The Lady Birds In The Locker Room

They all have old New England names like Helen and Alice and Mary and Edith. Solid. Friendly. Nothing crazy like Karen or Cathy. All of them are in their 70's and 80's.  I can't figure out if they know each other from outside of the YMCA or if some of them came in as friends. Usually they are in the locker room together around noon after they get done with swimming, traipsing around in their one pieces and flip flops, catching up as they speak through the dressing areas, putting their shoes on in front of their lockers or perched in a row in their bathing suits in the sauna, like a flock of pigeons under a bridge abutment, tittering away in the heat before they take showers in their swimming duds.

Early on in my days at the Y, they used to irritate me. I would go into the sauna with my music and try to meditate but the wall of noise upon the return of the ladies from their swim was impossible to drown out. It was like trying to get peace in a chicken coop. Lately, though, I've been going through a crisis and it has forced me to mellow out a lot. I have had to also learn to appreciate my own attributes a little more, make me appreciative of what I have. Watching the Lady Birds helps cement my attempts.

I like them. And I admire them. They have a wonderful positivity. No one ever seems to be in a bad mood. You can see that they maintain peace in their lives, maybe because they value the fact that they can still go to the pool and swim while they are talking about sick friends going into nursing homes and dead husbands. And live husbands. They are long past worrying about their bodies as tools for attraction, sexuality having left the stadium. They seem to treat their marriages as old businesses with really great partners that they are friends with.

You can tell that they are very good to their friends. They don't seem to talk about themselves as much as they do about their concern about each other. How was the vacation? Where is Edith? Oh? Dementia is going to kill her husband, so sad. We have to have coffee and give her a little break. Today I heard one lady.... God bless her.....say, "85 isn't old if you are healthy. Heck, even 65 is old if you are unhealthy."And I wished I could put it on a tee shirt. Why, I thought, I am positively infantile next to them!

One of them lost her locker key. Turns out it was the wrong locker and it was still in it. She was extremely patient, waiting for the lady to return with the wrong spare locker key. After she realized her mistake, we all laughed. There was no embarrassment or irritation for the loss of time. It was funny. We all agreed that having bad eyes was such a nuisance. I thought about how I had bad eyes too but hers probably trumped mine because hers were old and bad. The ladies are probably still talking about it, teasing her joyfully.

During my crisis I lost a lot of weight. I like not wearing clothes now if I don't have to.  The ladies are modest with their bodies but they don't seem to mind me walking around naked. On the contrary, I think that they would do the same if they still felt like they could, a silent "God bless you" for my frilly girl undies with nontraditional not proper lady cut, ignoring my 21st century shaving habits. I've noticed in the Y locker room that there tends to be more modesty in general than in places that I used to go to in NYC. But the ladies don't seem to judge.  It's a locker room. Live and let live. They are too busy talking about their friend's sick husband and how the man at the desk always give the locker key to a person just as you sit your belongings down in front of that very space isn't that always just the way?

They make me feel young and they give me hope for being older. They exercise every day. They have an attitude and social life that I envy. Their husbands are part of their lives like their limbs, not like boyfriends.  It's hard to tell if the husbands are alive or not and there is no animosity or venom I see in so many younger couples. They just are who they are as a unit.  Or were. They are a singular noun. "The Joneses." Like "the house" or "the kid." Their friends are there with them now. That is whom they chose to focus on. The lack of drama permeates the room.

I want that. I look forward to paying the price of lost youth for that. The worst has happened. They aren't pretty young things trying to hold onto men or losing jobs or raising children or not meeting bills because their incomes keep fluctuating. That part is done. Now they take their aching bodies to the pool. It isn't as much fun to move any more, but everyone has that problem. There are worse ones. Like being dead. And right at that minute, the Lady Birds are in the sauna at the Y while it is winter in New England. They have talking to do. And that is that.