Grace, Gold, and Glory Read online

  Long after our last Shabbat celebration, my love for Jewish culture continued — so rich and beautiful. One tradition that’ll probably always stick around in our family is Mom’s homemade matzo ball soup — she makes a mean version of it! At first, Mom would only make the soup during Passover, a holiday when Jews remember how the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery. But we all loved her soup so much that we begged her to cook it for every special occasion — like if Arielle or John made the honor roll, if Joy performed well in an ice skating competition, or if I got the highest score at a meet. Sometimes, Mom wouldn’t tell us she was stirring up her recipe — but I’d come running into the kitchen because I could smell it. “You’re making the soup, aren’t you?” I’d ask with a grin. Then we’d gather around our table, elbow to elbow, and savor each huge spoonful.

  The year I was nine, we celebrated Hanukkah. Mom even bought us each a dreidel, a four-sided spinning top. As we played with our new toys, the music from our new CD (remember those?) filled the town house. “Twinkle, twinkle, candle bright,” the melody went, “burning on the special night.” My siblings and I were cool with celebrating Hanukkah — until we realized that we wouldn’t celebrate Christmas or decorate a tree. “Does this also mean we won’t get presents?” I asked Mom. “No,” she said. “It means you get a present for eight days straight.” And yet both then and now, some of my best gifts haven’t come wrapped in a box. They’re things like laughing until I’m literally weak after Joyelle tells me a hilarious story. Or climbing into Mom’s bed and hanging out with my whole family. Or getting major goose bumps when I saw Carly win the gold.

  The Second Marriage

  One day in late March 2005, Mom gathered all four of us in the living room. “Tim and I are getting remarried,” she said matter-of-factly. She then looked directly at John, Joyelle, and me. “That’s right — your dad and I are going to try and work things out.” My first feeling was one of excitement. At last, my parents will be together, I thought. I’ll get to see my father every day— because at this point, I hadn’t seen him for at least a year. It quickly became clear that my older sister Arielle had an altogether different opinion. “This is a big mistake,” she told Mom. The rest of us fell completely silent. “Why is it going to work out so much better this time, Mom?” Our mother paused before she finally responded. “Arielle, Tim is the father of these three children,” she said slowly. “I really want to make this work.”

  That conversation was my first glimpse into a world that only Arielle understood: She’d been old enough to recall what it felt like to be cold and homeless in that Dodge van in Tulsa. During that time, my father had worked sporadically — and Arielle wanted to be sure that if Mom married him again, he would have a steady paycheck to contribute to the household.

  “Does he have a job?” Arielle pressed.

  “We’ll be fine,” Mom said. “I have some money saved up.” In late April, I came home after a double session at the gym to find my father sitting in the living room of our town house. All at once, I felt elated and stunned.

  Chapter Seven

  A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

  —DUKE ELLINGTON, JAZZ LEGEND

  I REALLY WANTED TO IMPRESS MÁRTA KÁROLYI — AND CAN YOU BLAME me? She and her husband, Bela, are huge legends in the sport of gymnastics. Bela once coached Romanian sensation Nadia Comãneci, the gymnast who scored seven (yes, seven!) perfect 10.0s at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Quebec. In 1981, Bela and Márta left their homeland of Romania and sought political asylum in America. Between the two of them, they’ve trained nine Olympic champions, including Mary Lou Retton, the first American woman to ever win the all-around gold. So when any young gymnast meets Márta — who has been the powerhouse national team coordinator for USA gymnastics since 2001 — it’s not quite like chillaxing at the beach. It’s more like nail-biting at the ranch.

  Make that the Károlyi ranch —a US Olympic training center that Bela built on about two thousand acres north of Houston. Tucked away in the forest stands a fifty-thousand-square-foot gymnasium, the place where the best gymnasts in the world have been trained. I had my first turn at the ranch in December 2004, the year I made the national TOPs A team.

  My road to Texas was more like a superhighway. I’ve already told you that when I arrived at Excalibur in June 2004, I had a ton of catching up to do when it came to skills. Well here’s the part I left out: I had just a few weeks to prepare for TOPs A testing that July. And even as I pushed myself to my physical limits during that summer, my 2004 – 2005 season was also revving up in the fall. So between summer and the end of the year, I made the biggest gymnastics leap I’ve ever made during any one period of time — I jumped from a Level 4 to a Level 7, the first of the levels in which I could design my own routine. Let me break that down for you in English (well, sorta): In just a few months, I went from doing basic split jumps, handsprings, and glide swings to performing at least two circling skills on bars, a front walkover on beam, and a back layout on floor. In a word, difficult.

  The great news is that I earned a spot on the TOPs A national team. The slightly unnerving news (at least for me, a perfectionist) is that I barely made the cut. “I could’ve done better,” I told my mother. “I messed up on some of the skills.” Mom responded the way she has so many times. “Yes, you’re almost dead last going into the camp, which is why you’ve gotta be willing to work your way to the top,” she said. “No one’s ever going to give you anything. There are no excuses. There’s just hard work.”

  After I made the TOPs A national team, I was invited back to the ranch for the training camp in December. That’s when I did my best to show Márta just how well I could perform. “Good job, Little One!” Márta said when she saw me showing off every single skill I knew. “Little One” was Márta’s first nickname for me — the second would come later! — because she noticed how much smaller I was compared to the other gymnasts. She’d sometimes hold my entire face between her two hands or pat me on the head when she called me by that nickname. Any little bit of affirmation from Márta — and I do mean any — meant so much to me. Especially since I could look around camp and spot girls who were rising Level 8s. At first, that scared me a little. Will I be good enough to compete? But with some encouragement from Mom, I realized something: the only way to keep growing is to continually put yourself in situations where you’ll be stretched. And that kind of stretching isn’t usually all that comfortable.

  Once I was back from training camp, Mom signed me up for a ballet class — talk about a stretch. As I honed my gymnastics skills, Mom wanted me to add a touch of ballerina grace to my floor routines. “These are itchy,” I complained when I slid on each leg of my pink ballerina tights before class. I was like, “Mom, when is this over?” That whole experiment only lasted a couple months — and if you ask me, that was two months too long!

  I’ve always been an animal lover. When I was small, I was always trying to bring home stray dogs in our neighborhood. “No, Brie,” my sisters told me when I once tried to rescue a puppy. “What if he has rabies?” I still tried to take him home, but Mom wouldn’t let me keep him.

  One evening after a double session when Kaiya’s mom, Kim, couldn’t pick us up from the gym, her dad met us instead. “We’re going to the pet store to visit the animals,” he announced, and I could feel my heart skip a beat. Once there, Kaiya fell head over heels for a dog we spotted. Later, her dad got her a dog mixed with everything from poodle to Schnauzer, which she named Mugsy. “He sooo cute!” I told Kaiya. Whenever I visited Mugsy at Kaiya’s house, I felt a pang of jealousy shoot through me. That’s when the same thought I’d been having for months hit me again: Why can’t we get a puppy?

  When I brought it up to Mom on our way home, her answer was the same — definitely not. The closest I came to having my very own set of four furry little paws that year was the following Christmas: Mom got me a stuffed black dog.

  For months, I kept lobbying. “You should
see how adorable Mugsy is!” I told her. Mom still said no, yet the fact that she usually said it with a hint of a smile told me there was a crack in the door. “Please, Mom!” I said. “Kaiya’s parents even got her a pet puppy.” But no matter how thick I laid on the guilt, it wasn’t enough to convince our mother.

  Until one August day in 2005. That afternoon, Mom showed up at my gym holding a box. When I saw a piece of black fur peeking out from under the sides, I put my hand over my heart. Could it be? “Surprise!” Mom said when she lifted the lid. It was another stuffed dog.

  “Oh, thanks,” I said, trying to squelch a tone of disappointment.

  “Don’t you like him?” Mom asked.

  “Um, yes,” I said as I forced a smile. A few minutes later, we walked out to our car. John and Joyelle, who’d come along with Mom to pick me up, were waiting in the backseat. “Hi, guys,” I said as I climbed into the front. Just then, I spotted the most amazing sight my ten-year-old eyes had ever seen: a real puppy bounced up from behind Joyelle and John.

  “I can’t believe it!” I squealed. I literally began jumping up and down, finally landing long enough to wrap both my arms all the way around his warm body. The pup was an eight-week-old black Labrador and Rottweiler mix that Mom got from a local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). Go, Mom!

  We all drove to Arielle’s school and tried to pull the same trick on her. When she came outside after cheerleading practice, she didn’t go for the gag — but even still, she was just as excited as we all were about our dog, who we named Zoway. I don’t think Zoway’s paws touched the ground the entire first day we got him, and I could relate: I was on cloud nine hundred with no chance of coming back down to earth anytime soon.

  A few years later, after Kaiya got a second dog (a Chihuahua), Joy and I began plotting how we could grow our family by one as well. We found an Internet photo of the cutest Toy Yorkie and printed it out. Along the bottom of that paper, I used a Magic Marker to write out the name we’d already picked for our dog: Chandler. We then hung that photo smack-dab in the center of the refrigerator door so Mom would see it every time she went into the kitchen. “You are not getting another dog,” our mother announced when she saw the photo for the first time. I tried every angle I could think of: “If I get all As, can we pleeeease get him?” Or this one, my favorite: “Can I have another puppy if I win my next meet?” But none of it worked.

  Then one afternoon when Mom picked me up after the first half of a double session, I was actually done with my homework — so Mom and I had a little time to burn.

  “Where should we go?” she asked me.

  “Let’s go to the pet store in Pembroke Mall,” I said. “That’s where Kaiya’s dad takes us when we have extra time before going back to the gym.” Mom hesitated but turned out of the lot and onto the road leading to the mall. Once we got inside the Pet-Go-Round store, I headed straight to the back. There, a group of puppies, all with light brown and white fur, pranced about in a glass cage. A sign taped to the outside of the case read Morkies — a mix between a Maltese and a Yorkie.

  “Would you like to hold one?” a saleslady asked me.

  “Yes!” I said emphatically. That’s when she scooped up the tiniest puppy in the bunch and put him right into my arms.

  “I’ll take you to the back here so that you two can get better acquainted,” the saleswoman said as she led us to a playroom.

  “Can we take him home, Mom?” I could tell by the look on my mother’s face that she’d known that question was coming.

  “No, Brie,” she said. “Unfortunately, the puppy needs to go back into his temporary home. But he’s so cute that I know it won’t take long before he finds a loving home.” Mom then handed the puppy back to the salesperson. Then, just as we were leaving the store, I looked back to see the dog leaping up to the top of the cage as if he was begging me to come back for him.

  “Look, Mom!” I said. “He wants to go home with us!”

  Mom paused — and the moment she turned around to see the same thing I saw, I knew it was a done deal. After Mom had a couple days to come around, I finally got Chandler — make that Channie or Chan Chan, which is what I called him for short.

  So that’s how Zoway got a little brother — and how we remember that our mother is as soft as she is strong.

  The more I trained for competition at high levels, the more time I spent at the gym — and the less time I got to hang out with my family. Mom began working back-to-back shifts, and I’d see her briefly when she picked me up at five each afternoon. At home, Arielle, then a sophomore at Landstown High, played latchkey mom. She was the first to arrive at our town house, then she made sure Joyelle and John made it home, did their homework, and ate some dinner. At ten o’clock, Mom finally dragged herself home from her second shift.

  My many hours at the gym also meant lots of moolah — which is why Mom was working so much. Some say that gymnastics is a sport for the affluent: the wristbands, the grips, the tape, and the tuition for the training time can all add up to thousands every year. That’s because things like grips, which run about $50 a pop, have to be replaced regularly, or else they’ll rip and put you in danger on the bars. Competition leos are usually $200 and up, and practice leos (we call them tanks) are about $50. Then there are meet fees and travel expenses, as well as the cost of hiring someone to choreograph a floor routine. Speaking of which, Mom once paid $600 for my choreography — and when a coach didn’t like it very much, Mom had to shell out another $600 for me to get a new one.

  Back during my Gymstrada days, Mom was part of the Gymnastics Parent Association (completely separate from the gym) that created fund-raisers to offset the high cost of training. The group’s major source of income: hosting Saturday night bingo games for the public. The parents took their turns in a rotation, and Mom did her part once or twice a month. At the bingo hall, Mom often worked at the back of the room as a money counter. “I have bad allergies,” Mom says now, “so I couldn’t stand all that smoke up at the front!”

  Since that time when we were homeless in Tulsa, Mom was definitely doing a little better financially, thanks to the double shifts. But because she was the only breadwinner for our family, her checking account funds were often low. She’d saved up every quarter she had to get us into our small town house, but it was right on the edge of a rough area. We were surrounded by parties with lots of drinking and smoking; the thumpity-thump of loud music often kept us awake at night. Sometimes, we even heard gunshots and witnessed drug deals and gang activity. Though the Virginia Beach Police Department cracked down on the crime and really cleaned up our area over the years, back then, Scarborough Square was still seen by many as a very tough neighborhood. So whenever I visited the homes of some of my Excalibur teammates for the end-of-the-season parties, I realized just how different our circumstances were. For starters, their homes were massive — and usually in the best parts of town.

  You want to hear something shocking? I was still thankful for what we had — and yes, I actually mean that. Would it have been nice to get more of the extras at times? Of course. Yet what I did have was my brother, John, to jump with me on the trampoline for hours in our backyard. What I did have was my sister, Arielle, who let me hide my stash of Tootsie Rolls in her bedroom so that Joyelle and John wouldn’t steal them. And what I did have was a mother who taught me to hold on tightly to 2 Timothy 1:7 whenever I was feeling a tad jittery: “For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (NKJV).

  The Gifts

  Mother’s Day was coming — and we all wanted to get our mother a special gift.

  “What should we buy?” I asked my father.

  “Let’s look around and see what we can find.”

  So while Mom was at home catching some much needed zzz’s, Dad loaded all of us into the car and headed to Walmart. Once inside, we filled our cart with so many different presents: a silk robe, slippers, a foot massager, flowers, a set of dish
es, and even a crystal candleholder. As Dad loaded the bags into the car, I told Joy, “Mom is going to be so surprised!”

  So you can imagine my shock when Mom later blew up. “Take it back!” she screamed at my father. “Take it all back, Tim!”

  John, Joy, and I shuffled off to our bedroom and closed the door for a private discussion. “Why is Mom being so mean to Dad?” I asked. “All he wanted to do was give her some presents!” That’s when Arielle came in, saw us huddling, and interrupted. “You guys don’t understand,” she said. “Your dad spent money we don’t have. Of course Mom likes the presents. She just doesn’t want our water to be shut off.”

  “You’re adopted!” shouted Joyelle, who was angry at my sister’s assessment and feeling defensive of our dad. “You’re not even the same skin color as the rest of us!”

  That was enough to make Arielle storm out of the room. I stayed put, only to keep thinking over the one big question I had back then: Why did my mother dislike my dad so much? I was as confused as I was sad. Dad rebagged all the gifts and took them back to Walmart that same afternoon.

  Chapter Eight

  No weapon formed against you shall prosper.

  —ISAIAH 54:17, NKJV

  I TRIED SO HARD TO BE NICE TO THE OTHER GIRLS AT EXCALIBUR. YET as my skill level improved and I surpassed some of my teammates, I noticed something: a few of them seemed a lot less friendly. I’m not talking about the majority of them, of course — there were plenty of cool girls at the gym. So how could I tell which ones didn’t like me? Sometimes I’d see them whispering, but they’d suddenly stop talking if I came near. Other times, they wouldn’t look directly at me. I’m sure you can just feel it when someone doesn’t like you — and believe me, I felt it.