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?

the gravity of ghost people

There is a pause to my house when I walk in at 8:39 PM.

"There is a light on in the basement," BC states. Beach nods agreeing, pushing the mashed potatoes around on her plate.

His words sink like stones between the three of us. Slipping beneath the waves of icy water lapping around my throat.

The events of the week have stirred up so many unsettled topics. I am treading lightly across the wooden skeleton of an old harbor.

I set down my bag.

For a week we have been running in circles taking care of other people's animals. It started with Beach watching 2 cats for a coworker from the gym. It's a good job for her. It requires me to drive her 2-3 times a day into Sugar House. For the most part, it falls easily into our days of running her to her job, me to my job, her to Gym, taking care of our own dogs, her school work, and household errands.

Then a phone call came in from a neighbor asking if Beach could watch her 4 dogs.

I agreed Beach could take the second job because she could walk down there and it didn't require anything from me. I couldn't have been more wrong.

The first morning she walked down I got a phone call right away. Once I got down there and saw the situation BC got a phone call.  I'm not trying to be mean or hurtful but the house, OMG the house.

The story we were told was her dog sitter flaked. After seeing the state of the house and the dogs we see that probably isn't the exact truth of it.

We cleaned for 2 hours while Beach stood in the yard with the severely neglected dogs.

It was quickly decided Beach could not go to the house alone. And above the obvious reasons, there was something very not right going on- I just didn't know what. We didn't want her in the house at all.

 It was so bad we went home and all stripped down in the mudroom. Ten minutes after being home I had an asthma attack- the first one in over 16 years!

So 4 times a day between driving 3 times a day to Sugar House and to Gym/work I have been walking down the street and taking care of these dogs... usually alone. Always trying to get there for the last time before dark. Always leaving feeling like I have done nothing for them. They live as patients on life support; like old people eating canned soup and rotting in their apartments in front of the TV.

The cats are so well-loved and cared for and my own dogs so spoiled! It's an impossible divide to accept. Imaginary divides created by real fences.

Knowing I would be at work until way after dark I had asked BC to do the nightly check-in and lock up for me. He had picked Beach up from the gym at 7PM to go see the cats and then to the dogs. It was the only night it wasn't my job.

The feeling I get inside the house the rock in my stomach about being in the kitchen, about being near the basement door suddenly makes too much sense.

"Mom," Beach grasps for a lie, "When you go down there at night is there a light on?"

She knows the answer is no. NO: A word I really should make better friends with.

"I think someone is living down there," he says.

"What do I do?" I ask.

"Pretend you don't know... and don't go in the kitchen."

The problem with ghost people is they live among us but we don't know they are there until it's too late.

the day

In the dark, I wait for the day to start.  

I wait for the thoughts to settle to the bottom of the bottle. 

Outside the sky crests.  A bowl of blues and grays with the rain leaking over the edges. 

What day is this? 

The summer has been a rabid dog hot and relentless.  So the coolness and the darkness of this morning feel like a lie. 

It seems summer will never end.  The fires have started.  Smoke fills the valley.  The sun turns red and the hillsides become charcoal.  Summer does not exit the west gracefully.

The day stretches.

Ahead of me, there is a lot to do coupled with the time if not the space to do it in.  There is no order to it.  I would even say it is all part of a long list I haven't sat down to write yet.  And I do, I want to write it before it is gone.- before the days write themselves.

I swear I can almost smell snow.  I can almost feel the cold of the desert wind wrapping around me.  Camp coffee and a field of juniper and sage. 

Silence.
Wind.
Trucks on a dirt road.

I am ready and so is the sky.

I am not

I sent a message out on my phone telling him I miss him and went to sleep. Of course between friends of the opposite sex, those weren't the words I used. I would never say that, not to him, maybe not to anyone.

 But I do- I miss him.

I miss the way he cut through the bullshit for me. I miss having someone who right or wrong was always on my side. I miss having someone else see my child as she is and loving her just that way. No excuses, no imagined divides, no hidden agendas.

No pretend smiles, no sudden silent conversations, no half-hearted cups of kindness. In fact, nothing about him was ever fake.

But that's not the shadow hanging over a 5:25 AM alarm. It's this day ahead of me. I have to get up and return to the place I left crying. The spot where I held it together until the moment I clocked out and then lost it right there in the coach's room in front of anyone unlucky enough to be in there with me.

It's been over a year since I actually cried probably closer to 2.  It takes a lot to go wrong for me to not find something beautiful or good inside a bad moment. It takes a mountain range of frustration or sadness to bring me to tears. 

I have to assume it was not intentional. The moment was simply bad. Raw stupidity on my part.

No one likes looking stupid but add in the injury and slight to your struggling child and that is the cocktail that took me down.

Mostly I felt complicit in the actions that were hurting my own child. After all, I'm the smiling asshole who asked her, "Didn't they invite you to go with them?" No. No, they didn't but thanks for reminding me. Left me holding a bag of empty words trailing out, "I think they were going to..."

I'm not good at asking for help. I see it as something powerful and not to be done haphazardly.  It's not small, the act of reaching out an empty hand and asking someone else to help you fill it. It's not small that I believe people will find a way to help each other out.  I am always shocked to find out that's not as true as I want it to be.

This shifting landscape that is the world of gymnastics has given me more than I have put in. Shocking but true.

The athletes aren't the only ones it changes. I am braver. I am bolder. I have gone places and done things I never would have done. Through this experience, I relearned how to face the world. Learned to walk into the unknown and be okay.

Each parent has given me a gift. Each parent a story or a lesson. I am grateful for each and every one of them and their amazing daughters. We truly are a family, faults and all.

But I look at the idea of doing 3 more years like this.  Three more years watching my child walk it alone.  Her head held high, her kindness, her leadership, her cheering squad of one for the underdogs.  The spaces she wraps with her beauty.  The tears in the car.

It's not because she is homeschooled.  It's not because she doesn't go to church. It's not because her closest friends have all moved on. It's not because she lives in a different neighborhood.  It's not because she is at gymnastics 4 1/2  hours a day.  It's not because the other girls aren't good kids. It's not because she doesn't deserve it.  It's just because.

And it isn't going to change except to get worse as the social season builds.  There isn't a fix on the horizon because there isn't anything to fix... unless she quits and she's not a quitter.

The only person's behavior you can control is your own... unless you are crying and I'm not a crier.

little giants

If it were up to me she would have played the cello.

She would have gone to school; Montessori I believe. 

Her hair would always be in a prim shoulder-length bob.

She would have colored neatly between the lines every time and rocked a school uniform.

And most importantly of all, she would have played soccer.

Aren't we glad it's not up to me? At least those of us who are blessed enough to know Beach.

A gifted photographer. An artist. A compassionate leader who leads by example and kindness. A friend. A justice seeker. An animal lover. A think outside the box style. Smart. Funny.

And a gymnast. 

If it was up to me my child would NEVER dismount the Beam.  I tell her all the time when you are done with your routine just stop and tell the judges that your mom doesn't like you running full sprint on a 4" wide piece wood and punching as hard as you can so you can flip through the air. Then climb down nicely and salute. 

Of course, it's not up to me.

I mean, I guess it could be.  I could stop driving her to practice and stop paying the bills.  I could force her into a box that isn't her size. I could break her dreams and ignore her passions. I could tell her she isn't good enough as herself that she should strive to be something and someone else. I could tell her she is a victim rather than a warrior.  

I could fold to the pressure of the dark wave that is bringing pollution and garbage into the harbor. 

I could make her a peripheral victim of the scandals rocking the gymnastics world by taking from her the tools she is using to forge her future. 

That is what the haters are doing. They are NOT making the sport safer. There are ways to do that. Positive and honest ways.

In fact, I will say that the woman I encountered online yesterday was attempting to use other people's children for her own purposes. She was attempting to victimize my child. She took a post that when you boil it down is about how parents need to not push their kids because gymnastics is hard and scary without their help and she tried to twist it to fit into her campaign of anger. 

I'm not about that.

I don't post about abusive coaches or some larger culture of cruelty because that has not been our experience with this sport. Trust me I was shocked too. My initial response to my child doing gymnastics was "over my dead body."

I write what I know.  I write about what is in front of me. The only behavior you are truly in charge of is your own. 

I am a mom. And yes, the darkest thing I have encountered (up until that woman) is badly behaved parents. This is where I can create positive change in this sport- within my own people. Within myself.

I have worked hard to make sure my child is in a safe environment. I won't apologize for that but I will take a lot of credit for it... and twenty extra pounds from skipping my own workouts to sit on a wooden bench making sure that I knew and understood the program and the people in my daughter's world.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize I am always at my child's gym. I was there so much they finally hired me to work the front desk.

If it was up to me no one would ever judge my child. My daughter would never fall, never get hurt, never know pain. 

Knowing that's not how the world works, I am grateful that she spends most of her time in a space where the judging is at least fair and the whole place is padded.

Last weekend we visited an interactive art installation Dreamscapes. The first room was an escape room.  In a room full of adults all strangers where no one else was brave enough to even try Beach was the one willing to risk making mistakes so we could all move forward.

She was the one who set us all free.

This is our story.  These are our Little Giants. They are not normal children.  They have chosen a tough road with lots of work and lots of lessons.  Gymnastics is a big book so don't try to throw it at them. There are a lot of stories out there. This one is ours. If it helps you and you liked it, share it. If you have a different story, tell your own.