I don't know when it first happened, when I became aware that, physically, I was not the woman I was used to being.

Maybe it was the day I took stock of my wardrobe and realized that I was most often dressed in hospital scrubs. You know, those loose-fitting, one-size-fits-just-about-everyone pants with the e-x-p-a-n-dable waist? Or maybe it was the day we moved off the boat and into a real house, a house that had a full-length mirror in the bedroom, not the little 6-by-8-inch silvered glass hung on a bulkhead I had used for 22 years.

Or maybe those were just incipient clues, the nibblings around the edges of my consciousness that things were changing. For it seemed as if one morning I just woke up to confront a stranger staring back at me from the looking glass, and thinking, "My God! When did this happen?"

Oh, I was aware somewhere in the back of my brain that as I put more candles on my cake, my hair would go gray. And I might even develop a few crow's feet (though I prefer to think of them as smile crinkles). But that was always somewhere off in the future. What I encountered that day in the mirror was something very different, something very unacceptable, something very current: an aging woman.

I raised my arm to test the reality, and was struck by the skin that sagged from my uplifted underarm. What had happened to my formerly strong shoulders and smooth biceps? I saw my own impish grin, but what were those parentheses bracketing the mouth? And those couldn't be jowls under the jaw, could they?

I did not like looking at the person in the mirror. Appalled, I turned away. Perhaps if I didn't see the image of my lost muscle tone, it didn't exist.

But every morning, when I passed that mirrored wall as I stumbled from my bed to the bath, I'd wince. My self-esteem, self-confidence and self image were eroding.

I knew I had to take myself in hand, but I didn't know how. Or where to begin.

LYCRA JUNGLE

My life had always been active and vigorous. I had never worried about diet and exercise; I just ate and lived. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't go on without changing. Yet one day I was trim and taut; the next day I was not.

Of course, intellectually, I knew the effects of age and gravity on the human body. But just as it is one thing to read an adventure in the pages of a book and another to go out into the world and live it, so, too, is there a difference between intellectual acknowledgment and emotional acceptance.

What to do about it? Suddenly, TV ads that I had never paid attention to were all around me, screaming for my attention: ab flatteners, cellulite inhibitors, appetite suppressants and fitness spas. Dr Atkins, South Beach and Weight Watchers. Surely there was help out there somewhere!

My diet and lifestyle were already healthy. I ate moderate amounts of a variety of foods; not much red meat and immoderate quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables. No, diet wasn't the kind of lifestyle change I needed. I had to do something physical.

Gardening, vacuuming and walking to the store and library provided some regular exercise, but maybe that wasn't enough.

I started to find the idea of a gym intriguing. Now that I lived on land and no longer hauled on halyards or heaved anchors, maybe that could be the way back to physical fitness for me.

I checked the phonebook for gyms near me, and headed to the closest one before I could lose my initiative.

I arrived in my baggy sweats, ready to jump on the treadmill as soon as they signed me up. I waited my turn at the counter, while the woman behind it batted her lashes and flexed her muscles at a young man who must have stopped in on his way to the set of "Baywatch."

A door to the inner sanctum, where they kept all the magical machines that were going to push, pull and prod me back into shape, kept opening and closing. Through it passed some of the tightest bodies, smoothest skin, and shiniest workout costumes I had ever seen.

Suddenly, standing there in the middle of my middle age, I felt intimidated. Inferior. Out of my element. Coward that I was, and as much as I wanted what I thought I could achieve in such a place, I ran.

SAY OUCH

Once back home, I chided myself. A silly, vain eejit! So, was I going to subdue my apprehensions and complexes and go back and brave that alien world? No way. I knew myself too well. My ego couldn't compete with those lissome Lycra-sheathed beings, glowing with a sweet sheen of sweat.

About then, I looked out the window and saw my neighbor carting out the trash. In one hand she held a garbage bag and in the other some kind of exercise apparatus. I went to the gate and hallooed her and inquired about the contraption, and she explained it was something she had sent away for but was bored with, saw no results from, and was now disposing of.

I took the thing home, studied it for a few minutes to see how it worked, and lay down on the floor and began to rock and roll and rotate according to the instructions. Every day, I went through the routine, but all I seemed to get for my pains was just that: pain. In less time than it took my neighbor, I put the ab machine back where I got it.

A few days later, I was coming out of Longs Drugs when I saw a discreetly written sign, contrarily blaring in hot pink: Curves for Women. Curtains on the plate-glass windows kept me from looking in. So what was it to be? Head for my car or satisfy my curiosity? I'm rather feline, so you know what I did.

JOINT IS JUMPIN'

I could feel vibrations travel into my hand as I pushed the door open. Thumping music crashed against my ears, and my eyes were amazed by the sight of a dozen or more women dressed in the most variegated attire, from oversize sweatshirts that hid everything to second-skin tank tops that hid nothing.

Half the women were astride varied pieces of equipment; the others were on 2-foot-square platforms, bouncing to the reverberating beat, the lower part of their bodies moving in every dance pattern, from a steady march step to a 1950s Lindy, a Latin cha cha cha to a tortured Tahitian tamure.

Even as I was taking this in, a recorded female voice ordered everyone to change stations. The women moved to their right. Those who had been on a machine now pranced or marched or just gently lifted their heels on the square wood platforms, and those who had been gyrating a minute before were now lifting, pulling, squatting and pushing against the torsion of the different apparatuses.

The women ranged in age from their 30s to their 80s; their skin was hued from almond to coffee to chocolate. Some were firm and others jiggled; some struggled and others maneuvered with ease. But they all were, almost without exception, oversized. And they all worked earnestly at their rotation of tasks.

Even as they laughed and chatted, several looked at me and smiled shyly. One or two waved. Someone called out, "Aloha." But they never stopped moving to the music or interrupted their pushes and pulls on the machines.

When the door opened behind me, and someone entered, everyone looked in that direction and called out, "Hey, girl," and "Where were you yesterday? How come you never come exercise?" The words wrapped around the woman as she slipped onto an empty platform, adding her bit to the group's synergy.

Something warm, womblike, pervaded the room, something that felt, well, what I call very Kane'ohe. Those who live there will know what I mean. There was no sense of competition or of showing off. There was nothing plastic or artificial, not even in the potted plants. What there was was a sense of 'ohana, of camaraderie and acceptance.

I was ready to start moving to this beat.