Health and Wellness

If the worst thing in the world is a sick child, the runner up must be a sick singer.  (Christ, there are many, many worse things than that, but it’s all relative.)  I’m in the cycle of sickness that appears to be my viral destiny nowadays: sore throat, congested chest, asthma symptoms, coughing spasms.  In a latest twist, this has now turned itself to something that requires antibiotics.  It really wouldn’t matter if I didn’t like to sing.  I haven’t lost my voice, but before I start my practice I have to go through a coughing fit before I even sing a note.  My sound is weaker and slightly breathier, especially in my treacherous middle range.

The other drag is that even limited physical activity is hard to take.  Just running for the train or cooking dinner in my tiny kitchen gets me winded.  Exercise is out of the question, so I now feel like a sluggish blob.  But even a mild illness affects my mind just as much as my body.  Since my asthma came back a couple of years ago, every sniffle or bout of allergies goes straight to my chest.  Despite frequent frantic trips to my pulmonologist, maintenance meds, and Advair, it seems that every time it comes back, I feel worse.  If these problems were elsewhere – my stomach, skin, feet, whatever – my brain might be spared as well.  But it’s my lungs that suffer, and with every cough and wheeze, and every time I need to slow down, I’m reminded of my life’s breath, which is only on loan to me for so long.  (OK, time to stop freaking out, the antibiotics are making me better…)

When I’ve been down lately – especially with the disappointments I’ve had with school, and the financial shock that comes with writing just one check in the amount of half your life savings – I’ve perked myself up with a trip to the gym.  In fact, I think of my entire tuition bill as just the price that comes with upgrading to a fabulous gym membership.

And boy, what a gym.  Coming from my cheap-o ghetto experience in NYC, the BU gym is the second coming.  A space so beautiful you want to give concerts there or hang some artwork.  The elliptical machines and treadmills face out onto enormous circular windows, or you can watch the numerous TVs with good sight-lines.  For those of us with no TV to go home to, this is a treat.  The ceilings are high and the climate is always just right.  There’s plenty of equipment, a bunch of classes (none of which I’ve taken….) and best of all, the music is either unobtrusive or turned off entirely.  

But best of all, there’s the pool.  Belonging to a gym with a pool was just too much of a luxury for me in New York.  But now, my gym has two pools!  In Rome, I was tickled by the idea of having a Roman bath in the marble pool I found in Trastevere, but the water was the temperature of sweat and I had to share a lane with grannies and hairy fat men who kept bumping into me.  In New York I would drag myself to the morning swims at the Carmine Recreation Center in the West Village.  It made me feel self-righteous, waking up at six to get there for the 7:00-8:30 window of time they gave you in the frigid outdoor pool.  The perk was the Keith Haring mural along the wall, which I used to spot myself.  But the leather-skinned head lifeguard forbid me from doing the backstroke – someone apparently sued the city when they were bumped into by a backstroker, it is now illegal in New York City pools.

But my pool at BU is a sheer delight.  I usually end up there in the evenings, when it’s less busy.  The lanes are marked slow, fast, medium…. and Amanda.  I often have a lane to myself, or else I get to share with some strapping undergraduate.  (Nothing to make you swim faster than trying to stay ahead of some muscular young thing, unless you’d prefer to get bumped into by him….)  I walk into the water as if I’m stepping onto dry land; I know how an ice cream cone feels when it’s dipped in chocolate sauce.

I’ll swim for 45 minutes or so, crawl going up and backstroke coming back.  Being buoyed by water must be one of the best human experiences.  My breathing falls into rhythm, and when the water covers up my ears, I find the peace I need to collect my thoughts.  I also feel my muscles coming back to life, after a long hiatus from this spring, the last time I worked out regularly.  (Though my numerous romps around Rome must have done something for my thigh muscles, the lifting of copious gelati and my digital camera didn’t do much for the biceps.)  

After a while, I’ll walk past the synchronized swimmers (no joke!) in the other pool and go over to the “spa,” where the hot tub is.  They also have what’s called a lazy river: a meandering loop with a current.  I swim against it for a bit – it’s hard! – then bob along with the flow.  I end my night in the whirlpool, positioning a water jet to massage my back, keeping just my chin and eyes above water, like a frog.