LETTERS FROM HOME: GETTING EXERCISED IN THE TWO-CAREER SEARCH FOR TOGETHERNESS

June 26, 1997

Dear Pat,

Because our schedules are so different, DC and I are avoiding many traditional battlegrounds of marital discord.

We don't race each other for the first shower in the morning, we haven't signed an uneasy peace treaty certifying who washes and who dries the dinner dishes, we don't hide the remote control and we don't have sex (just kidding).

But I do think we're missing out on some of the fruits of togetherness. Common ground isn't always easy to find in a two-career marriage.

She's involved in historic preservation. I'm not. I'm crazy about golf. She's the opposite of crazy about golf.

Movies are our United Nations, where all our interests congeal in two hours of fancy. Aside from sleep, most of our hours of togetherness have been spent in the darkness of movie theaters.

At one time I thought maybe we could squeeze in some exercise together. At least we're both from the low-tech school of working out. None of those contraptions that firm abs and buns while you wait. No, we believe in a more personal approach: videos.

Sometimes when I arrive home from work, DC's burning fat with Kathy Smith, who has appropriated the title of America's Foremost Fitness Expert.

Kathy Smith leads a pastel little group in what looks like an aerobic dance class. Disco music pumps, leotards and leggings flash, and blonde, perky Kathy assures everyone "You're doing great." Liar.

I tried to follow along a few times but didn't do great. Just felt silly. The lone guy on the tape looked silly, too. In fact, the only ones who didn't look silly belong to the very exclusive club of People Who Never Look Silly.

Not that it matters whether you look silly. It does matter if you feel silly.

My own exercise guru is a New Yorker named Carol Carlson. Carol, who also comes to our living room via tape, does yoga with me. The music is soft, serene, the movements much more difficult than they appear.

"A neutral mind is an open heart," Carol says to encourage an attitude of neutrality when your body resists what your body's doing.

"Let the work you've done work for you," she says when she finally allows you to droop into the carpet.

DC shouldn't be jealous, but lithe, shiny-eyed Carol has endeared herself to me in these few weeks we've been doing yoga together. She wants everybody to realize that strength and grace reside within each of us.

"Remember," she says, "we don't need to prove our strength, we need to improve it," she says.

I like her relaxation command: "Wiggle those hips."

Actually, DC and I don't exercise together primarily because we have very different ideas about what constitutes a good sweat. She does not think golf is exercise even though I walk well over three miles each time and return home with a soaking shirt.

Besides, watching DC attempt to strike a golf ball I once made the grievous error of telling her she looked like someone trying to kill a snake. End of companionship on the golf course.

And DC does not think yoga is exercise because people appear to be hardly moving.

In yoga, I assure her, the perspiration comes from releasing tension rather than creating it.

Yoga requires concentration. DC would like to be able to exercise while balancing the checkbook on inhales and leaping historic buildings on exhales.

We are Superman and Clark Kent in different bodies.

She'll keep dancing, I'll keep wiggling my hips. The two are not so far apart when you think about it.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.