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.
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