Maybe Nadal After All

As it turns out, my kid, the great tennis player, is also an amazing writer. Below is an essay he wrote for English class, reprinted with his permission, of course. I've added a couple of editorial comments (in parentheses) for clarification.

Growing up under a sick (disgustingly good, for anyone over 15) athlete puts a lot of expectations on you. Everyone thinks you’re the next version of him. I’m sure Michael Jordan’s boys live in a dark shadow. Some rebel against the idea, and some take it as a challenge. Which is exactly what I did with tennis. It wasn’t planned; I just fell into it.

My mom played tennis in our country club and decided to take me to a clinic. I started playing on a monthly basis, which turned into a weekly basis and, finally, daily. As I progressed, people told me about a place where could really improve. This is where I met Murphy.

I walked up to the court where a teenager was playing better than anyone I had ever seen up close. Murphy was his coach; I instantly asked Murphy to help me.

He was more like a friend then a coach, and my game improved rapidly. Before I knew it, I lived in cheap hotels and was in a new state every weekend (playing tournaments) and out of school at twelve every day. Leaving school early was the coolest thing that had ever happened to me.

Or so I thought.

My best friends became just friends and my friends became just people in the hallway. I wasn’t up-to-date with the latest fashion unless it had to do with a tennis racquet. I had joined the Murphy Payne Witness Protection Program.

After a year, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to put tennis to the side and have more time for friends.

A year has passed, and I’ve led an extremely social lifestyle. I go to school full time and hate it. And as I sit wandering where I would be if I hadn’t quit, I remember what Murphy used to say: “Do you know how many friends I have that I knew in high school?”

I always said no because his point was obvious. He wanted to show me that friends didn’t matter.

Friends do matter, right? They’re the ones who pick you up when you fall. Your brother from another mother. But will I know them ten years from now? Will I still be hanging out with them on weekends?

Of course not. I have big plans for myself. Which makes me think: am I going to be a professional friend?

So as I sit in class realizing how productive the past year could have been, I find myself daydreaming of winning a title. If I had to choose, I’d rather know my buddies on the professional tennis tour than my old high school pals.

I raise my hand to go to the restroom. Not because I need too, but so I can text Murphy.


Mom's note: As much as I would like to think I'm the "sick" athlete/parent, I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to me. See my last post for an explanation.

Nadal? Not at All

My kid is a great tennis player. And I’m a champion tennis spectator. We make a great pair, this mom who loves tennis and loves her kid and the kid who burns through a pair of tennis shoes every three months when he’s training hard.

Well, we make a great pair when he’s playing and I’m watching. Recently, though, I pointed out that I’ve spent the equivalent of a Mercedes on his tennis lessons and that it should merit me a few free lessons from him.

He graciously took me out to the courts and spent a couple of hours working on my game. Finally, he shook his head in frustration and gave me his assessment:

1. My grip is screwed up. For those who don’t play tennis, it means I hold the racquet wrong.
2. My serve is horrible. Mostly, that’s due to the fact that I hold the racquet wrong.
3. I’m not very coachable. In other words, I wasn’t getting what he was trying to teach me.
4. Basically, as a tennis player, I suck.

After his assessment, whatever game I did have was shot. Every time I served, I heard his voice saying, “You’re not holding the racquet the right way.” In fact, I even double faulted an entire game with his voice echoing in my brain.

Every shot, I heard him telling me I was holding the racquet wrong. I got so confused I couldn’t tell the difference between what was my wrong way and what was his right way.

But the new season started yesterday. And I was in the lineup. In fact, I was playing a position higher than I’ve ever played in my life – all with a screwed up grip and a hideous serve. I had to suck it up and get out on that court and just play the best I knew how.

We won.

Granted, I was playing with a really great partner. And granted, she’s the reason we won. But to my credit, I didn’t cause us to lose. In spite of me, we won.

Let me say it again: we won. And it felt great. I walked just a tiny bit taller for the rest of the day. And of course I let my kid know about the win.

Last night, after I brushed my teeth and washed my face, I walked into my closet and pulled my pajamas out of the drawer. I pulled my sweatshirt off and then peeled off my tennis top. And that’s when I noticed that my tennis skirt was on backwards.

Now, I realize that tennis skirts can get all twisted around. But this wasn’t just a tennis skirt. It was one with the compression shorts built into it. I don’t know how, but I wore that sucker backwards all day long and never even noticed.

Did I mention that we won? Even with my screwed up grip and my hideous serve and my backwards skirt?

I’m going to have to wear that skirt backwards for the rest of the season.

Mentoring the Mistress

Not long after I filed for divorce, I took a trip with my sister and her twins, Faith and Grace, who were four at the time. My job, riding shotgun, was to keep the Disney movies playing. Since my children are out of the Disney stage, I’m a little out of touch with the current animated superstars, so they attempted to educate me. My sister described the little fish Dory in Finding Nemo.

“What did Dory say, girls?”

“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!” they yelled in unison.

Just keep swimming. It’s the perfect divorce mantra.

On the same trip, we made the requisite toy-store stop at one of those outlet mall junk stores that sells the toys the big guys can’t unload. Grace picked up a Barbie doll called “Erica,” the spitting image of the other woman, the one I'd dubbed the "moderately intelligent Latina" after I discovered my husband's AdultFriendFinder stating he liked Latinas and that intelligence was only "moderately important" to him. Erica even had the same waist-length kinky, streaked hair.

I tried talking my niece out of Latina Barbie. I offered to buy her the store, but she was hung up on “Erica.” So I grudgingly paid for the trashy doll. We got out of the store, and Erica’s clothes promptly came off. And then I was ordered to put her dress back on. Great, I get to see Erica’s Latina titties. I was happy to note that they were better than the set my husband’s new hottie possessed.

“Now brush her hair,” Grace ordered.

“Oh, sweetie, I hate to tell you, but her hair’s tangled. I’m going to have to rip out a few chunks.”

Of course, Erica’s at the bottom of the closet by now, facedown and naked. Her hair’s been cut off with a pair of fingernail clippers. She’s wondering what happened to all the love and attention she was promised at the time of purchase. And Ken’s busy writing his next AdultFriendFinder ad.

A couple of weeks after Erica, I stumbled across a book on the paperback table at Barnes & Noble. Becoming Latina in 10 Easy Steps sounded like the self-help I certainly did not need, but a morbid sense of curiosity mixed with a demented sense of humor demanded the purchase. The author’s recommendations: date Mexican men, learn to cook Mexican food, and mentor an at-risk Latina.

I suppose I could go out with a Mexican man (Rafael Nadal is Latin, would he count?), and I already cook a mean fajita. The suggestion that caught my fancy, however, was the mentoring.

Suppose I meet and mentor my husband’s Latina. I could introduce her to my three teenagers, the crazy dogs, the parasite-riddled cat, the pet snake, and the Lithuanian exchange student. Then I could show her the toenail clippings he leaves on his nightstand for me to discard. I could teach her how to change the sheets when he comes in so drunk he wets the bed. And then she could retrieve his underwear from the front yard after the dachshunds pilfer through the gym bag he left in the garage and literally air his dirty laundry in front of the whole neighborhood.

I could set her alarm for six o’clock every morning to make the kids’ breakfast and pack nutritious lunches. Meanwhile, his ass is still snoring . . . and most likely not in her bed. He’s been out all night with some other little Latina who’s the backup to the backup gal.

I’d say she qualifies as an at-risk Latina. But I'll pass on the mentoring and the attempts at becoming Latina. Being me is good enough for me.

Acting Squirrelly

Ten minutes after Morgan’s grandmother and I hugged her goodbye and left her in the massive Third Avenue North Dorm at New York University, I opened my purse to discover that I had some of her important documents.

We were already in a cab bound for our hotel, and she didn’t need the documents immediately, so I promised to take them to her the next evening, after she returned from the day’s Welcome Week activities at Madison Square Garden and after I finished watching the day matches at the US Open.

Now, according to my son, whose tennis lessons have cost me the equivalent of a Mercedes, I “suck” at tennis. But I’m quite possibly the best in the world at watching tennis, especially in beautiful weather. It was a spectacular day. John Isner, the former University of Georgia star, won his match. Rafael Nadal and his muscles meanered past me as I sat eating lunch. I saw James Blake take the first two sets of his match.

At the end of Blake’s second set, Morgan called to say that I needed to vacate my expensive seat at the US Open immediately to go search my hotel room for her lost credit card.

“But I straightened up the room after you left, Morgan, and I didn’t see your credit card.”

“Just go look, Mom.”

“Can I wait until James Blake is finished playing?”

“I’m really worried that my card got stolen. Please just go look now.”

I left the US Open, warily trudging past the huge signs warning that there was no re-entry after I exited the grounds. And of course, as soon as I passed the point of no re-entry, I got a text from Morgan saying she’d found the credit card.

But she still needed her opening week schedule and vouchers. So when the shuttle from the Open dropped me off at my hotel, I jumped into a cab and told the driver to take me to Third and Eleventh.

I got to her dorm, walked into the lobby, and called to tell her I was there. She came downstairs, took her papers, and thanked me.

“Do you want me to take you to dinner?” I asked, fully expecting her to jump at the invitation. Her response brought back memories of a little squirrel I hadn’t thought about in years.

When we were teenagers, my brother, Beau, found a baby squirrel in the woods. He brought it home, and my mother helped him bottle feed the tiny, hairless rodent, much to the consternation of our dachshund, Tubbs. It was against the natural order of things, heretical even, for a dachshund’s family to harbor a squirrel, the bane of every dachshund’s existence.

Beau named the squirrel Sammy, and he grew into a fine-looking adult squirrel who seemed to love living in our screened porch. He spent his days jumping from the porch swing to the screened sides of the porch and climbing up and down the screened walls. He loved my mom and my brother, perching on their shoulders to eat and cocking his cute little head sideways when they talked to him.

But one day my parents broke the sad news to Beau that Sammy was grown. It was time to for him to make his way in the wild. They took the squirrel outside to the woods behind out house, and they set him down. The second his little feet hit the ground, Sammy took off.

So yesterday when I offered to feed her, Morgan tilted her head to the side, considering my invitation. And then she said, “Well, I already kind of had a papaya smoothie, and my friends are waiting for me upstairs. So I guess not.” I hugged her goodbye and watched her disappear back into her dorm.

And like Sammy the squirrel, my girl never looked back.