Sally Huggins Toner

I started a Shred30 cardio/strength training class at the Y this summer after two early morning workouts with my baby sister. Here I was, feeling pretty proud of my yogi lake walking self, smugly tracking my steps and  my movement ring on my Apple watch. And then…

I couldn’t lift the 10 pound weight over my head after 40 minutes at stations. 

I know, and have always read, it’s so important to mix up the workouts. But the truth is, we all have our penchants. My sister craves cardio. I do not. Yoga, stretching, meditation stress her out. Her Zen spot is on mile four of a hard run. I, however, am all about the savasana after twisting, contorting my t-rex arms and ant length hamstrings. Our instructor today urged us to move outside of our comfort zone. So I did.

And I promptly fell off that squishy half-bally with the plastic top thingy.

The writing life has been similar this summer. I have been stalled–have continued to journal at least a little daily but fallen off the productivity squishy half-bally thingy  in poetry, prose, blog entries (check the date of the previous one. I suppose it’s been more than a summer drought.) In less than two weeks, though, I’ll begin another creative Shred30 as I start an MFA at the University of Georgia. Yes, at 52, Sally is mixing it up, as I will my metaphors moving forward in this post.

I’m standing at the ocean’s edge, contemplating the surf. We did return recently from our annual family trip to the Outer Banks. It was a perfect week that offered a reminder of the value of asymmetry. I’m most at home by and in the ocean, Pisces that I am.  That’s because I understand that waves are rhythmic, not symmetrical. And that’s the way I like it. I’ve written before about my love of oyster shells, and I’m adding a picture of one here, where the waves bore a face on its fossil surface. The shells are worn by the tide unevenly, to be sure. Sometimes they’re broken in pieces. But the rhythm, if not the symmetry, remains. The thirty years since my last degree holds smooth places, barnacles, a multitude of colors, times when they clung to the rocks. Times when they rested, suspended over water that was glass. 10, 950 sunrises and as many sunsets, some covered in clouds, but all there, every morning, nonetheless, over the curve of the world I’ve always seen as I look out over the Atlantic. 

Though I’ll be traveling inland to my residency in Athens, Georgia has its own coast on the Atlantic–one my great uncle fought to preserve. He’s what brings me back to school, back to my family’s home. It’s a book about him I will be writing in this program. That’s the thing about that curve of the world. It comes back around, again, and again, and again. 

The waves don’t stop. Time doesn’t either. In the past month, the current has sped up exponentially. Or maybe that’s just how it appears as we grow older. I’ve been told that, but I’m not old yet, am I? In the past 20 days, one member of the next generation was married, and another was born. That same sister who craves cardio was the first to point that out, of course. She’s always been more comfortable with speed. I’m the one who wants to slow things down, freeze for a moment, which never works. Better to contemplate the waves that do not end. That’s a language I understand. 

Aimee Kathryn Toner became Aimee Toner-Cao on June 25th. She wore the dress my mother made for me when her father and I married at the exact same age. The exact same age my mother was when she gave birth to me. The exact same ages, 23, 52, 75 the three of us were on July 6 when my niece, Meryn Viola Policky, daughter of another baby sister, entered the world. There are those summers when everyone is in love, in so many dimensions. And all I want to do is stop. Breathe. Enjoy the savasana. 

Then again, breathing isn’t stopping, is it? There’s a lot of work our body is doing there, pumping blood through our organs–the water inside that sustains life. The savasana sees our chests rise and fall like the waves I watch before finally deciding to jump in. When I was a child, I was much braver than I am now. I dove under without considering sharks or riptides. The older I get, the more frightened I become, remembering every time I caught the tube wrong and was slammed into the sand. My bones are not as strong, my muscles as malleable, as they used to be. 

Hence the Shred30. And the going back to school at 52. It’s not as unusual as I thought. Turns out the aunt I will visit during this residency started her own masters at the exact same age, as did her mother, my grandmother. Aunt Sudy came to Aimee’s wedding and proceeded to walk 12,000 steps the next day as she saw the Matisse exhibit at the MoMA. I want to be her when I grow up. I come from a long line of very strong swimmers. So does Aimee. So does baby Meryn. 

So let the waves come. In rhythm, if not in symmetry.