The kids have gone circus freak on the trampoline. Using the special skills mothers acquire naturally and other people join to CIA to learn; I manage to keep both eyes on my cell phone and on my ninja acrobats and on the rusted metal frame peeping out from under the trampoline’s safety padding.
My son does a somersault with the skill of a bowling pin. Then an Arab spring; body rigid and poised as a beanbag. He beams. I’m sure he hears applause in his head. I know he can’t hear my loud exhale every time he rebounds and I don’t see blood.
But do I stop him? Do I point out the indemnity sign? Do I tell him to put his cycling helmet on? Do I, at the very least, sneak my laptop bag over a rusty corner? No, I do not! And do you know why? Because I’m a good mother!
Play with me
My son is 11, meaning he hasn’t reached that age where he starts treating me like a rash. Right now he still loves when I jump on the trampoline with him. He likes me to swim with him. To chase him. To cycle with him. To climb rocks with him. He has no concept of the fact that his 11 year old body is a pleasure seeking machine whereas my 38 year old one is just holding out for sleep most of the time.
I watch him and his cousin bounce into handstands and collapse on their backs only to arch up onto their feet like street dancers, and I wonder when it all changed.
I wonder when I lost the simple delight of moving my body; windmilling my limbs; rushing around as the wind ruffled my hair? When were those sweet, spontaneous, easy joys replaced by the more contrived and orchestrated pleasures of drink and food and TV and all the other things I occupy my body with?
Maybe it happened when my body became something I had to consciously manage and improve. When it stopped working perfectly on its own and when I started having to work to make it perfect.
Maybe it happened when my body got too heavy to run with. Too weak to climb with. Too tired to swim and swing and jump with.
I don’t know when it started, but I do know that there was a time in my life when the thing I loved most about my body was my body. I want that time back!
I want my body back
I also realise that at some point I gave my body away. I gave it to pizza and crisps and coffee and when my colon rebelled I gave it to doctors and pills. I gave it to my laptop for 15 hours a day and when I ended every day feeling like the Sandman was threading needles through my shoulders and woke up each morning feeling like they’d made their way to my brain, I gave my body to more pills and more doctors. I gave it to diet shakes. I gave it to a personal trainer. I gave it to the TV.
In the end, my body was simply an aching, heavy load I dragged around. And the burden of maintaining this body far outweighed the joy!
Then something happened
CrossFit happened! Sure, the actual workouts happened, and along with them the fat started vanishing and muscles started appearing. And that’s great, but it’s not the best part of reclaiming my body.
The best part comes with rediscovering the tummy-tilting thrill of something as simple as swinging on a bar (like I did on the jungle gym) and the giddy excitement of trying to tip upside down and get my toes up where my hands are.
It comes from running and hating it and running and hating it and then one evening realising that for a few perfect seconds I feel weightless, blissfully suspended in the amber light of the autumn sun as it drips off the leaves.
The best part comes when you realise that this is what our body was born to do. It was born to run. Born to play. Born to feel beautiful and magical and powerful.
Yes; the best part of Leoni running or doing weights or Michelle training with the Mistress of Pain or me doing CrossFit is that we’re reclaiming our bodies and with that, the birthright we gave up without even knowing it, years ago.
Your body remembers
The beautiful thing, I discovered, is that my body remembers. It remembers when every cell vibrated with energy and vitality. It remembers when that little pot of a tummy didn’t matter because my muscles exploded with power when I climbed trees and rocks and jungle gyms. My body remembers!
And I’m feeling it all coming back to me. Suddenly my body is behaving like a 5 year old; it just wants to play. If there’s a horizontal bar – say the top of my security gate – I want to jump for it. When I’m climbing stairs I want to box-jump them. I’m proud that I have calluses on my hands instead of carpal tunnel. That the ache that nestled behind my kneecap for 16 years is gone and instead my knees are bruised and my shins are scraped.
We all deserve this; this feeling of being so spectacularly alive, not of simply existing.
Most of us gave our bodies away too easily, too long ago. It’s time to get them back! One step, handstand or somersault at a time.
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