PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

My mother has been a spinning and aerobics instructor for over 25 years now, and for the 18 years that I´ve lived to see it, she has carried a black Nike gym bag around with her. This gym bag is a small plain bag with drawstrings and a big pocket in the front of it, kind of like a black trash bag with the Nike logo on it. It is a pretty small bag, but you’d be surprised how much stuff my mother can fit it in. You would think that the contents of this bag would be a water bottle, towel, house and car keys, iPod, earphones and maybe some kind of healthy, gluten-free granola bar my mom’s been obsessing over (she has a new favorite one about every week). But this gym bag holds much more than that, actually, it can hold about pretty much everything. I think my mom is secretly Mary Poppins because somehow she manages to have every single object you could ever need in that  17" x 13" pouch. As I said, ever since I can remember my mother has been a gym addict, as a consequence, this bag has been present in my life for every remarkable life event, always providing some kind of object to save the day. When my little brother was born, my dad had to bring the bag to the hospital because that’s where my mother kept the book that she was currently reading. When I had my first dance recital (and I was late for it) my mother pulled the bag out of the trunk, pulled a hairbrush and hairspray out of it and finished doing my hair all under two minutes. When I learned to drive, the bag was in the passenger seat with my mother and it provided us with the CD that made my mother’s screams much more bearable. When I had my high school prom, the bag was sitting in the bottom of my stairway and my mother pulled a bobby pin out of it to fix a strand of my hair. Of course, this bag is not magical or anything, what’s really magical is my mother’s dedication to my brothers and I. Like every mother, she’s always looking out for us and she’s always prepared for whatever we could need. I know for sure that no matter what life throws at me, I could go to my mom and her black Nike gym bag and she would have exactly what I need, whether it is a bobby pin, a granola bar or a hug.