16 March 2010 Trampoline

The blur there in the photo is bouncing Sam. She bounced and tumbled and hopped and even “hulee-hooped” at the Brighton and Hove Gymnastics Club today. Yes, we’ve been here one week today and already I’ve got Sam signed up for gymnastics. She was climbing the furniture in the flat. I can take a hint.

A quick Google search turned up the Brighton and Hove Gymnastics Club, which is in Hove, Actually, and actually the gym is inside the converted St. Agnes Church (Anglican). I was expecting the gym to feel holy and hushed, the smell of incense deeply embedded in the darkened wood beams. But when we got there it was raucous and lively. There was not a hint of ancient incense. The church smelled like sweaty feet.

One wonders what the old churchgoers would make of their place of worship now overrun by giggling barefooted preschoolers. Actually I don’t wonder that so much as I wonder who is rolling more: the former churchgoers in their graves or the preschoolers.

The Club instructors were lovely. They welcomed us right in and allowed Sam to do a trial class. She was pretty hesitant about this. First she declared she wouldn’t do it at all. Then she said she’d watch. So we watched. But then she kept whispering to me, “I could go that fast” as she watched the kids race down the center aisle and jump into a pit of what looked like squiggly foam packing material that you’d wrap in and around appliances. Finally I convinced her to try the running course one time. I walked her to the instructor who was setting up the last pair of running kids and said, “This is Sam.”

“Hullo, Sam. I’m Davy,” the instructor said.

“Hello,” said Sam.

“LOVE your accent,” said Davy. “Come round here then, Sam, and let’s let you have a go.”

And she was off. I can’t say that she never looked back, because she did. A little while later she ran back to me for a hug and a kiss, and then she dashed right back into the fray.

The other parents there no doubt think that American mothers are hopelessly, enthusiastically, shamelessly emotional because I spent that hour beaming and trying not to tear up with joy.

When you take your sensitive, slow-to-warm-up, timid kid away from everything she knows (twice! Pennsylvania really was home to Sam) and then pop her in a new country with new faces and new voices and new smelly gym equipment, and she adapts beautifully, even better than you do, well, then, that’s cause to jump up and down.