Exercise, who me?

Fast forward twenty-some-odd years. The empty nest struck. And I mean REALLY empty.

Our house had always been a rather hectic place. We were both teachers at a small private school in the Spanish countryside. It seemed our home was always filled with students, friends, family, or visitors of some other kind. We sometimes slept on an air mattress out on the balcony for months at a time, because every bedroom and every sofa was filled with guests. It was a happy, bustling place.

In 1997, our older daughter married, and flew off to another country with her beloved the following day. Later that same year, our younger daughter started hanging out with her first serious boyfriend, and in full throws of adolescence, basically stopped sharing her life with us as she had done until then. In 2000, our marriage of 26 years gave signs of disintegrating and my then-husband moved to his own apartment. In 2001, the younger daughter decided to follow her sister to that far-away place (which happened to be California), and I was left alone with a very, very empty nest.

I explain all this only as a basis to say that at that point I found myself in the grips of a deep depression. It was all I could do to move forward each day, go to my job, attend to my students, and return home in the evening to my big, silent house, with everything and everyone I had ever lived for gone forever.

At Christmas time, I took some time off to go visit my daughters in California. I stayed with my eldest and her husband. They were pained to see my pain. Every morning my daughter would say to me softly, "Why don't you trying getting out and exercising, Mom? It would make you feel better."

After about of week of her urging, I decided to give it a try. I borrowed some sports clothes from her and went out walking. The truth is that the sunny blue California sky and the fresh air DID cheer me up some. The next day, I decided to jog around the block. Ha! Did I say jog? I got as far as the corner, and then had to go back to a walk.

I did this every day for the rest of my visit, and by the time I left, I could actually make it around the (rather small-sized) block at a slow jog.

When I returned home, I signed up for some aerobic and step classes at a local gym. For an hour a day, I huffed and puffed and jumped and stepped and skipped with a whole lot of younger--and fitter--girls and guys. But it really did help. I would get a very pleasant high by the end of each session.

In 2002, I signed divorce papers, resigned my position at the school where I had worked for exactly 30 years, packed my favorite clothes in two suitcases, and returned to California, where I had lived as a child, and where my two daughters were now living. I was 51.

With best wishes for a long and healthy life,

The Jogging Grandma

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