{"id":193,"date":"2010-04-12T21:05:46","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T21:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/2010\/04\/12\/how-we-play-the-game\/"},"modified":"2010-04-12T21:05:46","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T21:05:46","slug":"how-we-play-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/how-we-play-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"How we play the game"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/span>\u201cIt\u2019s not whether you win or lose, it\u2019s how you play the game.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0 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<\/em> the sweetness of a hard-won conquest.<\/p>\n

He looks so much like his dad, my son Jack.\u00a0 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\u00a0 squint of his eyes.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The son seeks to vanquish the father; the elder concedes to his progeny and, in the process, confronts his own mortality.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s only tennis,\u201d I want to say, \u201clighten up.\u201d\u00a0 But mostly they are serious, each intent on proving something to the other.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The father-son practice wasn\u2019t for naught, though.\u00a0 Jack got back to school and played his way to a number six spot on the varsity team.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And we had house guests to think about, Steve\u2019s 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?\u00a0 But they insisted on coming, too, glad for a change of pace and a chance for the cousins to see each other.\u00a0 We arrived armed with snacks and cameras, hats and gloves,\u00a0 wearing the winter coats I\u2019d pulled back out of the storage closet where I\u2019d optimistically packed them away last week, when it was 86 degrees.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 We wandered over to the farthest court, the no-man\u2019s land of the number six slot. Before long, the sun came out, the day turned warmish, then warmer still.\u00a0 Coats came off, sunglasses went on, Caitlin began snapping pictures. Jack leapt high, hit well, scored a point. \u201cNice shot,\u201d 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.\u00a0 My husband, niece and brother-in-law, all four of us there together, just for the fun of it.\u00a0 Family ties.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 But for a while,\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s serve wasn\u2019t quite up to par.\u00a0 Hard to tell who really had the edge.\u00a0 Kevin took the first set, but just barely.\u00a0 Jack fought his way back in the second, won it all in a long, well-played tiebreaker.\u00a0 By then, all of the other five matches were over, both of the teams sitting court side, watching.\u00a0 The sun sank lower; the coaches came out and conferred with their players.\u00a0 It was late; the match would be decided by a ten-point tiebreaker.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t turn to his advantage.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 \u201cHow\u2019d you play,\u201d\u00a0 I will ask him after a game with his dad.\u00a0 \u201cAw,\u201d he says in all honesty, \u201cI beat myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

But two and a half hours into this match, my son was playing the best tennis of his life.\u00a0 He missed, and soldiered on.\u00a0 He scored, and continued. \u00a0 First serve, second serve, deuce, ad-in, game point. Again and again and again,\u00a0 point after nerve-wracking point, the tide turned one way and then the other.<\/p>\n

The crowd–and by then it was a crowd–cheered louder.\u00a0 If ever there was a moment to become unglued, this was it.\u00a0 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,\u00a0 locked in a duel that had, right before our eyes, turned epic.\u00a0 And somewhere along the way, as two hours became three, the outcome really had ceased to matter.\u00a0 The boys made their own calls, trusted each other, even seemed to establish, as time went on, a kind of fraternity.<\/p>\n

By the end, everyone was hollering, \u201cYou\u2019ve got it, hang in there Jack, it\u2019s yours.\u201d Meanwhile, Kevin\u2019s friends urged him on in Japanese, as he stretched his cramping calves, shook his arms out, got ready to serve again.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

In the final minutes of class, my first yoga teacher always said the same words to us, as we lay resting in shavasana: \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Step back and let go.\u00a0 How hard is that?\u00a0 For me, most of the time, quite a challenge.\u00a0 For my son, who often lies awake till the wee hours of the morning, processing the day, an ongoing struggle.\u00a0 Which is why what happened next both moved me to tears and left me full of hope for Jack\u2019s nearly adult self.<\/p>\n

He lost the tiebreaker.\u00a0 When the last ball went long, he turned to us smiled, shrugged his shoulders, then walked to the net to shake Kevin\u2019s hand.\u00a0 There was an instant then, when just maybe they caught one another\u2019s eye, acknowledged what they\u2019d just been through together–who knows?\u00a0 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\u00a0 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. \u201cVictory to our spirits,\u201d as Rolf would say.\u00a0 \u201cPeace to all beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s not whether you win or lose, it\u2019s how you play the game.\u201d \u00a0 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,35,8,9,10,43,14,16],"tags":[362,391,394,415,479],"class_list":{"0":"post-193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-family-life","8":"category-letting-go","9":"category-parenting","10":"category-parenting-boys-parenting","11":"category-parenting-teens","12":"category-practice","13":"category-soul-work","14":"category-yoga","15":"tag-rolf-gates","16":"tag-spirit-2","17":"tag-sportsmanship","18":"tag-tennis","19":"tag-yoga-2","20":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}