This was Megan's official first day at a new gym, and a new chapter for the Mills family.
Note that I referred to the life of our family. That's because gymnastics is all-consuming. The children may be the athletes doing the work, but the parents are the ones who take them there, look out for them, volunteer for the team, work at the meets, deal with the coaches, deal with the other parents... and pay the bills. The child has little time for social activities outside of gym. And if the child athlete has siblings, they either wind up also doing gymnastics, or find that their own lives are bent around the demands of their gymnast brother or sister.
Young athletes train hard, but they can't achieve their success without major support and sacrifice of their families. I'll be thinking of that next week while I watch the Beijing Olympics.
For the last five years, my daughter has been training at a gym that's close to home. She's made some wonderful friends there, and we've become close with many of the other team families.
But this last year at the gym has been tumultuous for my daughter and for me. When a handful of coaches all left at the same time, I felt that it was time for us to move on, too. My daughter did not agree. She was not ready.
We stayed.
But I've been worried about her. A few years ago, we could not pass a park or a beach or even a patch of grass without Megan breaking out into spontaneous flips. No longer.
I chalked it up to the fact that she's older, she puts in more hours at gym, she doesn't have the need to show off in her spare time.
But -- the truth is, I think she had lost her joy for the sport. And when she insisted that she just wanted to get to the optional level and quit -- well, it didn't sound right to me. If that is what she wants to do, that's fine. But I wondered if maybe she was just in a rut -- just needed a change.
This week, we made that change. The new place is 35 miles away from our home, which will be a bit of a hardship with the cost of gas (and the fact that I have been trying to limit the miles I put on my leased car).
But the gym is only two years old. The building and equipment are all clean and new. The air conditioning works. The coaches are young and while they lead the kids in a tough workout, they also know how to have fun -- which is an element I feel my daughter's training has lacked for a long time.
When you spend 16 or 20 or 25 hours a week doing something -- it had better be something you enjoy... especially if you're a kid.
My daughter gets a lot of enjoyment out of being with her teammates. She loves most of her coaches. They have a real bond. That bond is what always kept her from letting me talk to her about making a move, even when she was upset about the way things were going.
The last year has been hard on her. It's been hard on me. I think the turning point came when she returned home from the California State Games, where she finished first place all around for her level and age... and she was told it wasn't good enough.
She was upset and I was upset for her. But she wouldn't let me talk to anyone about it. Instead, I let my frustration out in a tweet... and someone left me a message about this gym I'd never heard of (because it's 35 miles away). One of the coaches who left our gym last year was going to be working here. I thought it was worth checking out.
When my daughter saw this new gym, for the first time, she let me know she would consider a change.
But when push came to shove, she refused to make the decision to leave on her own, because she hated the idea of leaving her teammates. I told her I thought this was something we should just do now so we could make a clean break before the start of the new season. She listened and nodded and said OK. Now she could tell her friends it was MY idea.
And once we decided, she seemed happy.
I have no illusions. I know that nothing is perfect. I am feeling sad tonight, wistful about saying goodbye to a place that felt like part of the family. I'm wondering if I made the right decision.
You can't run away from your problems. The new gym won't be perfect. I won't agree with everything her new coaches do. I won't get along with all the parents.
I know that the less-than-ideal situations I complain about now will likely be replaced by new ones.
But that word-- "new" -- is very powerful.
And then I think of what I saw over the weekend when we were at the beach. I watched my daughter run on the sand... and suddenly break out into cartwheels.
It was the most beautiful thing I've seen in a very long time.
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