I’d been mulling over the idea of getting back into fitness two weeks after I stopped going for taichi and walks around taman TAR. In actual fact, after the birth of Muhammad Alman, my first grandson, on 31st March 2012, I had abandoned the 6.45am roll out with the girls at the clearing on “The Peak” with the two sifus conducting the workout. How I miss stretching and swaying with the aunties gang and the fresh morning air, the open sky, the surrounding green backdrop of the forest reserve…the best things in life are free (rise and shine sleepy joes!). But little Alman comes first and I have resumed the role of “confinement lady” for my daughter….a million things to do to make sure mummy eats hearty well-balanced meals and gets enough sleep so she can nurse well and baby gets a healthy feed always. Daddy can’t be neglected too as he does get up to tend to the baby at night and has to go to work as usual. The house has to be clean and cosy with baby things giving a new character to the various spaces in the house. Sure we have an excellent part-time housekeeping maid, but she comes only 3 times a week, 4 hours each time. Regardless, it has been an exhilarating experience every inch of the way.
Something I’m not proud about but have had to accept is the gnawing ache at middle of my back on the right side that started in the second week after my entitlement as grandma. For the first time in my life, I started trying out analgesic plasters like acustok and ketutok, hot rubs and ointments besides sleeping with heat pads on by back. I got better after two days but it set me thinking…that I cannot let this happen again and again if I want to take proper care of Alman, carry and cradle him when he wants to be held, and to be walking and running with him as he grows up.
Fast rewind…..I had started gym in 1993, religiously going 3 times a week after a freak fall on the tennis court landed me in hospital with an acute back sprain. I stayed absolutely still on the bed with a heat pad all night only because I couldn’t even sip from a straw without wincing. Doctor was shocked to see me upright again the next morning. I was determined to never let that happen again and so started light `gym workouts to be limber and flexible and continued playing tennis (something I was neurotic about at some periods during my younger life) until about 5 years ago when I had a bad muscle sprain or something in my right arm which kept me away from the courts for a year. I only went for walks during that year. I tried playing again but always came back with some injury or other and could not keep up with the rest any more especially the guys. Truth always hurts but to accept it is to earn wisdom. If even marathon runner Murakami at 59 ( in “what I talk about when I talk about running”) can humbly deal with the fate of his weakening knees and embrace nature’s whims, why couldn’t I? But while Murakami continued running international marathons with more realistic targets, I only got lazy. Maybe it was the hormones, maybe it was work but laziness only made me depressed. For about 3 years I only did walking a few times a week and only got hooked on taichi about 1 ½ years ago. I ought to be thankful my weight has remained stable in the “ideal” category.
So a week after Alman came home, I realized that taichi is not enough. I have to rebuild myself so that I can give my best to Alman, as much, if not more than, what I gave to my own three children who wanted me to stay young forever for them ( I believe they also appreciate the beauty of old age too by now). Yes, they were my motivation for keeping fit and trim and now it is Alman….before he can even recognize me. Call it awakening. Awakening doesn’t always come like a thunderbolt or overnight, does it? This one had been seeping in ever since those lonely restless walks.
So back to where I started my diary today…..I’m exercising. I first went back to the gym for 35 min last Saturday. I cannot steal time out in the mornings regularly though, have to find something more convenient. Took out my old stepper (a manual stepping exerciser which I bought through a mail catalogue some 20 years ago!) out on the back porch, a set of dumb bells and a battered pair of tennis shoes. I love my little gym overlooking my disheveled back garden. I can listen to the radio from the maid’s room. I’ve started taking vitamins again too and since I have to prepare plenty of fruits and juices for my daughter, I take them myself instead of procrastinating like before. With the back gym, I can be flexible with my exercise times. So far I’ve started at 7.45am and gone on till about 8.15am. This is after I’ve put the clothes in the machine and cleared last night’s leftovers. I stop just in time to prepare breakfast. I‘ve had to make some adjustment to my part-time help schedule…to give me some pockets of time for relaxation and for work (as I still need to earn some). Alman is a gift from heaven, to be nurtured and loved. Some sacrifices will have to be made, new routines to set up but I believe I don’t have to cut myself off completely from other things that I have to do and things I love to do. Then my life will be truly enriched and I myself am responsible for realizing that.
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