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minxyI have been thinking, as I get ready to move (again) about the kinds of things I’m leaving behind and the kinds of things I will find in my new place. My Mom, at one point, wondered what kind of sport I’d find myself practicing back East. I said, somewhat tongue-in-cheekily, that it would probably involved the reservoir lake twenty yards past the front door of my house.
Today is the 37th anniversary of Title IX. I am going to turn 32 a week from tomorrow. I have always been an athlete, since my Dad taught me to throw a football (I grew up in the Midwest.) While I have adjusted to my brain occasionally having fits and starts and migraines and shutting down, which took a little bit of readjustment of my sense of self, I am deeply, deeply grateful that my body has remained uninjured, unbroken, and strong enough to allow me to remain an athlete into my fourth decade.
Today I am reminded that I should also be grateful for the laws that have insisted that I have a right to play this hard.
My brother has called me hard-core; it’s possible that he’s right about it, but I’ve never run a marathon, or anything, I go that distance in a boat. I’ve kind of always wanted to participate in a triathalon, but my last housemate soured me on that a little, and I’d really only be in love with the water portion of the race anyway. I’ve played softball and volleyball and whatever over the years, but it always comes back to water.
I learned to swim when I was but a wee little thing in a bowl-cut hair style. My Dad says I had absolutely no fear of the water when they showed me a pool for the first time. Then they showed me how to swim with technique at 7 years and saw me lead my backstroke with my shoulder, stretch my arms to make myself a bullet in the water, and they set me to racing. My brother came along for the ride for a while there, but he only liked backstroke best because it let him wave at the crowd.
Of the two of us, I was the athlete for a long time. My brother preferred to draw, until he discovered lacrosse and brought it with us as we migrated from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest in high school.
More than the little suitcase of medals I still have from my racing days, though, what I remember most is the dedication and persistence that practice took. What it felt like to increase your pain tolerance and practice harder so the race would feel better. To sprint so hard you could proudly talk to your coach about how you kinda felt like you might throw up. Oh, the validation those coaches provided. I still remember the year I got initiative and asked to train for a particular race (the individual medley, if you were wondering) rather than just waiting to be told what I would race, and how excited they were to put me in the exhibition lane. I went back to my hometown once, years after I left, and my coaches recognized me from across the natatorium. Then again, they've known me since I was 7. I should find some photos of myself during that time when I'm home in a few weeks, you guys might be interested.
In college (I went to a women's college), sports became my job, and the way I learned anatomy, and how to take charge of a situation where someone is hurt. How to talk to a determined athlete about not going back on the field because she would make the ankle worse, reason with her, and finally lay down the law that no, she could not finish the game, but she could maybe play in next week's. I learned to take care of injuries, plan a rehab, make judgement calls.
I missed playing, though, and sitting there on the sidelines got me out of the habit and out of the shape (I have never been a gym rat, I can make myself go for a few months, but then I'll lapse.) In graduate school I was challenged in the noggin in ways the like of which I will probably never be again. I went up a dress size or two (I don’t ever really gain or lose weight, though. Part of being an athlete in a lifetime way is realizing how heavy muscle is. I am always 175 lbs, and I love to announce that proudly, just like I announce my age.) I studied non-stop for three months to pass exams that smart people around me had failed. My heart soared and was broken. At some point I realized that I can get so caught up in my job and my mind and my thoughts that I don’t sleep.
I was an athlete, yo; I love sleep. So I took a friend up on joining a fairly competitive sprinting boating team, and I loved it. I got addicted to that time on the water where everything became rhythm and endurance and twenty people working together to move a dragon-shaped boat faster. Everybody knew me and expected me to be there, called me out if I missed a practice. It’s like walking into Cheers and having everyone call ‘Norm!’ only I’m not Norm, obviously, and instead of working on my beer gut, I burned off the calories from lunch, and dropped a dress size.
I learned to fall into the sound of the drum, let it stop my mind from going in circles about my job or my dissertation or my heartbreak or my advisor. I could sleep if I’d spent an hour with my boating team, and it was as much the ability to meditate (for versions of meditate that involve clearing your mind and not thinking) as it was the physical use of muscle and determination.
So when I moved to California, I found a boating team within a week of getting here. Endurance, this time, a distance sport (I dropped another dress size. I’m the same size I was in high school now, but sexier because I’m older.) I’m back into 3-hour practices familiar to me from my years swimming. I have definition in my arms and shoulders that Olympians would envy (and has gotten me a date occasionally), again, familiar to a swimmer. I discovered that the migraines my Mom also got knocked by in her early 30s win in the off-season and disappear during the racing season (due to regular aerobic exercise, I’ve found). The ocean is a new love, but I’m pretty sure it will still be there when I’m looking for a place to settle down finally in a year or two. Plus, my next house is right on a lake, so I can get a boat and take myself out on the lake every morning if I want to, though the absence of a coach and a team will be hard.
I learned to do this in such a religious way because I was allowed to play sports as a girl. My swim team as a kid was called something sweet and feminine while the boys were simply the Men’s Swim Team, and my town had sincere arguments about whether or not you could print a woman’s given first name or whether you had to use Mrs. (husbands name), but they let me play team sports. And I was in the Midwestern suburbs, where it's safe to let your kids bike to practice and parents donate lots of money to the sports programs and fully half of the girls played sports at any given season, even the really gawky girls.
It was a gift, to be on that swim team. My coaches have so significantly influenced how I lived my life that I can’t believe, in this moment, that I’ve never bothered to tell them so.
For the record, playing sports influences my health, how I manage my migraines, my stress, my happiness. I’m militant about playing sports because I’m similarly driven in my job and being both lets me be relaxed the rest of the time.
It’s not just allowing girls into the gym. It’s allowing us on a team, it’s giving us great coaches and teaching us to drive, push. Make the decisions to go faster, be strong, take care of our bodies and respect what they can do, not just how they look. I could have learned all this another way, and it's probably synergystic with the way I was raised in general, but I can't imagine growing up without playing hard, at this point. It's part of my toolkit and my sense of self, and I'm damned grateful for every single benefit it continues to bring me.
My mom can’t swim.
Cofax's post on Title IX
Today is the 37th anniversary of Title IX. I am going to turn 32 a week from tomorrow. I have always been an athlete, since my Dad taught me to throw a football (I grew up in the Midwest.) While I have adjusted to my brain occasionally having fits and starts and migraines and shutting down, which took a little bit of readjustment of my sense of self, I am deeply, deeply grateful that my body has remained uninjured, unbroken, and strong enough to allow me to remain an athlete into my fourth decade.
Today I am reminded that I should also be grateful for the laws that have insisted that I have a right to play this hard.
My brother has called me hard-core; it’s possible that he’s right about it, but I’ve never run a marathon, or anything, I go that distance in a boat. I’ve kind of always wanted to participate in a triathalon, but my last housemate soured me on that a little, and I’d really only be in love with the water portion of the race anyway. I’ve played softball and volleyball and whatever over the years, but it always comes back to water.
I learned to swim when I was but a wee little thing in a bowl-cut hair style. My Dad says I had absolutely no fear of the water when they showed me a pool for the first time. Then they showed me how to swim with technique at 7 years and saw me lead my backstroke with my shoulder, stretch my arms to make myself a bullet in the water, and they set me to racing. My brother came along for the ride for a while there, but he only liked backstroke best because it let him wave at the crowd.
Of the two of us, I was the athlete for a long time. My brother preferred to draw, until he discovered lacrosse and brought it with us as we migrated from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest in high school.
More than the little suitcase of medals I still have from my racing days, though, what I remember most is the dedication and persistence that practice took. What it felt like to increase your pain tolerance and practice harder so the race would feel better. To sprint so hard you could proudly talk to your coach about how you kinda felt like you might throw up. Oh, the validation those coaches provided. I still remember the year I got initiative and asked to train for a particular race (the individual medley, if you were wondering) rather than just waiting to be told what I would race, and how excited they were to put me in the exhibition lane. I went back to my hometown once, years after I left, and my coaches recognized me from across the natatorium. Then again, they've known me since I was 7. I should find some photos of myself during that time when I'm home in a few weeks, you guys might be interested.
In college (I went to a women's college), sports became my job, and the way I learned anatomy, and how to take charge of a situation where someone is hurt. How to talk to a determined athlete about not going back on the field because she would make the ankle worse, reason with her, and finally lay down the law that no, she could not finish the game, but she could maybe play in next week's. I learned to take care of injuries, plan a rehab, make judgement calls.
I missed playing, though, and sitting there on the sidelines got me out of the habit and out of the shape (I have never been a gym rat, I can make myself go for a few months, but then I'll lapse.) In graduate school I was challenged in the noggin in ways the like of which I will probably never be again. I went up a dress size or two (I don’t ever really gain or lose weight, though. Part of being an athlete in a lifetime way is realizing how heavy muscle is. I am always 175 lbs, and I love to announce that proudly, just like I announce my age.) I studied non-stop for three months to pass exams that smart people around me had failed. My heart soared and was broken. At some point I realized that I can get so caught up in my job and my mind and my thoughts that I don’t sleep.
I was an athlete, yo; I love sleep. So I took a friend up on joining a fairly competitive sprinting boating team, and I loved it. I got addicted to that time on the water where everything became rhythm and endurance and twenty people working together to move a dragon-shaped boat faster. Everybody knew me and expected me to be there, called me out if I missed a practice. It’s like walking into Cheers and having everyone call ‘Norm!’ only I’m not Norm, obviously, and instead of working on my beer gut, I burned off the calories from lunch, and dropped a dress size.
I learned to fall into the sound of the drum, let it stop my mind from going in circles about my job or my dissertation or my heartbreak or my advisor. I could sleep if I’d spent an hour with my boating team, and it was as much the ability to meditate (for versions of meditate that involve clearing your mind and not thinking) as it was the physical use of muscle and determination.
So when I moved to California, I found a boating team within a week of getting here. Endurance, this time, a distance sport (I dropped another dress size. I’m the same size I was in high school now, but sexier because I’m older.) I’m back into 3-hour practices familiar to me from my years swimming. I have definition in my arms and shoulders that Olympians would envy (and has gotten me a date occasionally), again, familiar to a swimmer. I discovered that the migraines my Mom also got knocked by in her early 30s win in the off-season and disappear during the racing season (due to regular aerobic exercise, I’ve found). The ocean is a new love, but I’m pretty sure it will still be there when I’m looking for a place to settle down finally in a year or two. Plus, my next house is right on a lake, so I can get a boat and take myself out on the lake every morning if I want to, though the absence of a coach and a team will be hard.
I learned to do this in such a religious way because I was allowed to play sports as a girl. My swim team as a kid was called something sweet and feminine while the boys were simply the Men’s Swim Team, and my town had sincere arguments about whether or not you could print a woman’s given first name or whether you had to use Mrs. (husbands name), but they let me play team sports. And I was in the Midwestern suburbs, where it's safe to let your kids bike to practice and parents donate lots of money to the sports programs and fully half of the girls played sports at any given season, even the really gawky girls.
It was a gift, to be on that swim team. My coaches have so significantly influenced how I lived my life that I can’t believe, in this moment, that I’ve never bothered to tell them so.
For the record, playing sports influences my health, how I manage my migraines, my stress, my happiness. I’m militant about playing sports because I’m similarly driven in my job and being both lets me be relaxed the rest of the time.
It’s not just allowing girls into the gym. It’s allowing us on a team, it’s giving us great coaches and teaching us to drive, push. Make the decisions to go faster, be strong, take care of our bodies and respect what they can do, not just how they look. I could have learned all this another way, and it's probably synergystic with the way I was raised in general, but I can't imagine growing up without playing hard, at this point. It's part of my toolkit and my sense of self, and I'm damned grateful for every single benefit it continues to bring me.
My mom can’t swim.
Cofax's post on Title IX