Letters to a Young Gymnast

Table of Contents

 

 

 

“A story told simply and elegantly of a young gymnast's progress to Olympic triumph, how it happened, and what happened after.”

—
The Globe and Mail
(Toronto)

 

“Comaneci comes across as a very thoughtful, determined person who combined her extraordinary skills with lots of work.”

—
Library Journal

 

“Besides dispensing advice through letters . . . the former Olympian shares the ups and downs of her life as an athlete.... She makes it clear that what happened to her as a child and teenager led inevitably to the next period of her life, when she had to find a life outside gymnastics.”

—
The Vancouver Sun

 

“[A] riveting autobiography.”

—
School Library Journal

 

“Comaneci, as few will forget, scored seven perfect 10s at the Montreal Olympics in 1976. In [
Letters to a Young Gymnast
, she] reveals how a Romanian school girl went from climbing trees to the medal podium and the covers of
Time
,
Newsweek
, and
Sports Illustrated.
”

—
Ottowa Citizen

 

 

 

 

 

—Nadia

■
Introduction

Dear Nadia,

Tell me everything . . .

 

Dear Friend,

I don't know everything. You have asked me to begin a correspondence in the hope of learning about my life. I am reticent. I've never written about myself before because there is not enough time in the world to spend it looking back.

You believe that there are answers in my past to the questions of dedication, strength, courage, pressure, goals, dreams, triumphs, challenges, and love. I look at those words and they slide from the page into chapters that I rarely visit. But you tempt me to recall forgotten stories and relive moments of happiness and hell.

I will try to answer your letters with the hope that my experiences may help you in some small way. Remember that they are mine and you must build your own story with both care and wild abandon.

 

Nadia Comaneci

■
The Dream

I have a recurring dream. In it, there are two young girls with long brown hair floating over my bed. They wear gauzy, white nightgowns that fall loosely around pale legs and delicately pointed bare feet. I lie on my back beneath the covers watching them hover. They are
lovely creatures, and I am not afraid; I am mesmerized, and I long to join them because they are cloaked by soft light, graceful and pure. Their lips, pale rosebuds, curve into smiles; their brown eyes are wise; their delicate fingers cup together, holding a hidden promise.

And then the dream changes. The girls hover closer, and their mouths open into cavernous, yawning black holes. Suddenly, all I can see is darkness. All I can hear is the roar of a vast ocean. I am cold; I am afraid; I am alone. I know that the blackness will swallow me whole, but my bones are leaden and I cannot move from my bed. I try to call out for help, but the scream catches in my throat. The terror tastes like salt and blood.

And then the dream shifts. I see tiny bursts of color flutter out of the darkness. The girls drift overhead; I am still shrouded by the void, but sapphire, ruby, and amber-colored butterflies with transparent wings dart at the edge of vision . . . first one, then two, then many more. They look like stained glass—delicate, fragile, and breathtaking. The black begins to recede.

I peer into the girls' cupped hands. They are empty, and yet, they hold everything . . . promises, opportunities, desperation, love, angry words, delight, Romania, deception, rag dolls, fairy dust, clarity, applause, my grandmother's smile, tears, fear, red ribbons, barbed wire, practices, curses, surprises, my mother's touch, elation, America, music, the scent of vanilla, refusal, a first kiss, dances, whispers, apple trees, my brother's laugh, the scrape of chalk against my palms, airplanes, sunsets, disappointment, skin and wind and waves, rivals, survival, upheaval, broken words, magic, the feel of my father's hugs, chocolate, passports, fishing trips, funerals, birthdays, proposals.

Sometimes in my dream, fear paralyzes me, and I cannot reach for the girls' hands. The darkness grows again, and I am swallowed and wake gasping for air, my hair drenched with sweat, my heart skipping and racing and grasping. I feel lost then and lonely in my failure. I feel like a child, a teenager, a young woman who never had the opportunity to control her destiny and learned nothing from the years of frustration, confusion, and desolation. I see the ghostlike girls fade from my vision and their almond-shaped eyes fill with regret.

Sometimes, though, I take the girls' hands and gently open them; I let life slide through their fingers because there are moments when I have the courage to risk letting go of everything even though I understand the danger of doing so. Then my bedroom fills with butterflies and bursts of electric color, and the darkness recedes. I am wrapped in the knowledge that I cannot always choose dreams but that I can be lost and found, afraid yet brave, and make each moment my own.

Dear friend, in your letter you asked about my dreams, childhood, and early life as a gymnast. Perhaps you expected short and simple answers. Maybe you wanted to hear about my first perfect score of 10, gold medals, defection . . . I promise all that will come. But my life, like your own, is much more complex than a simple list of failures and accomplishments, and I will not cheat you of your answers despite some discomfort on my part in the telling.

I have come to realize that these letters are not only for you. There is a catharsis that comes from recalling the memories I had carefully packed away in the attic of my mind so that I could go on with my life unburdened by the remembering. You have asked me to shine a light
into that dusty place, and I am finally ready to do so. Bear with me. Write me again, and take my hand when I falter because I cannot make this journey alone. I do not know you, but you will know me.

Do you know what they say about stories? That there are always three versions—yours, mine, and the truth. This is mine, and I hope that what I have seen and understood and what I choose to share during our correspondence is valuable for you. Everyone has a few secrets. I will tell you some of mine, but I will keep a few as well because they are either personal treasures or too painful to recall and because I worry about distressing the living or the relatives of the dead with tales that cannot be altered to protect friends and families.

You ask who I am. I was born in Romania on November 12, 1961, and named Nadia Elena Comaneci by my father, Gheorghe, and mother, Stefania. My name literally means “hope,” but my grandparents always believed it should have meant “luck.” When I made my loud entrance into the world, I had a rare and large birth defect—a sac of liquid on the top of my head that looked like an enormous blister. The Romanian doctors were stymied and told my mother that they weren't certain I would survive and that if I did, I'd have mental handicaps. The doctors stuck me with countless needles, but the problem remained.

Finally, my grandmother instructed my mother to take me to church on Sunday; before the priest entered, she was to carry me over the threshold three times. She did, and when she woke the next morning and took me from my cradle, the birth defect had disappeared. It was probably a coincidence, but that's
her
story and the first lucky thing that happened in my life.

The second lucky incident occurred a week after I left the hospital. My mother was staying at my grandparents' home so that they could help her take care of me. There was a big storm the first night, and the roof was covered with giant slabs of ice. The next day, while I slept in a tiny bed in the kitchen because it was warmest in there, my parents and grandparents repaired windows and leaks. Passing through the kitchen, my grandfather decided to pick me up. A second later, the roof collapsed onto the bed. I would have died if he hadn't been holding me at that moment. It was probably another coincidence, but I grew up Romanian and in the Orthodox Church—and we have a tradition of weaving stories into gifts from God.

My mother once told me that the first piece of meat I ever ate was part of a bird. She believes that is why I loved to be outside, climb trees, and jump from heights without getting hurt and why I was able to soar as a gymnast. She also believes that's why I did not break my neck or drown when I fell off a 5-meter-high bridge as a toddler. By that point, my brother, Adrian, had been born, and he was seated in a stroller while I walked by my mother's side over the bridge. Somehow, my foot got stuck in the wooden slats, and I flipped and fell over the edge and into thigh-deep water.