In Which We Unleash a Warrior
My younger niece K has always been a unique soul. She's creative and quippy, coming up with an ever growing list of phrases that have entered our family lexicon under her own brand. She's feisty and fierce, never giving an inch to her older sister and marching to the beat of her own drum that the rest of us will never hear. She's caring and creative, giving unique names to every one of the continually growing army of barn cats and writing pages and pages of stories of her own imagining.
She and her sister are both what we call "farm girl strong" - a blend of physical and mental strength forged by early morning wakeups and thousands of pounds of feed carried across barnyards and hundreds of sessions hauling obstinate animals around a show ring. K showed off this strength very early on. My father and I both watched in amazement when a toddler K saw something on the breakfast bar in my parents' house that she wanted. Little K just grabbed the breakfast bar with both hands, chinned herself up, grabbed what she wanted, and dropped to the ground. She dropped nearly as fast as my father's jaw at this feat of strength from this tiny child.
Now, our farm girl is hitting the mat. She's joined the junior high wrestling team, and we've all entered our wrestling era as a family. We've all got matching shirts, and we're learning a whole new vocabulary - meets, bouts, pins, takedowns, cradles, and all. No one in our family has ever been a wrestler, so we've all got a big learning curve. And we're loving every minute of it.
It's so cool to see her in this environment. She's having so much fun with her teammates, and she's such a good sport. Defeat doesn't phase her - probably something she learned from all those hours in the show ring, knowing that one judge's opinion on one day doesn't have to define her. She's helping her opponents with their head gear, laughing and hugging them before they hit the mat. But a bout or two before she hits the mat, she goes into what I call her "Fortress of Solitude" - she goes off on her own to a corner of the bleachers, or behind one of the tables to bounce and move and practice her footwork. I can see the focus take over her face that just a few minutes before was laughing with her friends. She's watching the girls on the mat, moving her body and getting into her zone.
And I've got to say - we've unleashed a warrior. As soon as the referee blows his whistle and drops his hand, that girl's face transforms into what can only be described as murder. She is totally focused, totally locked in on defeating her opponent. When she's wrestling, more than once I could identify the moment when she kicked it into gear - I often can't see her face, but I can tell from her body language that's she's ready to finish her opponent. And often she does. Her record is pretty darn good for her very first season.
But she's still a kid. After she won the match pictured, I went to talk with her. According to K, "That last girl was like... totally terrified of me..." she told me, with barely hidden delight. She's such a blast.
And her big sister is completely supportive - talking to her before matches when Mom or Dad or Aunt Ivy would be too much, filming her from the edge of the mat, showing up every time she needs her. Her Mimi (my mom) is at every meet, yelling her support. I'm at every meet, doing the same. Even my dad, who often chafes at having to sit through long events (I think the ADHD gene runs deep in that one!) came to a recent meet. When K saw him leaving, she ran across the gym to tell her Papa goodbye. And as my dad said afterward, "I'll remember that grin she had - from ear to ear - for a long time..."
We've unleashed a warrior in our K - and I couldn't be happier. She's learning that she's strong, that she's capable, that she's disciplined, that she's part of a team, that her body is a tool that can be trained and honed and used to accomplish a goal. It took me several more decades to learn that - to stop hating my body for not looking like everyone else's, to learn to celebrate what it could do, to care for it just because it was mine. K is learning that lesson so much earlier than I did, and will be so much stronger for it.
And it doesn't hurt that she loves having other people be like... totally terrified of her. :)
