Our son came 20th in the region (5 states) for his age group. He jumped off the pommel. It was the last event and the choice to jump off instead of falling was in the last few seconds of the routine. That deduction dropped him from 10th to 20th. Oh well.
Now, the three of us are debating on strategy. I look at his photos on the P-bars which is not even his favorite event. And, I know from my experience training at Crossfit, he is at an advantage. An advantage that will not be a waste of time as an adult.
CROSSFIT TAUGHT US THE ADVANTAGE OF GYMNASTICS
When we are adults, we have to work so hard to try to attain the strength to weight ratio he has. Can I get a witness??
Not to mention his muscles hold memories mine or yours may never learn.
The three of us decided to keep going through the gymnastics levels. There’s been some meandering and missteps because as parents we didn’t know how to guide him.
OUR SON ASKED HOW COULD A LITTLE KID MAKE THOSE TOUGH DECISIONS?
Now we understand that we have 3 years to make the next chance for Nationals. He will be competing as a 16-year old when he qualifies for nationals because it goes by the age you are during the national meet. Even though he will be 15 most of the season.
It was good to reframe the experience through the lens of the bigger picture.
The 2018 season is officially put to rest. Great work! 20th in the region is a huge accomplishment!
The picture is my favorite. It’s the Akeela and the Bee moment. You remember, Dillon. the kid at national Bee, Akeela’s nemesis? He doesn’t want to win if she won’t compete and tells her to ignore his Dad. “What does he know? He’ll never be in a national spelling bee. “ That moment because as parents, we never held our 12 year old body up by our arms, parallel to the floor. And, yet we have the responsibility of deciding. Not easy.
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Updated: Mar 15, 2022
Do you have kids in different school systems with different breaks? We made it through the first year of separate spring breaks. My son wondered if he and I would get along. We worked it out and learned a lot about each other.
Here are 10 things that surprised me about parenting alone:
1. We showed up at all the expected places. Simply Amazing! As my son pointed out, luck was often on our side.
2. We stayed on top of homework like ninjas. Or so we thought until we forgot his backpack at gymnastics. We recovered the next morning
3. His room looks great. I told him that I am super easy to deal with in a low mess environment. So, we just made that happen.
4. He asked for curry chicken on Monday night and I finally got that done by midweek. Woohoo! I fulfilled a meal request.
5. I took the stress of lunch making off us and have ordered a subway sandwich online. Each day! Turns out there were no leftovers. He ate the whole turkey breast foot long. And, his teachers notice that he has been more engaged in class.
6. We put the oven, rice cooker, and microwave, on delayed starts and timed cooking. We came home and everything was perfect. We were in awe because we weren’t sure if the house would have burned down.
7. We talked about homework. Actually talked about it. I edited both his French and English and have decided that his political opposition to verb tenses is cross-lingual. He laughed because he is getting how crazy the sentences get sometimes.
8. We finally agreed lookups are important. If you don't know, don't guess. Like you have a phone in your hand. Look it up.
9. Improved Commuter Homework Skills. I was super stringent on using the time in the car. I had massive commutes as a kid but no phone. So I did my homework. I was usually done by the time I got home. Basically, he did 2 full pages of single line typing on his phone on the drives back and forth to school and gymnastics. The paper is due Tuesday and it is done.
10. I am nerd. I know, I'm not cool but it gets fun if you stick with the program. No need to worry we go along just fine!
We can't say enough to all of the people who helped us make things go more smoothly - OUR SPONSORS.
Grandparent who help us with carpooling. Affectionately nicknamed Gruber and Gryft.
Subway for making those awesome sandwiches, ordered and paid for online, and who call you if they have a question!
Doggie Daycare. I'm sold. And, our local place Noah's arf is caring and loving. There's nothing like a pup having a place to place when you household is down by 50%.
OMG, those appliances, did what they were told and didn't burn the house down. Seriously, we lunched, podcasted, and marveled at the ingenuity of modern humans!
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The coach in me assigned myself a year of reflection that I chose to do on the 21st each month. The assignment happened organically. I started writing monthly and then I committed to the structure as part of my own development as a person. In a way, because I am old enough and practical, I wanted to also learn how to grieve.
Yesterday felt like a year to me. From Tuesday to Tuesday in the 3rd week of March. But by the calendar today marks a year anniversary of our mother's passing.
Why was the acceptance process so important?
When I finally begun to comprehend the diagnosis and my mother’s choices in 2009, I would have been reckless in my approach to my emotions and even grieving. It was through my realization and reconciliation with the diagnosis that I came to terms with being reckless was all that I knew. But, sometime in the early fall of 2009, I realized that our mother wasn’t dead yet, nor was the world ending, and to quote the unforgettable Hyo herself “Well, enough now. Life goes on.” She was living and I was a hot mess.
A process for grieving.
A Year of Living, by Stephen Levine could not have entered my life at a better time. It was offered to us as extra reading in our coach’s library. Boy, that unassuming slender paperback took me the whole summer to get through. It was about choosing how to live through the last year of life with your loved ones. Hot mess was not the only way!
Continuing on
Although there are many, many things that come to the surface as I imagine they will continue to from time to time, there is one that still baffles me.
Mummy never took her stuff with her.
I know it sounds funny but my mother in my experience treasured the sweetness and the relationships in her life through her writing, books and reading, and the things she had “worked hard for in this life.” So although she had said innumerable times, beginning in the 80’s, that “she’d never seen a hearse pulling a U-haul.” A statement in itself that coupled with her laughter could get the whole family to fall out, teeth outside, teary with belly laughs, I still kind of thought she would have taken some of her most precious things somehow.
Her stuff actually helped a couple of weeks ago upon my first visit back home since her passing. Getting reacquainted with what was left behind in the way that my sister and Dad have tastefully integrated those things into life was good. My sister In Toronto is slowly purging and had a large box of laundered and folded clothes ready for pick up by a local charity. Hyo herself would have said “Girl or my child or Deeeeleeyah, life goes on.”
It’s an odd thing death. It makes no sense and then it makes all the sense in the world if there is suffering.
Community Helps
God blessed me with this forum for conversation and for commitment.
Thank you so much for being a part of all that was shared. It is clearest to me now that we always love our departed ones, they always live, and the choice for them to live on or not is part of our own experience.
I miss my old mother and all of her younger selves that I knew. In our Guyanese lingo, like I hearin’ she(her) now, "Life Goes On."
P.S. Thanks to Cheryl Reyes for her animated representation of an older HG, Hyo, Mummy, Cynthie, and Hyacinth Grenville.
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