Oh, What We Won’t Do For Our Kids! I Am Now A Certified Rock Climbing Belayer!

You know those articles you read like…”Ten things no one will ever tell you about parenting”, or “Life lessons, I learned from my children”? Well, here’s one I’ve never read in any that I’ve seen, and it’s something I never gave a single thought to before becoming a parent: It’s the fact that I have had to face or inevitably hide all of my greatest fears!

I first became aware of this when my son was just a toddler and a bee was hanging out around his mouth while he was eating a piece of fruit.  He was far enough away from me that I couldn’t just shoo the thing away.  All I could envision was him biting down on the bee so my panic set in and I screamed at the top of my lungs for him to drop the fruit.  The result?  A boy who is extremely afraid of bees!  (and spiders thanks to me yelping a few times over those as well) Ok, realizing I screwed up with him, I made a huge effort with my second child to pretend that all critters were really exciting.  The result? A girl who thinks bugs are cool, and lets all sorts of weird things crawl on her arm.

I have since had to brave many situations on their behalf.  The most recent one was completely accidental.  On a recent getaway, sans husband who was traveling for work, there happened to be a rock climbing gym right beside our hotel.  The kids really wanted to go, but when we went to check it out we discovered that you had to have your own person in the group who could belay (be the person to help the climbers get up the wall, and lower them back down).  They told us we weren’t out of luck though, because I could just take a quick class and learn how to do it.  The whole thing wouldn’t take more than 45 min.  Perfect!

 

 

Just as I started to get the hang of all the knot tying and safety checks, the teacher threw me for a total loop!  “Time to climb the wall!”, she said gleefully.  Of course! How could I have never thought of this?! In order to learn how to belay, we would have to practice being the climber.  I never intended on climbing, because I have a pretty big fear of heights, and those walls are really high.  To make matters worse, she said we would have to pretend to fall on the way up to make sure the belay student was paying attention! My kids were watching, and at this point there was no turning back, so I had to do it.  I had to get the certificate so they could have a fun day of climbing.  They knew I was afraid, and cheered me on the whole way.

 

 

I did it! Complete with the fake fall! No … I did not make it all the way to the top of the wall, but I did what I had to do.  Of course, when it was my turn to belay, I was stuck with the biggest guy in our group thinking there’s no way I’d be able to support him.  It turns out the height and weight of the person doesn’t really matter, so I passed that part with flying colors and was even told that I’m a natural!

 

 

I felt like some kind of warrior at the end of that day.  I conquered something new I wasn’t even planning on doing, and enjoyed an amazing day of climbing with the kids.  My only disappointment is that I didn’t get some kind of big certificate for it, or a cool card to carry around in my wallet to flash at people.  ‘Certified Belayer Here!’