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Gym Daze The mothers I know go to the gym for two reasons: One, they want to look more fit/toned/slim/attenuated/youthful. The other, they crave the endorphin rush brought on by an hour-long spin class wound down with thirty minutes of “Synergy Stretching.” Between the hours of 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (the hours between school drop-offs and pickups), my gym, the Equinox Fitness Club on East 85th Street, is a testimony to female determination and discipline. It reels with squat thrusts and imported Russian weight bells, tasteful Lycra® and shiny ponytails. A few years ago, the gym became the place I went when I was momentarily out of strength. Life felt raw and messy since I had learned that my second child, Eden, had multiple and life threatening food allergies. He was eighteen months old and I had just found a specialist with a curative treatment. I had been unraveling Eden’s diagnoses since his birth. Out of the resulting tangle of physical symptoms sprang multiple developmental delays, among them – Eden threw up almost every day. Fortunately, when the sandbox mommies grossed-out at the sight of Eden vomiting his way out of the playground, I could reassure them that, “He’s getting feeding therapy!” I should have slept deeply at the end of days spent swimming through various kinds of therapy sessions, nutritional advice and prescription medicine. But Eden awoke in the night with the frequency of a soldier in a foxhole (another developmental issue). Far into the night, I grabbed toward the shadows in his room, changing bed sheets, singing, fetching water and filling hampers. Yet, I couldn’t seem to take the highly touted “power naps” to compensate for my ongoing sleep deprivation. Within minutes, nervous energy vibrated my eyelids open and the urgency of daylight pushed its way back into me. Some mornings, after dropping off Eden’s older sister at preschool, I couldn’t think of anything but the elliptical machines. They lulled me into hypnotic escape. Sneakers pushed snugly into pedals, fingers wrapped around handgrips, I backpedaled on the least challenging course. It was easy to ignore the other women’s exchanges: “Just hard-boiled eggs and green tea. That’s it!” Or, “It was so cleansing. I’ll give you the number.” I discovered her by accident – the haggardly attractive woman with half-moons under her eyes. She favored the elliptical machine next to mine. I don’t know how I got in a conversation with Elliptical Woman about our children’s eating habits. I had avoided that topic since Eden’s diagnoses. But that day I let her talk. I learned that Elliptical Woman gave her son smoothies with bananas and blueberries to disguise his daily fruit allotment. Clever Elliptical Woman. How to explain to this seemingly normal mother that your own son was allergic to his first two baby formulas, and so his throat muscles rightfully rejected most liquids, bringing them up to remind me of all the wrong foods I let down? That he couldn’t eat most fruits due to allergies and I had already tried making blender drinks on his therapist’s suggestion? Anyway, who would want a banana, Gerber Stage One pears, and rice milk shake? Eden certainly didn’t. Thereafter, I avoided the elliptical machines and embraced the less popular Cybex climbing machines. Weeks later, I saw Elliptical Woman and her son in Barnes & Noble. Eden was with me, asleep in his stroller. Her little boy had disarmingly large brown bunny eyes and although he looked to be at least six years old, he was grabbing every book off the shelf in front of him, one by one, and stacking them into piles of two then four, then two again. He crossed wide fields lying between methodical and frantic. I allowed myself a guess. Autistic. Elliptical Woman turned to me and breathed out, “Do you come here a lot? I haven’t seen you. We are always out, out somewhere, even in the winter, but he can’t stay anywhere for very long. My mother says to me, ‘Why are you always running around so much? You look exhausted. He’ll be alright but you should sit down and drink one of those shakes yourself.’ “I tell her ‘Ma, I can’t stay in with him. I just can’t.’” She looked into me and her gaze was not brutal like the daylight, but the act of a near stranger who hoped I would meet her eyes – I did. Confession over, she chased after her son into another aisle. That night, rinsing a plate while water rose at the drain, the smoothies interrupted me. I had researched Eden’s symptoms for months. Autistic kids have sensory issues too. Thickened drinks and specific textures of food are recommended. Just then, I knew her. Elliptical woman was pumping and striding her way to her music, to the place where she did not supplicate to Velcro® shoe bindings or schedule “meds” into grape juice. I knew the shadows on her face were dark love leaking through thin skin. She was jogging alongside the flurry of her own unexpected life with her child. That day she joined my side, or maybe I had joined hers. Either way, we were both caretakers for “of the moment” childhood medical conditions. Inertia, like motherhood, was now instinctive. Our upscale gym was not a source of pleasure, narcissism, or even punishment. It was a literal confirmation that we could keep going. There were days that it didn’t matter how far we went. Susan Weissman lives with her husband and two children, Dayna and Eden, in Manhattan. Formerly, she was a middle and high school English teacher and the editor of an alumni publication. Susan began to write about parenting experiences after her son Eden was diagnosed with life threatening food allergies. She has written for allergicliving.com and musingmama.com. “Gym Daze”is an excerpt from a memoir Susan wrote about her family’s life during Eden’s illness – she is in the process of finding a publisher for it.
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