the size of the fight

I'm not going to tell you a story so don't ask.  It's not that exciting anyway and you will live not to know the exact details.  

In fact, go ahead and insert any G-rated storyline you like- it's all the same for the purposes here. It's not the point.  It doesn't matter. 

What I am going to tell you is how proud of my child I am.  

Sometimes it is easy to stand up for what you believe in and sometimes it's not.  

Sometimes it will cost you something you have worked hard for; hurt for, cried for.

I have said many times that Beach is a fighter.  If she was in public school she would always be in some kind of trouble. That sweet smiling kid is more than she appears.  She has a strong internal sense of social justice. Constantly on the side of the underdog.  If she believes something isn't right, she won't leave it alone. 

She is innately good.  Kind, generous, thoughtful, and smart.  These things help because that much fight poured into the wrong type of moral character would be dangerous. 

This is why gymnastics works so well for her; most days you get out what you put in, gravity is fair to everyone, the equipment is predicable stoic, and you support your team no matter what. 

She also has a built-in drive to collect the herd- to team build and to belong. She sees her team and her friends as part of her and she part of them. 

Yesterday she did what she thought was right despite thinking her parents would both be mad. In fact, believing all the adults around her could possibly be angry. 

Remember a time you did that.  A time you made a choice (the right choice in your heart) and voiced it knowing it would piss off everyone you loved.  

Despite the price tag literal and metaphoric, she stood her ground. 

As she told me the events, her words, and her choice I realized I was listening to the words of a true Leader. 

Whether or not one agrees with her (or what she was fighting for) she stood up for what she believed in.  

She fought for someone else giving everything she could. Everything she had to offer. 

She didn't solve world peace or stop global warming. She didn't even win the fight. The issue will be talked through by the real parties involved and forgotten. 

What matters is the willingness to stand up and say your truth. To fight for what you believe in.  There isn't enough of that going around these days. 

Somehow I have returned to running and to writing. Those 2 things go together for me.  But so do the nightmares.  Running fuels them.  They feed off sore muscles and adrenaline. 

Last night after Beach spilled her story to me and left my bed I fell asleep to the old whispers.  Old dreams, old ghosts, old monsters.

Sometime in the night, I dreamt of a room filled with party-goers; a mix of prom and little kids at Halloween.  I asked a question and Beach answered, "Ask Wendi."  

I turned to see my sister sitting beside Beach on a stool.  A perfect 16-year-old Wendi.  The way I remember her when she was my best friend. Before all the boys and the beer and the drugs took her away. 

Wendi said nothing she simply smiled pastel and papery. 

"How did Wendi get back here?" I asked Beach.  Because it's been a long time since I have seen her in my dreams.

"Oh, she's with me, "Beach answered. 

I suppose she is now... perhaps that only makes sense to me. But like I said that sort of fight in the wrong hands can be dangerous. In the right ones, it will save us all. 

learning not to speak

I stood.  I lingered.  Rocking back and forth on the words trying to find enough air to travel on.  She is sixteen, I reminded myself.

Sixteen, but still.

I wavered a moment more. Then I walked to my car. I waved at the parents and a few squares of concrete down the block I waved at the girls.

The two of them together side by side. One a billowing white ghost, the other a black and white convict. One trying making her way while still being invisible; the other bursting, trying to escape her cage.

 I didn't say she is totally night blind and may need help in the dark...

But she is sixteen.  

And this is a new friendship in a new place. 

 I didn't want to ruin it. 

Alone in my car driving down St. Mary's drive, I dropped the work of a decade of Halloweens spent guiding and protecting her while pretending she was doing it all on her.

I know it seems ridiculous.  A Level 10 gymnast with titles on the national stage, a skilled artist, and an award-winning photographer but the kid is legally blind in one eye and low sighted in the other.  For me, this was truly the first time I was letting her go into a world without mother strings attached- without history or a label.

The sunset was a burning jack-o-lantern slipping into the salt of the western horizon. I thought about the time she walked off a 4-foot ledge and tore her costume, skinned her knees and split open her lip.  The countless number of times she tripped or was knocked over by children she didn't see coming.  The painful way she teetered off porches and stumbled down steps. How it seemed every crack in the sidewalk was out to get her.

When I returned a few hours later she was safe inside the home of her new friend.  Sitting at a table with candy carefully sorted in piles, ready to trade. I didn't ask her if she had trouble in the dark.

And the next morning I didn't say a word as I closed the extra spaces in her 5 pages of typed notes on the conditioning program the head coach asked her to write for him.

I am learning how to let go of her disability. 

Perhaps one day, I will catch up to where she stands.

  

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

start time now

I can see us walking through the mall, passing the glass storefronts laughing.  I can feel Beach's excitement beside me.  

Time is ticking, but we don't know it yet. 

It's not about spending money, but yes, I had just decided to give my daughter a gift. She was wrapped inside the love of it like a fuzzy jacket. Smiling, the paper bag with its tissue crown swinging in her hand. Still enjoying the polished sweetness of the women of the Bare Minerals Shop like pieces of strawberry candy. 

What had I bought for her? Their three-piece skincare package, a loose powder, and a concealer stick. The excitement and the appreciation are about getting something new, whole, and decedent. Something she would never have dared to ask for. 

We pass a group of men in dark clothing, and I think of the week we have had, of my neighbors and the lingering threat they pose, but not here, I breathe. We are having fun, and for the first time in days, my head is not pounding... not here.  

Time is ticking.

I paused to see a $24 t-shirt that reads Death before Decaf. Beach shows me a pair of socks that look like sharks.

We stop at Pacsun to see the contents of my 7th grade closet out for display. Pacsun, the store that on Christmas Eve Beach picked out two pairs of pants believing they were buy-one-get-one-free. Luckily, I sent her off to get lunch at the food court while I paid. Turned out, they were not buy-one-get-one-free.  She would have never asked for them had she known, and I never would have agreed to buy them. But I bought them anyway, not wanting to break her heart.    

Being there remembering it makes me sad. I step away while she gazes at the racks. I stare a second at the pen of ride-on autonomic animals and think I want a photo of them in all their ridiculousness, but for some reason, I don't take it.  

Beach joins me. As we pass the breezeway doors, I ask Beach what time it is.  

It is 1:25.  

We step into Dillard's.

I ask her to send a message to let her friends know we will be arriving early unless there is anything else she wants to see... we stop for just a moment lingering at the front of the store. She says no, squeezing the bag in her hand a little tighter. She is too grateful to ask anything else of me. 

We walk under the bright lights and around the glass cases in the perfumed air. I touch the shirts in the men's section like it is a petting zoo.

We walk out of the mall and into the southeast parking lot; it is 1:29. 

[STOP TIME] 

All summer, I have been dropping and picking up at the mall. I enter the same way all summer, park in the same row, and enter/exit through the same doors. For some reason today, I turned into the mall one entrance early and parked one section over, shifting the doors we would use to enter and exit the mall.

That nondecision, that strange chance, took us directly out of the line of fire.  

From my house, I watched the NEWS recounting the aftermath of the shooting. One of the Bare Minerals store clerks retells the terror inside the mall. I wondered if she wondered about us. The clerks had been so charmed by Beach and her sweet-softness. Won over by her attempts to help me pay the bill with the contents of her little wallet. So gracious, so kind, such a great kid.       

When Alexis and Conner were little, I went to bed every night asking myself, if this was the last day we had together, did I do all that I could have done to show them they were loved? 

I know we were never really in danger. But had it been different...

Walking beside my daughter, she knew she was loved. That is something time can't take away. 

   

found: Beach's list of fears from 2014

I came across this post in an old blog of mine.  I had totally forgotten about it! 

I am sharing it because I think I want to do a follow-up on this writing project.  

  

Out of the blue Boo dropped this not so little piece of work (2 pages with illustrations) onto my desk.

 "Mom, these are my fears. Want to see them?"

#1 Ants. This we already knew. Boo the brave is afraid of little, tiny ants. Always has been.

#2 Bees. Not too surprising. The day after we installed our beehive a bee got trapped in Boo's hair. It really scared her not being able to see it but hearing and feel it buzzing around.

#3 The dark. #4 Dolls. #5 Bad hair day. Yes, my little tomboy-gym rat is quite specific about her hair. When it is time to fix it for gym I always cringe a little, she is so critical. 

#6 Thumbs down.

I had to ask her to explain. What it boiled down to was disapproval.

#7 Splitting the beam. Seems reasonable considering.



#8 Bad Clothes Day. This one made me laugh.



#9 Going to jail. #10 Braces. #11 Getting in trouble.

Unnumbered is Grammar, lol.

#12 Leaving behind Bunny, a stuffed animal she has had her whole life. She has nightmares about this.

#13 Being hit by a car.

Personally, this would have been my number 1 but...



 As it turns out this was a lot more interesting to see than I first thought it would be. I was surprised to see the multiple expression of her fears of 'getting in trouble' especial jail (what?!). Certainly not a writing project I would have chosen but I think I we should play around with it some more. Perhaps find ways to tackle these fears.

postcards home, Beach at the beach

While Beach's big brother Fisher is home packing up to move to Cedar City to attend college and her mom is recovering from oral surgery Beach got the chance to spend an extended weekend with Sophie's family at a beach house in Cal.  The perfect place for Beach to be <3 Thanks to all the grown-ups watching out for her. 

The fabulous coach & soon to be aunt Randi and Beach's first summer school assignment to bring home a postcard from Oxnard for her summer writing journal.