To the Sweat

I hate to sweat.

It's sticky and uncomfortable and usually means that I've exerted myself beyond natural levels. My face gets all red and my skin turns blotchy . . . it's not a pretty sight.  I don't glow.  I don't shimmer.  If I'm running hard or playing hard, I sweat like  . . . well, like something hot and slimy and sweaty.  Ugh.  It's not an under-arm kind of thing.  My elbow pits sweat.  My knee pits sweat ... actually my knees sweat, too, and it runs down my shins and soaks my socks. Ugh.  Most of all my back sweats, especially the small of my back, and it runs down my back and drenches the waistband of my pants or shorts, which is really unattractive if you're a teenage girl wearing white shorts, playing racquetball on a hot summer day on an outdoor court with a cute boy.  Having your rear end soaked with sweat is not appealing summer date attire.

Sweating also means that I have to shower more often.  Exercising daily equals daily showers, which for me usually means washing my hair every day, which I really don't like doing.  Now, before you germaphobes and hygiene maniacs start pelting me with your "ew, gross" eye rolls, I want you to go have conversations with your dermatologists and hair stylists about the benefit of not soaping down your skin or your hair every single day.  However, even I recognize that if I'm sweating un-like a pig (because we all know that they don't actually sweat, except for on their noses, like dogs), I'm just gonna have to shower more often or I'm going to smell really, really bad. Here would be an appropriate place for the "ew, gross" eye roll, by the way.

I'm also terrified of tornadoes

When I was little, my greatest fear was being swept up like Dorothy and Toto by a raging, sentient, cruel tornado.  I found some comfort in the fact that we had a little storm shelter in our house . . . well, under our house . . . under the garage to be precise.  When the house was built and the slab laid for the garage, there was an area under the garage that was dug out some.  Because the house is on a hill with a walk-out basement, you could access this "cave" by ducking under a little wall.  Inside it was cool and dark and smelled pleasantly of rich, dark earth.  We didn't really play there when I was little, but we did go in from time to time, and we knew that if there was a really bad storm, we were supposed to go to the cave and sit it out.

For as wimpy as I was back then, including my deep-seated fear of spiders, I wasn't afraid of the cave.  It was safe.  Our dog had puppies in there.  It was kind of a cool place to me.  One summer, my older sister came home from college and decided that we needed to dig out more of the cave to make it more spacious and easier to move around in.  We took pick-axes and shovels and a wheelbarrow and hacked away at the dirt inside for several weeks, hauling the dirt out of the cave and dumping it down the hillside where our brother had cleared a tubing trail for wintertime.  The extra dirt covered rocks that were starting to pop up in the trail, and we felt like we were accomplishing two tasks at once.

My sister and I sweat a lot that summer.  My socks and shorts were soaked.  She tended to sweat on her face, with great drops forming on her forehead and running down to drip off her nose.  I thought she looked more impressive when she sweat -- with that damp forehead, she epitomized a hard worker.  I just had soggy britches; less than impressive.

When I was in college, my best friend and I were in a performing group together.  We sang and we danced.  She was really good at dancing, so she was in more of those numbers than I was.  One night my dad came to one of our shows.  At the end of the show, we always ran out into the audience to visit with people.  My friend and I found my dad and hugged him before going back to the stage to break down the set.  Afterwards, my dad commented on how my friend was all sweaty, with her hair damp on her forehead, and I was fresh and dry.  He meant no harm by it; I think he saw it as some affirmation of my femininity or something.  The truth was, she sweat more because she exerted more than I did.  If I had put as much energy into the dancing as she did, I would have been just as sweaty . . . and I probably would have been a better dancer, as well.

Now, I'm not saying that a dancer's skill is measured in how wet they are after a performance - there are all kinds of physical and even genetic factors that come into play, but I have learned that when I exert more, I sweat more.  I know that I didn't always exert as much as I could have when I was dancing.  Or when I was singing.  Or when I go running.  Or when I'm taking a class.  Or when I practice the piano.  Or when I work at my job.

Hmmm. This isn't about perspiration anymore, is it?

I'm about to start a new job; one that is going to make me sweat more than just a little, at least to begin with.  It's not a huge deal -- I'm not becoming a lawyer or a nuclear physicist, or designing artificial hearts or organizing emergency relief for refugees.  I'm not going to be trading stocks on Wall Street or conducting the Boston Pops or anything cool like that.  It's just a different kind of job on campus that is going to require significantly more focus, initiative, research, and institutional knowledge than my previous job.  I'll be learning a lot of new things in the first months and will be expected to keep track of documents and schedules in a much different way than I have been.  There won't be anyone else to clean up after me if I mess up.  I'll be the one cleaning up.  Period. 

I almost didn't take the job, because I was a little afraid of the additional responsibilities and expectations.  I was afraid of being bad at it, and I was a little nervous about sweating that much. I took some time to think about it before I realized that even as much as I didn't want to have to sweat, I was more concerned about not sweating at all.

I've been running lately, getting ready to run with dad in the Parley P. Pratt Freedom Run on July 4th.  Today I ran 3.5 miles without stopping.  I'm pretty close to a 10 minute mile.  For some of you, that seems pretty insignificant.  For me, at 54, it's huge.  Two months ago, I couldn't have run a mile without thinking I was going to die.  This is progress.  And as I pushed myself this morning to go 3.5 miles instead of the 3 miles I ran on Friday without stopping, and knowing that tomorrow I'm going to run 4 miles without stopping. it occurred to me that my sweaty shorts and t-shirt are symbols of my effort; of my willingness to push and exert myself.  I realized that when I have succeeded at anything that has felt worthwhile, it has been because I exerted myself, not because I kept myself daisy fresh.

Runners know that there are important steps to follow in a training program: warming up, stretching, pacing oneself, cooling down, alternating the muscle groups being worked, not to mention diet, hydration and rest.  No matter where I look, I can't find an area of life that doesn't require balance and moderation.  As the steady rhythm of my footfalls on the pavement lulled my thoughts into a meditative place this morning, I could see the contrast and relationship between my dry moments and my drenched ones.

Here's to a little sweat.  It hasn't melted me yet.