Free Lessons in Letting Go by Corinne Grant Page B

I didn’t know what the problem was. I rang Adam.
    ‘Hey.’
    ‘Hey, honey. You sound miserable.’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘Do I need to come around with a bottle of wine?’
    ‘No. Just tell me something outrageous and make me laugh.’
    We reminisced about Corryong, the fish and the bull spoof guy, and I hinted that the fight with Wendy might have been why I was so upset.
    ‘I don’t think that’s it at all, Corinne.’ Adam was in full psychiatrist mode and I imagined he was pacing his lounge room, gesticulating as he spoke. ‘I think you’ve just spent a weekend dredging up your past and you’re feeling vulnerable. The good thing is, it’s over now. You’ll wake up tomorrow and feel fine.’
    He didn’t know about all the stuff. He didn’t know that I had packed so much into my hatchback that the only space left was around the accelerator and brake pedals. He didn’t know that I had filled my car to the brim with guilt and then parked it outside my flat. And he didn’t know that one object in particular was haunting me worse than everything else: an oversized piece of exercise equipment my father had given me for Christmas ten years previously.
    Like most fathers, Dad left the gift-buying to Mum, so it was always a big deal when he came up with an idea himself. On Christmas morning 1987, after breakfast and the obligatory phone calls to relatives, we sat down to open our gifts. Dad was grinning with anticipation as I ripped off the paper to find a large box emblazoned with the French title Le Marchepied #1 Step! , or The Super Step , as the helpful translation said beneath.
    Le Marchepied #1 Step! was essentially a platform that rested on four separate feet (or pieds as those fancy French folk would say) that could be heightened or lowered depending on your fitness level. It also came with an instructional video for step aerobics, presented by Brenda Dykgraaf, a US aerobics champion who, if the shiny tan stockings and high-cut, hot pink leotard were anything to go by, knew what she was doing. In terms of being up to date, my father had it spot on: it was the eighties and aerobics was all the rage. In terms of impressing his fickle teenage daughter, he’d missed the mark completely.
    A good daughter would have been thrilled to receive such a thoughtful gift, and even if it wasn’t exactly what she was after, she would have enthusiastically pulled it out of its box, popped on the video and jumped around the living room, whacking her knees to her elbows, and yelling, ‘I feel the burn!’ Instead, I rolled my eyes. I didn’t even inwardly giggle at the name ‘Dykgraaf ’.
    ‘Put it on and have a try,’ my mother encouraged. She knew what was up. She knew nothing would thrill Dad more than to see his daughter bouncing around like a slightly less girly version of Richard Simmons while panting out an earnest, ‘Thanks, Dad, this is brilliant! Happy Christmas to you too!’ But I was fourteen. I was a turd.
    I reluctantly stuck the video in the machine, hit the play button and made a great show of how exhausting it all was. I heaved up and down on the step, wincing and puffing as if I was an arthritic eighty-year-old. Brenda Dykgraaf bounced along on screen, shouting out instructions and grinning iridescently. I scowled back at her. How dare she expect normal people to find this kind of torture enjoyable—what did she think I was, an idiot? Who in their right mind would voluntarily endure this kind of pointless up-and-down puffy stuff in their lounge room on a regular basis? The more I did it, the more I started to believe that I was a martyr and I was being asked to do something unreasonable. I think I even faked a cramp to further illustrate my point. Eventually my mother snapped that if I didn’t want to do it, then I should stop carrying on and just pack the damn thing away.
    I didn’t feel vindicated, I felt childish. However, instead of letting that show, I dismantled it, slid it back into its packaging