Simone is yelling at me.
I change the incline on my treadmill to hill, crank up the speed two notches, and the terrain on my screen suddenly changes from California coastline to the streets of San Francisco. I had been jogging on the beach by the Pacific Ocean. I could hear the waves and the seagulls. I could feel the warm breeze and sand under my feet.
But my virtual instructor had sensed me slowing and challenged me to do more.
“You can do it!” Simone yells.
I am now running up a nightmarish hill that resembles a mammoth cobra. It snakes this way and that, and the higher I traverse, the longer it seems.
“Faster!” Simone admonishes me. “Faster!”
It is much too cold—and much too dangerous—for me to run outside. February is a winter bully in Michigan: It taunts you endlessly, hammering you as soon as you leave your home, whistling in your ear, getting in your head, wearing you down until you finally break.
I relented a few years ago and bought a state-of-the-art treadmill and bike, so that I could bring the exercise bullying inside.
“You’re slowing down! Pick up the pace!”
Simone looks like an anime Barbie. Her blond hair is pulled back into a perfect ponytail that bounces back and forth between each toned shoulder. She is sporting a pink shimmer on her lips and can wear a cropped pink athletic top that shows off her tanned midriff because she doesn’t have an ounce of fat that shifts when she springs around on the balls of her feet. Her sweat is melting gold.
A mirror on the wall in my basement turned home gym shows only a part of me running: hips to neck.
I did not often see women like me featured on the covers of fitness or fashion magazines growing up. I have always been a bit too tall, a bit too gangly, the girl told by the school photographers to stand in the back row and slouch or take a seat in the tiny chair in the front row so the rest of the class would seem in proportion. Not to mention the fact I felt guilty wearing heels so as not to make my dates feel “uncomfortable.” I bought so many pairs of flats, I could have joined the high school ski team.
I train my eyes on the size of the new hill in front of me.
I wonder if the Pink Ladies checked the height of my dates, I think. How awkward would it be to stand a head taller than them, or if they feel compelled to haul a box out and hop onto it for a photograph. I think back to the Santa Run. He was taller than me.
“Don’t stop,” Simone yells.
Do stop, Susan, I think. Stop self-sabotaging.
Years of being called “giraffe” and asked How’s the weather up there? have taken root. How many times have I walked into a restaurant or coffee shop to meet a first date and watched him control his reaction until he can’t take it and inquires, Now, how tall are you?
It’s taken me forty years to realize it’s not my fault. I am proud of how I am and how I look.
I trudge up the hill, my eyes focused on Simone.
How unfair is it that fitness magazines rarely featured a woman like Leah, a woman in her early fifties who has raised a family and is healthy, happy but not the size zero so admired in society? When we go to the beach I’ve watched her worry about stretchmarks and cellulite—the beauty marks of a wonderful life—and her discomfort that people will look at and judge her is so palpable that I can feel it in the air.
I can’t wait for winter, she has said. So I can cover up again.
And what about Noah? He had little to no representation in the small town where he grew up. Confused and scared, he lost himself in books at an early age, quietly searching for someone like him, someone to give him hope, someone to prove that he should not only be proud of who he was but also worthy of being loved.
I glance at myself in the mirror again.
The expectations society places on those who do not fit within its preconceived standards of beauty or acceptance, those who cannot float throughout the world as easily as Simone is traversing these hills, doom us from an early age.
That’s why publishing is so exciting these days. The number of diverse voices and underrepresented authors writing uniquely personal stories that have never been published before feels like a sea change.
My incline finally ends, and I finish my run by the ocean.
Sea change.
Can a sea change happen in my life?
And the lives of my friends?
Or are our stories already written?
Simone thanks me for my energy, and I thank her for my already aching back.
The treadmill slows.
The world is changing. I must keep pace.
Simone waves goodbye to me as I grab a towel and step off the treadmill.
I head upstairs to my kitchen, chug a glass of water and then pour another, which I take into the living room. It is awash in red.
I go immediately from Christmas lights to Valentine’s lights, stringing red lights across my mantel and outside across my porch railing. I place heart-shaped lamps on tables and decorate a Valentine’s tree in my window.
I’ve heard from many a newcomer to town who believed my old Victorian was a brothel when they first arrived.
I’ve even had a few random knocks on my door from drunken strangers and even more surprised looks on their faces when I answer it in a robe and facial mask carrying a book.
I do not like the dark of February, and I must light my world in any way I can. I hate sitting at home at four in the afternoon on a Sunday in the pitch black.
The light makes me feel happier, as if...
I’m not alone.
I start a fire and stand in front of it, thinking about the first Yule logs and why they were started.
We yearned to not only warm our homes but also fill them with light.
That flame, quite literally, ignited our love of holiday lights, which united our need for light in winter with our faith.
Our need for light in dark times.
My fireplace is an original wood burner. I have wood cut and stacked in my garage, and I carry it inside and stack it in my firewood rack. Yes, this is not as convenient as a gas fireplace, but I love the smell of a real fire. I even love the process of starting one. There is a feeling of accomplishment when the flicker bursts into a flame, when the living room becomes toasty and warm.
And it fills my Pink Lady with a glorious glow.
I pull a blanket around me and sit in my favorite rocker in front of the fire for a minute, drinking my water and staring into the light. I remember, as if it were yesterday, sitting in this same rocker—my dad’s favorite chair, which I’ve reupholstered in Pendleton camp blanket fabric—staring into the fire and writing the following lines to my childhood poem:
So, until my day comes
I’ll remain happy and bright
And I will believe in my Kringle
With all of my might.
Light.
Bright.
Love.
Might.
Hope.
Faith.
I watch the flames change colors before my eyes, blue then red.
I set my water down, pull the blanket around me even tighter, and I fall asleep and dream I’m wearing a magical mood ring whose stone is made of fire, and it changes color with every beat of my heart.
I don’t know how it got on my finger, and I cannot remove it. And yet, it’s so beautiful that I can’t help but touch it, over and over again.
Each time I do, I get burned.