‘Perseverance’

Lessons From The Skatepark

“Bowl!”

And down into it he goes.

Flying up and out the other side, he’s attempting to stick a new trick.

He continued this up and down, in and out of the bowl for a solid 2 hours…still not stomp the move he was trying to master. In good spirits, he kept trying and never gave up until we had to leave to do errands.

Not new news, Luke is our ‘hospital kid’.

It’s also not fake news that Jeff and I have silent bets as to what injury will occur or what day of the week we will end up at emerg.

As I started writing this blog this morning, I was watching Luke at the skatepark. Coming out of that session unscathed, I thought we were good for once as far as injuries go. We arrived home only for him to then attempt one last trick, swinging and slamming his scooter into the side of his kneecap. That dropped him…hard…onto the driveway and it left a decent mark too.

After he had laid there a while and colour came back to his face, I helped him upstairs and threw an icepack on leg. Luke chilled out and then we went on our way for the day.

After dinner we returned to the skatepark and back at it he went.

In and out of the bowl — flipping, twisting and turning. He still didn’t land it.

All of a sudden I looked and he was on the ground holding his ankle in pain and laying there a while…again. (***side note: it had to have really hurt for him to go down in tears in front of other people at the skatepark because he usually won’t show his tears to others***)

“Here we go again”, I thought…it’s broken or torn.

After carrying Luke to the bench area, having a closer look and feel and getting him chill on the sidelines for a bit it was obvious he got lucky this time. Kinda shaky, he got back on his scooter and kept trying the same trick.

Leaving the skatepark about an hour ago, he still hadn’t landed it but he had a good attitude albeit a sore foot.

Even though he didn’t land it today, one thing for certain is that he had perseverance and kept a good attitude. I was proud of him.

While we were there an older teenage gal was trying a few tricks on her skateboard. She was really good. We watched her ollie up onto a higher section, ride it and pop off the other end.

She was ecstatic.

What we didn’t know before she had mentioned it was that she had been working on doing that move for two years.

What served as a reminder to all of us…especially Luke as he is learning patience, resilience and to discipline his disappointments with his skatepark efforts…is that if you never give up, if you persevere through failure — success is inevitable.

PS: Luke is still sore in many spots (which is pretty much a daily occurrence with our “full send” child) but thankfully we got away without a trip downtown today. #winning.

-Becky