the Olympic Moment Wednesday February 24, 2010

And the knitting with the Olympians continues…

While Bode Miller and the tiara’ed Julie Mancuso step up to the podium and celebrate (and chew, Bode!), my fingers have been flying! Now at the half-way point (oh-oh should be more) with only days to go, it grows and grows, both bigger and smaller.

The thrill of Victory: seeing the texture pattern take shape within the form of the garment itself.

The agony thereof: having to rip back 8 really long row last night when I discovered I was not even following My Own Pattern. It was Late; the brain was was struggling to maintain on fumes.

And I ripped and put all those stitches back on the needle and when I laid my head on the pillow, the eight rows had become ten before I drifted off to dreamland…

To say what I’m doing in comparison to the athletes on the mountain tops is as heroically large, is, of course, absurd. But, as I keep seeing the drama unfold, the behind-the-scene warm-ups, the husky bold chatter of the coaches in the background to pump up the skier right before they launch out of the gate; the collapses at the finish in the cross and the soft, personal close ups in the kiss-n-cry, I see how it’s really much much more than any medal or finish line.

The olympic moment is actually the moment the person steps up to the starting line and wills themselves into the ether of the future, come good come bad.

It’s the attempt itself. That’s the heart of it, at least to me. It’s the thing that’s made this very real and inspiring in a way that has followed me from these games and become a path worth following.

For every first place, there are all the hundreds of others who try. The unseen or non-media celebrated who walk right up to that incredible wall of pressure that is the Starting Line. Imagine it. I did and it rang in my ears.

In my mind, they are the winners; they are the people who’ve made sacrifices and trained to the empty stands, who don’t have the endorsements and spacey commercials, who’ve gone home when the sun’s still up and risen before the dawn: to Try.

Seeing all of the finishers who don’t medal with faces filled with exuberance and joy in the attempt is the thing that’s come away with me.

Thinking it would be easier to quit is not an option; knowing it is harder to go the distance is the reward, even knowing you might have to dust off. To Try Again.