Airborne

Luke is great at so many things, but (deep breath) he does not seem to be the biggest sports guy around. Sure, he's good at baseball, and he loves his team, but in this sports-crazed town he doesn't seem to have the interest or coordination to become part of the basketball or soccer cliques. This is a little sad for me to write about, but when I took him to a birthday party on Sunday at a big indoor sports training facility, he recoiled when he realized that it was basically one big basketball game. "Why did we come here? I don't know how to play basketball, Mom," he whispered, trying to hide behind me. "This is so embarrassing." Eventually he got out there and hovered around the outer edges of the court, and he seemed to start enjoying himself once they started doing soccer, football, and dodgeball. It was only after the party that I was crushed to learn that some of the kids were teasing him while they were playing basketball. What is wrong with people? If you're 7, it's too late to be a beginner at something? Now I'm afraid Luke is going to carry lifelong scars when it comes to basketball. There is a camp this summer that has a morning dedicated to Legos, chess, and basketball, and Luke declared there was no way he was going to do it because he didn't want to be involved in basketball at all.

When Luke and I got home from the sports party, we decided to unwind a little bit by playing badminton together. I found some really nice-quality racquets and birdies at the 99-cents store, and strangely enough, this is our new "thing." It only took him a few sessions to get pretty good at it and he gets a real thrill when we can have a volley that lasts for more than three consecutive hits. He started tallying our consecutive hits and announced that when we got to 100 total hits, we would have a huge party. And sure enough, when we got to 100, we whooped it up and danced all around the yard. Luke is very excited about our progress and keeps talking about how in about "eight weeks" we are going to be so good we're just going to stand there hitting it back and forth to each other for hours at a time. Maybe there's a racquet sport in his future; or maybe (like when I was a kid) just some long summer nights of badminton.

Last night my friend Andrea (Declan and Chloe's mom) and I took an intro "aerial fitness" class. It came about by way of a Groupon; I wanted to try the class but I didn't want to do it alone, and Andrea was a willing volunteer. We both agreed that we weren't exactly in top gymnastics shape, but the class sounded like fun, so we'd give it a whirl. As I was getting ready to leave the house, Luke said, "Mom, are you nervous about it?" and I responded gaily, "No - of course not! I love trying new things!" But when Andrea and I walked in to the class, it was another matter entirely. The facility is basically a wide-open, high-ceilinged gym with long silks hanging down from the ceiling, and all of these Cirque de Soleil muscle-bound gymnastics-type people standing around. "Now I know how Luke felt walking in to that basketball game," Andrea muttered.

There were seven of us taking this "intro" class, with Andrea and I the only pure beginners. There was at least one other student who was absolutely an expert, whirling through the air with incredibly graceful and athletic stunts. Was it fun? Er...Let's just say it made me a little more aware of my own limitations. I didn't quite have the upper body strength or coordination to do some of the most basic moves or shimmy up the silk. But I was able to secure my foot in the silk and do this one move that kind of made me feel like I was the mermaid at the front of a ship (pictured, although not me). Does that count for anything?

As we were leaving, the instructor and one of the students were talking about how they were going to be auditioning to be aerial artists for Taylor Swift's upcoming North American tour. Andrea and I had to stifle a laugh; we were happy enough to have made it through the hour without breaking anything. But we agreed that we both must have some pretty healthy self-esteem to have put ourselves through that. Next time we'll take a yoga class. And maybe our kids will pick up on some of our (clearly outsized) self-confidence.