The Gym: Larus

I walk in, not sure where to go -- do I sign in, check in with the women at the front desk, head to the turnstile and swipe my card?  But I have only ten swim passes on my gym card, and I've signed up for two months for the palestra, yoga, and pilates classes  I don't want the turnstile to track my entrance as a pool entry since I'm not using the pool and I want to save those pool entrances.

So I go to the desk.  I hobble together some Italian; the women there gesture and speak and nod and click a button so the turnstile lets me in without my swiping my card (phew, still 8 swim passes remaining).

In the gym, walking on the treadmill, I start googling kilometers to miles.  I want to walk four miles per hour, and the treadmill counter is on kilometers (the other day when I baked molasses cookies, I hollered to Sebastian, What's 350 degrees in Celsius?  He hollered back, Can I ask siri?).  When I cancelled Netflix at the beginning of December, I got a message saying, "You can change your mind at any time, and your subscription will end on December 30."  So I still have netflix: yes, I can watch tv while I walk.  This is exciting.  I find a movie ("To All the Boys I've Loved Before"), put in my headphones, and walk walk walk.

Every five minutes I look around, thinking that someone might kick me out.  Or tell me I'm doing something wrong.  Or tell me that I can't have on headphones.  Or tell me to move my jacket.  I've paid, I'm wearing regular clothes -- not jeans and not too revealing sports clothing -- and I'm not in anyone else's way as far as I can tell.  But still, I feel like I don't fit in.  This not fitting in is strangely okay other than that I feel a little on edge.  It's okay because I also have a strange sense of feeling comfortable, too.  This is a gym, and I'm walking and listening to my headphones, and other people around me are walking or running on treadmills.  Two women to my left are side-by-side on treadmills, chatting, and they make me think of being at the Waltham Y next to my friends, chatting as we walk.  One guy is over by the mats doing crazy strong things while his daughter plays on his phone.  An older couple walks by, and this makes me think of the variety of ages at the Waltham Y.  A man to my right walks/runs on the elliptical, and this makes me think of my sister who masters every machine while I can coordinate my limbs for only the treadmill.

I'm not sure how I feel both the outsider and comfortable (excuse lack of parallelism here), but I do.  I needed a new place to go, somewhere beyond home and work, home and kids' school and activities.  An exercise spot gives me a place to go, a daunting place in some ways, as I learn my way around, but still, a spot where signs are in Italian, everyone speaks Italian, and I can get more comfortable both in being myself and doing what makes me comfortable and in learning another spot, more language, more spots for my feet.

When I leave, I walk upstairs and wave to the women at the reception desk.  They call out, "Ciao!  Auguri!"

They said, Ciao!  They didn't say, Arrivederci: I am familiar to them.

Yes!