I spend every Thursday night at the circus

“Find the Joy” says the chalkboard welcoming people to Commonwealth Circus Center. On the exterior of this large warehouse, fading letters indicate that it once fulfilled some function for the Boston Globe. Now, it’s an explosion of color. Silks hang from the ceiling in magenta, emerald and royal blue. Three steel hoops wrapped in colorful tape are suspended from an I-beam that spans the length of the gym. The walls are filled with racks of hanging hula hoops, unicycles and yoga blocks, while an adult-sized stuffed unicorn looks down on the space from above the front door.

My trapeze instructor dons a yellow sweatshirt that says “bee nice.” “More snap!” she says. There are six of us following her directions, each clad in leggings and a t-shirt. We are in our 20s, 30s and 40s, 5’0” to 6’4” tall, of varying shapes. In front of us hang three trapezes. These are static trapezes — not the kind that swoop through the air. Each is suspended by two ropes from the beam above.

We are trying to do a full mill circle, a maneuver that involves sitting on the trapeze with one leg in front of the bar and one behind, lifting your body up off the bar, and falling forward. The goal is to spin around the bar until you end up back where you started. Each time we try it, all six of us make it three-quarters of the way around before we lose momentum and flop backwards. The instructor knows exactly what we are doing wrong: we need to more forcefully snap our front leg down to propel us forward. We try again, and again, and again, falling in increasingly strange and awkward positions, laughing at ourselves every time. Once we’ve each tried it three times, it’s painfully clear: Not one of us will be able to do it today.

“Great job,” Abbi says. “We’ll work on that one more next time.”

I joined the circus center shortly after my 40th birthday. I didn’t feel materially different at 40 than say, 39 and a half. But a lifespan that once seemed to stretch out farther than I could imagine suddenly had an endpoint visible on the horizon. I had been young once and never would be again. If I wasn’t going to take that trip or write that essay or sign up for that circus class now, when would I?

I had been a gymnast when I was a kid, and while I loved swinging around the uneven bars, I thought I didn’t have the strength or coordination to make it past the JV team. I had never been able to do a single pull-up and so I imagined some sort of middle-age redemption as I scanned the internet for classes nearby. But I quickly discovered that unless you are good enough to earn a living at them, certain types of activities usually end in childhood. While I could find plenty of cardio and weights and Pilates classes near my home, there was no adult gymnastics for miles.

Then something in the corner of Google Maps caught my eye: the words “circus center.” I clicked through to the website and they offered just as many classes for adults as they did for children. I put in my payment info and scrolled through a bunch of waivers about all the things that can happen when you are 40 and hanging upside down on a trapeze. I was committed.

... one night a week at the circus center, swinging around a steel trapeze suspended from an I-beam is nothing short of exhilarating.

The possibility of showing up to class surrounded by fit 20-year-olds got my heart pumping and so when I attended my first class two weeks later, I took a deep breath before opening the door. Inside, there were people who appeared to be much younger than me — yes — but there were also others who appeared to be in their 40s and 50s, holding themselves upside down on ropes, gliding through the air on shiny silks and, spinning around on steel hoops and trapezes. They had pink hair, grey hair, brown hair or no hair. And they were really, really, strong.

I’ve been taking trapeze lessons for over a year now. My class has mastered moves called coffin and candlestick, mermaid and Russian roll. Sometimes we all try to get on a single trapeze at once; other times, we practice juggling or doing the hula hoop while hanging by our knees.

There are many other things I could be doing with my Thursday nights, but I keep coming back here. “I told my husband that twice a week, the kids are his responsibility,” a classmate told me last year. “I’m going to circus now!”

When I ran into Cynthia, another writer, at the circus center, she said “It’s my favorite day of the week! I can shut off my adult brain and be a kid again. It’s the best day." She is in a different class across the gym, and when I glance over, they are hanging in various shapes inside steel hoops while spinning in circles.

This is not to say that trapeze is all fun. I’ve gotten myself in positions where I suddenly lost all my strength and if my instructor hadn’t rescued me, I am sure I would have either fallen or experienced some type of inverted suffocation. There are moves I’ve been trying for months that I am still very far from mastering. And because the bar is steel, I find purple bruises in places I have never bruised before: the middle of my forearms, the small of my back, both sides of my kneecap. Last summer, I wore jeans through August to avoid questions about these alarming-looking injuries.

We too often think that the way adults spend our time should follow certain rules. It is ok to seek thrills, as long as they're age-appropriate. Hobbies are acceptable, but increasingly, we expect them to also be side hustles. We value exercise, but not because it can be a lot of fun. It’s something we suffer through to meet our goals: to be healthier, to improve our strength, and — let’s be honest — to improve our appearance, too.

But one night a week at the circus center, swinging around a steel trapeze suspended from an I-beam is nothing short of exhilarating. It is not about improving my fitness metrics. I think I’m getting stronger, but I couldn't tell you by how much. The fact that I still can’t do a pull-up doesn’t matter to me much anymore. What I want is to figure out how to get enough snap to do a full mill circle, to have the strength to follow it with other moves without needing a rescue, to laugh a bit and then to go home.

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