Another week of winter in northern Indiana made every effort to impress: fresh snow over layers of ice and frozen slush with wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour. Lake-effect snow is proving Michiana white and icy.
Time for a good walk!
On with the layers of merino wool and wind gear. As we walk before sunrise, we include lights so that we are visible. Finally, Gore-Tex shoes and cleats to run and walk quickly without disaster.
No, we are not mad. The only alternative is the treadmill: a punishment of the soul.
This morning, I am alone in the streets except for presumed humans in cars. I can see newly frozen-over tracks from other runners and walkers but no actual human beings.
It is magical. The fresh snow sparkles under streetlights. The crunch of my metal cleats on the ice provides a rhythm like music. My mind is free to roam and ruminate. In a little more than a month, I will turn 66 years old. I think about my parents, who would never have even conceived of a brisk walk or slow run in the summer, much less the winter. My father, in particular, insisted that women who exercised on purpose were just not ladylike.
As a good rumination goes, I thought about my grandmothers. One died before she was 60. The other lived longer but was unhealthy—with diabetes and obesity—for as long as I knew
her. Frances was 56 the year that I was born and I have no memories of her being outside of her house. She certainly would have thought that my lifestyle was mad: walking/running six to 12 miles every day and lifting weights to mitigate aging.
Her life would surely have been healthier (and more fun) if it had been filled with movement. If my parents thought that movement for adult females was unladylike, what were expectations like for women born near the turn of the 20 th century, like Frances.
As I crunched out mile six close to my home, I remembered I had a “guide” for women from the 1930s, a used bookstore find called: “Home Management”.
“A Comprehensive Guide-book to the Management of a Household, containing authoritative contributions by Experts” was edited by Margaret Garth, a home economist, in 1934—two years before my grandmother’s sixth (and last) child was born. Photos show that Frances was not ever what we might now consider slender or fit, but I am sure raising six children born in11 years was no small feat! Garth and her contributors, however, include a guide to women’s beauty, apparently a key to “Home Management”. That chapter includes recommendations for women they first describe as “stocky” but then thereafter just say “fat”. Garth suggests that being more than seven pounds over her recommendations means the woman is “fat”. (Cheeze!)
Much to my surprise, Garth has a recommendation for “fat” women, but not for those not “fat”: walk at least two miles a day and don’t sleep too much or hang out (my words) by the fire with a box of chocolates. She also suggests a diet that would not sate a child, but does emphasize what dieticians might recommend today: fruits and vegetables, lean meat and whole-grain bread.
She doesn’t suggest people use any of these exercises to increase health, just to “fix” this “beauty problem”.
Kind of makes hanging out by the radio or television sound lovely, no?
By the time Frances was 66, Jazzercise was fast becoming as popular as Domino’s Pizza.
The culture had shifted as I became a young teen, particularly for women. Health and well-being was a lifestyle choice for all people in America, whether they chose it or not.
In my English classes studying the literature of walking, however, my students abhor the idea of walking. Most express profound boredom at the idea—particularly without earbuds. The women are terrified of violence, statistics to the contrary notwithstanding.
Perhaps we moved from a culture of “women must be ladylike” to “people must be entertained and rarely at any risk”. Another kind of straitjacket? They miss the magic of ice crystals, soaring birds, a waterfall, ruminations, and physical and mental well-being.
Sun, rain, humidity, snow, ice: I will be out there keeping my brain and body alive and well. Come join me!