what it takes

A four and a half hour practice beginning with Floor and Vault at the end of a long week of workouts. Followed by two back to back rotations on bars. Rushing to throw a few full routines on Beam to catch up with her team. Roughly fifty minutes of conditioning and stretching.

Three ibuprofen twice a day.  Four to five 20-minute rounds of ice and heat.

Beach has struggled all season with her bar routine (and her back). At the end of this week she was given the choice to change her routine for Regionals. To give up the 10 start value in the giant blind in trade for a pirouette to a shoot-half.

Mentally exhausted, she took the offer but it came with its own price tag. She only has 2 weeks to learn the new routine.  To put together skills that she has not done together before with a hard deadline and no real safety net to go back to if she "fails".

That's what she was doing on Friday when she stayed for a second rotation on Bars while her team moved to Beam.  It was what she was doing on Saturday morning when she walked back in a crowded gym and made her way back to Bars.

It's hard to watch them struggle. I am ready for her to NOT compete at Regionals and start rehabilitation on her back.  It's not that I don't want her to go to Regionals, it's that I don't want her to train for it... I want her to stop pushing and start healing.

After Bars, we drove out to the mall where she ran into a teammate out on a group day date for Prom (It's a Utah thing I think). We walked through the weekend crowds pressed behind the storefronts of glass.  Lulu for shorts. She had saved up to buy them for herself but I bought them for her as a treat. Lush for bath bombs; one for now and one to save for after Regionals. PacSun for overpriced...everything; she only bought socks.

Then the chiropractor. The bookstore to browse. Starbucks for a pretzel. A quiet family dinner of lasagna and salad to the backdrop of rich smells coming from the woodburning stove.

When she was offered the chance to come in and work extra on Saturday she had looked down at her hands turning them over. The hands of a gymnast.  It wasn't a question of do I want, or should I.  It was physically can I?

Will my body let me do what it takes?

Friday after practice I had taken her to Milley's for a dinner of chicken, fries, and milkshakes. We sat together in a little red booth watching the traffic of the Sugar House District pulse by. We talked about gymnastics which we don't really do very often. Usually we talk around it.

Since Sophie retired I have talked to Jeff almost every day. It's like seeing into a parallel universe. The universe of what if. All the unasked questions of regular girlhood and the outside influences rushing in like current trying to fill in the dry land that is no longer protected by the wall of Gym.

On the other side, I see Beach walking in on firm ground on a Saturday morning. Every coach pausing to greet her.  Stopping to smile and ask why she is there. Teams making space for her to warm-up and work her in on Bars. Parents, coaches, friends... what it takes is a village. Her Coach, who has been with her from the very beginning, standing there willing to go out of her way to help Beach help herself as if it was nothing.

Gymnastics takes everything but it also gives. It is a place, it is a people, it is a playground and a classroom. It is a closed door and an opened one. It is what she is. She is what it takes.

once she was

I remember sitting at the old gym building on the benches watching the "big" girls practice. I remember the pockets of time they were suddenly absent from the gym for a few days. I remember hearing their moms talk about single event scores instead of All Around awards. I remember watching them and thinking nothing about them related to us. I remember the day that changed.  

Every single one of our JO team girls qualified for Regionals this year.  The lower levels head to Reno. The upper levels to Las Vegas. For many, this will be their first look at a national stage.  

I am surprised at the lack of questions coming from the parents. I know I was not prepared for what was ahead of us that first time. Most of the girls will compete alone. There are so many athletes the age divisions divide by months not years. At best you will get one or two teammates in your session.     

Although I was not prepared Beach was. All those "do we really have to travel this far for a meet?" moments make sense the second you see the scale of a regional meet.   

The encounters with the big-hitting North Cal teams have already happened somewhere out on the road. Knowing ahead of time the talent pooling together in one spot helps prepare our girls so the can enjoy seeing the differences and the possibilities.

I look at all the scores and placements from Beach's regional meets and I am honestly surprised at how low they were and yet I don't ever recall anything but joy tied to all those numbers.   

Regionals is a victory lap. Mixed in there are falls and personal bests, big risks, bravery, and the final salutes of the season.             

Once she was little and we had never gone this way before.

A brief history in numbers of Beach's past regional meets:

A Quick Note: The year Beach competed JO Level 6 the national program was completely restructured. It was the first year Level 6 became an Optional Level.  The program did not yet include a Regional Meet* 

Regionals 2015 Level 7 Long Beach, California

Vault 15th 9.1, Bars 2nd 9.575, Beam 3rd 9.425, Floor 1st 9.725, 

All Around 2nd 37.825

Regionals 2016 Level 8 Las Vegas, Nevada

Vault 1st 9.550, Bars 9.15 10th, Beam 8.825 14th, Floor 9.35 5th, 

All Around 6th 36.875

Regionals 2017 Level 8 Utah State Team Visalia, California

Vault 2nd 9.6, Bars 9.2 12th, Beam 9.3 7th, Floor 9.3 15th, 

All Around 7th 37.4

Regionals 2018 Level 9 Reno, Nevada

Vault 2nd 9.6, Bars 8th 8.675, Beam 9.3 5th, Floor 7th 9.35, 

All Around 5th 36.925

Qualified for the Level 9 Region One Team for the 2018 Westerns Championships

And coming soon: Regionals 2019 Level 9 Las Vegas Nevada April 12-14th

dust to dust

I can admit I bribed her to help me.  Not that I had to but I did.  I dropped her off at home to get started and I walked the half block south to fetch an oreo shake.

It was supposed to be a pretty straight forward project. Clean out 3 dressers, move them around, pack a load (or 2) to donate, and list a few of the furniture items we no longer need on KSL.   

"Did everyone have this much music?" She asked wading through a dusty drawer of CD's and yes, tapes.  Something BC was assigned to do years and years ago. 

Before you, we always listened to music...

Before you.  She accuses me of saying it all the time.  Before you, we swam every night.  Before you, we took sunset hikes.  Before you...

But it's true.  Life before Beach was different.  It was slower.  It was two families dating each other.  His one child and my two. We were all on our best and our worse behavior.

There were lines of his and hers drawn all over the place.  Two sets of family traditions, 2 ex's, 3 households. It was Beach that changed all that.     

Life before Beach and life after Beach.  She made all of us make sense.  She tied us together and erased the lines.  It only seems right she would be the last child here. The child sorting through the remains of a family.  The family she created.  Helping me decide what stays and what goes.  Knowing the difference between what matters now and what mattered when. 

In my lifetime I have three times cleaned out the living spaces the dead left behind.  One old and ready to go, one just ready, and the other too haunted by life to live, afraid to die but gone all the same. 

I think about it a lot.  Not the death part but the remains part.  What would I want to leave? How much am I willing to hold on to?  And why?  What is the value of objects versus the value of freedom?

Our passion for vintage and rare walks us straight down the whale bones.  Ghost towns and desert roads.  I like abandoned places.  I like to see what gone looks likes.  I am drawn towards emptiness.

Clutter is my number one trigger for anxiety but the house on 10th West (and its male owner) likes junk.             

Despite BC's best efforts to collect and hoard the house is thinning.  We are all growing up.

Before you Beach, we listened to music... but then you came along and created a whole new soundtrack to our lives. 

I can see the end.  Forts made of blankets and bedtime stories are being put away. 

I see a field of golden grass blending in the autumn light. It is the hillside where 16 years ago BC and I laid down a blanket and a bottle of wine.  We planned our life together there.  In some ways we were wrong but in the ways that matter we were so right.

Our lives together, like moving through a house opening door after door.  Now they are all open and we find ourselves standing on the back porch.  Staring out at an open field.  Right back where we started.     

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there." ~Rumi

home room

...and finish

They have been together from the start.  

Competed together from Level 3 to Level 9.

 Their journey together in gymnastics is over but their friendship will go on.

Good luck, Sophie <3 

gold, silver, and bronze

When I think about it I remember the sunlight.  A quiet winter afternoon, warm enough to not need a jacket.  The smell of the zoo; straw, musk, tar, and hot plastic with overtones of popcorn. Beach, small for her age, flaunting her climbing skills atop a bronze statue of a rhino.

"She should be in gymnastics," he said to my shoulder.

I turned to look him the eyes.  In my head, a blackboard covered with mechanical force equations.  Open notes on human anatomy, comparative vertebrate morphology, and pathways of human evolution none of which included flipping upside multiple times on a 4-inch beam.

And Russians.  Don't forget the screaming Russians.

"Over my dead body..." I replied.

Nine years later, that gymnastics coach visiting SLC from Georgia certainly would get a good laugh at me.

The scene from the car on Saturday mid-morning the smell of fresh flowers filling the warm spring air.  I turned to Beach, "This is normal, right?  Buying flowers and picking up friends to go to a sporting event.  Normal people do this."

Normal.  It's jumble of words; pancakes, cartoons, library, green grass, soccer.

On the days I work before we leave for the gym I lay on my bed and close my eyes.  I try to soak up all the smells and sounds of being home.  Cedar, sun, warm cotton, and coffee.  If we weren't doing this if I could only stay home if we could slip off into the mountains if there was nowhere to always be...

But we are doing this because it is who she is.

So I drove around the valley.  Then drove to Ogden for the second time in 2 days.  Paid $10 for a gold paper wrist band that goes well with my pink one from Friday.

The minute we got there the girls slipped off together down the halls.  I talked with the parents of the Level 8's.  Stood with them until it was time for them to go. 

I climbed the bleachers and found a spot on the back row so I could lean against the wall.  I sat alone between parents from other gyms completely invisible watching the 10's.

What hasn't been said was that Sophie did not attend State.  In fact, she has not been in the gym to work out for over a week.  Her official retirement holding until after State Meet so not to distract her teammates from their training.

The slow drifting apart between Soph and Beach has been hard to watch.

Without Sophie's refusal to ever take Beach seriously Beach's stoic default has drifted back over her like gray clouds around a mountain.  Unchallenged, Beach holds the weight of the world on her shoulders.                 

When the Meet was all over the girls trailed me through the parking lot. I drove to a drive-thru, ordered big milkshakes and salty fries to keep the backseat happy for the long drive home.

Sunday morning 6am I woke up and googled; what day is St. Patrick's Day?

Whispered "shit-shit!" as I threw on a coat and shoes and head for the grocery store for a "pot of gold" for a 15-year-old child.   

Spent 10 minutes winding light blue string around the house until it was nearly impossible to get around.  Tied one end to the hidden "pot of gold" and tossed the rest of the ball onto her bed.  It landed softly just below her nose.  She didn't even stir.

My Little Giant.  Two gold medals.  One for her perseverance and bravery on Vault and the other for making a double turn on Floor.  A bronze medal for her bars, a routine that crushed her heart.  She works harder on bars than any other event.  It hurts her back,  It hurts her soul.  But she keeps on going.

And one silver medal in the All Around to hang in her clouds. 

When we were picking out the graduating sr bouquet standing among all the beautiful flowers you could think of, Beach told me she wants only sunflowers in hers. Golden sunflowers, silver linings, and bronze statues.
 

Gymnasts, salute.