When grief invades your life, the world becomes surreal—and, as in dreams, unexpected gifts begin to drop from the sky. After my father’s death and my separation from my partner of more than 20 years, I received an invitation to a residency I’d applied for and then forgotten about: a month in a 15th-century castle outside of Edinburgh. The playful universe seemed to be offering recompense: The ground is no longer solid beneath your feet. Here’s a castle!
Once there I became obsessed with arms, the body part that does not hold us up but that does just about everything else. I fondly considered them as they rested on the raw-wood desk and atop the green comforter, thought of who and what they had held and released. For the first time perhaps ever, I had nothing but space and time and someone else doing the dishes. I used it to think and stare out into the forest. The space heater chugged away, forming condensation on the windows, as I sat bundled at my desk, wearing a scarf all day, writing an entire book in a month.
As it was often sleeting, I began, daily, to do push-ups, keeping track of them on a spreadsheet alongside my word count. Two weeks in I noticed that my arms were becoming leaner and more muscular. Soaking in the ancient bathtub down the hall from my room, I admired them in the lamplight.
My fellow fellows, who I adored, teased me. Being British, they called push-ups “press-ups” and said it was very American to obsess over health. To defend myself I pointed out that I was keeping pace when it came to consumption of dry sherry and peated whisky.
One of the other journalists there said she did not blame me for thinking about arms so much. She’d just learned about arm Spanx and was intrigued. “Are arms the new legs?” Louisa mused.
Absolutely not, I said. Arms are just…there. Unlike legs, arms aren’t even usually the focus of erotic fixation. Whoever heard of an “arm man”? If bare legs, shown off by shorts or slits, are seductive, bare arms signify fitness. Fashion displaying women’s arms, as seen in these pages, testifies to strength, so it seems like sacrilege that the culture nudges us, as we age, toward the three-quarter-length sleeve, as one urges a toddler to start picking up his own toys.
“When I think of arms I think of Madonna or Michelle Obama or Jennifer Aniston, people who go to the gym,” Louisa said. “Women work on their arms to look strong and healthy, which is sexy in a different way.” Miniskirts are only so versatile, but bare arms can be set off by something as simple as a white cotton tank top or a full couture ensemble.
I wondered when my arms had been as strong as they now were. The answer was twice: one was 16 years earlier, when I was a new mother. My son loved to be carried, and this seemed reasonable to me. I’d have liked to be carried, too, if it were an option. And I liked having his head near mine so we could chat. He was great company, even then. So I moved through life with him cradled in my arms and then on my hip, my forearm around his back. As he grew, it was like weight being slowly added to a barbell. At the playground in the spring, I rolled my T-shirts up to the shoulder to let the sun warm my upper arms. If an older person wanted something carried to their car, I was game. My body was strong for my son and for the world.
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