Winning Balance Read online

  They saw each other around town whenever possible, even though they didn’t attend the same school. Because her family moved several times, Mom attended three different high schools in the area. Yet Dad was a constant in her life. Mom had a little motorbike, which she would ride four miles to see him. They also sat together at football games, and Mom started going to Dad’s wrestling matches. In 1977, they decided to get married two weeks after Mom graduated from high school. Because she was just seventeen, she had to get her parents’ permission. Needless to say, their engagement raised eyebrows around town. The fact that I didn’t show up until fifteen years later quieted the rumors.

  In the meantime, Dad went to work for a construction company, learning to frame and then becoming especially skilled at interior trim work. Several years before I was born, he and his brother started their own contracting business. Mom, who had grown up helping her mom keep the records for her stepdad’s business, continued working in bookkeeping and accounting.

  Growing up, Mom’s family had moved around a lot, so once she was married, she worked hard to create a warm, welcoming home with my dad. Not long after they married, they got a dog, the first of several family pets. Dude, their first golden retriever, arrived just about a year before I did. He would become one of my first playmates.

  Once Mom was pregnant, they talked about choosing the perfect name. They loved “Shawn,” which was going to be my name whether I was a girl or a boy. If I’d been a boy, I would have been Shaun Douglas, after my dad. However, since I was a girl, I was named Shawn Machel (pronounced like the traditional spelling “Michelle”) after my mother, Teri Machel Johnson. I used to hate my name because the kids at school thought it was a boy’s name. However, I’ve grown to love its strength, uniqueness, and meaning: God is gracious.

  By the time we left the hospital, my parents had the healthy newborn they’d waited so long for. Though they were certainly ready to welcome a baby, Mom was a little afraid. I seemed so delicate and tiny. When she gave me a bath, she was more hesitant than if she had been washing fine china. When she changed my diaper, she was worried she’d hurt me.

  That’s how Dad ended up doing a lot of the bathing and the feeding when we first came home from the hospital. After working all day doing trim work, he would come home and immediately bathe, feed, and take care of me until bedtime. This might explain why I’m such a daddy’s girl even to this day.

  Once when I was still a baby, I was lying on the couch when Dude, who had just noticed movement outside the window, jumped on top of me to get a closer look. Mom was convinced that I’d punctured my lungs and frantically called the doctor.

  “Well,” he asked, “is she breathing?”

  “Yes,” my mom replied.

  “Then,” he assured her, “she’s going to be just fine.”

  After a few months, Mom learned I wasn’t nearly as breakable as she thought. She found that my arms could actually be raised and bent to fit into my tiny clothes. My head survived, even when she stretched the opening of a shirt to fit around it. Bathing me and changing my diaper now came naturally . . . no matter how much I wriggled.

  And—wow—did I wriggle.

  In fact, by the time I was about six months old, my mom began noticing that when I eyed something, I was so determined to get it that I rolled sideways until I could reach it. I completely skipped the crawling stage. When I was nine months old, my parents looked up one day to see me toddling into their room, grinning from ear to ear. I had flipped out of my crib and sauntered to their bedroom. They had no idea how I’d learned to walk.

  I never slowed down after that. Once, I crawled up on the kitchen counter to try skydiving. (Hey, I was little . . . so the counter seemed as high as the sky to me back then.) When I landed, my teeth went through my bottom lip, and there was blood everywhere. But that injury didn’t stop me for long. As a toddler, I would pile all of my toys on the floor as a makeshift ladder to reach the top of our entertainment center. From there, I’d jump onto the red leather couch, pretending it was a trampoline.

  Even more fun than trying these daredevil tricks myself was urging my cousin, Tori, to do them with me. Tori, the daughter of my mom’s sister, is two years older than I am and a bit more cautious. I had to talk her into doing flips over our couch. When she stayed over on Saturday nights, we’d sleep in the bunk beds in our basement. I loved to do flips and pull-ups on them, as well as hang from the bars. At first Tori just watched, but before long she was doing them with me.

  Tori and I also loved to play outdoors. Sometimes we dressed up and acted out stories; other times we would take turns tying a rope around our waists and pulling each other in a wagon. Since I was smaller and younger than Tori, I’d also jump on her back and let her carry me around.

  I’m an only child and Tori’s brother is eight years older, so I guess it’s not surprising that we not only played like sisters—we also fought like them. I admit I was usually the instigator. When we’d be playing in the basement, occasionally I’d hit her lightly, waiting for her to respond. Almost always, she’d give me a funny look and keep playing. But I’d go running upstairs, crying that Tori had hit me. Though she was the one who got in trouble, she never held it against me.

  Tori also joined me in my first tumbling and dancing classes. Because I was so physically active, Mom decided she needed to find an outlet for all of my energy. Even though Tori went with me, I had no desire to continue either of those activities. So my mom took me to a local gymnastics center and signed me up. It’s not that she was particularly fond of the sport. She just knew that I needed a large, open (and soft!) place to play. And I loved it. Even though the coaches were very strict, I enjoyed tumbling and running and always had a smile on my face while I was there. For three years, I happily went to the gym at least once a week. My coach told my mom that I was full of energy, but not full of talent.

  Then Mom heard about a new gym that was closer to our home. One day after dropping me off at my gymnastics class, Mom drove to that facility and watched a class through the windows. She was struck by how happy all the young gymnasts appeared and how much fun they seemed to be having. She never imagined that she was staring at my future.

  Lesson I’ve Learned

  Even if you fly high in life, stay grounded. From the time I was very small, my parents supported my daring ventures out into the world, while making home a place I always wanted to come back to.

  Chapter 2

  Finding My Place

  Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

  —Dr. Seuss

  A FEW DAYS LATER, my mom walked me into Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute for the first time. On one side of the large gym, an Asian man was setting up equipment. My mom stopped to talk to the woman in the office, who we later learned was the man’s wife. While my mom asked her about classes, I spotted the uneven bars and ran over to them. I began swinging on them right away, flashing my baby-toothed grin toward the man.

  That man, who would soon become my coach, was named Qiao Liang, but he told us that day that he’d prefer if we called him simply Chow. Eight years before, his exceptional career with the Chinese national gymnastics team had ended, and twenty-three-year-old Chow had to decide what to do next. With images of the New York skyline in mind, he decided to move from Beijing to coach at the University of Iowa. No sooner had he landed on a snowy airstrip in January—with no skyline or even trees in sight—than his new boss, Iowa gymnastics coach Tom Dunn, met him and drove him to the gym at the university. Tom told him to begin coaching the male gymnasts who’d arrived for practice—despite the fact that Chow had just completed a thirteen-plus-hour flight from China and was still wearing the dress clothes he’d traveled in.

  That was not the only shock that awaited him. As an elite gymnast in China, Chow had never had to cook or clean for himself—his daily needs were met so he could focus completely on gymnastics. Now, after years of enjoy
ing the perks and fame of an elite athlete in China, he was suddenly a poor college student in Iowa. He rose at five o’clock each morning to prepare for his English classes at the university. After classes ended in the early afternoon, he coached the gymnasts until early evening. Then Chow headed home to prepare and eat dinner before starting on homework that often wasn’t done until one or two in the morning. After a few hours of sleep, he began the process all over again. Despite the culture shock and challenges in communicating with his athletes, five of Chow’s gymnasts qualified for the national team in his first year. As he coached them to become better athletes, they helped him learn English faster.

  Within a year, Chow was able to focus solely on gymnastics and began coaching Iowa’s women’s team. Not long after, he married his former teammate from the Beijing city team, Liwen Zhaung—or Li, as I call her.

  Chow and Li dreamed of coaching national and world champions, but after seven years at the university, they realized that in order to make that happen, they needed to train and develop gymnasts from a very early age. So they followed their own American dream and opened Chow’s Gymnastics and Dance Institute.

  Within a week of my first visit, I was enrolled at the new gym and hanging on the uneven bars like a monkey. Though I was fearless and comfortable on the equipment, Chow recommended to my mom that I be moved back a few levels so I could relearn some of the fundamentals properly. Though my mom was surprised, she didn’t resist. In fact, she laid down just one ground rule: “I will never make her come here,” she told Chow. “I just won’t. This is supposed to be fun, and we’ll stay here only as long as it’s fun.”

  Thankfully, Chow made it fun. He never told my parents I’d be any sort of world champion. Instead, he told them I had a lot of potential. Other gymnasts at the elite level—particularly in Chow’s home country of China—often train as much as many American adults work per week. In fact, Chow himself was chosen at a very young age to become a champion. At only ten years old, he had left his home and moved to a school specializing in gymnastics.

  Maybe that’s why his philosophy regarding children in the sport was so refreshingly different from many ambitious and successful coaches. He always claimed that no coach can look at a kid when she is six and determine whether she’ll be a champion.

  “You’re supposed to have a real life,” he’d say. “And to have fun.” That may explain why the atmosphere in his gym was so different from the first place where I had trained. At my original gym, we weren’t allowed to fidget. But Chow would let me go off and do cartwheels and flips while waiting in line.

  “Don’t let her get away with that kind of thing,” Mom said one day after arriving early to pick me up and seeing my antics. “She can stand in line like everyone else!”

  “I don’t mind her being a kid,” he assured her. He never minded my playfulness because he knew it wasn’t the result of a lack of discipline. Instead, he saw my high energy as evidence of my desire to better myself, to get on the equipment where the work was done. In fact, he considered my desire to be in motion a benefit, and he focused on teaching me how to concentrate when it really mattered. At the same time, he made sure that I—and all his gymnasts—had plenty of space and time to master new skills.

  While gymnastics was becoming a larger part of my life, my parents were determined that I would have the normal childhood they wanted for me. I attended Westridge Elementary, located near the two interstates that connect West Des Moines to the rest of the country. When I began attending kindergarten there, it was immediately clear that I loved school and learning. I was always the teacher’s pet. My instructors would frequently ask me to help them outside of the classroom. I loved doing schoolwork because I liked to figure things out. My insatiable curiosity led me to read my textbooks like they contained the secrets to life. I was an interesting combination of nerd, tomboy, and girlie girl . . . which, come to think of it, is probably still a good description.

  In the evenings, Mom would take me to gymnastics and watch from the viewing area with the other parents. Even though I’d only started gymnastics because it was a fun and safe place to play, I ended up enjoying it so much that I went several times per week. The more I enjoyed the sport, the more I went to the gym. The more I practiced, the more maneuvers I could do. The more skills I developed, the more fun I had.

  “I made the pre-team!” I told my mom excitedly one day when I was six years old. Unlike toddlers in ballet class, who usually end up in a recital wearing ballet slippers and tutus, kids in gymnastics class do not necessarily get to perform publicly. Competitions are a privilege earned through work, even at a young age. Chow evaluated his recreational gymnasts and hand-selected a group of us to be on the “pre-team,” which was an easy place to begin learning competitive skills. I loved to learn the new routines, though I never considered it “work.” At that stage of life, everything was fun and games. Over the course of the year, I got better and stronger. And when I was seven, I made the team.

  Gymnasts at this point are divided into levels, beginning at 1 and going to 10. Once I mastered a certain skill set, I’d move up another level. When I was seven, I was at level 5, which was the first level at which Chow allowed gymnasts to take part in competitions. By this point I practiced about nine hours a week, mostly in the evenings when Mom came home from work.

  My first gymnastics meet was in Iowa City at the university. I wasn’t nervous at all. When I was waiting to begin my routine, I stood on one side of the beam and the judges stood on the other. Because I was so tiny, I couldn’t see over the top of the beam, so I kept popping up on my tiptoes to see if the judges had signaled me to begin. Though my scores were not memorable, I still remember seeing my mom and dad beaming at me from the audience, along with hundreds of other smiling faces.

  Even the judges laughed at the sight of this tiny, leotard-wearing kid bouncing up and down. Between rotations, they played songs during warm-ups. I danced while I waited, without a care in the world. When it came time to get ribbons, I actually got one—the worse you did, the more colorful the ribbon. So, I took my pretty ribbon and was absolutely thrilled.

  Level 5 introduced me to the joy of competition, yet it also very well might have been the end of my gymnastics “career.” I had begun gymnastics with great enthusiasm and progressed rapidly for several years. However, even though the judges might have thought I was a cute—if short and slightly pudgy-looking—gymnast, they didn’t score me very high.

  In fact, when the season ended, my mom told Coach Chow that she and my dad would be perfectly happy if he decided to keep me at level 5 for another year. Yet this time Chow recommended moving me up. That’s because he and Li knew something my parents didn’t: the skill set at level 5 worked to the advantage of tall, lean gymnasts. But the coaches knew that mastering the skill set for level 6 would require physical power—a strength of mine even then.

  Because of my body type and my frequent workouts at the gym, my muscles were developing faster than those of other kids my age. Given that I was a short kid with huge biceps, six-pack abs, and the name Shawn, my classmates weren’t always sure what to think of me. The boys didn’t like me because they—rightly—figured that I could beat them up. And many of the girls didn’t like me because I looked like a boy and had a boy’s name. I definitely wanted to fit in, but over the course of my months at the gym I’d gotten a little competitive, even outside of my sport.

  “I’m going to win so many awards!” I told my dad one day when I got home from school. Field day was coming up, and I could hardly wait. I’d signed up for all kinds of activities because it was my favorite day of the year.

  “Really?” he asked. “What are you doing?”

  “The one-hundred-yard dash, potato-sack race, softball throw, and pull-ups,” I read from the list I’d brought home. Then I asked him, “Dad, what’s a softball?”

  Within the hour, Dad had driven to the store, bought me a softball, and begun throwing balls to me in the backyard. I ca
n’t remember if I won the softball throw that year, but I definitely won the pull-up competition. My main rival was a little boy who valiantly pulled his chin over the bar with much effort. I’d been doing this at Chow’s every day, so I knew I was going to dominate in that contest. I carefully counted to see how many he struggled to get—nine. So I went up and did ten, without even breaking a sweat. That way I won the contest but didn’t show off the fact that I could’ve done pull-ups until the end of the school day.

  I had two simultaneous, frequently conflicting desires. I wanted to win, and I wanted to be just like everyone else. I didn’t want my strength to artificially separate me from my peers. But I found the cliques at school to be impenetrable. So I did cartwheels on the playground while the other girls ran around in groups and were chased by boys who apparently had a bad infestation of the cooties.

  Once a girl in my class came up to me.

  “Want to be in our group and run around with us on the playground?”

  “Sure,” I said, trying to hide my excitement.

  “Well, we have to vote.”

  By the end of the day—apparently without much deliberation—I got the bad news.

  “Sorry,” she said, though I didn’t think she meant it. “We voted, and they said no.”

  I was always the girl who didn’t fit well into any neat, prepackaged friend group. At school I was quiet, kept to myself, got my work done, and left. But at the gym, I fit in effortlessly. There was something equalizing about wearing those leotards. In school, we always had the popularity contest about who wore what clothing. But at Chow’s, it was so easy. All I had to do was throw on a leotard and put my hair in a ponytail, and suddenly I looked just like all the other girls in the gym. It wasn’t about who was wearing the coolest clothes; it was all about the sport. Those girls at Chow’s were like my sisters. Though we came from different schools, and even different towns, they were my constant support system.