz in pony tails until it grew out followed.

I check and recheck to make sure the straps haven’t flopped out, drag on my butt, invite stares. I instruct from a cold folding chair on the pool deck, goosebumped and on display—unable to hide behind well-coifed hair, well-manicured clothes. My arms and legs feebly gesture moves these water aerobic veterans know by heart. Gossip and chatter is absent today but for calls of “How you doing, Honey?”

I’m no longer invincible youth—no “age before beauty” jokes when the ladies shuffled with me out of the locker room. I was the girl on the shampoo commercial, shiny curls swishing, confidence showing in my perky routines. I used to bounce effortlessly in the water while they struggled to keep up, their bodies protesting.

And now, propped by ugly brace, I watch from the sidelines

as an eager pubescent watches kids dance in the gym from the bleachers. I call scissor, egg beater, sweep and their buoyant bodies respond, beautifully churn water.