Courage to Soar (with Bonus Content)

by Simone Biles

  A couple of days later, when Shanon started talking about trying to reunite the family, I didn’t know how to feel. Ashley and Tevin wanted to be with her, and as much as I’d grown to love and depend on my grandparents, I wanted to be with my brother and sister. I didn’t know the world without them. I felt so torn.

  Grandpa talked things over with the social worker, because he was worried about how Adria and I would manage if things spun out of control again. “What if we send the two older ones back and keep the younger ones here,” he suggested. “If things start to unravel, at least Ashley and Tevin are old enough to call us.”

  The social worker told Grandpa that he needed to keep us together, which meant we’d either all go back to Columbus or we’d all stay in Spring. To my grandparents, the answer seemed simple: all four of us would remain with them. But over the next few months, it became more and more clear that Ashley and Tevin wanted to be back with Shanon, and so the decision was made for all four of us to return to Ohio. I could tell that Grandma and Grandpa were sad to see us leave, but they prayed for the best.

  “I’d formed such a bond with the children,” Grandma said years later. “It was so hard to say good-bye. I remember we were trying to give them all advice about things, especially the older ones, right up until the last minute. My heart was going out the door with them.”

  The following winter, Grandpa flew with us back to Columbus. The strange thing was we didn’t go straight to Shanon’s house. Instead, child protective services placed us back in the home of the foster family we’d been with before. The social worker wanted to oversee our transition and make sure Shanon was actually up to taking care of us.

  We never did go back to live with Shanon, because she kept failing her drug tests. The social worker told her that if she could just pass a few tests in a row, they’d let us move back in with her. But she couldn’t seem to stay sober. Finally, after another year of this, child services terminated Shanon’s parental rights and put us up for adoption. Grandpa wanted all four of us to come back to Texas, but Ashley and Tevin didn’t want to leave Ohio; they wanted to stay close to Shanon. After a lot of back and forth with child services and our extended family, it was decided that Ashley and Tevin would move to Cleveland to live with Grandpa’s older sister, Aunt Harriet, and she would adopt them. As for Adria and me, we would return to Spring to live with our grandparents. This time, for good.

  In bringing us back to Spring, and then adopting us, my grandma was doing what she’d seen her own parents do. Grandma was born in Belize City, Belize, where she also grew up. She had two sisters and a brother, and they all had a comfortable upbringing as the children of a senator who was also a deacon in the Catholic Church. Her family prayed the rosary together every day, led by her father, and they attended church every Sunday. Because of her father’s government position, and the grocery store that her mother ran in the downstairs of their home, Grandma Nellie always had what she needed. But she had cousins and other family members who weren’t as fortunate. Her mother would take these relatives into their home during hard times. My grandma remembers growing up with lots of cousins around, and they’re as close as siblings to this day. I’m sure my grandma got her big heart and devotion to family from her parents.

  Grandma left Belize and came to America when she was eighteen. She’d been accepted into a nursing school in San Antonio, Texas, and her parents were doing well enough to pay for their children’s college education in the States. My grandpa came from a world very different from Grandma’s, but with the same strong values and love for family. Grandpa is one of nine children, and he grew up in the housing projects in Cleveland. He joined the air force soon after he graduated from high school, and he and my grandma first met when he was stationed at a military base in San Antonio. My grandma was in her junior year of studying nursing at Incarnate Word College, and she’d gone with a girlfriend to a party. Grandpa was at the same party with his brother, and they all started talking. And you know what’s funny? My grandma ended up marrying my grandpa, and Grandma Nellie’s friend ended up marrying Grandpa Ron’s brother!

  When my grandparents met, Shanon was five years old and she’d been living with my grandpa in Texas. My grandparents wanted to adopt her, but of course, Shanon’s mom wanted to keep her daughter close. Soon after the wedding, Shanon’s mom sent for her to come back to Ohio. Now, all these years later, my sister and I were reversing that journey and heading from Ohio to Texas.

  Adria and I came back to Spring on Christmas Eve 2002. I was five and my sister was three. Grandma was a little worried about me at first: She noticed I was a lot more guarded than before. I was still bouncy and hyper, and I still acted like a little mother to Adria, but I was less talkative. Years later, Grandma told me that she thought it was because I was afraid to trust the situation, because we’d lived with them before and then they’d let us go. She thought I might be wondering whether she and Grandpa were going to send us back to Ohio again. All I remember is being really glad to be back in Spring. It was like my own Christmas miracle.

  Even though my grandparents started the process of adopting Adria and me as soon as we got back, we still called them Grandma and Grandpa. For the next year, social workers made regular home and school visits to make sure we were bonding properly. Meanwhile, Grandma enrolled our family in counseling to get us through the transition and bring us together. To my grandmother, making us her own children meant she would lay down her life for us without even thinking about it. She wanted us to know we could rely on her and my grandpa one hundred percent. And you know what? I did feel that I could depend on them. At a certain point, we all broke through to a deep-down understanding that we were a family. We belonged to each other. They were mine now, and I was theirs, even though the court didn’t formally approve our adoption for another year.

  On November 7, 2003, our family went down to the courthouse to finalize the adoption. In the judge’s chambers, there was Grandpa, Grandma, Adria, and me (Ron II and Adam were both away at school). I was now six and Adria was four, and we were both wearing dresses. Back then, other than my baby dolls and Barbies, I didn’t like girly-girly stuff. I would roll out of bed in the morning and grab my favorite pair of overalls, then head right for the trampoline in the backyard. But that day in court, I was wearing a very girly dress in my favorite color, blue, with my hair done up in two braids held by matching plastic barrettes. My little sister was dressed like a mini me, except her dress was pink, which is still her favorite color. My grandma had on her pearl earrings and a gold chain necklace, and my grandpa wore his usual work clothes. Something about the way we all stood with our lawyers and the social worker in front of the judge told me this was a very important day.

  That evening, after dinner, Adria and I got up from the table to head upstairs and get ready for bed. That was our usual routine.

  “Good night, Grandma!” I called as I was skipping out of the kitchen with Adria on my heels.

  Grandma, who was at the sink rinsing dishes to stack in the dishwasher, stopped and looked at us. She had a funny expression on her face, which made Adria and me pause in the doorway and look back at her, waiting.

  Grandma wiped her hands on a dishtowel and said, “Simone, Adria, come here.”

  There was something different in her tone. I didn’t know what to expect.

  “You know, girls,” she said as we stood in front of her, “we adopted you both today. So I’m your mother now, and he”—she pointed at my grandpa, who was wiping the table mats—“he’s your father.”

  Grandpa paused what he was doing, stood up straight, and smiled. I just glanced from one to the other, my eyes big and round. What had happened in court that day suddenly became clear.

  “Does that mean I can call you Mom and Dad?” I asked.

  “It’s up to you,” my grandma said, one hand cupping my cheek, the other one smoothing Adria’s hair. “Call us whatever you want to. Now go to bed.”

  The two of us scampered upstai
rs without another word. But when Adria went into the bathroom to brush her teeth, I stood in the middle of our bedroom, my hands pressed against my temples. I was hopping from one foot to the other and jumping up and down, so much excitement was flowing through me.

  Mom. Dad. Mom. Dad.

  I kept whispering the words, getting used to the sound of them. Finally, feeling as if I would burst, I ran back downstairs and to the kitchen.

  “Mom?” I said, standing in the doorway.

  She looked across at me, her lips twitching like she was trying not to smile.

  “Yes, Simone?”

  I turned to where Grandpa was putting away the table mats.

  “Dad?”

  “What is it, Simone?”

  “Nothing!” I said, squealing and bouncing up and down gleefully.

  I had done it—I’d called them Mom and Dad!

  I turned without another word and raced back up the stairs. In my room, I flopped backward onto my bed and let out a happy sigh. Adria and I were finally and forever home.

  Shanon still calls Adria and me on birthdays and holidays, but we don’t have much contact beyond that. Some days, I feel a little bit sad for her. It’s not that I ever wanted to go back to live in Ohio, but I do wish she’d been able to make better decisions when she was younger. I’m glad that she’s now working so hard to stay clean. Every now and then, I think about how my life might’ve been different if Shanon had been able to keep us with her. If I’d stayed in Ohio, would I have ever gotten into gymnastics? Probably so, because I truly believe I was supposed to take this journey, which means God would have made a way. But when it comes to how things turned out, I’m not sorry. I’m part of a beautiful family that is closer and more loving than any I could’ve ever chosen. As the woman told my grandma—now my mom—in the lunch break room all those years ago, God never makes a mistake.

  CHAPTER 4

  Doing Backflips

  “The unexpected is usually what brings the unbelievable.”

  —MANDY KELLOGG RYE, WRITER

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed one of our day care teachers opening the closet where our bright blue “Kids R Kids” T-shirts were neatly folded on a shelf. The minute she started taking piles of the shirts into her arms, I ran to her side, and so did the other kids, almost seventy of us crowding around. The teacher handed out the shirts, and we quickly shrugged into them, screeching excitedly. We all knew what blue T-shirts meant: field trip day! Where, I wondered, would we be going today? I stared across the room at my big brother Adam, looking for a clue.

  Ron II and Adam had both been teachers at the day care Adria and I attended. That summer, Adam was working at the center part-time while going to community college, where he was studying business. I soon noticed that Adam’s eyebrows were all scrunched up as if he was trying to work out something in his mind. I followed his gaze and saw that he was scowling at the pouring rain outside the window. I watched as he and our other lead teacher huddled together with the four assistant teachers. Finally, they called all the kids over.

  “Okay, everyone, listen up,” Adam said. “We were supposed to go to a farm in the country today. But since it’s raining so hard, we’re taking you to a tumbling gym instead.”

  Adam was the one who’d suggested Bannon’s Gymnastix for the field trip. It was just down the street from the day care, and he knew his little sisters would enjoy it way more than going to, say, a museum, where we’d have to be quiet and orderly—two things that never came easy for me! Also, it didn’t hurt that I absolutely loved doing backflips and somersaults. My brothers actually used to bounce me off the trampoline to see how high I’d fly and how many flips I could do before I landed. It drove our mom insane. I was so small and light that she was worried they’d bounce me so hard I’d get hurt. But I’d laugh and tell her, “Mom, it’s fun!” I loved roughhousing with my brothers, trying out different moves, and figuring out how to land on my feet.

  By this time, I’d become a world-class climber. At home, I liked to see how fast I could crawl up and sit on my brothers’ shoulders while they were standing. And one of my favorite games was to make a running start and grab on to their outstretched arms to see how many pull-ups I could do before I’d drop back down and keep running. I must have been an exhausting six-year-old! Adam probably figured I’d be easier to supervise while tumbling around and doing my usual backyard tricks on Bannon’s enormous spring floors. I could land with no danger of injuring myself on the padded mats or in the squishy foam pits.

  The minute I got inside Bannon’s, I saw all kinds of equipment made for just my size—low beams and low bars and floor vaults that I was eager to try. I watched a gymnast do a back handspring skill on the vault, and I immediately wanted to try out the same move on the kiddie springboard. I let loose, going from one apparatus to the other, trying to copy skills I saw the older gymnasts practicing in the gym. After a while, Adam came over to me.

  “Simone, do a flip,” he said. “Let me see you do a flip.”

  “I’ll do one if you do it first,” I challenged him.

  “Okay,” he said. He did a backflip, but instead of landing on his feet, he crashed right onto his butt. When he saw me laughing at him, he was like, “Okay, smarty-pants, if you can do it better then show me.”

  My brothers know how much I love a challenge, so Adam probably knew I’d go for broke. I did a backflip with a little twist on the layout and then I did it again, landing upright on my feet.

  Right then, a lady from the gym came over to talk to us. We’d seen her at the receptionist’s desk earlier when we first came in. The whole time I’d been jumping and flipping and swinging from the low bars, she’d been watching me from across the room.

  “My name is Veronica,” she said to Adam, “but people call me Ronnie. Is this your daughter?” she asked, nodding toward me.

  “Whoa! I’m no one’s dad,” said Adam, who would soon turn nineteen. “This is my little sister.”

  “Has she had any formal gymnastics training?” Ronnie asked.

  “No,” he said. “Not a single class.”

  While they were talking, I got bored and began to do some more flips into the foam pit. Ronnie immediately started coaching me on the proper form. “Point your toes, Simone,” she called out to me. “Keep your knees together.”

  Turning back to Adam, she said, “Do you want to sign her up for classes?”

  ”I’m not the one to make that decision,” Adam told her. “You’re going to have to talk to our parents.”

  That’s how I arrived home from our field trip with a letter inviting me to enroll in gymnastics or tumbling classes at Bannon’s.

  “Mom, they gave me this letter for you,” I said, placing the sheet of paper on the kitchen counter. I tilted my head to one side and added, “I really want to go back to that gym.” Then I ran up the stairs to my room to wash up before dinner.

  Mom didn’t see the letter as anything special at first. She figured that all the kids who visited Bannon’s probably got such flyers as part of the gym’s marketing strategy. But that letter was special in another way: because of it, a lightbulb went off in my mom’s head.

  “Never in my wildest dreams did I think to put the girls in gymnastics,” Mom admitted years later. “Even though they would jump on that trampoline for hours on end, the sport just wasn’t part of my experience. Growing up in Belize, we’d watch gymnastics when the Olympics came around, and that was all.”

  Now, suddenly, Mom realized that recreational gymnastics might be the perfect outlet for her daughters—especially for me, her little bouncing bean who jumped and climbed on everything nonstop. She called me back downstairs and sat me down at the kitchen table, across from her.

  “Simone,” she said, “this letter you brought home, they’re asking if you want to do gymnastics or tumbling classes.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked.

  “Well, as far as I understand it, gymnastics is all four events that y
ou saw today—the bar, the vault, the beam, and the floor—but tumbling, well, I think you just get to tumble. You just do the floor separately.”

  “I want to do all four,” I announced.

  Mom signed Adria and me up for recreational gymnastics classes that very week. She enrolled us in forty-five-minute sessions twice a week, and she bought us colorful leos from Bannon’s gift shop on our first day. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I was finally learning the proper way to do all those skills I used to improvise on the trampoline. Adria was more lukewarm about the whole experience. She just went along with me.

  Ronnie was the recreational gymnastics coach. Halfway through our first class, she called over another teacher to run the session for a few minutes so she could find her daughter, Aimee Boorman, who was one of Bannon’s team coaches.

  “You have to come see this little kid,” Ronnie told Aimee. “She’s a natural.”

  Aimee had been involved in gymnastics since she was six, which meant Ronnie had also spent almost three decades immersed in the sport, first as a gymnastics mom and later as a coach. Ronnie knew gymnastics. She told us later that she just “had a sense” about me.

  But Aimee was busy coaching and blew her off.

  “Mom, I can’t right now,” she said.

  Ronnie insisted. “Aimee, you want to see this kid. She has . . . something.”

  “Mooom,” Aimee said, sounding exasperated. “Okay, okay, in a bit.”

  Aimee never came to see me that day, or for the next two classes. Then toward the end of my second week, she was walking through the gym to the area where the team gymnasts practiced, and she noticed me. “I saw this teeny, petite thing with rippling muscles who was just full of energy and couldn’t stay still,” Aimee said later. “She was sitting on the floor with her legs out in front of her. Then she put her hands at her sides and pulled up through her stomach, just on her hands, and I thought, Hmm, six-year-olds shouldn’t be able to do that. Later, during that same class, she was on a mat waiting in line for her turn, and the mat was four inches thick, and she did a seat drop and bounced right back up to her feet as if she was on a trampoline. I was like, Okay, that’s not normal.”