YWCA locker room

About twice a week my trip to the gym coincides with the ladies attending water aerobics. Mean age 68. We all end up in the locker room at the same time. They are a wise group of women. I know this because I eavesdrop shamelessly as they dry their bodies with more care than anyone from my generation can conceive of. This fact alone I find marvelous. What would happen to them if they dried off as recklessly as myself? Perhaps bedsores. These women in the locker room speak casually of cataracts, bouts of cancer, exacting sequences of hip replacements, heart problems, politics, gardening, remodeling, 20-year-old microwaves that just won't quit, grandchildren, people dead and dying. All this at 8 o'clock in the morning. It is a profound experience to have before the day has even begun to take shape. To bear witness to so many lives well-lived and realize that I will one day speak as casually about such things. Possibly in a locker room full of other sagging bodies. And while I find some measure of comfort in the thought, I am more comforted by the things they never speak of. Namely, that they never worry if their jeans make their butts look big.