So let’s start with the obvious proposition that I’m hopeless—high-blood pressure, flabadelic, out of shape, eat much too much of the wrong stuff, right?—that I do everything wrong except drink like a fish, which I don’t.

The only thing I have going for me is the mirror and Sarah Kochlis, my brand-new personal trainer at the Aspen Health Club & Spa.

I’ll start with the mirror and all it’s not cracked up to be. A mirror is supposed to show you exactly the way it is, but I’m told some people can’t even stand to look at it.

Not me, brother. I look in the mirror and the pounds melt off me faster than Dr. Atkinson went down for the count. I look in the mirror and I see a man in much better shape than me—a man that I would hardly recognize if ever I saw him in real life, which I don’t. I’m athletic in the mirror, and dashing, and just a hard-boiled workout or two away from absolute perfection. The mirror is my friend, on the surface at least, because it brings together all my delusions and illusions about the life I have so far lived.

In my life, the mirror is a hallucination.

My mother would say this is a good thing because it means I have confidence or something that passes for it. My fiancée would say not so much, because in the Midwest we never brag on ourselves, not even in our own minds.

I would say at least I know I’m hallucinating—give me that—so none of this is as bad as it seems. But it’s bad enough when to the actuality of where my actual body is as of right now.

I have help. Thank goodness for that. Help and health comes in the form of Sarah Kochlis, a personal trainer so accomplished she really should spend her time on more promising prospects. But she’s offered to help me and I’ve promised to blog about it as we go.

As you can tell, I need help. I’m better off than some, not as bad off as most, but I do have a brother whose health problems are waving like a red flag in front of my nose—no bull. And I am also at the exact age when our father had the first of multiple strokes that left him a shadow of a man unto death.

So it’s time to get cracking, and Sarah has many good ideas as to how. She is English with degrees and expertise in everything from dance to Pilates—many of her credentials have the words “Royal Academy” in them-and I am struck by how different the world of working out has become. Sarah focuses on “the core,” the mid-section and middle part of the body from whence so much motion comes into play. Free weights? Not so much and not so heavy.
In practice that means that balance is the new force at work: Sarah puts me on two small porcupine platforms that make me balance before I do anything. She puts me on the big ball that does some of the same things, forcing small muscles in the core and elsewhere to fire off like there’s no tomorrow because, for me, there is none, or not much of one, if I don’t do something but quick.

There’s a mirror along the wall of the room in the Aspen Club where we work out, but this mirror seems to work differently that the others in my life, so I can see the news come to life right in front of me–and the news could get much worse. What I see is a life and death matter: the memory of what might have been, of what was, and of what still could be. I see the cartilage in my right knee let me down, and I see my left foot try to protect the calcium cobbled into my left heel. I wobble and I bobble as Sarah puts me through my paces with infinite good cheer—always encouraging me despite my many failures.

I try to do what she tells me even when I can’t do it right away. She is building a foundation and for me it’s all good, but not for the obvious reason that I feel better and one day might even look better. I look forward to my sessions with Sarah because of her good cheer, of course, but also because she has replaced the abject falsehoods I see in my mirrors with the light she holds up to where I am today.

It’s not a pretty picture, but hey–it’s me, yours truly, warts and all. See what I mean?