Jack went
to the gym almost every day for the last 30 years of his life.
He wasn’t
particularly athletic when we first met, sometimes joking that the most
exercise he got was lifting his glass-holding hand to his lips. But a few years
after we moved to New York, we decided to learn to ride bikes. Mostly we biked
around Central Park or Riverside Park; this was long before bike lanes, and
biking on city streets faced hazards from both moving and stationary vehicles.
We always
walked a lot, well, at least Jack walked a lot. He sometimes told the story
about walking to school as a teenager. Because he didn’t have a car, he was
embarrassed about walking, and later found out that students admired him for
walking. We walked around the neighborhood, but also in Riverside Park, down
along the river and back.
Especially
in the summertime, with a cool breeze off the water, this was fun. A few times
we walked across the George Washington Bridge and into Palisades Park, once
climbing down giant rocks to near the river. Another time we took the ferry to
Staten Island and walked eight miles to Richmondtown.
In the
’70s, Jack took up running. At first he ran along the outside of Riverside
Park. Then he discovered the track down in the park near 72nd Street. That was
his favorite. I tried running, too, but soon I had to tape my ankles, and after
another year or so, I was taping my knees. And since I could never make myself
run farther than a mile and a quarter, I went back to the long exercise walk.
When I
started teaching at NYU and got a family membership to the gym, Jack took to it
immediately. No longer did the weather stand in the way of getting his
endorphin hit. When it looked like I wouldn’t get tenure, he searched around
and found the West Side YMCA. He’d taken Christie there for swimming lessons
years earlier, and the gym and locker rooms had been considerably refurbished
since.
He loved
the Y. He rode the stationary bike long before there were TV screens for
distraction, for an hour at least. He had friends there, both men and women. He’d
bring home stories, most of which I’ve forgotten. Sometimes he tried the weight
machines, but mostly he just wanted to bike. Even after his blood-clotting
disorder, he missed a few months, but was back as soon as he could.
His fall,
however, stopped him. He never went back to the gym, and it was never clear
whether he was embarrassed about how feeble he had become or simply didn’t want
to talk about what happened. He went to physical therapy and kept up his
exercises at home. I bought him weights to help. I also kept renewing our
family membership, even though I wasn’t going as regularly as I should have. I
did tell Zaida, who worked at the “towel-desk” and always asked after him when
he died.
Ever since,
I’ve had mixed feelings about the Y. I keep going back, much more regularly
now, but there’s hardly anyone left who knew Jack and knew that he and I were
together. The Y is one of the most diverse places I spend time, which is
important to me. But will I continue to go there, or find another gym or health
club? I don’t know.
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April’s writing
challenge is to blog every day, with each post beginning with a letter of the
alphabet from beginning to end. We skip Sundays, except for April 1, so as to
have 26 days in the month.
