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  • Before and after
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Archives from 2002-2006

I’m not sure what the hardest part is. Maybe it’s the pushups, which we start in on right away. There’s very little discussion of modifying these pushups, really, other than a suggestion to rest at the bottom rather than at the top. I peek around at my fellow classmates, who are dutifully balancing on their toes and lowering their bodies, no one’s starting with the knees. Dammit. Once we grunt our way through five or so, the trainers grin like sharks and show us how you can make sure you’re really getting full range of motion: you briefly touch your cheek on the floor each time.

“Let’s do . . . oh, fifteen. Ready?”

After a while I flatten myself like a crushed bug, my cheek resting on the dirty, rubbery floor. “Full! Range! Of motion,” I mumble, in the direction of a trainer’s shoe. He laughs and tells me I can use one knee if necessary, then move to both knees if things really start to suck.

I think about whether things are really starting to suck, then glance at the clock. Ten minutes in. I heave myself back up on my feet for two more.

Or maybe it’s the medicine ball drills, where we practice cleans, over and over and over. Squat down (“Low enough so a marble on your knee would roll to your hip, guys!”), grab the 10-pound ball, heave upwards in a powerful motion I cannot seem to get right no matter how many times I try, quickly drop back down under the ball in another deep squat. We do so many of these I start fantasizing about painting a face on the ball Castaway-style in order to derive more satisfaction from then slowly backing over it with my car, crushing its stupid, plasticky skin under my tires.

The female trainer eyes me critically. “You want to kind of pop up with the hips,” she says, and demonstrates, every single muscle in her enviable collection flexing as she moves around the ball in a liquid motion. I nod and do the same thing I’ve been doing: a flailing kind of jerk, elbows out, ball dominating me as surely as if it were stuffed in my mouth and tied with a leather strap.

“You’ll get there,” she says kindly.

But maybe it’s the actual workout, which is 15 of those beshitted medball cleans, 10 box jumps, and a 250 meter row. Which kind of wipes me out after one round. And then there’s four more rounds to go after that.

It takes me around 19 minutes to finish all 5 rounds. Afterwards, I wiped the rivers of sweat out of my eyes and joke that now I know why there are buckets placed around the gym.

“Well, those are chalk buckets,” says a trainer. “But . . .” He walks over to a trash can, and spins it so I can see the PUKE HERE stickers adorning the other side.

I drive home hissing in pain every time I have to turn the wheel. My arms, chest, and armpits are registering complaints on a level I’m totally unfamiliar with. My butt chimes in and reminds me about all those squats. My sides ache. My eyelashes hurt. I’m pretty sure some critical internal organ has ruptured.

“How was it?” asks JB.

I collapse on the carpet and stare up at the ceiling. I feel as though I’m going into a long, dark tunnel. I see the faint outlines of dead relatives beckoning me to the other side.

“Awesome,” I whimper. And for some reason I mean it.

When I was counting down the days until I could give notice at Workplace, I was filled with a growing, jittery sort of anticipation that kept veering into dread. I was secretly afraid I’d find that I hated staying home with the kids.

I thought it might be like maternity leave, that being my only experience with staying home full time. And really, for all the wonderful, amazing moments that did happen during both of my maternity leaves, and for all the ambivalent, sometimes-truly-unhappy feelings I had about going back to work when they were over (which seemed stronger the first time around; I think after Dylan was born I was chomping at the bit to get back to an office), I kind of . . . didn’t enjoy those months. Very much. At all.

I mean, obviously being home with a newborn is a totally different situation. You’re walloped with so much insanity all at once—physical discomfort, roiling hormones that continually whip your brain from giddy transcendent joy to a murky froth of utter despair, depressing bodily lane-changes from Lovely Glowing Vessel of Life to Puffy Disfigured Lumpen Oozing Pile of Weaksauce, tortuous sleep deprivation, and so on. It’s a wonder any of us survive it, really.

Plus, I don’t know if everyone gets The Terror, but I sure did. That’s when you think every single tiny thing your baby does means he’s dying, from the way he snorfles when he breathes to the mini-geyser of milk he deposits in your bra. Sleeping for a long time? Not going to wake up! Crying inconsolably? Wracked with fatal internal injuries! Yawning? Struggling for oxygen! When you’re gripped by The Terror, ALL ROADS LEAD TO DEATH.

Have you seen that internet video with the baby panda sleeping near its mom, and out of nowhere it lifts its head and blasts out this sharp, super-loud sneeze, and the mom panda nearly falls over from shock? Like she’s thinking, what the FUCK was that? That’s The Terror, right there.

So part of my brain knew that being home this time would be different than sitting around all day hunkered nervously over a baby, occasionally holding a mirror over his mouth, but I was also thinking of how utterly lonely it was to be home with a baby all day, no one to talk to, and how leaving the house was such an expedition—just getting to the point of being able to walk out the front door was exhausting enough, and then 9 times out of 10 I’d have to turn right around and change a blowout diaper or scrape milk-barf off my shirt or whatever. I was thinking of how the hours used to stretch like taffy and go on and on and on and on and on. How I’d look at the clock thinking that surely JB would be home any minute and it would be, like, 10 AM. How when he did get home, I’d snap at him for daring to step onto the carpet and alter the fibers which I’d arranged as pathologically as the scene in Pink Floyd’s The Wall when Pink enshrines the smashed-up contents of his room because the one and only thing I’d managed to accomplish all day long was vacuuming that fucking carpet I WANT A DIVORCE.

Of course, it’s been nothing like that. Being home with walking, talking children is nothing like being home with a newborn, and oh, thank god, I am finding it about a trillion times more enjoyable.

(At this point I feel I should worriedly point out that I’m only describing my own experience and feelings here and your maternity leave is going to be awesome, okay?)

I don’t really know if I believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do think this opportunity came along at just the right time for me. I don’t think I would have been happy staying home with a baby. I’m pretty sure I would have lost my damn mind during the early-18-month zone. And I’m not saying that the full time company of a 5-year-old and a 2.5-year-old is on par with, say, a soothing hot stone massage or anything, but . . . well, it’s so much better than I thought it would be.

I love to be right. Doesn’t everyone? But sometimes it’s even better to be wrong.

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