Before I left home for college, I left Riverside for Spins. I was thirteen. The only thing that could have kept me there were the girls I'd grown attached to in our two years as a team. I don't know how many push-ups, pull-ups, leg lifts, oversplits, press handstands, failed back handsprings, and missed kips we suffered through. Recital dances to Men in Black and sleepovers.
But I had to leave. Because I shouldn't have had to want to throw up from anxiety before and during every practice. There had to be a gym where the coaches pushed me to be the gymnast I could be instead of holding me down to the gymnast they thought I was. And maybe I'd make friends there.
Ten years later on a humid summer night, five of us sweat from hot wings instead of un-air-conditioned gym. We drink beer and Grey Goose instead of water (or with water), wear cute T-shirts instead of leotards, make sure to make fun of boys (maybe that never changed). Between us we've got two associates degrees, a masters in progress, three bachelors, another bachelors in the works and the fifth just begun. An age gap as wide as nine years and as close as four days. Roommates turned besties and roommates turned...lame. New gyms, old gym, and no gym at all.
Yet no matter what we speak of, one can easily say "roundoff" or "Tsuk"' or "spotting fat kids" or "I can't even..." and the rest pick up the rhythm immediately.
I think that's how it is at home. They speak your first language. And perhaps that doesn't happen until two or three or seven homes later when you realize who you are and what you want to say. And that's when the first people listen.
So to elbows bitten and needles used and unused and Meghan's shining start to college and, most certainly, to all of us.
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