This Column, "About Time," Hilariously Late

Oops and also SURPRISE! Two back-to-back columns this week

This column is an adaptation of my contribution to the February gathering of The Nameless Club, the event inspired by literary gatherings once held by William Pryor Letchworth and now held at Theater at 37 in Perry, NY. The Nameless Club is open to all. Participants tell short first-person stories. The theme for this edition was: “About Time.”

I often hear people say things like time flies, that the older you get, the truer that is; the days and months, and even years blurring into one another, vaporizing in the time it takes to blow out a birthday candle.

I understand the sentiment, but can’t help but wonder if these people have ever spent time on a treadmill.

I’m quite certain they have never attempted even one Bulgarian Split Squat.

Motion, as anyone with a podcast and a promo code for protein bars will tell you, is medicine. Oddly enough, motion is also magic, as exercise, in my experience, has the ability to stop time in its tracks.

I’ve recently added strength workouts into my routine. Often, the sessions involve what is described as 45 seconds of work with a 15-second or so rest in between. The sets are repeated until the workout ends or you lose consciousness — whichever comes first.

It should be noted that the notion of “rest,” in this case, is pure sarcasm.

Rather than resting, I spend the fleeting moments in between sets inventing new expletives before plunging back into what is, again, 45 seconds of work, but what feels in my body like 7 - 10 business days.

When I’m not wrestling with heavy dumbbells, I find myself twisted into humiliating shapes with names like “The Fire Hydrant,” a movement that finds me on all fours and actually mimicking a dog relieving himself.

I’m old enough to remember Jane Fonda doing the same thing — it was the 80s, she was in a leotard, and she more aptly, called it “Rover’s Revenge.”

The good news is: this is all very good for me — which seems positive, except for the constant reminders that it would have been better had I gotten more serious about it — 15 or more years ago — when my muscles were already retreating into obscurity and my bones were rapidly turning into, what I heard one helpful influencer describe as “chalk.”

Now that I’m in my 50s, I hear about this stuff all the time, but I don’t recall anyone mentioning anything about muscle mass or bone density when I was younger, least of all any of my medical providers.

They always seemed more worried about something else.

Scanning my chart, they would nod approvingly or frown slightly at my weight, ask some standard questions, then pause, and I always knew what was coming next.

Was I planning to have children?

The clock was ticking after all.

There I was: a woman in my 20s, then 30s, then 40s, with no children and no immediate plans or desire to produce any — a true medical and societal oddity.

I got used to this routine, and just when I thought it might be over, during one appointment in my mid-40s, a doctor, a woman, asked me again. I answered that I just didn’t see it in my future at 46 or 47, to which she responded:

“Did you just not want to have children?”

The more I thought about it, the more I found it odd that they didn’t concentrate more on the things that actually were in my body already — bones, muscles, blood, organs — rather than the mythical human being they thought should come standard on a model my age.

Existing, it seemed, on my own and for myself lessened the concern about my upkeep, unless, of course, it was cosmetic.

To be fair, my friends with children have not fared much better with their doctors.

Tired? Experiencing pain? Awake at 3 a.m. for no reason? Freezing? Sweating? Anxious? Hair falling out?

“All just part of aging, sweetie”

My generation is known for being the one with the latchkey kids, so it stands to reason we’d grow up to unlock the mysteries of things like perimenopause and menopause on our own. We are now the older sisters and weird aunts passing down what we’ve learned to our younger counterparts in ways that didn’t happen for us.

Meanwhile, they’re busy pushing back on a society wringing its hands at declining birth rates, still expecting women to prioritize motherhood, all while refusing to provide support, community, or even safety.

Whatever any of us, at any age, have taken on, as women we are finding, in ever greater numbers, the courage and confidence to stand up for ourselves and put down the weight of anyone else’s expectations.

And to that I say — It’s About Time.

Nameless Club #5: February 6, 2026

The next night of storytelling is planned for Saturday, April 25 at 7 p.m. at Theater at 37 on Main Street in Perry, NY with the theme of “Guilty Pleasures.”