Mobility Gratitude

By Jessica Gingold

Tonight, after too many vinyasas to count, a wobbly, but convincing headstand, low lunges, high lunges, half splits, full splits and the happiest baby pose you could imagine, I was instructed to thank myself. I was told to have gratitude for my healthy body that allows me to do all the physical activities I want. In that moment, I was grateful. I was grateful for the practice I had just had. I felt a deep strength in the prior 90 minutes I rarely encounter in the day-to-day. Still, underneath that gratitude, I felt a sadness. The truth is, my body is limited. I can do yoga, but frog pose hurts. I can walk briskly, but it’s been ages since I went on a run.

From age eight to eighteen, I spent more time gliding on ice than walking. I never fully fit into the competitive figure skating world. My first skating outfits were bought at a dance store from the sale bucket. I had a skating dad, thus I did my own French braids and they were often a little lopsided. One of my early programs was to Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin; even when I would skate a clean program, the judges never really warmed up to it. I did not cut back on school to pursue my dream of going to the Olympics. Still, I was a figure skater.

Skating was my outlet and my balance. I was a straight A student with a social justice activist family. Most minutes of life were full of intense, complex ideas. When I was on the ice, it was just me. I loved the challenge. I was never the best skater, but I was solid. I landed my double axel early, and successfully earned my gold medal in Moves in the Field and Freestyle. When I was 16, I had to write about my spirituality for my progressive Unitarian church group. God is still something I am growing to understand, so at age 16, God was not the subject. Instead, I wrote about the transcendent feeling of landing a clean double axel. So while I was perhaps a non-traditional skater, it was deep in my soul.

When I got to Colorado College, the first order of business was setting up the Colorado College Figure Skating Club. Our club went on to host two regional competitions and several shows. However, I never got to compete freestyle at our competitions.

Small Successes: the Mahala Boys

Mahala is a word deceptively simple given the complex construct it houses. In fact, it is probably this complexity that makes the word so thoroughly Moldovan. In Moldoveneşti, mahala means neighborhood. It is descended from the Turkish (and in turn Arabic) word mahalle, a term introduced throughout the Balkans during the period of Ottoman rule. In literary (i.e. Romanian) Romanian, however, mahala has come to mean more of a slum. Before even arriving at the complexities of the actual Moldovan mahala then, the word itself is a signpost showing the historical fork between Romania and Moldova. It is a very Eastern European dark irony that the word for neighborhood in Europe’s poorest country means “slum” in the same language spoken by its richer neighbor to the west. If Romanians often point out politely that Moldovan Romanian is an archaic and rural dialect, then the word mahala captures the subtler unspoken chauvinism between these richer and poorer neighbors.

Even in Moldova, however, a mahala is so much more than a geographical boundary. It’s an agricultural system, a living map of generations of familial histories, and a complex network for the exchange of gossip and information.

Peace Corps Volunteers, on the other hand, come from outside the community – we arrive mahala-less. So often, we are reminded of the frustrations that implies when trying to work with our adult colleagues – not knowing the right person to talk to in order to cut through the red tape, not knowing a particular history that prevents two potential partners from working together. But our tabula rasa also grants us some potentially powerful freedoms, particularly with students.