Teri Johnson, as told to Kyle Munson

This story first appeared on stage May 11 at the Des Moines Storytellers Project: Parenthood event at Living History Farms in Urbandale. The Des Moines Storytellers Project is a series of storytelling events in which community members work with Register journalists to tell true, first-person stories live on stage. An edited version of the story told by Teri Johnson of West Des Moines, the mother of Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson East, appears below.

Shawn, my daughter, made it pretty clear to us very early that we were going to have a unique journey parenting her.

She was on the fast track, just so incredibly active even as an infant. She started walking when she was 9 months old, she never crawled — didn’t want to bother with that. She was about 10 months old when I was getting ready for work one morning in the bathroom off of our bedroom, and doing my hair and my makeup, finishing up. I just get this really creepy sensation down my back, and I turn around and there stands Shawn. I thought she was happy in her crib entertaining herself, and she scaled the crib, climbed out and came in to join me.

Everything was fast and furious with her. She was about 3 years old when we put her in her first gymnastics class, and that was literally out of desperation. At home she was a terror, and she was a danger to herself. She would stack her toys and try to get to a higher level, and it was awful. So we put her in this little gymnastics class, and it was just immediately a hit for her.

I’ve said before that if it’s possible that an individual and a sport were made for each other, I truly believe that Shawn and gymnastics were made for each other. I had no goals, no aspirations. I just wanted her to be somewhere where she was safe, and somebody else could corral it and somebody else could be responsible for it.

It started in these teeny tiny classes. And we took her a half hour one day a week. And we’d sit and watch because it’s cute and that’s what you do. We all know where it took her. It just evolved and it just kind of got on a fast track. Every day she learned something new. She was just greedy for physical activity. She progressed, and she did really well, and then she would do even better, and then she would win. She pretty much won anything she ever competed at. She has a definite drive for competition. It seems innate in her.

'A roller coaster that won't slow down'

She started slow in competition. We would go on weekend family trips and stay in a hotel and play in the pool, and she would do her little competition, and we’d drive back home. Then it just got bigger and bigger. It got to the point to where it started at a half hour one day a week, and then the last two years going into the Olympics it got to where she was going four and a half hours six days a week.

You start out watching because it’s cute and fun. And then we ended up watching and sitting through that entire practice, because after school I’d get her and get her a snack and rush her to the gym, and literally if I didn’t sit there and watch her I didn’t get to see her that day. You’re kind of on a roller coaster that won’t slow down. She just kept being so successful. That’s what she wanted and so, therefore, that’s what we wanted for her.

But the more success she had, unfortunately, the less we would get of her. She was 11 years old when she qualified to the United States national team. After the qualification, and she’d made the team, we go into this room and we have this meeting. Immediately they have plans for her, and they give her an assignment as a national team member to Belgium. And I’m like, "Omaha is my comfort zone."

Along with her being a U.S. national member there’s stipulations and rules that we can no longer travel with her to her competitions, nor can we stay in the same hotel. And there’s a no-contact rule that they don’t want you talking to your kids or having anything to do with them during competition, because it’s a distraction.

Well, my husband and I always felt like it was very, very important, especially when they’re taking her out of the country, to be wherever she was at. She was 11 years old! I joked to her coach, “I don’t even let her go to the bathroom at the mall by herself. I don’t know how to handle this. I don’t know how to do this.” So I trusted him, and I knew he would take care of her.

But we did want to be wherever she was at. So we traveled — we shouldn’t have, but we did. We went to every competition that she ever went to. We would sit in the stands. We joked that it was kind of a “Where’s Waldo?” She would always find us in the stands. And that’s all we would see of her, from the stands. There’s no hug, there’s no “Oh, honey, you did great.”

And because of all the activity and the bigness of it all, when she would come home we never celebrated. We kind of never did anything. She wanted to come home and have homemade pancakes and sit and watch TV with us and do nothing. And so that’s what we did. When she would go do her big things, then she would come home and we would just do our nothing. Which was great. We loved it. Because we got her back.

2008 Beijing Olympics

It led her to the Olympics. In preparation in getting her to that stage of competition they took her to camp and she was at camp for two weeks prior to going over to Beijing. And then she was in Beijing a week before we got there. So by the time we saw her — and she was on the competition floor when we got to see her — it had been 28 days. And it gets to the point where you’re just kind of desperate to be a part of your child’s life. Because life is taking her away from you with her success. Which, again, that’s not something we ever wanted to begrudge or be sorry about, because the things she has gotten from her success have been wonderful.

I don’t know if everybody saw where they threw me up on TV and I’m balling my eyes out in Beijing. I don’t know what anybody’s thinking I’m feeling at that moment. But truly the only thing I was feeling was relief is that it was all over and that we would get her back.

'We're not going to get her back'

She’s home about a week after the Olympics and then the U.S.A. gymnastics, they put on this tour to showcase the gymnastics team and their success, and they make a lot of money doing it. The girls love it. It’s the first freedom they’ve had in a very long time. They’re eating pizza and hamburgers and stuff they’re not supposed to, and going at it.

So she’s on tour, a 40-city tour, she was gone for about three months. It was like the second week into the tour and my husband and I are back home sitting at a local restaurant. I think it was Legends out in West Des Moines. We’re sitting there, we’ve ordered, and we’re just kind of looking at each other. And we both know we’re sad she’s not with us. I said to my husband, “You know, I really felt like we would get her back, but we’re not going to get her back.” And it was just a hard realization, because she’s only 17 and we kind of felt we needed catch-up time.

While she’s on tour she gets a call from “Dancing With the Stars.” So as soon as she gets back from the tour then she has to go — well, she wants to go, duh — be a part of “Dancing With the Stars.” The show had at that point never had a minor on the show. So the only way she could be on the show is if she had a chaperone 24-7. So I packed up my stuff, and I moved to out to Los Angeles with her to be her not-want-to-be-there mother-roommate. She’s ready to fly right now, with her freedom and stuff. Mom wasn’t really kind of equated into that flight.

During rehearsals and preparation for the show, they rehearse six days a week, I had to be there six days a week. Her partner totally didn’t get it, was not happy with it. But because of the way they film, there’s cameras everywhere. And I can’t be seen or heard because I’m not part of the show. And at these dance studios you just never know what you’re going to get. I sometimes would sit behind a little half wall or in their storage room, or if they had a break room, or if they had an office, for six, seven, eight hours and entertain myself. I read a lot — a lot. I read the entire “Twilight” series. It was pretty good.

'Absolute peace' and anticipation

We get through “Dancing With the Stars.” She wins, because that’s what she does. It brings, of course, then more attention and opportunity, which is wonderful. She has filled and emptied her bucket list five, six times. She’s still doing it.

She moved to Nashville. She claimed it was for college. I think it was the boy. And it was the boy: They got engaged. And she ended up getting married in Nashville, just last year in April. We planned the wedding not in the way I had envisioned it. I figured it was going to be here, and it was just going to be low-key and cool. It wasn’t. It was big. It was beautiful. We planned a lot of it via Skype, because I was here and she was there. I went out a couple of times and we managed through things.

She married an absolutely unbelievably wonderful man. I couldn’t be happier where she is at today in her life with her husband, knowing she’s absolutely happy, successful, still grounded, still humble, sweet, kind-hearted, fun-loving, and she’s married somebody that I know is going to take care of her. And I’m at absolute peace knowing where she’s at and what she’s doing.

And I’m just waiting now: She says that she will not raise her kids anywhere but Iowa. So I can’t wait for her to get back, and that’s what I’m looking forward to next.

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