Dipping Into Subject of Swim Suits

I am going to go bathing suit shopping. To any woman over 40 with her wits about her, this is like saying I am going to jump into a barrel of boiling tar, head down.

I am not a beast. That isn’t it. But something woeful occurs to the female form as it passes that mark where life was supposed to begin. Everything moves around, ever so subtly.

And buying a bathing suit is one of the most unmistakable ways to realize that some time has passed since any bathing suit looked all right as long as it answered the demands of decency.

Don’t worry. I am not considering anything remotely like what is called a string or any of those featured in the bathing suit issues of magazines.

There is something deeply depressing about being in a small cubical with three sides of mirror and looking straight ahead. Obviously, there is a flaw in the mirror.

The reason I am subjecting myself to this experience is that soon I will be board-flat in the stomach area. And if I’m not, I want my bathing suit money back.

Here is what I’m doing. For a long time, my friend Dr. Dick Diehl has urged me to take water therapy to increase the bendability of my fake knee. Dr. Diehl is the orthopedic surgeon who is the team doctor for the USC Trojan football team. My fear is that his hopes for me are too ambitious. I have always suspected that Dick thinks that if he patches enough, he will transform me into an 18-year-old nose guard. The chances are none-to-none, but he keeps hoping.

So in order to please him, I have joined a pool exercise class given at the Eisenhower Hospital by a pretty physical therapist named Julie. It is for people who have artificial joints.

Last week I marched, or rather tottered, into the pool area and was given a key. With this, you open a locker where you stuff your clothes after you have removed them in a dressing room and wiggled your way into a bathing suit. Then you pin the key to your bathing suit. I haven’t had a key pinned to my bathing suit since my grandfather took me to Ocean Park.

Julie coaxes us all into the pool, which is blessedly shallow and does not wet my hair. Then we march up and down the pool, heel-toe, heel-toe. We end up clinging to a rail at one end of the pool and Julie gives us pleasant commands to do things that my classmates seem to find easy.

I didn’t do very well, and I know that every time Julie said “Straight back,” she really meant me. I found muscles and/or what had been muscles I had quite forgotten.

When I stumbled out of the pool on a ramp that had been thoughtfully built down into the area, I went into the dressing room and reversed the undressing process.

I am going again today, high-hearted and full of determination, hopeful that my stomach will disappear. That’s why I have to buy the bathing suit. I think the one I’m wearing was the one I had on when Grandpa took me to Ocean Park.