Flowing with the Go (4 page)

And what of Carly's things? Most are still in the same place. I have been able to give away some of her clothes by walking into her room and telling myself, “Oh, this wouldn't fit any more,” but I leave everything else: the pictures of her friends, her trophies, favorite books, journals, Beanie Babies, and basketball shoes. I still burst into tears when I unexpectedly find a spiral notebook with her writing in it, a doodle on a pad of paper, an old card she'd given me.

I've had people ask me what I've done with Carly's room. That frustrates and irritates me. Kathleen has told me that I can take all the time I need . . . and that when it's time, I will know. It is not discussed in our house. I know, without it ever being spoken, that it is up to me to decide.

Having attachments to symbols has served me well in Jiu-Jitsu. The martial arts are full of symbolic rituals and emblems, and somehow, this comforts me. Before comfort, however, came baptism by fire, so to speak. Never having been a martial arts practitioner, I did not know many of these rituals and learned of them after many an innocent, yet reprimandable gaffe. For instance, I thought that if I was late, I should hurry, put on my uniform, and jump into the warmup. No! If you are late, you must stand patiently on the edge of the mat until the instructor notices you and gives you permission to join in. When you have permission, you must bow, step on the mat, and depending on how late you are, either join the line or have a private workout session on the side, which is called “ropes.” Nobody likes to do ropes. First off, it's just you, singled out because of your tardiness, and the upper belt, who gets the privilege of holding the rope. The rope is tied to a section of cage and held about eighteen inches off the ground. You must jump over and back sideways, over and back frontward and backward, and then you must drop to your belly, crawl under the rope without touching it, and jump up and over the rope again. The magic number of repetitions depends on how late you were and whether or not Coach has had a nice day. I've done at least twenty a couple of times.

There is symbolism and honor attached to your uniform. Your uniform, called a gi, must be clean, neat, and properly adjusted any time you are lined up to bow. The belt is the most important and symbolic part of the uniform. Your belt tells everyone your rank. Your rank signifies your level of achievement in the sport. One of the rituals I learned was that you are to never wash your belt. A belt that looks “used” indicates that the wearer has trained hard for a long time. Each gym also has team patches. Getting a team patch was very important to me. As in any sport, wearing the insignia of your gym means that you “represent.” I was especially proud to receive my Competition Team patch. It's amazing how a piece of fabric can make you feel like you belong.

Getting back to tattoos: A great number of Jiu-Jitsu folks have tattoos. Most have more than one. And I'm sure if I asked them, each person could tell me the meaning behind each piece of body art. I can feel that. Interestingly, Coach is not in favor of people getting tattoos of the gym logo or Lotus Club, our parent organization. He says members will typically ask him if they should; he suggests they do not; they go ahead anyway; and then they either quit or move away and join another gym. Well, I would get a tattoo of our gym. I would because I am fiercely loyal and owe my life to this gym. I'm pretty sure that if I moved away from here I wouldn't roll anymore. I know I ended up at Foster because I was supposed to, because I needed to. Maybe if I win a gold medal, I'll get one. Should I ask Coach for permission or forgiveness?

6
Off the Couch and
on the Mat

I
had been striking for a few weeks when Coach Rick asked me to come and watch a Jiu-Jitsu class. “What's that?” I had never even heard of Jiu-Jitsu except that it was in the gym name. And I had never seen a class because striking class was the last class of the day. I was enjoying striking just fine and didn't see a need to add anything else to my repertoire. But he was persistent. He wore me down.

About Rick: Rick is big. Let's say, maybe six-two, 270 on a slim day. Hence his nickname Brick—Big Rick. When Brick is not rolling, he is a welding instructor. I think it's a combination of genetics and the constant use of heavy equipment that gives Brick forearms the size of most mortals' calves. When Brick puts on a baseball choke, you have to tap or its “broken bat” lights out. (It takes 5,000 pounds of impact force to break a bat, and only 38 pounds to break a neck . . . science geekism.)

Brick has his own tale of moxie. In January 2009 (the day before his forty-ninth birthday), the inconvenience of a nagging headache sent Brick to the doctors. Instead of the prescription pain reliever he expected, Brick wound up in neurosurgery to have a brain tumor the size of a tangerine removed. The tumor didn't kill him, but not being able to roll almost did. He had to wait six months for his skull bones to heal before he got the green light to hit the mats again. I might also add that it took about six months for him to grow enough hair to end his Frankenstein impersonation.

Brick also complained about “losing too much weight,” because he couldn't work out. Is that another insult to feminism or what? I had to work my ass off to literally work my ass off. Apparently, if I was Brick, I could have put a dent in the couch and bought a smaller pair of jeans.

The pinnacle of his recovery is that a year or so later Brick competed in the Pan Jiu-Jitsu Championships and won two gold medals, one in his weight division Senior 3 age 44 and up, and one in the Open, where all weights compete together in that age bracket. Coach also promoted him to brown belt.

So one day, I went to watch a no-gi Jiu-Jitsu class, which is also called submission grappling. A few thoughts came to mind: Whoa, that's a lot of touching; those guys are really sweaty—slimy-looking actually; looks kinda aggressive. I played collegiate volleyball, which is a non-contact sport. Basketball and touch football were the only level of contact sports I was familiar with, and they were “normal,” because at least they involved a ball.

Brick: “When we gonna see you again? What are you doing Saturday morning? Come and watch another class.” At that point in my life, there wasn't much filling my weekends, and Brick smiles like he really does want to see you again, so I went to watch.

This was a gi class, so everyone was wearing their martial arts uniform that resembles a judo uniform. A gi is built for functionality. It is made of sturdy cotton in a weave that can take plenty of abuse. The jacket folds over in the front like a kimono and has a sturdy lapel. The lapel is a favorite place on the gi to “get your grips,” and it is thicker than the rest of the jacket. The pants have a drawstring and gusseted crotch so that you have plenty of freedom to move—and probably so that you don't split your pants when you are in compromising positions that put a strain on the seams. The third piece is the belt. There is a special way to tie your belt, and it is very important that you tie it correctly. I looked it up on YouTube to make sure I had it right. To not tie your belt correctly or to drag it on the ground is dishonorable.

Brick noticed I was wearing sweats, so he invited me to join the warmup. Okay, I can run in a circle, no big deal. But then they started getting down on the mat and doing line drills and contorting their bodies in ways unfamiliar to me. Sensing the questioning look on my face, I was taken aside and taught some basic moves and vocabulary.

That day, I learned how to “shrimp” and hold someone in “side control.” ( “Mount” was seriously suspect.) I still wasn't sold. I certainly was not going to wear one of those uniforms. It looked very cumbersome and hot. But I was nagged by the voice that anyone who has competed knows; the one that says, “You can do that. If you don't even try it, then you have failed.” I bought a pair of fight shorts (which I thought were pretty cool) and started going to the no-gi class that was scheduled before the striking class.

It turned out that submission grappling was as slimy as it looked. And there was touching for pretty much the entire one and a half hours. And there were no other girls usually. Being the only woman most of the time didn't bother me. I grew up in the middle between two brothers. I was also the only girl on the block growing up, so I played with the boys. I grew fast and was taller than most of the boys as well. I remember always being in the middle of the back row for pictures in elementary school. I went on to play three varsity sports all four years of high school and played year-round club volleyball. Needless to say, I was no stranger to a gym or to being challenged by boys to athletic competitions. I could trash-talk and “good old boy” with the best of them. In graduate school, I was the only woman to join the faculty and other graduate students for “a run” —gym-speak for playing lunchtime basketball. This continued throughout my adult life. I played on two three-on-three teams (one was coed) at Hoopfest in Spokane two months after giving birth to Carly. And yes, I breast-fed between games. (Ah, but I digress to my younger days.)

Eventually I bought a gi. A blue one because most of the people wore white and that seemed rather bland. In my mind, this uniform meant commitment. I told myself that I would give Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) a year. A year would be enough time to gauge my aptitude and feel like I gave it an honest try. And so my journey began.

7
It Really is a Journey

L
et me stop for a minute and talk about “the journey.” We all know the saying, “it's about the journey, not the destination.” In the gym during promotions, Coach would often remind everyone that we each had a personal Jiu-Jitsu journey, and it was not about rank or promotions. Some people advance quickly; some people take awhile. We all have differing backgrounds in martial arts, athleticism, and fitness, and we all have varying learning curves. People also have different schedules. Some people can train every day and others only once a week. For these reasons, the coach emphasized the importance of not comparing yourself to others or focusing on the next belt. He would remind us to come to class when we could, train hard, and do our best, and the rest would fall into place when the time was right.

Yes, I believed this wholeheartedly, but not deeply. Each day I was able to train, I was simply thankful to have made it through another class—because my measure at the time was just to participate in the world again, to be consistent about something. I wasn't thinking about rank or promotions because I only thought about life one day at a time—just moving forward for twenty-four hours. That was my status quo for a year and a half. If I thought too far ahead, I would fall apart.

The anticipation of significant dates or holidays would trigger terrible anxiety. Carly's birthday and the day she died are only one week apart in April. My anxiety would start to creep in around the middle of March. By the first week of April, I would have trouble sleeping, start eating poorly, and start drinking more, and I would become “the weeping woman.” A song by the Fray (Carly's favorite band) would play, and I would cry. People sent cards and emails and texts, and each one was bittersweet. I was glad they remembered her and me, but each one was like a little dagger into my heart, just tormenting me with how much I missed her. For most of April, I felt like crap. I wouldn't train much because physically I felt ghastly, and emotionally I wasn't sure I could keep it together for an hour and a half. If I let my mind wander to my grief, I would start crying. And there's no crying on the mat. That I might not be able to keep it together just made me more anxious.

It was probably close to my second year of Jiu-Jitsu, three years after Carly's death, that I began to realize that I could shrug off some of the weight of the world that kept me yoked. I can recall a speech of sorts I gave at a fundraiser for The Carly Stowell Foundation. It went something like this:

People who have known me for a while know that I am prone to curious etiquette. I have a Happy Birthday banner that hangs across a beam in our living room—everyday—for years. A few times I started to take it down, and then I'd begin to feel a little blue. I'd think, “It's somebody's birthday today, and won't they be sad if they don't have a banner?” And so the banner stayed there. I would also send thank you cards to my friends at Thanksgiving, usually enclosing a small rock or trinket that made me think of them. I would write a memory I shared with them inside the card and tell them how thankful I was to have them in my life. Well, I stopped doing that after Carly died. I quite simply did not feel thankful for any part of my life anymore. It felt like my grief was a heavy stone, and I was being crushed underneath it. It was hard to breathe or move under the weight of it. Yet it protected me.

After a while, I was able to crawl out from under the stone. I could breathe more easily. Still, I felt like I had picked up the stone and put it in a backpack that I carried everywhere. Grief “had my back,” but not in a good way. I could move, but grief still weighed me down.

And now, I finally feel like I can take that stone out of my backpack and leave it for a while. I can rejoin the world, lighter and for longer than before. And for this, I am thankful. Thank you for helping me move the stone. Thank you for carrying the backpack when I could not. I'll be writing those thank you cards once again.

I had made it through two Aprils with a gi on. And each one was a little easier. I still “fell off the rails,” but each time I fell a little less far. Other people started to point out to me the mileage I was adding to my journey. I remember last fall, one of my colleagues tentatively said, “Stowell, you seem different.” I replied, “Yeah, I feel like I can think clearly for the first time in a long time.” My doctor (who did not know me pre-grief) said, “You have a joie de vivre I have never seen in you.” I felt healthier, stronger, and more confident, and I said, “It's the Jiu-Jitsu.”