Spinning with my mother

The lure of the spin studio soon caught up with the once inactive Daniela J. Lamas

preferred the back. From time to time, I would glance over my shoulder and there she was, a few rows behind me, waving a towel over her head or biking with her eyes closed, moving in sync to the music. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so free or so happy.

Spin class was our thing. Even though she lived in Miami and I lived in New York, we called and texted the details of our favourite classes, like who had played Pink’s or that great remix from I heard about one instructor who brought in a drummer, and another who gave each rider a thimble of Cuban coffee before class started. The sign-ups at her gym went from paper to online before I had taught her how to navigate the Internet, and for a few weeks, I was the one who signed her up — right before rounds in the hospital, 26 hours before the class started so she wouldn’t miss her favourite bike. Each time, she thanked me as though I had performed a miracle.

I wonder how many classes we’ve taken together over the years. I think it has to be in the hundreds. I’ve even squeezed in a spin class with my mother right before our drive to the airport, lingering in the studio afterward, browsing through gear we won’t buy while my suitcase waits in the car, neither of us wanting the time to end.

Inevitably, though, it does end, of course. My flight approaches and then it takes off. Time ticks by, months at a stretch between my visits. These days, when I see my mother in Miami, her back hurts and so she sends me to class without her. She waits for me outside.

Back in Boston, where I now live, I go to spin class nearly every morning, before I head to work. There is something sacred in that room, something I never could have anticipated in my years of avoiding exercise. It isn’t just the sweat, or the idea that I’m burning calories. Maybe this is my mother’s gift to me: When the doors close and I’m clipped into that bike and the lights go down and the beat grabs me, everything is so simple.

Outside the room, we are all growing older and there is possibility and excitement, but with it, deadlines to meet and decisions to navigate. Yet in there, my only job is to move my body, to time my legs to match the music, to stand when the instructor tells me, to sit, speed up or slow down.

And class after class, week after week, those 45 minutes have become my own. I like to arrive early, so that I can sit outside the studio. I watch people pass me by as I change into my bike shoes, pulling the Velcro straps tight. Then I take my seat in the front row and clip my feet into the pedals. The doors close, the lights dim and I watch my shadow in the mirror and in a way, I dance.