Jump, Savta, Jump

I’ve got jump ropes on my mind. I woke up this morning with an old elementary school primer running through my head.

"Jump, Savta, jump."
"Look, Jerry. See Savta jump."
The next line should have been:
"See Savta jump high."

In my imagination, however, the word "high" was crossed out with a thick black marker.

Let's just say that if you blinked, you probably would have missed the exact moment both of my feet were technically off the ground. 

The funny thing is, this isn't my first attempt at becoming a jump-roper.

JUMPING ROPE WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG

About ten years ago, when I was still young (I was only sixty), my granddaughters Arielli and Galya decided that I should learn to jump rope. I honestly can't remember why. Did they want me to have as much fun as they were having? Or did they already understand the importance of building bone density? (Um…no…What four- and eight-year-olds think about that?)

Really, I don't remember. I'll have to ask them.

I do remember that I occasionally succeeded in getting my feet over the rope. But apparently, I wasn't determined enough, because eventually we became interested in other things and my jump-rope career came to an end.

Fast-forward ten years.

JUMPING ROPE WHEN YOU’RE OLD

Now, at seventy, with my jumps and hops becoming more difficult (read: almost non-existent) in tap class, I decided it was time to try again.

So, I poured out my non-jumping heart to my amazing physical therapist, Dara Saker, and she looked at me and said one simple word:

"Jump."

I stared at her face with a very puzzled expression, as if she had suddenly started speaking Chinese. What? "Jump."

Who tells a seventy-year-old to jump?

"I can't jump," I told her. She looked at me confidently. "You can, and you will."
"I really don't think I can."
"Jump. Jump right now. DO YOU WANT TO JUMP IN TAP OR NOT? Jump!"

So I jumped. Thirty times. Not high. In fact, you probably couldn't slide a penny underneath my feet while I was theoretically off the floor. But I jumped.

According to Dara, that counts.

Then she hung two thick exercise bands from the chin-up bars, instructed me to hold on tightly, and told me to jump again. It was almost like jumping on a trampoline. 

Apparently, I was smiling. "You're having fun, aren't you?" she asked.

Now, everyone knows that you should never admit that anything in physical therapy is fun, because that is the last time you will be allowed to do it.

But between us...
...it was kind of fun.

On Friday, while preparing for Shabbat, I was alone in my kitchen. So I jumped. Thirty times. Still not even close to penny height. But I jumped.

And then came my next lesson in jumping.

MORE JUMPING

Today, during warm-ups at Senior Women's Dance, our teacher Judy Kizer called out slowly: 
"Jump out, hands down."
"Jump in, hands up."

A studio full of women in their sixties and seventies froze. The expressions on our faces looked exactly like those crazy-eyed WhatsApp emojis. Was she telling us to do jumping jacks? Apparently, she was.

We were awkward. We looked at one another. We laughed. But we tried. Because if Judy said we should do it, she probably believed we could.

Two times. Not twenty. Two. But we did. And that was enough.

Somewhere between Dara's "Jump!" and Judy's "Jump!" I realized something. Maybe the hardest part of jumping isn't getting your feet off the floor. Maybe it's believing that you can, or not yet believing and trying to do it anyway.

So I've made a decision. I'm buying a jump rope.

When I mentioned this to my nine-year-old granddaughter, Yumi, she immediately informed me, "Savta, you need to get a jump rope with weights."

How does a nine-year-old know about weighted jump ropes? I have no idea. But I have learned that children often know things we adults haven't figured out yet.

By family vacation, IY"H, maybe my granddaughters and I will all be jumping together. They'll soar over their ropes. I'll celebrate every glorious penny-height jump. And while they laugh and jump, I'll sing the old jump-rope song from my childhood, “On the mountain, there’s a lady. Who she is I do not know...”

They will have no idea what I'm singing about. They will probably think Savta is silly. And they will laugh.

And maybe that's what growing older gracefully is really about. Not jumping as high as you once could. Just never deciding that you are finished jumping.

See Savta jump.