Crossfit

I started Crossfit the week after Thanksgiving. For those of you who don't know, Crossfit is a gym cult which emphasizes "functional fitness." What that means is that they teach you some Olympic lifts, and in addition to the weightlifting make you do a whole bunch of other painful things, like pull-ups and push ups and jumping rope and sprints. Sometimes they make you flip a very large tire, or throw a heavy ball high up onto a wall. They also wear really nerdy knee-high socks. I've got purple ones that say 'Genius' on them in yellow. Ironically, it was my friend Jessica who gave them to me for my birthday two years ago, long before she made me buy the Living Social coupon that brought us to Crossfit.

It's pretty brutal. The other day my hip flexors were so sore I couldn't stand up straight for two days. Sometimes when I'm there I want to throw up, and I find myself spending a lot of time on my knees gasping. But in addition to carving my delts into a shape I haven't seen since college, it's a godsend for my mood. I think it performs the function that yoga is supposed to: a quieting of the mind that allows for an unimpeded presence in your own body. My mind is a wily sucker and has created many workarounds in the years I've been doing yoga, but intrusive thoughts appear, at least so far, to be impossible at Crossfit. Now it's true that I often cry on the drive home, but that's actually an improvement on the way I usually feel when I leave the house.

At the gym one Saturday a few weeks ago I started chatting with Callie, a tall and slender woman of about my age, and she mentioned that she had had a baby. Actually, she complained that the Paleo diet, which we are all attempting to adhere to for thirty days, was hell when you're nursing.

I've got a love/hate relationship with the Paleo diet. It's how I lost thirty-five pounds four years ago. I couldn't stay on it when I was pregnant, though, because of the nausea and food aversions, and I've been struggling to get back on it and stay on it since Balthazar was born. It doesn't work in the magical way it used to, either, and I've got thirteen pregnancy pounds still to lose. Maybe it's because I'm reluctant to shed that last vestige of Balthazar, but I think the weight I've got left is less his fault than mine, the result of the many, many croissants and plates of pasta I consumed. Mostly I just wish I could wear all of my clothes again.

"How old is your baby?" I asked Callie.

"Nine months," she said.

Oh my God, your baby is exactly the same age as my not-baby! I didn't say. Instead I said, "I'm impressed that you are trying the diet at all."

I noticed immediately that I didn't hate her. I didn't run to the other side of the gym to avoid her. I did think, Oh no, and I thought, what a weird coincidence, but that was it. I even thought about telling her about Balthazar, but then I didn't. I didn't want to freak her out by dumping that information on her the day we met. But then last Saturday we were partnered up for the workout. I didn't choose her; I was afraid that to seek her out would make me some kind of creepy mom stalker. But the trainer put us together because we are close in height.

She is slighter, though, and before we started I apologized to her, because the first thing we had to do was to take turns carrying each other on our backs. I mentioned that I carry my son sometimes, but he is only fifty-seven pounds.

"How old is he?" she asked, making conversation as we waited for the workout to begin.

"Seven," I said.

"I have two seven year-old boys," she said.

OK, now that's really weird, I thought. Then I asked her how the age difference was working out with them and the baby. Pretty well, she said. She'd been concerned about it, but the older boys took great care of the little boy. And I felt guilty for fishing when she didn't know I had my own very specific reasons for asking that question. Then the workout started. Did I mention that everything is for time and that you're trying to beat everyone else?

We were great on our squats and our box jumps. When we got to the flutter kick portion of the workout, though, we fell behind. Now it was her turn to apologize for her weak core. I knew then I had to tell her. So in between the flutter kicks and the push presses, as we ran out the door and toward the third telephone pole down the street, I said, "We are at a real disadvantage in that exercise, because I had a baby nine months ago too."

"You have a nine month-old too?" she asked, sounding surprised and pleased.

"Well, no," I said, "because he died."

It was probably the least opportune moment to spring that information on anyone ever. She handled it gracefully, though, and I didn't collapse in tears, though I thought I was going to hyperventilate for a second. I had just wanted her to know that we were in the same boat with our abs, but for obvious reasons that can't be a simple conversation.

We finished our push presses. We ran again. And then when we were done we talked a bit, about the hyper-competitive mom who was kicking everyone's ass at sprints one month post partum, and about what happened to Balthazar.

Since our conversation I realized that I've entered a new stage of grief. I was able to approach this woman as someone who has a lot in common with me: We both have seven year-old boys! We both have weak abs! My first thought was something other than that she has everything I don't.

I think that's why I tried something different with the blog last week, though I don't think it worked. I just wasn't sure that I could write another piece about what the woman at the grocery store said to me about my dead baby. I have read other blogs like this where the writer has admitted that they have nothing left to say on the topic, but I didn't ever think I'd run out of things to say about it. I don't necessarily think the well is dry just yet, but I think the things I want to say are going to be different.

There is sadness attached to the knowledge that I'm in a new place. It means that Balthazar is farther away from me. The loss of a stage of grief creates its own grief. I understand that it's not linear. I've felt better and then worse again before; maybe this is just a temporary phase.  

But I feel that something has changed. At the coffeeshop today I looked on as a blonde toddler arranged some plastic dinosaurs on a table and I realized there wasn't any bitterness there. His presence no longer seemed like an affront.

Callie and I make good workout partners, I think. For women who had babies nine months ago we're in pretty good shape, but we lag behind some of the other women, who are under thirty and whose pelvic floors remain untraumatized. I doubt I'm ready to meet her baby, but maybe it'll be OK if she talks about him.