Ruminations

It can truly get windy here and it amazes me all the ways people have found to harness that wind.  We parked in the lot of the local theater to watch this fellow and a companion flying before the winds.  I found it thrilling watching these young men enjoying themselves and putting on a show for us so I could get pictures.  This is exactly the kind of thing I would have loved to have done as a kid.  I used to use my roller skates to do long jumps over things, now it would asking for a life in a body cast to do that but maybe rolling around a parking lot...I wanted to tell him to get a helmet.

My mother used to watch musicals and the dancers and say "I could have done that."  She very well might have, she had danced in Vaudeville shows in Portland when she was a very little girl and kept her flexibility and long legged grace up to the end of her life.  As she grew older she quit bemoaning her lost alternatives and truly seemed to enjoy watching others perform, in particular my younger sister who has always moved well and seems to have the performing gene as does her daughter.  When I realized that I'd quit envying others doing what I used be able to do, I understood better her joy in musicals, watching Olympic ice skaters, and gymnasts.  Now I love watching the speed skaters, Apolo Anton Ono is amazing, not to mention he is a fellow Seattle homie, and a handsome young man.  And the snowboarders, especially the women. 

Things way different since I was a girl.  I loved basketball.  No basketball teams in my high school.  My first opportunity to play on a basketball team didn't came when I was in my 30's and a young mother.  My alma mater now has a great collegiate women's basketball team. My grandkids, all girls but one, have much more opportunity to develop their physical side as well as their minds.  A very good change.