Aging Sportswoman
A lifetime of sport creates strange opportunities even when you are not officially ‘practicing” sport….
You can find a McDonald’s in the maze of downtown Moscow while running down a packed pedestrian sidewalk with a 40lb child on your back …and get him to the toilet before his jeans are ruined…
The long climb to the Group 6 room at the Ermolino Baby House is not too difficult with an immobile, but smiling Dima on your shoulder.
Supervising painting in the backyard of the orphanage while making sandwiches in the front of the building while chasing Sasha is possible.
Sprinting 40 steep stairs to the top of the ‘Magic House’ to turn off the soup you forgot was boiling over because you were downstairs bagging up donated toys while painting wood in Sasha’s Nature Workshop doesn’t yet cause an asthma attack.
Riding a fierce one-speed bike over rooty muddy trails along the Moscow River while carrying on a conversation with your 3 year old who is swaying in the bike seat on your rear fender and concentrating on making it up the slight rise in the terrain is still something you are proud to be able to do. It counts as a “workout”.
You still have breath to curse the littering fools whose garbage you are collecting in a huge heavy green plastic garbage bag on Saturday morning with your family. You can utter “Dobroe Utra” to the ladies shuffling by looking at you as if you have gone mad, and still keep that bag off the ground…
You are not immobilized after hoisting doors and beds to the farthest reaches of the basement to make room for bike repairs, wood carving and collections of rocks and sticks in the front.
And finally, you can imagine carrying another child on the other side even as you struggle up the grassy bank of the Moscow River after enjoying another sunny hour of digging in the sand, looking for fossils and explaining words like ‘democracy’ and ‘propaganda’ that your 3 year old is asking about. It would be possible. You aren’t that out of shape yet.
You can find a McDonald’s in the maze of downtown Moscow while running down a packed pedestrian sidewalk with a 40lb child on your back …and get him to the toilet before his jeans are ruined…
The long climb to the Group 6 room at the Ermolino Baby House is not too difficult with an immobile, but smiling Dima on your shoulder.
Supervising painting in the backyard of the orphanage while making sandwiches in the front of the building while chasing Sasha is possible.
Sprinting 40 steep stairs to the top of the ‘Magic House’ to turn off the soup you forgot was boiling over because you were downstairs bagging up donated toys while painting wood in Sasha’s Nature Workshop doesn’t yet cause an asthma attack.
Riding a fierce one-speed bike over rooty muddy trails along the Moscow River while carrying on a conversation with your 3 year old who is swaying in the bike seat on your rear fender and concentrating on making it up the slight rise in the terrain is still something you are proud to be able to do. It counts as a “workout”.
You still have breath to curse the littering fools whose garbage you are collecting in a huge heavy green plastic garbage bag on Saturday morning with your family. You can utter “Dobroe Utra” to the ladies shuffling by looking at you as if you have gone mad, and still keep that bag off the ground…
You are not immobilized after hoisting doors and beds to the farthest reaches of the basement to make room for bike repairs, wood carving and collections of rocks and sticks in the front.
And finally, you can imagine carrying another child on the other side even as you struggle up the grassy bank of the Moscow River after enjoying another sunny hour of digging in the sand, looking for fossils and explaining words like ‘democracy’ and ‘propaganda’ that your 3 year old is asking about. It would be possible. You aren’t that out of shape yet.