Balance Beam

“Balance is different for everyone - for me, it comes from listening to my kid sing like this …” — BC

Annie Shipp fell off the beam in a gymnastics competition when she was 11, twisted her ankle and didn’t get back on until last year. Shipp, now a mom of two in her 40s, helps run a medical practice in the Midwest and put one of those low-to-the ground wide-footing balance beams inside the office. It meanders through the hall a bit like a centipede, navigating down the center of a long, wide hallway separating several exam rooms. “It was supposed to be a bit more symbolic, but now most patients and the staff take turns on it. Not the seniors,” she laughs, “but most of the adults and always the kiddos.” Annie always asks her patients “what don’t you have that you need” and more often than not, in no uncertain terms, they say “balance.” I suppose we all need that as we meander through life. “Maybe what balance looks like changes but it’s still essential to health,” she says. As we finished our interview I was struck as Adeline, an older lady from this small Indiana town, stepped on the roughly 12 inch high beam and with the help of her son put one foot in front of the other, wobbling a few times, but finding her way. “If you raise kids you know about balance – it’s really all you hope for for your kids,” Annie says. I know that is true for my own daughter whose balance comes from singing as she does here, though admittedly I think hearing her sing is probably my balance too.