sick day, napping in the greenhouse

lost fillings

I sat in the corner of the gym cross-legged on a bench.  Black sneakers, jeans, a zip-up hoodie, hair a mess, this me at the end of 39 no more grown-up then I was a decade ago and perhaps even less mature than I was 2 decades ago at 19.  I have a good reason for staying through Beach’s whole practice: she is in pain.  Actually she is in pain twice.  But I am having a hard time distinguishing which pain is important to note and which is not my target.  All I should be caring about is the pain in her mouth.  Seems one of her fillings has popped off a back tooth and she is in enough pain to have finally 24 hours later told me about.  Too late to call her dentist I gave her 400 mg of IBF and hoped for the best.  But her other ‘feelings’ seem to have come loose too, causing her pain and for this the RX is time; time to adjust to being separated from her other mates, time to feel big inside even though she is small on the outside.  

I watch her face as she sucks on her cheek.  Is that pain or nervousness?  I lose sight of her between the bigger girls.  She reappears being physically pick up and set down by an older girl moving past her as if Beach was a cat or a toddler heading into the street needing redirection.  I know this bothers her.  She looks little and lost.  The nearest kid to her in height is a good head taller (even with the Littles she was 2^nd shortest) and the rest rise like beautiful rolling hills above them.  She cracks a tiny smile.  She never looks up.    

Trying very hard to be a good rule following gym mom I go to the front desk and ask if someone might go check on Beach and I explain the tooth.  Sending Sue, the nicest woman I know next to my mother to check on her I hold my breath.  She reports that she really doesn’t look well but Beach insists she is fine.  It makes my chest hurt but I laugh remembering trying to pull that one off myself and the way He would bend down getting right in my face.  “Oh-no you don’t.  You can’t slip that past me, I’m ed-u-ma-cated.  From where I’m looking you are not fine, unless it is fine like I’m going to jump off a building fine?”  I would laugh wiggle free of his grasp and say again, “I’m fine.” whether it was true or not.  So much like her mother >damn<.  

They move to beam.  Parents on the benches are staring & smiling at her.  Some even point her out to their little girls waiting on the benches for their class to begin or a sibling’s class to end.  I try to ignore the extraneous information: size does not matter.  The bigger girls are laughing.  They are sweet, kind, and thoughtful.  They praise her and it is not false flattery she looks amazing!!!  She is more than holding her own.  Slowly she begins to smile.  They laugh and she starts laughing too.  And the sucking on her cheek slows down. 

I get the chance to flag down one of her beloved coaches, pull her aside and tell her about Beach’s tooth.  She informs the Beam Coach then has a small powwow with Beach and heads back to the other half of Beach’s team at bars.  This means Beach is doing okay.    

The rest of the 4 hours is a blur of little leo covered bodies propelling themselves through space.  It ends with Beach on the other side of the gym on a different tumble track with her team behind her cheering her on as she braves a new tumbling pass.  Across the big blue floor 3 of the Littles have stopped what they were doing to stand together and watch her. Two of them are her best friends, and they cheer for Beach too.  Beach steadies herself and takes off: front handspring front tuck.  Beach steadies her landing and salutes to cheers and high-fives. The Littles eyes glued on one of their own 'making it big time' giggle and shout, “Oh my gosh, did you see what Beach can do?!”

I sit on a bench knowing we will be standing in the dentist’s office first thing in the morning once again worrying about fillings but I will never be sitting here again wondering about the other kind of feelings.  She will have ups and downs, there are a million more challenges to meet, tears and bruises, it will all be just FINE.  I mean honestly, Did you see what Beach can do...

                            

night lights

My whole body hurts a thin membrane of pain running below my skin and I can’t sleep.  No matter what I do I can’t get BC to move over.  But I think I know why: his side of the bed, the side I abandoned as my own after my sister died, is scary.  We have a King size bed and together we sleep on the space of a twin.  I make lists in my head.  Five things about me: 1) what I love best about BC is the way he smells & the way his skin feels 2) I have a weakness for grape soda 3) a passionate dislike of the number 8 3)  my claustrophobia is getting worse  4) so is my vision 5) I wake up at 3:13 every single night  

I push against BC’s body trying to gain precious inches, enough to roll over.  I think of Beach asleep on the sofa on the other side of the wall from the scary part of the bed.  I was surprised to find it still scary.  The night before last when the mysterious thumb print bruise appeared below my skin on the side of my knee I slept over there so I could sleep with the heating pad.  Tonight as BC moved in for his death grip of love hold on me I whispered “Your side of the bed is scary.”  He squeezed me and asked me “Scary from what?” “My sister” I said too tired to care how stupid it would sound.  He squeezed tighter laughing and said “I will protect you.”  

And there is Beach past the scary dark space sound asleep.  How she had been scooped up from her first Level 6 practice by a Team Meeting.  She had sat on my lap in her leo and played with a small white ball of clay.  I thought about my run and my knee and the way my skin feels like it is separating from the body beneath it.  I feel like I am bleeding out.  I thought about the way I was taken aback with the discovery about the way her little group of 7 had been split within the new larger class now totaling 23.  Some of the girls are much older, some aren’t staying long they will be moving on to level 7 in a few months.  It is just the way it happened this year.  Our little level 5 along with the older level 5 graduated into level 6 before the level 6 girls move to 7.  It is an amazing opportunity for our Littles to mingle with girls whose skills are about 2 levels above their own.

When I entered the gym Beach was on the first beam.  I slipped past unnoticed and watch her.  23 girls is too many together on some rotations so the 2 coaches divide and conquer.  The divide put 5 of the Littles on one side and Beach plus only one other to the other group.  It was harsh.  There was Beach among the big girls looking mighty and scared and very, very small.  The rest of her friends on the other side of the gym easily spotted in their tight short pack at bars.

In the meeting the reason was given matter of fact by the coaches: the girls will be split and it will be by ability, deal with it, it is in their best interest, it will change, girls will move back and forth, it doesn’t mean anything…

Beach’s account was tearful whine of loneliness, of fear, of being lost.  She kept repeating “I was in shock” I tried to steer her to the good.  I tried to tell her she wasn’t alone.  I tried to tell her, her coaches were there to catch her.  She countered with “I was in shock.  I was all alone."  She tells me how she broke down and cried to her coach.  Part of me is fearful her emotions will set her back and I don’t want her coaches to listen to her fears.  And part of me wants them to.  And part of me embarrassingly just wants to know how she did in level 6 but separating the gymnast from the little girl who thought she had been feed to the wolves was like trying to peel a single piece of string.  BC tried too but his speech of ‘you need to get used to being with bigger better kids because you're good’ ended in more tears. 

I lay in bed thinking about the dark scary space on the over side of BC, thinking about the dark scary space between Beach and her teammates.  With a crack of light between the mountains and the clouds comes clarity and gratitude for the pending dawn.  She is scared but I am not.  I know without a doubt her coaches have her.  She is learning.  She will get over it.  She will adjust.  And hopefully with the skills she is gaining she will grow into an adult who is brave enough to sleep anywhere she damn well pleases.

Five things about Beach: 1) she loves gymnastics 2) she is legally blind out of her left eye 3) she loves her coaches like second mothers 4) she loves her friends like siblings 5) she cries only when she feels safe enough to.

Her little words roam my mind, “Wendy saved my life on bars tonight.  She caught me when I was falling.  My cast is too powerful and I am peeling off…”  It is such a strange mix.  I laugh out loud. It stirs BC in the blankets but he doesn't wake.  It is her own power she is afraid of.  Unharnessed power is her dark scary space but in that space her coaches are lights guiding her safely through.  Hands that hold her, words that raise her, powerful women who catch her when she falls, listen to her fears, and show her how to get back up again.

And the scary dark space on the other side of the bed is expelled by the bright light of morning.

And tonight we do it all over again.

                      

follow the sun

Home school abduction by BC takes English Lit out to the greenhouse.  

We follow the snowbound path BC holding coffee, I take water, Beach brings the book.

*Clothing change required

I have the most beautiful family.

tiny voices

Last night at the bottom of a paper sack full of clothes was a pair of Wheelies.  You know shoes with wheels on them.  Immediately the little girl put them on and headed straight for the top of the cascading wooden staircase.  "Yeah, no>dirty look over her shoulder< that is not a good idea." Her mother told her.  

Reluctantly she removed the shoes.

Early the next morning before the first coffee pot had been drained the sound of skates gliding across the hardwood floor crisscrossed the stern smart British voices coming from the radio.  She skated across poverty, dictatorships, unrest, terrorists, and gun violence.  

"Mom?" Her voice hitting the note of a sad forgotten brass bell. 

"Yes?" Her mother replied. 

"It seems to me skating down the stairs isn't so dangerous."

"In the grand scheme of things I suppose it is not but the answer is still NO," her mother said wiping her hands on the side of her pants and switched the radio off.  

 

little people big crazy

Home school conversations that leave you scratching your head:

Begins with "What is the firing squad?"  

Ends with "I would pick decapitation."

"I don't think that is an option but hopeful you won't be committing any capital offensives."  

"I don't plan to but just so I know what would be considered a capital offense?"

Begins with "I wonder which type of tectonic event causes the largest earthquakes" [great question!] 

Ends with "Can go on that one British page and cause earthquakes?  I love playing God."

Begins with "...in another 200 million years of continental drift the planet will look extremely different." 

Ends with "Then why are we learning this if it is just going to change again?!?!"

"200 million years is a long time."

"I can wait."

Begins with "GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"

Ends with "Wait, I haven't finished growling." 

wth?!?!

Begins with "Mom, you want hot buns?"  

Ends with "Then call Dad."

(so not funny!)

deep enough

There is something poisonous in his smile as he announces, "I knocked the shed down last night."  He is so proud of himself and I am surprisingly torn by the news.  One half of me is smiling like him and the other half cannot imagine why erasing history is a good thing.  I throw on boots and a jacket and head out to see just what he has done... 

In the icy morning light I see this.  The Shed which goes by many names: to BC it is the Shed, to me the Garage to the family who built it was Home.  He has knocked down someones house.

Okay, they don't live here anymore.  And even before that they didn't live there.  The family built the Shed and then they build block by block, taking seven years, the house we live in today.

This is progress.  In its place a new building is going up.  A place to keep things, a wood shop, a real garage.    It makes way for the remodel of the our house too.  I should be jumping for joy but I'm not.  Old broken things strike wondrous melodies deep in my soul.   Their stories too often are the books we never get to read.  

As I made my way back inside in search of my abandoned cup of coffee these words drift through my head "The house on 10th west liked junk."  They are my words written a long time ago, another dog has died and been buried on the property, children have grown up and moved out, buildings toppled, and new foundations waiting to be poured...

"The house on tenth west liked junk.  We didn’t know that when we fell in love and bought it.  A realtor’s nightmare with dead animals mounted on the walls, over stuffed rooms.  The day we were shown the house we stepped around the piles of boxes, navigated rooms so full we were not allowed to open closet doors. 

We bought her anyway and moved across town.  Down 1700 South over the tracks and through the industrial warehouses, onto a wide residential street that seemed to stretch forever; we were in by Halloween.  Ripping up carpets, tearing down cabinets and curtains, striped her bare and we all started over. 

The house came with an acre of dirt, junk trees, and thistle.  We buried Zeke there four feet down through earth just awaking from winter’s long frozen sleep.  When the water began to seep in and the mud no longer released from the shovels but clung in clay weights that pulled at your side and made my shoulder ache we stopped pronounced it deep enough and buried the dog. 

I am stoic and Colby is melancholy.  I still regret not having learned to listen.  Had I, I might have deflected some of Colby’s pain by correctly interpreting the animal control officer’s phone call.  Instead I unknowingly dispatched Colby to the road side carcass of our dog.  Despite the earliness and dampness of the weather the least I could do was to not let him bury the dog alone.  The body of the Great Dane had lain over night in the truck of the car and yet the only smell at the grave side was the sourness of ground water."    ~ Taming Venus, mlb