Sorry About The Chunks

We should have cleaned up the coconut water.  Why?  Because it had chunks in it.  It was only a little spill – nothing like my water bottle dumpage onto the leather handbag.  The can of coconut water was sitting on the ground next to the bench.  An errant ball knocked it over.  The contents began to trickle out.  I ran over and righted the can before too much escaped.  We evaluated collateral damage – tennis bags, handbags, coats – and there was none.  So we resumed playing.

I didn’t even think about the coconut water when it was time to leave the court.  I’d forgotten the spill entirely, which seems consistent with the state of my overall mental capacity.  I can’t even remember the score of the game if a particular point goes on too long.  We all picked up our belongings, exchanged greetings with our tennis friends who were taking over the court, and left the club.

When I say “chunks” what I mean is little bits of coconut that are included in this particular brand of coconut water.  They’re not really like the coconut shavings that you’d find on a cake or pastry.  They’re small, white, oddly shaped pieces of coconut meat that, yes, could be mistaken for regurgitated matter if you just saw them strewn in a small puddle of water, especially if the telltale coconut water can was removed from the scene.  Which it was, when we left the court.  The only thing remaining was a little puddle full of chunks.

The next group of players was concerned, but not aghast at the puddle.  This I found out later because I played with them a few days hence.  They know all of us who had just played before them, and they knew that none of us would vomit on the court and just leave it.  I suppose there was a part of them that assumed there was a perfectly good explanation for the mess left on the floor.  But still, they erred on the side of caution and treated it like vomit.  Which is to say, they kept all their belongings on the other side of the bench and expressed a collective disgust among themselves.

And when they finished playing, they, too, left the coconut water puddle untouched.

Even hearing this much of the story, days later, made me laugh. I’m not trying to make excuses when I say that the amount of coconut water that had spilled was small and the chunks were few.  If I had come onto the court next, I, too, would have thought someone had upchucked, but in a small way, like a hairball.

No, no, they told me.  The puddle had expanded – maybe it had seeped into the court and spread.  It was not a small, tidy dribbling as I had remembered.  It was a big expanse of ick.

The third group of women to play on Court 3 that day did not even consider that there might be an innocent explanation for the chunk-ridden puddle they found next to the bench.  I was told that they were absolutely horrified to discover that someone had obviously vomited on the court and just left it there. 

I don’t know who those women are, but I want to let them know we’re sorry.  We should have cleaned up the spilled coconut water.  I don’t know if any of them will ever read this, but I know I would be relieved to learn that something I thought was vile and inconsiderate was really, in truth, only inconsiderate.  And we didn’t even mean to be that.  We simply forgot. 

Food Is ... Not Sex

 Sometimes when Shelley plays, she does this charming little thing where she has us all touch our racquet heads to the net and rub gently back and forth to get good energy into our collective game.  She usually suggests this when someone is playing particularly poorly and thus feeling bad about herself. 

This was the case recently, when Debi the Sub and I were playing against Shelley and Kelley.  Debi the Sub and I were not in our groove and our posture was taking a hit with each point we lost.  Once down four games, we were all droopy and dejected and Shelley called us all to the net for some Tennis Mojo.  We all placed our racquet heads on the net and rubbed them from side-to-side.  Then, in unison, we lifted the racquets off the net and high into the air as Shelley cheered, “Go, tennis ladies!”

“I hate being called a lady,” someone said.  So we put our racquets back on the net and lifted them in unison to the chant, “Go, MILFs!”

However, two of the players weren’t Mothers.  So we decided to modify it to WILFs.  But that made someone else visibly uncomfortable.  So Debi the Sub suggested a whole new tact and we rubbed our racquets on the net and yelled, “Food is Good!” and everyone was really happy and comfortable with that, so we went back to playing. 

We all felt a little like deserters for our unbridled allegiance toward food over sexuality.  We laughed about it, but it was not a mirthful laugh.  We played, but something had shifted. 

Our game did turn around after that chant, but I’m still not so sure it was really worth it.

The Good, The Bad and The Keratin

I just sat down to write about my Keratin treatment.  About how I got it on a whim yesterday at the salon, and how I left the salon with pin straight hair that completely freaked me out, even though my stylist warned me not to judge it until the next day, once it had been washed and some of the natural wave returned.  And about how she also warned me to be extremely careful, in the hours before washing, not to wear hats or use barrettes or even allow the handle of my handbag to touch it on my shoulder because any little impression on it could (and probably would) remain as a permanent dent in the finished product.

I was going to write about how I woke up this morning and washed it, and then spent about seven minutes with the blow-dryer and ended up with a luscious, silky, wavy hairdo that was completely devoid of frizz and made me look like a (middle-aged) Breck Girl.  I was going to recount how I showed up at tennis with my new coif and how afterwards I asked Gina to take a picture of it with her iPhone so I could send it to my Curly Girl Friends so they could see the miracle that had taken place. 

I would have added the part where, embarrassed to be posing for pictures in the parking lot, I yelled out to Melissa on her way in that I had just gotten Keratin, and how Melissa called me a traitor (because she is a Curly Girl) and how I smiled and agreed.  And then how Melissa said she was envious because I would now be taken more seriously, and how Shelley said, “Oh my God, it’s only hair,” and how Melissa and I shook our heads knowingly, indicating that we understood that Shelley was right in principal, but in actual fact, Straight Girls do get taken more seriously than Curly Girls, and wondering whether we should tell Shelley that it’s not because she wears her nightclothes out during the day, or that she didn’t go to Harvard that she doesn’t get taken seriously, it’s because she, too, is a Curly Girl, and that’s just how life is for us. 

I would have tried to capture how this hair treatment unlocked something in me that made me feel more confident and outgoing, funnier and more charming, but I would have stopped myself, thinking that’s silly – hair doesn’t really do all that.

I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to get to any of that, or even if I could have thrown in the line about how this feels like the Botox of hair treatments (which may have seemed random and out of context), because I stopped writing after the first sentence to check online and see what exactly Keratin was – scientifically – and after I’d found that out, I just went to one more site to read about it as a hair treatment, and it was there that I found a post from a woman who was crying for help because after her Keratin treatment she started losing her hair.  Fast.

Of course, I had to scroll down and read more of the posts and was heartened to learn that many people responded with sensible advice for her.  But even more responded that the exact same thing had happened to them, and as I read I could actually feel the sweat develop on my palms and my breath start to shorten in my chest and I thought to myself, “Oh, gee…I’m going down.”

I stopped reading and reverted to skimming, and then once my anxiety registered an 8.0 on the Richter Scale, I found my way to my husband and curled up on his lap and told him I’d made a terrible mistake that there seemed no way to undo and began to moan about how scared I was that I was now going to lose my hair.

“You’ve been doing so well, today,” he said, “what happened?”

I told him about my time on the internet and he attempted to talk me off the ledge.  “You have to do this, don’t you?” he said.  “You can’t just let a good thing be good for very long.”

And I nodded, yes, but I didn’t have to.  Because we both know that’s exactly what I do.  I did it today, during tennis, when we were up two games right off the bat.  We ended up losing the set 2-6 or something.  And I do it in my mind all day long – spinning off different horror scenarios because I’ve just found myself singing joyfully, gleefully, to We Won’t Get Fooled Again at 60 miles an hour after a surprisingly pleasant errand of returns to Marshall’s.

We came back in the second set this morning, and I was able to leave my husband’s arms tonight and come back here and write – things that I don’t think I could have done even just a year ago.  But still, it’s vexing.  How the mind works.  How it knows the job it has to do and it goes at it like a steamroller.  How no amount of tennis lessons or expert advice is ever going to touch that steamroller.  Only the practice of learning to leave well enough alone.

89 Minutes Is Not Enough

 I’m not going to belabor the fact that I’d been waiting 13 days for my Wednesday Clinic to reconvene.  Thirteen long, arduous, tennis-deprived days.  Well, they weren’t all tennis-deprived, but they weren’t my Wednesday Clinic, which is it’s own little bit of heaven on earth.

The Wednesday Clinic starts at 9 a.m. and goes until 10:30.  When we were The Monday Clinic, we started at noon.  I liked that because it’s hard for me to get anywhere at 9:00.  Also, it forced me to be extra productive in the morning, accomplishing two or three tasks before I even walked out the door.  Now, with this early start time, I can barely get my shoelaces tied before it’s time to go.  I’m punctual to begin with, but I really hate being late for tennis.  When I’m driving down that last big stretch of road and the clock says 8:59 I panic.  Even though I know I’m only two minutes away – 89 minutes of tennis is not enough.  I feel deprived if I don’t get the full ninety.

I walked in today at 8:55 and I was the first one there.  I knew Laura The Tennis Pro would be late because she’d texted me from the road.  Rain, traffic, probably an accident somewhere.  She said she’d be a few minutes late.  But Marybeth was also late, and she’s always there before anyone.

Gina left me a voicemail that said something like, “I know it’s inconceivable to you, but I actually forgot about our clinic today.  But I’m on my way, just running a little behind.” 

Inconceivable doesn’t even begin to describe it.  It startles me anew every time I realize I am the only one counting the hours (from, like, Sunday) until Wednesday Clinic begins.  I know I’m not the only one having fun out there, but everyone else seems to have a certain perspective on the game that I just can’t seem to access.

I worked really hard today to stay chill today about not getting my 90 Laura-the-Tennis-Pro Minutes.  Maryanne and I played singles until Gina showed up.  Then the three of us hit for a while.  Laura didn’t get there until 10 and Marybeth bailed altogether, never showing up at all. 

Once Laura came, we played doubles until 10:30.  I tried to stay really present and make the most out of the short time we had together, and for the most part, I did. I didn’t feel like it was enough – although I never do. 

When my husband was studying for his yoga certifications, he would come home and espouse all this Buddhist banter that made me nearly insane.  “The world comes from you, not at you,” he would say.  “If you want something in your life, you have to create it first for another person.”  And, “there are no such things as accidents – we have created all of our circumstances from seeds that we’ve planted in the past.” 

I’m sure a lot of that has merit – probably even truth (with a capital T) – but it didn’t take me long to start rolling my eyes every time he said such a thing.  Yet here I am now, trying to understand why it never seems enough for me – my tennis time.  Why I constantly feel a deficit.  Why, no matter how many minutes or hours or days I’m playing, I don’t ever feel sated.  I’m sure there’s some yogic principle to explain this, but for the life of me, I don’t know what it is.

Tennis Is The Last To Go

I’m not going to lie to you.  Things have not been great this year.  My husband lost his full time job over a year ago and we have been scraping by on project and freelance work ever since.  A lot has changed.

I don’t go to movies or out to dinner, pretty much ever.  The cleaning woman comes half as often as she used to.  No more Poland Spring deliveries.  I just cancelled my YMCA membership. 

We still have an guy come mow the lawn because 1. We don’t have a lawnmower and 2. He is so dang cheap.  If it were left to us, it would never get done.  But I rarely buy clothes.  No pedicures or waxing of any kind.  Haircuts, only when absolutely necessary.

We haven’t replaced the broken vacuum cleaner – using instead the hundred-year-old Electrolux that had been relegated to basement use only.  We’ve left our over-priced accountant, my excellent (but expensive) shrink, and barely go on vacations ever to anywhere.

However, I still play tennis at least twice a week.  Three times on a good week. 

Tennis is my meditation and my salvation.  It is the single thing I look forward to week in and week out.  Indoor court time does not come cheap, but the whole family agrees: Mom needs her tennis.

The Players: Debi The Sub

Debi the Sub and I know each other from my working-in-an-office days.  Back then she was Debi the Freelancer, essentially filling the same role as she does now: stepping in to do a job that no one else is available to do.

Debi the Sub grew up playing tennis but hadn’t picked up a racquet in over twenty years before this summer.  Our tennis together started out rough, with her being so unconditioned that she could barely hit for 20 minutes straight.  But we went out alone once or twice a week for a while and she improved dramatically each time. I guess that’s the difference between learning the game as an uncoordinated, middle-aged wannabe and growing up going to tennis camps. 

At first she would only hit one-on-one with me, but eventually I talked her into playing doubles.  She barely knew the game—growing up playing singles -- but was eager to learn.  She has a great groundstroke and can get almost anything back from the baseline, but she didn’t understand how to play the net, either psychologically or physically.  I shared with her the few things I’d picked up after five years and five hundred thousand dollars of tennis instruction.  She catches on easily so, again, her game changed quickly.

Debi the Sub fits right in to my tennis world in that, like most of the rest of us, she’s a strong woman with a delicate emotional state.  Most of us are like that: we present well in modern society, but our psyches rest tenuously on houses built of cards.  As a group, we embody every imaginable phobia and compulsion known to man.  It’s this shared psychodrama that makes our tennis so lively.

One day, four of us were playing a game and Debi the Sub and I were winning.  This is not a typical state of affairs for us.  We lose most of the matches we play together.  But we were taking point after point and we were both a little giddy as a result.  In between points, she came over to hand me balls and said in a low, excited way, “We’re invincible!”

I was feeling the same way and squealed quietly in agreement.  From that point on, we went down.  Debi the Sub knew as well as I did what had happened.  We got cocky, which always backfires.  We lost point after point, knowing full well that we had set this particular spiral in motion with our arrogant proclamation.  We also knew the only way to set things right was to repent. 

“We suck,” we would say to each other quietly, hoping the Universe would heed our atonement.  Even if we won a point, we would say, “That was good, but we still suck.”

I can’t remember whether we ultimately won or lost that game, but it solidified for me that she was a kindred spirit.  It’s almost impossible to try and vet out viable subs for my groups.  How can you say to someone: you need to be serious, but not too serious?  Fun, but not distractingly silly?  Competitive, but not haughty?  Neurotic, but in the right ways and not to a paralyzing degree? 

That you must completely understand and comply with the laws of Tennis Karma, which are unspoken and changeable, yet fully knowable if you are paying any attention at all.  When you find someone like that, you must make sure that all your players put her on their sub list.  And if she can ace her serve, like Debi the Sub, you must move her right to the top.  

The Long Shot

I had barely started moping about my lack of tennis for Thanksgiving week when I received a sub request in my email.  It was a clinic I’d never played in, run by the head pro at the club.

I’m usually a little anxious on the court with this pro.  He’s seen me play from the moment I first picked up a racquet.  From the time I would perspire most not from running or exertion, but from sheer nerves.  He’s a good instructor, but unlike Laura the Tennis Pro, he’s not an unlimited font of patience.  He’ll do what he can for you, but you don’t get many chances before he writes you off as hopeless. 

He’s written me off as such many, many times.

During this particular clinic, the drills all revolved around hitting overheads, which, he knows, is not my strongest shot.  It’s actually my weakest.  Forget about smashing, I’m just happy to make contact with the strings.  Most often, I’m hitting that shot with my racquet frame.  “You paid for the whole racquet,” he’ll say with uncharacteristic humor, “you might as well use all of it.”

Today, I barely used my frame at all.  I missed a few, but I hit most of them.  Not especially well, but I got my racquet on them.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said to me when I was out of the hot seat.

“It could’ve been much worse,” I agreed.

I took it as a small bonding moment between us.  An unspoken, “Hey-you-don’t-suck-as–much-as-we-both-expected-you-would.”  But it had this really big effect.  Practically all my nervousness evaporated after that exchange.  I started judging myself less harshly and playing more easily.  

Did I end up dazzling him with my athleticism and skill?  Uh…no.  But I got something from that clinic that I’m never able to get with Laura the Tennis Pro – a long-term perspective. 

Being with the same instructor every week, we inch along together making bits of progress here and there.  It’s like watching your kids grow; you don’t really notice the differences day to day.  But being with an instructor only now and again is completely different.  He didn’t exhibit the usual pity or disgust at any of my shots – even the ones I flubbed – and it made me feel like maybe I really have come a long way.  That maybe there is some hope for me after all. 

Wet Cow/Dry Cow

Just before tennis yesterday I decided to play some Grateful Dead to settle my mind. I had gotten myself a little worked up about this game for no good reason at all and I don’t know what it is about that music, but it just calms me right down.

This wasn’t a match – it was just my regular Thursday game – although two people were subbing: Debi the Sub, who is from my old, working-person life and whom I’ve recently brought into my tennis web of madness, and Sloane, who used to be in this Thursday group but ditched us this year for better players.

Sloane can be caustic and Debi the Sub can be sensitive and I wanted everyone to be happy, so I was having some pre-game jitters in that way I do when I feel like I need to take care of everyone’s emotional well being.  Also, I learned on Wednesday that Laura the Tennis Pro had made the baffling decision to travel home for Thanksgiving next Wednesday, and in so doing cancelled our Wednesday Clinic.  So, no clinic next week.  No Thursday game because of pesky Thanksgiving.  No Friday game because all those women want to spend the day with their families.  This was the last time I was going to play for two weeks.  As a result, I wanted to play well and leave the game on a high note. 

I listened to a few songs from Terrapin Station but still showed up a little frazzled, not even taking the time to tie my shoes before I’d gotten in the car.  I laced up, braced up, showed off my new tissues (a gift from Laura the Tennis Pro) which were boldly imprinted – each and every one –with the words You Had Me At Achoo, and stuffed a few tissues into my waistband so when my nose started to run (as it invariably does on Court 5) I would not have to use my shirt sleeve.

I was so pleased with our playing from the very first point.  Debi the Sub and I were partners and I felt like we had a good, simpatico thing going on.  We were up 5-1 and I was just about to vow to listen to the Grateful Dead every single time I came out to play.  But then Sloane and Tracey started getting some games.  Several games.  And before I knew it we were tied 5-5. 

It was warm on Court 5 and we’d already stopped after a few games to take a drink. I would replenish my Achoo tissues.  We’d chat a bit.  I’m not sure what the score was when we went for that final, fateful water break, but it was after we were all tied up.  I had apparently not screwed the top back onto my bottle the time before so when I picked it up the top flew off (which startled me) and I dropped the bottle (which was nearly full) and water (a lot of water) spilled everywhere – all over the little glass table that our waters had been sitting on, all over my warm up shirt and pants that were hanging over the chair back, maybe a bit on my tennis bag, and quite a lot all over the floor.  I didn’t act as quickly as I might have – it was, after all, only water.  If I’d seen the wet handbag right away I wouldn’t have been so cavalier. 

When Tracey reached down to get it, it was the first time I noticed the big water stain on it.  Of course, the bag was leather.  We all started saying, “Oh no!” and I, of course, was mortified.  I think it was Sloane who declared it “ruined,” which was when I chimed in with something completely idiotic.

“It’s going to be okay.  Cows get wet all the time and then they dry.”  (This is actually the mantra I use when I spill something on our leather sofa.)  And it’s true, it does dry.  But our leather sofa has kind of a worn-in, distressed look to it.  It is not the same effect as this buttery soft leather hobo bag. 

Tracey started laughing, but I could tell it was because she really wanted to cry.  “You’re not going to believe this, but I just took this bag out of the box for the first time this morning.  I’ve never even used it before.”

Ok, now I see what’s happened.  It’s not just her handbag I’ve ruined, it’s her brand new handbag.  “I’ll buy you a new one,” I blurted out, because I knew that was the right thing to say.  I quickly started covering the bag with my Achoo tissues, trying to help the drying process along.  Then I got a quick, sick feeling in my gut.  “Wait, you probably got this bag from Nordstrom’s,” I said, “not from Payless.”

Tracey was still laughing about cows, but I could tell she was distressed.  “I ordered it online,” she said.

“Zappos?” I asked.

“Cole Haan,” she said.

I don’t even know how much a Cole Haan bag is, but I’ll tell you this: once someone told me about what another woman paid for a Fendi bag and I was completely dumbstruck.  I don’t even carry a handbag and when I do, it’s from Kohl’s.  That’s not because I’m cheap (although I am), it’s because I know that whatever bag I buy is going to fall short in some way.  It will be too heavy, or tip over awkwardly in the car.  The strap will slide off the shoulder of my favorite coat, or it will be just a little too small to carry a book in.  Rather than spend time bemoaning the money I’ve spent on what I thought would be the “perfect” handbag, I get inexpensive bags that I use for special occasions, and the rest of the time I just carry my wallet in my pocket.  Before my Fendi education, I thought $200 was a lot for a bag.

Later I found out that Tracey has had the same quest: the hunt for the perfect bag.  Although, unlike me, she hadn’t given up.  This Cole Haan bag was potentially it.  She’d splurged.  This was the bag that was going to change her life (as handbags are wont to do). 

I spent the day cursing my clumsiness.  My forgetfulness around recapping my water.  My stupidity around talking about wet cows in the face of tragedy.  My ability to wreck damage and destruction every time I leave the house.  I cursed the fact that Debi the Sub and I ended up losing 6-8 a set in which we had an early 5-1 lead.  And also I cursed the Grateful Dead, who were supposed to bring me good fortune that day, not bad.

In between all that, I went on the Cole Haan website and found the bag (on sale…whew!).  I called their customer service department and asked how to antidote a big water mark.  The gentleman I spoke to couldn’t have been lovelier, but it was quickly apparent that Cole Haan customers are not typically klutzy, because he had absolutely no experience in dealing with anything like this. 

I did a web search, not on Wet Cows/Dry Cows, but on Removing Water Stains From Leather.  Fifteen articles came up with the exact same advice (which was, interestingly, sort of based on my “cows dry” theory) and I emailed them all to Tracey. 

She wrote me back a note that obviously took her an hour to compose.  It was a long, amazing reminiscence of how she had gotten to this bag – the years it had taken her to stop buying cheap bags from which she wasn’t even able to access her ringing cell phone and finally spend some real money on something that would truly make her happy.  As I read it, I just felt worse and worse.  I knew I was going to be out a couple hundred on the bag – and that it was the right thing to do – but I couldn’t help thinking: Cows Dry.  

She ended her note by saying that her family can barely notice the water mark and that if she herself does notice it, it will remind her of how much fun she has playing tennis with me.  I don’t even know how someone can get there from where she was.  How to go, not from Wet Cow to Dry Cow, but from Wet Cow to I’m Happy To Have The Cow Wet, which is not only the essence of grace, but is surely a Google search that could benefit me a hundred times more than getting in a couple extra games of tennis.

I'm Off Today

I play tennis most Fridays.  But not today.  I'm off the schedule today and already I can feel the crankiness setting in.

I jumped out of bed early hoping to find a message in my inbox that someone is looking for a sub.

I've been known to take a more active role.  I've been known to send out an email to every tennis friend I have, telling them which days I'm free to sub that week in case anyone can't make their game.  This technique has paid off well.  Women will take me up on my offer for (what I consider) outlandish alternatives.  They'll skip tennis for a doctor's appointment, or a hair appointment, or for (heaven forbid) work.  I almost understand skipping tennis to tend to a sick child, although there are tables and chairs in the lounge...a television...a snack machine...a bathroom.  Really, what more are they going to get at home?

This week I didn't send out an availability email.  I decided to just let fate take it's course.  And I don't mind telling you I don't like where it's gotten me.

There's a certain amount of shame attached to being a tennis wench.  And I feel it now, sitting in the middle of my throat.  Like a tennis ball.