At the Gym Today...

Dear Fitness Instructor:

I know what you meant

Eying me and my postpartum 20.

“So…what is your fitness level?”

To polite to say “do you really think you belong in this class”

Or (more to the point)

“You don’t look like the rest of the people here”.

Like I hadn’t noticed.

Perhaps you think I can’t read, and therefore missed the class description online.

or that maybe “HIIT” means nothing to a chubby 40 something like myself.

What’s my fitness level?

My fitness level is “survived a 6-hour drug free labor followed by an all-natural birth, the first time.”

My fitness level is, “stayed conscious through a 4-hour cesarean gone awry with my second, until the epidural wore off and I could feel them stretching my body to capacity with their metal clamps.”

My fitness level is a 30lb 3-year-old who gets jealous of her 15 month old sister

and so

I carry them both up the concrete steps and sway with one on each hip during our dance parties.

My fitness level is squat to a shoulder press with two children who love to be tossed like bags of flour.

I may look like I don’t belong here, sir, but just so we’re clear:

I am a warrior.

I have reserves you can’t imagine.  

What’s my fitness level?

My fitness level is “mother”.