How we play the game

“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”   I know from long experience as a mother on the sidelines how easy it is to say those words to our children — and how, although we really, really do mean it, we also (perhaps secretly) really want them to win, too. The truth is, we would prefer them to have it all, the grace under pressure, the good sportsmanship, and the sweetness of a hard-won conquest.

He looks so much like his dad, my son Jack.  I see it in the way he walks, tilted forward a little, across the tennis court; the way he tosses the ball high for a first serve, the  squint of his eyes.  When the two of them play against each other, there is more than tennis going on–youth against age, raw power versus long experience, desire coming up against cunning. To call it an Oedipal drama might be to overstate the case, but not by much.  The son seeks to vanquish the father; the elder concedes to his progeny and, in the process, confronts his own mortality.  “It’s only tennis,” I want to say, “lighten up.”  But mostly they are serious, each intent on proving something to the other.  By the time spring break was over, Jack had a blister on his palm the size of a silver dollar. Steve took a handful of Ibuprofen and claimed victory.

The father-son practice wasn’t for naught, though.  Jack got back to school and played his way to a number six spot on the varsity team.  Saturday he had a match just an hour from home and, somewhat to my surprise –for Jack is not a kid who generally wants his parents in the audience–he invited us to come and watch him play.  It was raw and windy in the morning, gray clouds scudding across the sky, not a great day to stand around outside for a couple of hours.  And we had house guests to think about, Steve’s brother from Minnesota, here with his daughter to visit college campuses; should we drag them along to a high school tennis match on a blustery April afternoon?  But they insisted on coming, too, glad for a change of pace and a chance for the cousins to see each other.  We arrived armed with snacks and cameras, hats and gloves,  wearing the winter coats I’d pulled back out of the storage closet where I’d optimistically packed them away last week, when it was 86 degrees.

Jack was playing his way to a doubles win as we arrived. There was just time for a sweaty hello peck on the cheek and a Clif bar, before he rewrapped his grip and headed back out for his singles.  We wandered over to the farthest court, the no-man’s land of the number six slot. Before long, the sun came out, the day turned warmish, then warmer still.  Coats came off, sunglasses went on, Caitlin began snapping pictures. Jack leapt high, hit well, scored a point. “Nice shot,” Steve murmured, resisting the nearly irresistible urge to coach. The perfection of the afternoon seemed to materialize out of nowhere–the delicately budding trees and the tender green grass of this early, astonishing spring; the sun heating our backs, the pleasing view of distant mountains against a sky of purest blue, the thwack of balls and the encouraging shouts of boys cheering one another on.  My husband, niece and brother-in-law, all four of us there together, just for the fun of it.  Family ties.

Sometimes I am so afraid for this son of mine, for all the pain and heartache that will no doubt be part of his future.  But for a while,  during what was turning out to be a very long tennis match indeed, I managed to put a hold on my fear, allowed myself a brief vacation from worry, remembered to simply love the moment.  No need right now to think about the ghosts of the past, the dream of an unknowable future; just first serve, second serve, deuce, game point.

Out on the court, Jack was holding his own against a fleet-footed Japanese boy named Kevin. Perhaps he was hitting a little too hard, given the wind; perhaps Kevin’s serve wasn’t quite up to par.  Hard to tell who really had the edge.  Kevin took the first set, but just barely.  Jack fought his way back in the second, won it all in a long, well-played tiebreaker.  By then, all of the other five matches were over, both of the teams sitting court side, watching.  The sun sank lower; the coaches came out and conferred with their players.  It was late; the match would be decided by a ten-point tiebreaker.

Jack was always our too-emotional little boy; the one who would lose his cool, upend a board game in the final moments, stomp off in tears when things didn’t turn to his advantage.  Even now, he struggles not to lose focus, to hang in there, not to give up too soon, not to let his demons get the better of him.  “How’d you play,”  I will ask him after a game with his dad.  “Aw,” he says in all honesty, “I beat myself.”

But two and a half hours into this match, my son was playing the best tennis of his life.  He missed, and soldiered on.  He scored, and continued.   First serve, second serve, deuce, ad-in, game point. Again and again and again,  point after nerve-wracking point, the tide turned one way and then the other.

The crowd–and by then it was a crowd–cheered louder.  If ever there was a moment to become unglued, this was it.  Two exhausted players, everything on the line, a tiebreaker that seemed as if it would never end as ten points turned into twenty. Yet they each dug deep, found second winds, and then thirds,  locked in a duel that had, right before our eyes, turned epic.  And somewhere along the way, as two hours became three, the outcome really had ceased to matter.  The boys made their own calls, trusted each other, even seemed to establish, as time went on, a kind of fraternity.

By the end, everyone was hollering, “You’ve got it, hang in there Jack, it’s yours.” Meanwhile, Kevin’s friends urged him on in Japanese, as he stretched his cramping calves, shook his arms out, got ready to serve again.  But the truth was, they were both beyond hearing any of us. The game had transcended itself, been transformed from a competition between two strangers into an intimate shared experience, one that had taught each of these determined young athletes something new about themselves.

In the final minutes of class, my first yoga teacher always said the same words to us, as we lay resting in shavasana: “We show up, burn brightly in the moment, live passionately, and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.”

Step back and let go.  How hard is that?  For me, most of the time, quite a challenge.  For my son, who often lies awake till the wee hours of the morning, processing the day, an ongoing struggle.  Which is why what happened next both moved me to tears and left me full of hope for Jack’s nearly adult self.

He lost the tiebreaker.  When the last ball went long, he turned to us smiled, shrugged his shoulders, then walked to the net to shake Kevin’s hand.  There was an instant then, when just maybe they caught one another’s eye, acknowledged what they’d just been through together–who knows?  All I could see was that it was Jack who, caught up in the emotion of the moment, suddenly raised his arms, Jack who reached  across the net to give Kevin a hug, a pat on the back. And then, somehow, he found the energy to run across the empty courts to where his team was waiting for him, ready with high-fives all around. “Victory to our spirits,” as Rolf would say.  “Peace to all beings.”