Palm Springs 2019 Floor 9.525 1st Place

Beach Ries, Gymnastics Training Center

Personal Bests

Level	Vault	Bars	Beam	Floor	AA
6	9.150	8.850	9.425	9.425	36.850
7	9.500	9.700	9.550	9.750	37.825
8	9.700	9.350	9.375	9.475	37.400
9	9.600	8.675	9.300	9.550	36.925

Scores on America's Top 100 as of 01.21.2019 Year Level Vault Bars Beam Floor AA 2017 8 9.700 2019 9 9.550, 9.525

behind the numbers on the wall

Beach crossed the floor to the island of parents sitting in folding chairs.  We all sat waiting in rows like seats on a bus that wasn't leaving anytime soon.  And WE really needed to get going. 

"Well, that could have gone worse," she said smiling.

In my hand, I held the phone.  MSO had her listed in 1st place.

It's what she had come over for- the phone.

I closed down the page without saying anything about it because I knew it didn't really matter to her. She took the phone and slipped away with her team behind the big black wall of curtains.

Beach hates awards.

Beach already knows how she did.  In her scoring, there are no numbers.

She knows she did amazing (for her) on Bars (but won't admit it).  She knows that even though she stayed on there will be extra work waiting for her at Beam.  She knows that the floor colors confused her so much during her Floor Routine that she had to close her eyes to concentrate. She knows she didn't even try to twist her vault.

When the bus did get going, the girls were given their medals behind the black curtain then marched out to stand on the podium for placement and pictures.  It was faster but they all came out with the same dazed look.  They walked slowly and the cheering was muted because their team wasn't out there with them.

Behind the curtains was were Beach found out she had taken 1st in the All Around.  It was also where she would have realized she had been bumped up into the older age division making her one of the younger girls in that bracket.  It put her in with 3 of her teammates including Sophie.  She would have never wanted that.

"It could have gone worse," she repeated on the way out then she shook her head and whispered, "I didn't like this meet at all."  Sophie was mostly silent.

It took one order of hot greasy fries, 2 waxy cups of cold creamy ice cream and a hundred miles for the mood to lift in the car.  The hills of the Mojave Preserve at 75 mph.

Palm Springs was beautiful.  The meet was very well run.  The underlying somberness was the shadow cast by the light at the end of the tunnel.  Their days together are numbered.  They can see it.  They can feel it.  They know it is coming.

It was Jeff's last scheduled meet traveling Sophie which by default means it was our last meet traveling together too.  The rest of the season Sophie will go out with the team.

And the question of whether or not Sophie will retire at the end of this year hangs in the sky like a winter storm warning.  It is why we didn't take the girls to watch the other levels compete.  It was their last trip together traveling in the family we created around them.

In the gym, Sophie is struggling to hold to the skills she has. She is pushing away from gym.

Beach is struggling on how to let Sophie go and how to keep going herself at this level of competition.

Beach's back hurts.  Her hips and hamstrings are so tight they ache.  She's lonely.  She is looking ahead and wondering who will be standing beside her at the end.  Who will miss her when it is her time to go.
 

When they placed the Team awards Beach was the last of her mates to walk out.  The announcer handed her the trophy.  She gladly handed the trophy off to her team.

Beach handing the team award to her mates

She knew she could have done better and she knew it could have been worse.  Gymnastics is a sport made for lions not little girls.  When I tell people that scores don't tell you anything about the girls, I mean it.  Sometimes they don't even tell you anything about the meet they had.

Hidden beneath the numbers hanging on the wall are the real stories of who they all are.

If you ask Beach about competing she will tell you, "I'm not competing against anyone. First, I am trying not to die.  Second, I am trying to do my best while trying not to die. And if I get past that I am hoping everyone else is out there doing the same."

it's time to go

That was yesterday.  Today is very different.  It's dark in the little house and the girls are still sleeping but that's all about to change.

It's meet day.

It's also time to go.

We were scheduled to return on Monday but weather conditions have changed our plans.  We are going to try to get out ahead of the statewide snow storm pressing in on Utah.

It means a late start to a long day.

I have been mostly awake since 2AM.  I worry about her flick lay on beam then I worry about gassing the car.  I worry about pre-meet breakfast and grips.  Then about the fastest route home.  I worry about her giant blind and if we have any sun chips left for the drive.

I drift and dream of rain and snow.  I dream of the sound of their feet on the floor.

I am a worrier.  I always have been.  Almost everything makes me nervous.  I am not cut out for this sport.  Not wired to travel.

I am doubting Thomas; I can't believe what I cannot touch.  This is the moment before... and it always scares me.

travel the long road

Who knows what will happen.  It all seems like a lot of pressure to put on a kid. 1,300 miles of pressure.

We slipped out of the house at 4:12AM.

We drove the night. Racing down I-15.

By dawn, we were so far gone... I could breathe.

But as I drove us away from the pressures of my life we inched closer to the pressures of Beach's life.

It's a two-lane highway her and I traveling in opposite directions.

The place we meet is the journey in the middle.  Perhaps that is why we linger.  Why we pull off.  Why we seek roadside attractions and dirt paths along the way.

Our family is often the first ones to head out and the last ones to come in; the last family on the road.

Like I said, I don't know what will happen at the meet. All that I can know is what I can give to her along the way.

Breakfast in Mesquite served by little old ladies in fishnet stockings, painted rocks in the desert, rainbows on the side of the road, and mountains of sands.

May she always find the silver linings in the big blue sky above her.

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. 

   

under cover

Beach has been struggling with friends.  A few of her closest pals have started pulling away as they explore the world of distractions: boys, drinking, smoking, and even drugs.

On New Year's Eve she was lied to and then ditched by Sophie leaving Beach heartbroken.

It was a big wake up call.  I have watched the changes in their friendship over the last year and tried making adjustments but it took that moment of hard realization for Beach to finally see it was time to let go of Sophie as her best friend.  

Since then Beach has been reaching out to other girls from Team.  There are so many wonderful personalities <3

Last night she got what she had been looking for all week; somewhere soft to land.  Serious downtime eating cookies and popcorn and watching movies in a blanket fort with PayPay.

"One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood." 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

to do nothing

At 3 AM I woke to the sound of children screaming in the street. I woke BC and he went to check. I heard the front door open and close twice.  The third time what I heard was our end of BC's 911 call.

A man had come out of the dark following the 3 young kids and bleeding woman. BC had come out to ask if they needed help. BC asked the man if everything was okay. The man responded with a punch that hit BC on the side of the face and dropped him instantly.

BC was not out looking for trouble at 3 AM when he left the safety of our bed.  He was not duty sworn to protect and serve. He wasn't armed or trained or ready with back-up.  He was doing what anyone would do, what anyone should do; he was offering help to someone in need.

The police arrived behind 3 blazing spot lights shining down 10th. Captured in the cold beam was the woman barefoot, bruised, eye swollen shut, and bleeding from a head wound.  Beside her 3 young kids not dressed for the winter weather.

From the first moment the police talked with BC they treated him poorly. They set the tone. They were dismissive of his injuries and story. Telling us, "Well, we don't know there was an assault; we didn't see it. You can make a report if you want but then you will have to file that with the prosecutor's office." A clear effort to insert a barrier to action on the officer's part.

We were asked multiple times if we really wanted to file charges every time we said YES. Reminded twice it was only simple assault. Again, an attempt on the officer's part to discourage BC from filing charges.

They spoke with the woman.  She was uncooperative other than to give the address of the house she had fled.

We had 2 people out in the street bleeding. "You can't make someone be a victim," the officer told me. Same officer who liked to remind me when I pressed for some sort of action on their part that they don't know if that man assaulted BC because they didn't see it. 

"You know how ridiculous that is?" I responded. "We aren't in a court don't pretend you don't know that guy hit my husband. We are all more intelligent than that."

Seven police officers proceed to knock loudly on the door of the neighbor's house. The woman and the kids had returned inside with him. The man refused the police entry so they tried to leave.

It was me questioning them that held them up. I was told they can't go in without an active threat to someone. Without that they had no reason to force their way in.

Okay, understandable but then they got one.

While I was questioning them the man shirtless burst out the front door into the yard.  The 7 armed officers suddenly decided to stay. They even called 3 more officers to help them. The cars blocked the street.

It seemed they were about to become more serious about the threat. Instead, I watched 10 huge cops stand outside the small fenced yard collectively trying to open the gate from the other side and failing to do so.

I was seriously about to go help them at the risk of being shot when a man in a truck pulled up.  He ran across the street, jumped the fence, and grabbed the man now openly threatening to beat and fight the cops and "everyone in the house" into the house shutting the door behind them.

The police returned to pounding on the door.  Then they gave up a second time and left.

But before all 10 trained, armed, fit men left I had another long conversation with 2 of the officers because their story kept changing.

At first they couldn't go in because there was not an active threat.  Need I remind you THEY didn't see BC get punched so they don't know why he was bleeding.  The woman refused to talk so she was totally fine.

Then there was a threat but they told me it didn't seem safe (now it was too big of a threat) to them to go because they didn't know what was in there. And yet they all seemed pretty shocked that I was pissed they were taking all their big guys and big guns and leaving us here next to what they felt was a dangerous situation. Too dangerous for them but not us?

I shared my disappointment in them. They were sorry I felt that way.

What was most disturbing was 15 minutes after the officers left we stood in our front room, too afraid to let our guard down, watching a woman ushering 6 small children out of the house and into the van parked in front of our house. The whole time there had been children trapped inside the house as the man threatened in front of the police to beat them all. The police had left them there and those kids knew it.

The police refused to act because they didn't know what was in the house. BUT they did know, and what they didn't know, you can never know.

For the record, I didn't know what was waiting for me the day I ran into a house to protect small children as my neighbor's boyfriend held a knife out threatening them. I didn't NOT act because of the unknown, I acted on the known. There were kids in danger. My job was obvious; get them out at any cost. I don't want to be someone who wouldn't see it like that.

I didn't know what was wrong with the lady slumped in the gutter across the street when I approached her. I didn't know what I would find climbing into an over turned truck at the end of the street to stop the bleeding from the driver's gushing wounds.

To the Officers:

I'm sorry one your own was killed this week.

I'm sorry one of you felt justified enough in that fresh wound to say to me that I should consider that you have a family you want to go home to while I stood there pleading with for you stay and protect my family and the family trapped inside the house with that man.

I'm sorry you feel we should live in a world where we should do nothing. I'm sorry you are so scared to do what you know is right, that you don't do it.

I am sorry the assholes are braver than the heroes.

I'm sorry you feel helpless.

You told us, next time don't do anything. Call us. I told you that was impractical, and you agreed.

In the night a child cried out for help.  In the street a woman was beaten and bleeding. The man who went to help them was struck in the face and knocked to the ground.  The men trained to help were called by the good guys. Nothing happened to the bad guy.  The woman and children where left in harm's way.  And the good man who tried to help them was treated like shit by the men who refused to do anything.