turns out i can still do a back handspring {or, in which i try to recapture my childhood}

Every year, I do a back handspring {just making it under the wire this year}. You know, just to make sure I still have it.

Turns out at 31, I still do—not as pretty as it once was {I'm no Gabby Douglas}, but I'm just happy I didn't seriously injure myself and that I got to tumble in my old gym {the YWCA, hence all the basketball noise from the court next door}.



Feeling inspired after this, I tried to do a kip on the bars—it's this swingy around thing that was my mount in my bars routine when I competed. By my description of "swingy around thing," you'd never guess that I taught gymnastics for eight years, would you?

My description of cartwheels when I was teaching small children was: "It's like your legs are rainbows, and they're arching through the sky." That might've been too poetic for them, and it is shocking that children ever learned anything from me.

But back to the bars—the uneven bars, that is, not back to the drinking bars.

I tried to do a kip and failed miserably, realized that I must've had frighteningly strong abs and arms when I was 12, wondered where all that strength went to, pondered reinstating my strength workout from when I was on the gymnastics team, and then decided to accept that my body can no longer do everything it once did.

But at least it can still do a back handspring. For those few seconds of flipping rapidly, I can feel like a kid again.

PS There is obviously no video of me failing to do a kip.