Present in the Past

Alicia Wolverton
Sep 8, 2018 · 2 min read

I’m at the gym a lot. Typically three to four times a week, you can find me tracking miles in place on the elliptical or trying to remember to breath as I hoist some kind of weight over my head. However, while my body is physically in one place, every now and then a particular movement or specific motion launches my mind back to a place of the past.


Six years ago, I was hoisting a different kind of weight. Body dripping in sweat from the oppressive heat of the indoors in summertime, air filled with clouds of chalk. I’m still in the gym, but not the one that most people attend. This one is solely dedicated to the workouts of gymnasts.

At 14 years old, this is year 10 of this sport for me. Nine levels, countless competitions, and hours upon hours tracked inside the confines of a warehouse-like room filled with equipment and mats to the edges, I am in a world I know as well as the chalk filled lines on the back of my hand.

I don’t lift weights in this world. I lift my body weight, around the bars, about the floor, over the vault, and across the beam. Every movement becomes so ingrained that the muscles are like simple brains, remembering and recording how to function. Years of movement floating around the over-toned surfaces of well worked muscles.

And then it ends. The muscles do not move in the same way they used to. They still remember, but they can no longer bring the memories to fruition. It is time to let go of the world of gymnastics.


So I switch gyms. I start lifting real weights. Heavy ones that attempt to keep my muscles in their previous condition. But they don’t know these movements. They’re foreign and the memory capacity is so full. Nothing is quite the same, even though the results might look similar.

But every now and then, there is a slight spark. A roll of an ankle or a dip into the chalk bucket before lifting a weight that triggers the muscles out of their slumber and back to the other world. When I pull myself up on the gym bar, the muscles in my hands are really holding the chalk-caked surface of an uneven bar. When I pin my legs down to do sit ups, my shins are feeling the hands of a teammate holding my legs down so that I do not fall off the vault as we finish a conditioning set. When I stretch out my wrists, I remember rolling them before taking a deep breath and flipping down the balance beam.


I am not sure how to stay rooted in the present. I am not sure how to keep the memories my muscles hold from taking me back to the earlier half of my life. I am not sure how to move into new motions without bearing witness to the past.

Perhaps with time muscles forget and memories are lost. Or maybe slapping chalk on one’s hands or rolling one’s wrist will always be a journey back.

Alicia Wolverton

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Writing in the Now