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.