Almost 57 and Aerial Fun

I am almost 57 Years Old and Apparently I Do Aerial Now

There are moments in life when you look at something and think:

That looks interesting.

Then your brain catches up and says:

That is completely insane.

Naturally, I signed up.

I have been trying to say yes to more things lately. Not reckless things. I have no desire to wrestle an alligator or fling myself off the roof with an umbrella. But things that make me curious. Things I haven’t done before. Things that make that little voice in my head say, Could I?

Aerial hammock was one of those things.

You know the beautiful women you see doing aerial? They float. They twist. They turn upside down. They somehow persuade gravity to mind its own business.

I am not one of those women.

At least not yet.

I’ll be 57 years old at the end of October. I’m not particularly flexible. My legs need strengthening. And my core and I have a complicated relationship.

Years ago, when I had breast cancer, I had DIEP flap reconstruction. Tissue and blood vessels from my abdomen were used in my breast reconstruction, and the surgery left me with an incision stretching from hip to hip. My abdomen has been through a lot.

So when an instructor says something that amounts to, “Now use your core and do this,” my core’s response is approximately:

Ma’am, we have not been consulted.

Still, I went.

And then I had to stand in the hammock. That sounded considerably less ridiculous before I actually tried it.

I got my feet into the material and stood up.

And I shook.

Not a graceful little tremble, either. My legs were shaking, which made the hammock shake, which made me shake more, and suddenly I had created my own terrible little feedback loop.

Woman shakes hammock.

Hammock shakes woman.

Woman seriously reevaluates recent life choices.

For one very long moment, I thought, Oh damn. I’m going to fall.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I leaned forward. Just a little. I changed where my weight was.

The hammock began to settle. Then my legs began to settle.

And suddenly—

I was standing.

Not beautifully. Not effortlessly. But I was up there.

And yes, that felt good.

Later came something the instructor called the butterfly.

My son took one look at the picture and called it the bat, so obviously its official name in my household is now the bat.

That one required maneuvering my shoulders around and through the fabric—rolling, twisting, figuring out where my body was supposed to go while my brain tried desperately to keep up.

There was nothing elegant about the process. But eventually, there I was.

Bat. Butterfly. Whatever. I DID IT.

There were things I couldn’t do.

I couldn’t flip.

Other women could. They were strong and flexible and absolutely amazing to watch. And for a second it would have been very easy to look at them and turn my own experience into a list of deficiencies.

I can’t do that.

I’m not flexible enough.

My core isn’t strong enough.

My legs aren’t strong enough.

I’m too old.

I’m too heavy.

I’m too—

No.

I’m done with that sentence.

Because then there was another move.

I was supported by the hammock, and I had to lean backward. That sounds simple until you’re actually doing it.

Your body knows where the floor is. Your body knows your head is moving toward it. Every sensible instinct says, Excuse me, we generally try to keep the skull ABOVE the rest of us.

But I leaned back.

I let my head fall. I opened my arms. And I trusted the fabric. More importantly, I trusted my body inside the fabric. That may have been my favorite part of the entire night.

Because I’ve spent years thinking about what this body can’t do.

This is the body that had cancer.

The body that was cut from hip to hip.

The body that isn’t thin.

The body that isn’t flexible.

The body whose core strength isn’t what it once was.

The body that will turn 57 next month.

And that night, instead of asking it to look different, I asked it to try something.

It shook.

It struggled.

It couldn’t do everything.

And it surprised the hell out of me.

Maybe trying new things isn’t about discovering some hidden talent.

Maybe you don’t have to be good at something for the experience to belong to you.

Maybe being the least flexible person in the room doesn’t matter.

Maybe watching somebody else flip beautifully doesn’t diminish the fact that you stood up when you weren’t sure you could.

And maybe courage isn’t always some enormous, cinematic act.

Sometimes courage is a pair of shaking legs inside a piece of blue fabric.

Sometimes it’s leaning forward until the shaking stops.

Sometimes it’s twisting your shoulders through and becoming a slightly bewildered bat.

And sometimes it’s leaning backward, opening your arms, and discovering that the thing you were afraid wouldn’t hold you…

holds.

I went into that class nervous. I came out unable to flip, still inflexible, still lacking the core strength I wish I had, and with absolutely no indication that Cirque du Soleil will be calling anytime soon.

But I also came out proud of my body. Not because of how it looked. Because of what it tried.

And next week? I’m going back.

Because apparently this 57-year-old, inflexible, reconstructed, problem-child bat has decided she does aerial now!