the thing most feared

I don't want her to die in a gym.  It's a feeling that doesn't have to be written. I don't want her to die; not there. 

No one has to say this but I am. I don't want her to walk into a room and never walk out.

She has traded a childhood of freedom for discipline and work. Hours, days, months, years of training. She has lived there; I don't want her to die there too.

Gymnastics is hard.
It's scary.
It hurts.

It is not for everyone.  But for those who find it as the framework for their lives, it is the only way.  It is their language, their culture.  It teaches them about the world and about themselves. 

And as much as I don't love the sport part of it, I have always feared the moment it ends for her.  Never once did I consider the alternative- that she could end.  Broken bones and pulled muscles... but even I didn't allow my fears to go beyond that.

She is who she is because of this sport and this sport IS because of others like her.  

So I say again to the moms and the dads, what words do we want to give to our daughters as they go to and from their work? 

Work harder, point your toes, run faster, take more turns, push harder. OR I love you. Have fun. Be brave, but not too brave. We are proud of you for all that you do. 

It is more likely one of us will die driving than one of them will die as a result of gymnastics.

 It is more likely your good-bye would be your last, not hers. 

But what if a million horrible things lined up.

Anxiety gives me a clear window. The world is dangerous. I am just "lucky" enough to always know that. It doesn't take a tragedy to remind me of how fast the clock is ticking.

If today was our last day together what would we have done differently? How would you have said good-bye? 

cups of water

It's the water.  The blue weight of it lapping at the side of the boat.

It whispers low beneath the wind, Let me in, let me in.

This was my idea but sitting in the canoe in the cool vastness of a November mountain lake I start second-guessing myself.

The wind is combing the dark water.  Scraping it towards the canyon and away from the dam.

I paddle but it feels like rowing through the sand.

"You can't straighten the canoe from the front in the wind," he says over the gentle clicking of the reel on his grandpa's fishing pole.

"The wind is going to push it sideways."

I know this. 

I lean carefully over the side of the canoe.  Let my fingers dip into the water.  I guess the water temperature to be in the '50s. I nod to myself knowingly but really it's the only cold water temperature I know- the water tank at the sports rehab I take Beach to. Honestly, I have no idea how cold it is or isn't.

 I look boat to shore, shore to the boat. Then I glance around the canoe wondering if we tipped which of the items I took with me would be the thing that killed me: the scarf? the big sweatshirt? the coat? Yeah, definitely the scarf. If only she hadn't worn the scarf...

I imagine the weight of waterlogged wool wrapping around my throat and my hands like a sea monster. I resist the urge to throw it off to the muddy floor of the canoe.

BC leans to one side.  I react and lean to the other and swear under my breath.

"When we go back we should take the trail below the parking lot," he says.

I look back up the steep, yellow hillside and wonder how long until we do actually go back.  Long, I tell myself, relax, enjoy this... because it was your fucking idea after all. He is only doing this for you.

I sit quietly among the sound of the grayling jumping; starvation fish.

I begin to contemplate how to get into a life jacket while fully dresses in breath-stealing water. Will it fit over my coat? Or do you try to remove your coat first? 

"I know this makes you uncomfortable," he says.  I hear the strong zip of a good cast. "Just give me a few minutes of drift to get set."

I turn and "date" smile. "No, it's fine. Take your time." I adjust the lifejacket at my feet so it's not trapped beneath the seat if the boat flips. I measure the distance to the nearest shoreline- far. Yep, it's officially very fucking far.

Pause. "It's just...uncomfortable, why does it feel like we are going against the waves?"

"We aren't."

I paddle three dozen strokes.  "I want to go over there but we aren't." I am pointing at the far shoreline.

"We are," he answers dryly.

The sun touches the hazy crown of the mountains to the west. I stop my slow panic to watch it.

He shifts.  The canoe takes a bow to the waves.

"Why does the canoe seem so tippy?" I ask, once again readjusting the lifevest with my foot.

"It's a canoe," he says.  Then probably remembering something about me he adds, "It won't tip.  We would have to both really try to tip it to get it to go over."

I know this. 

I nod. My back fighting to stay calm.

I watch the waves roll by blue- but the lake is green.  Clearwater almost gelatin looking in its purity.  Early in the day, I had called the reservoir ugly but it isn't.  It sits like a silver cup between golden canyons. 

"Okay, where do you want to go?" he asks his paddle already in the water correcting the course.

"There." I point to the shoreline around the headwater. Dead trees standing like broken gates. I can't help but to want to look behind them.

The canoe finally points and BC's strong comfortable stokes coupled with mine move us. The water dances against the low craft.

This is why. It's the water.  The sound and the silence.  The light and the dark.  The deepness and the shallows. I was raised on the water.  It's where my soul rests.

My strokes are easier than they have been in years. My shoulder finally healing.  BC and I move the boat together and we make big gains.  Yes, this is why.

Midlake I say, "I think I need a beer."

He stops paddling.  Opens the cooler pulling out a brown bottle.  Popping the lid with his lighter he hands it to me.  Our fingers barely touching over the length of the boat.

The canoe losing it's direct turns in the wind.  I pretend not to feel it as he pours himself a glass of wine. For some reason, the sideways gait of the canoe is less uncomfortable now.

A triad of ducks drifts by then explode into flight. They call out to each other, ark in the muted sky and land on the other side of us; no closer, no farther away.

I put in a few strokes that pull us back on course.

BC joins me and we glide to the end of the lake.

"Shore?" he asks.

"Sure," I answer, not really wanting to leave the water.

"The rocks?"

"Sure."

"You will have to bring us in," he says as he begins to pull is his line.

"I always do," I answer.

I push my paddle down reaching for the bottom and don't find it.  I do it two more times as we get closer wetting my gloves but never finding the ground. The shoreline below us must be steep I reason.

I take aim, give three good strokes and set my paddle down on the bottom of the boat to pick up my beer. The nose races in.  It nuzzles a set of white rocks on the right and a dense cluster to the left.  It stops softly on the patch of open gravel.  A perfect mooring.

I look over my shoulder to BC a laugh already spreading across his lips.

I shrug, "Who needs a paddle?"

I jump out landing precariously three times before finding solid footing.  I pull us in. I was raised on the water.  My body knows everything about it. I look out across the lake, the waves with the sun slipping away.

BC pulls on his coat before carefully making his way to shore.  He is more thoughtful than I was. Choosing a route up the rocks that ensures (over luck) dry feet.

A bottle of beer, a glass of wine, and a silver, no, a golden cup of blue-green water. 

This is the reason: to remember I am more okay than I think I am... even when I am drifting.

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.

  

beautiful November

I remember the moment: the tip of his white tail flashing through the tall, still grass.  Behind me a small village of pine trees, before me a divided army of Aspens.  

My life is beautiful.

Standing miles away from where most of it is lived I could look back at it and smile.  

How dangerous to be this content, I thought.  How grateful to have this moment.  The edge of Autumn slipping into winter.  The mountains closing into white corners.  The valley about to be shushed. 

I had stolen the time from other places to be there.  To slip away one more time before the snow gate dropped just to see the dogs running free in the mountains.  To watch Juneau crisscrossing the trail.  No one telling him he's wrong.

The air and the ground were cold but the trees held the light so carefully.  I stood in the meadow breathing the smell of the woods.  I had everything I needed on my back. 

Yes, my life is beautiful.

November is calling.  The orange lights of Halloween have burned out. It is time to call all the children home.  

Time to set the table for the next season that is already falling around us.

Home-baked bread, board games, thick books, and piles of blankets. 

I love winter.  I love the snow. I miss nothing of summer and the way it suffocates the city.  

Spring; heavy with mud and false hope.  Autumn; short and sweet.  

Winter stretches long and quiet. 

Dark draws us all home down roads lit by street lights dancing with falling snow, headlights bursting in the slush, frost bleeding with the salt of dining room chandeliers left on.

Winter makes space.  It gives room for change to happen.

November is deep. 

It is sharp and blue and quite possibly the most beautiful part of the whole year. The best part is it starts now.

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?