Some ladies in my community wear makeup to\u00a0water aerobics class. They don’t like to get their coiffed hair wet either.<\/p>\n
If I were still in my 30s I might\u00a0make fun of them for that … but we’re all getting older, aren’t we?<\/p>\n
They look nice when they leave the fitness center – unlike me, with my wet hair clinging to my head.<\/p>\n
They really are nice ladies. They’re very solicitous of my health and well-being. They laugh when I wave my arms and dance to the music in class. They notice when I’m not there.<\/p>\n
I try to get my exercise without splashing them.<\/p>\n
My limbs are working hard but I keep them below the water. When we do movements that might make waves, I put more\u00a0distance between me and them.<\/p>\n
Today one of them asked how I was doing.<\/p>\n
Her hair and makeup are perfect, but there’s a little bend at the edge of her smile. She’s old enough to have lost a lot of people.<\/p>\n
I give a small\u00a0smile back, bobbing\u00a0with the music. I’m trying to be honest about my recovery, to bring out what’s happening inside<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Well… I’m mostly OK,” I tell her, “but it’s up and down. Some days I’m fine, some days … aren’t so good.”<\/p>\n She nodded. We kept moving with the beat.<\/p>\n Then she said, “Life is like that.”<\/p>\n And smiled. That little bend at the edge.<\/p>\n “Yes,” I said. “You’re right.”<\/p>\n Up and down.<\/p>\n In\u00a0time to the music.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2015, the year I started doing water aerobics.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some ladies in my community wear makeup to\u00a0water aerobics class. They don’t like to get their coiffed hair wet either. If I were still in my 30s I might\u00a0make fun of them for that … but we’re all getting older, aren’t we? They look nice when they leave the fitness center – unlike me, with … read more Like that<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[67,622,92,223,624,504,764,329,863],"class_list":["post-7526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-67","tag-exercise","tag-friends","tag-music","tag-pool","tag-recovery","tag-relationships","tag-smile","tag-splash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7526"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7532,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7526\/revisions\/7532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}