Masking Gold

There are two gymnastic moves on the uneven bars named after me. The first is called “Comaneci Salto.” Salto is a general term meaning somersault. To perform a Comaneci Salto, the gymnast begins in a support position on the high bar. She casts away from the bar and performs a straddled front somersault and regrasped the same bar.

Gymnastic moves are rated from the easiest to the most difficult: An A move is the easiest, then there are B, C, D, E and Super E moves. The Comaneci Salto is rated an E move. Even now, many years after the 1976 Olympics, very few gymnasts attempt the Comaneci Salto because it is so difficult.

“Letters to a Young Gymnast” by Nadia Comaneci, Olympic-gold champion, 1976.

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Dear Alex,

What is really important in your life has much to do with what is really important to another. Your biggest treasures rely and thrive on the biggest treasures of another.

Say, all at once, you have a stroke for reason incompatible with anticipation. Let’s turn the saying to happening: you - yup, you, Alex - falls this morning from bed to paralysis, rolling out of deep sleep for a deeper sleep still in wakeful throttle.

For once to all, your words become transfixed on grunts rather than screen, fingers affixed to rigidity, saliva leaking past navel. You curl on couch or tile, a cautionary skeleton to onlookers, object or reject in gossip, your mind limp as petal.

Now your state of living, static in flesh but lively at stake, rests on the status of your relationships with others, your values conjoined to their virtues. What is key to your happiness must be fitting to their readiness for you. Your treasures are theirs.

Say, not a stroke but a slip. That’s you, Alex, the writer, father, beloved and thorn - you have a gap, a lisp, a hole exposed and imposed on another in exponential grief, the subject of ridicule rid of manly mercy, your importance in function or fiction and religiosity questioned by those of personal importance. Sure, they cannot be untainted judges of your slip but their judgement infiltrates your valuables and validity.

Most of us will mount nowhere close to titanic peaks where moves are titled after our names as Olympic-gold gymnast, Nadia Comaneci has sustained. Our steps and missteps seem singularly bound to our values and vales of misfortune, our treasures presumed isolated from others.

When something is really important to you, you will endure the most complex moves to preserve it. Do it alone and you risk masking gold. Comaneci had a coach who shared her story and broke treasures present now for you to relish.

What moves are you going to make to protect your treasures beyond pandemic limits?

Yours, Kate