checking boxes

It's quiet in the woods alone.  The world is silent beneath the trees.  The light tip-toes between the branches.  The wind stays low.

But sitting at the front desk of the gym that is silence is simply a memory.  The gym is packed.  The first week of winter session creeping down the calendar.  The threat of valley snow and hard freezes crawling to meet the fast end of October.

It is time to decide.

Time to decode the meaning of the lingering pain in her back. The pain that is keeping Beach from returning full force to gymnastics.  Time to see if we are at the end or simply back at the beginning.

Like the woods this spot is quiet.  It's lonely and far away.  No one is calling her name.  I can't help but wonder exactly where we really are; is she done?

Beach's team and head coach hugging her over the ropes after she competed
her final event at the 2018 Western's Championships in SLC

The hard part is the slope.  I know she isn't ready to be done. She is fighting to hang on.  Fingers crossed for a good appointment with the Spine Clinic.  Something reassuring that the pain is normal, expected, and not causing harm. May it be soon and simple.

Beach standing alone after vaulting in the
2019 Western Championships in Spokane, WA

May it give her the confidence she needs to fight on.

driving in traffic

The road is slow.  It twists like a shirking shoulder. The cars seem to float; tiny pretend boats with bells in a water trough.  And although the cars are moving slowly, about 50 mph, the thoughts in my mind are racing. 

The thoughts stomp like giants.  They twist like tornadoes. They bash and crash and wiz by.  Be here, get there, do this, do that, then get there, and be here again, do that, do that again, don't forget this or that, oh god don't forget that...

And a little voice from deep within my head whispers, what is the point of any of this? 

That is the voice I react to. No, no, no, nooooo! Don't ask that question when we are doing so well! 

My house is spotless.  Our meals are all shopped for and planned.  The dogs are walked.  The children are happy.  I am dressed, all organized and going on as planned.

But it is a good question.

Why are any of us doing anything?

Two by two, the cars roll down the shrugging shoulder of the interstate.  The road straightens out their speed increases.  The mountains in their winter coats rise into view. 

The breath of Autumn breathes down on the valley and the air is so clear... but I don't know what the point is.  I never have known.  Perhaps that's what makes me me.   

When the days are fast I forget that I don't know.  I forget that I don't see the cathedral we are building only the rules of the blueprints.  I am one of those chosen to live in life in doubt.

I have moments when I think I know.  Standing in the center of a dead dirt road watching Juneau's tail flash through the golden grasses as he breaks across the openness.  Flashes of red and white in the mountain meadow.  The smell of pine needles bedded in the cooling ground.  This is why; to heal a broken dog.

People aren't so simple to help.  Like Beach and gymnastics...it's hard to see the point when it is stabbing you in the gut.

I drive in the traffic as it thins.  Don't forget this, and do that, pick up this, make that. go there, be back by then, do it again...

I pass the exits I have been taking and not taking my whole life.  I am ready to move on from here.  Ready to follow BC somewhere quieter, somewhere older.  Towards a larger sky and a new history.

The cars float on and off the interstate.  I drive.  The giants stomp.  The tornadoes whirl.  They bash and they crash.  I take my exit and I go on.

the unknown variable

Looking for answers &/or support I am not getting from our gym I joined a facebook group for parents of upper-level gymnasts. 

For over a month now I have been reading through the questions and comments.  I made a few new friends and learned a couple of things. 

Then like throwing a penny in a wishwell I posted my own question about injuries. It bounced around a bit, made a good splash at the bottom, that was about it. 

Everyone in the group seems nice but the "something" I was looking for is not there. In fact, the group makes me feel like a preschooler in the world of gymnastics 'momming'. They talk about start values, skill values, routine composition, and recruiting. And I am over here texting the head coach questions like, "Hey some head coach in NJ is asking questions about Beach should I answer him?" 

At this point, I feel pretty stupid. I keep asking the same questions, requesting the same support, and I get nothing. 

I ask Beach how she is doing but she does not report pain well. She doesn't read the signals and can't self-report. The thin line between pain and fear is unreadable. 

I have even asked myself for the answers. I have a pile of dead drafts about injuries and recovery.  Drafts with opening lines and middles but no endings. 

I watch my daughter wander.  

She goes to Gym every day for the full practice. She conditions. Carefully calculating her return on an unseen equation creating a mystery out there on the floor. 

She has returned to vault with timers.  On beam, she has a leap pass and 3 ways to get off the beam- none on a hard surface. She tumbles on the tramp into the pit or a plie of landing mats. She flips on the tramp. On bars, she turns giants.  On the floor, she does dance throughs. 

She is entered in meets for the 2020 season. She has a new beam routine, a new floor routine, the money spent, labeled a Level 10 she is moving forward and to me, her mom, it like she is walking right off the edge of a flat earth.  

I am still looking for answers at 65 mph. Or maybe it's just me and the way I see things but shouldn't she be the most important variable here? Shouldn't she be the best-known quantity? Shouldn't we know where she is before taking off?

Maybe the answer is there is no answer until there is no longer a question and there is no end until it's over. 

Misty Brown

September 11 at 5:06 PM

This is my daughter Beach vaulting at Region One Regionals this past spring. Turns out she competed all season with 2 compression fractures in her lower back. Since Westerns (middle of May), she stopped all skills requiring pounding and arching. She goes to Gym 5 days a week mostly doing conditioning some tramp work. When she does try skills she still reports pain in forward landing and hard punching. Anyone have a happy ending story with this type of injury?