Laura is the manager of the first gym I’ve ever liked. She is tough, smart, and competent. She has helped me to the right tools for a strong heart in a comfortable place.

I never thought I would say that about a gym.

Laura doesn’t pull any punches, but she has that twinkle in her eyes that says she cares. And I listen. She has a booming voice to go with the smile.

One of the many things I love about life is that I often find myself feeling, writing, and doing things I’ve never done before.

I’m told again and again that old age is a time of moving inward, of stasis and fixed points, not change and experimentation. I don’t see anyone at the gym who is my age.

Okay, that means I’m a freak, but that is not a great surprise to me, or perhaps, to you.

All my life, I’ve avoided gyms. I never liked them, felt welcome in them, or enjoyed anything I did in them. Exercise was almost always a nightmare for me after years of fighting off my father’s anger and frustration at the choices I made.

I remember standing on a treadmill and wondering why any rational person would do that.

For my father, exercise and sport were a ticket to connection, health, and manliness. Reading and writing and bedwetting was not. He taught me my body was no good.

So I would never go near a gym.

Early on, gyms seemed like places for muscle men, which I am not, then the waves of yuppies and kids started going. I see people in spandex grunting and sweating and I know I am not one of them.

I see the kids lifting weights, and I am not one of them either.

Some gyms are seedy, but many are trendy. And in any case, I never felt I belonged. Mine is bright and clean and airy.

My heart has suggested that I change my way of looking at it, and I got the message.

I am one of those people who are often slow to get things, but once I do, I’m a raging bull. Or maybe just full of bull.

The coronavirus hit gyms hard, along with many other things. There is talking of the state closing gyms down again.

I hope they leave mine alone, although I am much at risk from the virus, Laura keeps the gym safe, socially distanced, sprayed, disinfectant and masked.

She told me what hours to come when I’m mostly alone, and the nearest people are rows away.

This year, after two heart catheter procedures, I finally realized – I sure didn’t rush into it –  that I needed to take better care of my heart, which is right now in the best shape it’s ever been to my knowledge.

And I needed to shed my lifelong phobia about exercise and my body.

I’m in the midst of a thorough restoration of my body, painful, expensive, successful. My heart is strong; my blood pressure is excellent; my diabetes is firmly under control.

This is the time, it is really now or never.

I’m in cardiac rehab twice a week – strongly recommended for heart surgery survivors – and I’ve done well there, thanks to my stronger and patched up heart.

That’s where you go after heart surgery to strengthen the heart when it is most vulnerable. The first year after surgery is very important.   The heart heals or it doesn’t.

The doctors say people who go to cardiac rehab live longer and are healthier than those who don’t.

I am learning there that exercise is good for me, and I am, even at my age, much better at it than I thought. The nurses are trained, observant, and supportive, something I’ve never had before when it came to exercising.

Those angry male jocks who taught gym in my class did not care for kids like me. They would have loved my father.

Cardiac rehab will end in a month or so, and so I found another gym to go to work out on my heart.  I drove over a couple of mountains, and I’m there.

I want to keep this going. I exercise every day – walking, or one gym or the other if the weather is bad.

I didn’t realize exercise feels good, done properly. I listen to audiobooks while on the machines or to music. It has become a kind of meditation for me, a place to be alone and think alone and do myself some good at the same time.

Today, I did 45 minutes on the treadmill at a fast walking clip. I barely worked up a sweat. I can feel my heart getting stronger and more durable. The heart monitors agree.

To confront my lifelong discomfort over taking good care of my body, I went back into therapy with the therapist who pulled me out of the darkness a decade ago. She’s been through a lot worse than this with me, but she has taken on this issue of running from myself and hiding and putting my very life at risk.

As always, she is honest and sees quickly through my evasions and rationalizations. She is wonderful for me to talk to.

And it’s really working, as it did before. She has the key to my madness; somehow, she gets right to it gets me on the right track. For the first time in my life, I belong to a gym I really love going to.

Part of my journey to the gym is therapy.

She got right to the problem, and we’ve been working hard on it. She often tells me I’m one of the hardest working clients she’s ever had, and I’m proud of that.

Another reason is Maria. I want to live with her as long as I can; I’ve never been happier; I see now that I’ve never really even been happy.

Then there’s my heart itself. I promised to care for it, and I will.

And there is Laura. I don’t want to leave the wrong impression. I am not one of the gyms.

My gym clothes are the same. I always wear jeans, pants, a chambray shirt, the same shoes, and the same socks.

I don’t shower or undress in the locker room; I don’t even go into the locker room except to hang up my hat and suspenders and jacket.

I know no one there, and thanks in part to the virus protection, we are not encouraged to get close enough to speak. That’s good for me.

Laura made me comfortable.

She offers advice if she thinks I need it and otherwise leaves me alone. She has a great sense of humor – our humor is dark and similar – and keeps a close eye on the place.

Every time I go in, we go through the Covid-19 questions and laughs at me because I have so much trouble swiping the membership card in and out.

While my beautiful e-bike will have to wait for Spring,  the gym, virus willing, will get me through the winter. I am dumbfounded but pleased with my gym life. Life is full of crisis and mystery.

I have much hard and disciplined work to do ahead of me – more medicine to get through.

I will do it. I don’t think Laura noticed that I was about to jump out of my shoes when I first came in. Perhaps she sensed it. She acted like I belonged, that there was nothing strange about my being.

Thanks, Laura. You may not know it, but you make a difference.