Saying No

Gymnastics. The girls spend more time in leotards than they do other clothing (unless you count the sleeping time of PJs). Hadley conducts gymnastics classes for all children who enter the house, willing or not. They happen in the playroom, on the gymnastics mat my parents bought me and saved for twenty years before passing on. Regularly I hear the in unison counting of my two girls as they do the designated warm ups for the day's tumbling tests.

Sometimes, Hadley will grab a clip board and write out a  list: headstand, handstand, somersault, back bend, splits. Kassy will happily perform for her teacher who then rates the skills, always with words of encouragement and praise.

November will mark the one year aniversary of starting Hads in gymnastics. While I value the strength and determination she has developed (it seems just yesterday she was crying over not being able to do a headstand...well, the tears have stopped and she has learned valuable lessons about practicing), gymnastics has my stomach in knots. True, when she spins around those bars and lets go to land, I hold my breath and can barely watch. That's bad enough, but the real knots come from the future.

Hadley started in the recreational classes and was quickly moved to the pre-team class called Ladybugs. I gawked at the three hours of practice per week that they wanted and only agreed to once a week. They gawked at me, but must have needed the money. Now they want to move Hadley to Junior Trainers, which requires six hours a week in the gym, for three hours at a time. The fee, not including the insurance fee, $150 per month. If a month was really only four weeks long, that would be $6.25 an hour--not unreasonable.

And Hadley is praying fervently to be able to be a Junior Trainer. She'd sell most of her possessions and give up soccer if she could be a trainer. She wants a team leotard and wants to compete. She's good--not exceptional, but good.

But I can't afford $150 a month, not unless I tell Kassy she can't do anything. And the next level is 9 hours a week and more money. And the level after that? 12 hours.I don't want her gone twice a week from 4:15-7:15. She's 7. I want her home for dinner---the too- busy- for- family- dinner thing CAN'T happen yet. And who knows? Gymnastics might not be her life-long sport love and no one can do gymnastics past their early 20s. But for now, Hadley is smitten. We both cried when they moved her up because we both knew she couldn't go up.If I knew a college scholarship or a job teaching gymnastics full time was in her future, I'd go get a job and make this work, but some people don't even think gymnastics is a particularly healthy sport and I don't know the future.

Why are kids sports so intense, so quickly? Can't she just go for two hours a weeks? Yes, she can. But then she can't compete and she gets second rate coaching. You know those moments when you look at your sweet, sleeping child and hope you can give them all that their heart longs for? I've always known I couldn't, that I shouldn't, that heart breaks would come and I would be powerless. But tomorrow I have to call the coach, "Look, we can't do this, now what?"

And then I have to tell Hadley, who is still holding out hope that she is so good, they will let train anyway, I will have to say, "Look honey, even though your friends can be trainers, you can't (with, the undertone of we don't have the money). But you can still take gymnastics(unavoidable translation by my daughter:non-competeing, inferior, gymnastics). Chin up." And we will both cry.

And I will wait for the day when I can grab her thoughts and complete the lesson, see, "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." But I will still cry.