the flea market

Beach's 3rd love: flea market shopping

parts of team out and about the town

 ivviva store, fashion place mall

just the girls

I found this simple pic on my camera.  It's from last weekend. <3

Friday

through the eyes of a mother

It happens a lot.  Little Giants catching reflections of themselves in the glass of the coach's office.  The littlest of them almost always smile.  The older girls seem more curious and less sure.  As if they don't quite recognize themselves.

The moment is short. Sometimes so fleeting they don't even realize they are doing it.

Each gaze, smirk, & smile is as unique as their are.

But there is one look they all share: the daughter look. 

Beneath the rips and the bruises.
Under the mat burns and layers of tape.

Below the dust of white chalk they are our daughters.

And when they get sick the daughter look is the only one they wear.

It is instantly recognizable. 
The look that says I am here standing at the gym's front desk not as an athlete but as a child who wants to call their mom and be taken home.

Wednesday at 7:14 PM I looked up from the desk.  The phone pinned between my ear and my shoulder.  Standing before me the ashen face of a child.  She was wearing a coat but the straps of her leotard could still be seen. Her mouth flat and tight; leaving her eyes to do the frowning.

This daughter standing there was mine.

Then again they all are- at least until their own mothers show up
and take them home.

 

nameless (with a 2019 update)

What else would you want us to know about her and your family, he asks.  There is a pause over the line.  All I can picture is 8:23 PM.  Grainy surveillance footage of Beach and I jumping over clumps of gray snow turning to slush as we enter the 7/11.  I see wet brick-like tiles.  Smell burnt coffee.

Hear the greeting given by one of the many characters behind the counter.  They call her Little One.  It is what they call all the neighbor kids because they don't know their names.  They know she is "something", that she does "something", but none of them can remember exactly what that is.

Why this pops into my head is because of what I told the man on the line next. "We are a westside family, with a westside socioeconomic status. Gymnastics is an elite sport with an elite price tag.  Gymnastics is practically unheard of down here."

Beach slips from this side town to that side.  Unnoticed. Nameless.

We pass the mechanic shop and the abandoned house at the end of our block. Drive over a set of active train tracks that burst out from between the cinder block buildings flanking the street. The crossing is naked; it does not have gates or a signal.

The trains that run that line ride their horn as they approach.  We call it the canal train and try to forget the terrifying shine of its headlight at it rips out for the darkness and across the road.

We pass between the army of semi-trucks getting on and off the 9th west exit.  Driving a stretch of road that seems lawless. No posted speed limit, no rules, and in the ten plus years we have lived here I have yet to see a cop do anything more than speed pass it.

Sometimes I watch the children in our neighborhood as they walk to or from school.  They no longer know "the girl" is here.  The Girl they played without in the grass.  The one they would shout about, "the girl is better than you" "look what the girl can do" "the girl is winning". They have forgotten about her.

Like the boy in the bubble; I even think she has forgotten about them.

Our closest neighbors seemed mystified by our schedule.  The ones with children around Beach's age think I am some sort of pathological liar for as many times I say, sorry she can't she has Gym.

In a community build around differences, she is too different to be noted.  A small band of loyal supports at the summer Sunday morning farmers' market knows her as the Little Dancer. Only a handful really know she is a gymnast.

The lifeguards at community center blankly stared at her as she tried to rehab an avulsion fracture during adult only lap swimming hours last year. Special permission required.  The staff at PCMC nodded politely as I explained why we waited so long to get x-rays of the compression fractures in her back this spring.

And over there on the east side... she is almost one of them.  Almost, after she makes the muddy trek out to the chicken coop to gather eggs; after the wood is split and stacked; after she trails behind her mother at the grocery store unit pricing and seeking manager specials; after she brushes sawdust off her jacket and drives the industrial jungle out.

And if out is the goal there is a problem. 

December 2016 Beach sat on the floor among her mates listening to the college recruiting meeting. The next day she announced she was not interested in doing collegiate gymnastics. I let it settle.  A few days later her reasons slowly slipped out. The price tags on the media and promotion needed scared her.

While her teammates worried over the warnings of inappropriate social media or following academic guidelines she was doing the real world math.

Westerns Championships 2019 3rd Place Vault, 5th Place Floor

This year despite the injury to her back her scores helped her gym get team-high scores on Bars, Floor, and in the AA. She made the Top 100 in Vault. She killed it all season on floor and vault. She is the Region One Level 9 Sr 4 Champion, State Floor and Vault Champion. She brought home 2 medals from the national stage in Vault and Floor for her gym.  But none of this was ever mentioned by the gym, no social media post, no good luck, no congratulations.  Nameless.

What would I want a film production crew working on a micro-documentary piece featuring my daughter (it was never released to the public) to know?  The same thing I would anyone to know: that being half blind is the easy part. Being half poor is what really makes it hard for her to see.

No one knows really knows what or who she is.