Old Lady Tennis

Blond Tumbleweed sent me an email at 5:30 AM asking if I wanted to take her place at tennis yesterday morning.   It seems she missed a step on her way downstairs and took a little spill.  I would normally jump at the opportunity to play for her, except that I was already scheduled to play and I already didn’t want to.

I had my own injury going on.  A pain and stiffness in my hip that seems to come about from writing.  Well, from sitting. Dr. H has diagnosed it as Gluteal Amnesia, a term that I thought he’d just made up to amuse himself or humiliate me, but I googled it and it appears to have, if not widespread notoriety, at least familiarity among a few sports coaches and practitioners.  (Laura the Tennis Pro has also been diagnosed with GA. It makes me feel a lot less old and decrepit to have the same malady as a 32-year-old athlete.)

I urged Blond Tumbleweed to come to tennis despite her injury.  I told her how much pain I was in from my hip problem and reminded her that Curly Tumbleweed was coming off a respiratory infection that has left her sinus cavity so clogged up she can’t hear and it would be surprising if she could run at all without coughing up a lung.

On Fridays we play on Court 5, at the very end of the club.  Court 4 usually remains empty for the whole time we play.  The <a href="http://jessica-wolf.blogspot.com/2009/04/jersey-girls.html">older women</a> who used to play on both Courts 3 and 4 last year have winnowed themselves down to a single court (3) this season, so we are down at the end all by ourselves.

The three of us confessed our disabilities to Kelly (our fourth) and she reminded us that she has had a torn ACL or meniscus or some other knee related problem for the past year.  Since we were all injured, I suggested we just play a nice game of Old Lady Tennis and call it a day.

This group that plays together on Friday is a high testosterone conglomeration of power hitters despite their all being middle-aged women.  Aside from me, everyone was an athlete in high school, many in college, and a few have even joined women’s soccer and volleyball leagues as adults.  Balls fly around the court at crazy speeds.  I usually just pray a lot.

But we all agreed to play mellow tennis and I instantly felt better about not having to worry about running after speeding bullets or leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

Blond Tumbleweed served first and Curly Tumbleweed returned.  The ball whooshed past me so fast in each direction I barely had time to register that a point was going on.

“That’s not OLT!” I said, using what I considered a clever code for Old Lady Tennis so that the old ladies playing a court away would not be offended.

“What?” said Curly T, ears entirely clogged with week old mucous.

“Never mind,” I said.

The game went on like that for an hour and a half.  No one played like an old lady except, of course, for me.

“That wasn’t an Old Lady Serve!”  Kelly yelled out as she received a serve from Curly Tumbleweed that nearly knocked her over.

“Shhhh!”  I said, trying to protect the feelings of our Court 3 elders.

“They can’t hear us,” said Blond Tumbleweed.

“What?” said Curly again.

Curly Tumbleweed and I took the set, and maybe played the best tennis we ever had as partners.

“Do you have that?” I’d yell back to her as a ball ripped past me.

“What?” she’d say, running up and hitting it.

I play better tennis when I’m injured.  It doesn’t make any logical sense, but I think I do certain things that garner a better outcome.  I pay attention more, because I know I’m going to be slower to react.  I don’t run after crazy balls, but try and take them in a smarter (safer) way.  I make sure I’m completely stabilized before I take a shot.  And maybe most critical, I keep my expectations (about winning) really low.

I watch the Court 3 ladies play and I love how confident they are.  No one is reckless.  Their points go on forever.

“We belong on that court,” Blond Tumbleweed said to me after the set was over.  She pointed to the old ladies and I shushed her again.

“They know they’re old,” Curly Tumbleweed said.

“And they know they’re better than us,” said Kelly.

In Defense of Hothouse Flowers

I am a delicate Hothouse Flower.  I don’t mean to be, I just am.  All us Hothouse Flowers are like that.  We are born, not made.

I would typically not write about my Hothouse Flower-ness, except I had a troubling exchange with a friend the other day and realized she was under the mistaken impression that we are delicate by choice.  And so I am writing on behalf of all Hothouse Flowers so that the rest of you buck-up-and-deal-with-it Tumbleweeds have a better understanding of what’s involved.

The topic came up because my friend’s husband is also a Hothouse Flower.  He’d recently had general anesthesia for surgery and passed out a day and a half later at a restaurant.  She was empathetic in retelling the story, but you just knew that if it had been she who’d had anesthesia, there would have been no fainting going on.

Most of my friends are Tumbleweeds.  Maybe all of them.  Perhaps Hothouse Flowers are not drawn to other Hothouse Flowers, for reasons only Darwin could explain.

It always surprises me how sensitive I am compared to others.  For a long time, I thought everyone felt like I did.  I don’t like getting pedicures because the feeling of someone handling my foot is both too ticklish and too intense.  Same for massage.  It takes me literally a month to recuperate from a dental cleaning.  I’d actually considered not having children, ever, because I didn’t think I could hack the delivery.

My friend spoke about her husband as if he had something to do with his own sensitivity.  “He’ll tell me ‘I feel something coming on,’” she said (I’ll call her Blond Tumbleweed), touching the glands in her neck to demonstrate. “Do you ‘feel things coming on?’” she asked me.

I nodded emphatically, Yes, yes, I always feel things coming on.  And I begin my arsenal of preventative measures so I won’t get sick.

Blond Tumbleweed rolled her eyes and snorted at the mere idea of ‘something coming on.’  “Call me when you’re on your death bed,” she said.  “I don’t need to hear about it before.”

Another friend, Curly Tumbleweed, was with us and she chimed in as well.  “It has to do with how you’re raised,” she said.  “When I was a kid, if I threw up in the morning my mother would say ‘Ok, can you go to school now?’”

I once played in a tennis match with Curly Tumbleweed and thought I’d broken my finger trying to catch a ball.  “It’s not broken,” she said, “it’s just jammed.  Come here, I’ll pop it out for you.”  And with that she grabbed and pulled until I saw stars.

I’m pretty sure every woman I play tennis with is a Tumbleweed.  They all show up to play with sinus infections and IBS.  They wrap an ace bandage around injuries that I would be in traction for.  Years ago, Blond Tumbleweed showed up on the court achy and stiff.  “I can barely move my legs,” she uncharacteristically complained.  Later, I found out that she’d gone to the doctor and was diagnosed with Fifth Disease (a.k.a. Parvovirus) – a relatively mild illness in children, but one that in adults presents with a rash as well as joint pain and swelling.  I too had had Fifth Disease six months earlier and didn’t leave my bed for days.  At one point I was in such agony my husband suggested I go to the hospital. “No, I can’t.  It will be too bright there.  I’d rather just die here in my bed.”

I’m not proud to be a Hothouse Flower, but neither am I ashamed.  I disagree with Curly Tumbleweed – I don’t think it’s nurture at all.  My brother is a Tumbleweed.  He carries on with walking pneumonia and gout.  Being a Hothouse Flower is just the hand you’re dealt.

I tried to explain that to Blond Tumbleweed this morning when she was scoffing about me and my “feeling something coming on.”

“You think it’s easy to be a Hothouse Flower, Blond Tumbleweed, but it’s not,” I said.  She smiled to humor me, and then left me in her dust.

The Hazards of Reading

Here is why I’m not playing in my beloved Wednesday Tennis Clinic this morning.

Last night, I was lying in bed, minding my own business, reading my Kindle, and decided it would be a good idea to flex my leg muscles as tight as they could be.  I did this for a few reasons. 

One is, I had taken a particularly rough spin class in the morning and whenever we are “climbing hills” the instructor is always quick to point out how we are building muscle, up there, at the top of the leg.  That it isn’t just rampant sadism on his part, these hills, it’s actually a torture that he throws in for our benefit.  I don’t have muscular legs – I never have – and so last night, out of the blue, I decided to see whether my sadistic spin instructor was speaking the truth. 

The other reason is that I don’t like reading on a Kindle, and no matter how good the book is – and this book I’m reading (To The End of The Land by David Grossman) is VERY good – I find little ways to distract myself, because deep down I hate the fact that what I’m holding in my hands is an awkward, confounding piece of electronic gadgetry and not a nice, refined, tree-wasting paperback.  Flexing my leg muscles – the upper muscles, tightening my right thigh as much as I can, then pounding on it with my fist – that’s exactly the type of small distraction that keeps me from finishing my book in time for my book group meeting.

I don’t recall that musculature being tight or compromised during the day, but it must have been.  Why else then would a few flexes and pounds result in the type of throbbing ache that prevents me from falling quickly to sleep? 

A little after midnight, my leg ached so badly I had to get up and take some Advil, and hobble downstairs to get the icepack.  After that I was able to sleep, but when I woke up this morning that whole area was tight and unmoving.  I considered the possibility of playing tennis anyway – something I would have tried to do in the past – but my experience has shown me that doing so only makes this kind of thing worse.  So I quickly resigned myself to a tennis-free day – perhaps a tennis free week – and, overall, I have to say I’m taking it quite well.

The silver lining here could have been that my muscle flexing antics produced thighs of steel.  That my oft-jiggly legs were so toned and tight that I actually hurt my fist in pounding.

Or that I set aside my cheapskate tendencies and, despite having paid for my Kindle version of Grossman’s amazing novel, I go out and buy the book (which is only available in hardcover right now, dang!) so I can actually enjoy it.

But, more likely, it’s that I’m going to get to see my beloved Dr. H before the week is through.

How I've Become So Well Adjusted

Gina shows up to tennis 15 minutes late.  “Sorry, ladies.  I was at the chiropractor.  He gave me an extra long hot oil massage before my adjustment,” she says in my general direction, “and I completely lost track of the time.”

I shoot her a look.  “Hot oil massage?”

“Oh.  Doesn’t he do that for you?”

Gina tries to make me believe that Dr. H. likes her more than he likes me, but it’s just not true.

“Who are you talking about?” asks one of the other women.

One of us utters his name and the rest of us nod dreamy eyed.  Half the women I play tennis with see him.  “We all love him,” Gina says. 

I met Dr. H. a decade ago, when I crawled into his office, unable to lift myself onto his examining table.  I was brand new to town and the former owners of our house had done an amazing thing: they had gone to the trouble of writing up a 7-page guide of all the Need to Knows about Montclair.  Best hardware store, best liquor store, best bagels, best haircuts, and thank heaven, best chiropractor.

“I don’t know if you go in for this type of stuff,” wrote our house seller, “but Dr. H. is no voodoo practitioner.  He’s helped me and my wife out many times over the years,”

That number came in handy when I threw my back out and found myself completely incapacitated, not even able to drive myself the mile to his office.  That was the first time Dr. H. put me back together again, but it would not be the last.  Since then, we have gone through a lot together. 

I can’t speak to chiropractic technique; I’ve been to lots of practitioners and they all seem to do similar things.  But Dr. H. is a master handler.  And I need a lot of handling.

Once I pegged him as a Doc Who Listens, I began seeing him for everything under the sun.  “My toe hurts.  I have a toothache.  I can’t find my keys in the morning.”  He was somehow able to fix it all. 

“Is this sepsis?” I asked him one day, referring to the rash running up and down my legs.  “How do you know about sepsis?” he asked back.  “I watch House,” I said.

The rash ended up being Fifth Disease, but no more House for me.  Dr. H forbade me to watch it ever again, along with ER, Gray’s Anatomy and every other doctor show.  I was also not to read the Linda Sanders, MD column in the New York Times Magazine.  And I must stay off the CDC website.

Much of my relationship with Dr. H. involves his digging his thumb deep into my muscle tissue and my cursing him out.  But there is also his unique ability to counsel me through my myriad health worries.   He’s taught me how to gauge the seriousness of my maladies, so I don’t have to run in and see him every three days with this or that problem.  He’s taught me how to manage my particular brand of health anxiety and he’s also taught me how to keep myself from kicking him in the groin if he hits a tender spot.  Or maybe he’s just figured out how to move more swiftly out of harm’s way.

I know he doesn’t give hot oil massages, and I know he likes me better than he likes Gina.  Dr. H. and I have real history together.  She’s just a recent fling.

“He gave me his cell phone number,” Gina says in a stage whisper as she takes her spot next to me on the tennis court.

“Well, he gave me his home number.  Ages ago,” I say.

“Home number? You mean the number where any family member could answer?  That doesn’t seem very private,” says Gina.

“I have his daughter’s cell number, too.  I’m like part of his family!” I say.

I know I’ve gotten to her with that, but she appears imperturbable.  “Yeah.  If you say so,” she says.

Stuck

The ladies that play on the adjacent court on Wednesdays are old.  Not older than the hills, but they all have at least 20 years on our group.  They’re all gray and braced and slow and accurate.  They wear Christmas sweaters over their tennis clothes during the holidays.  Sometimes during water breaks, we speculate which one each of us will grow into.  (I think I’ll become the one who wears her tennis duds just a little too tight – the skirt is too short, the top rides up on her belly.  Sometimes I think I’ve become her already.)

If I had to pick one word that described yesterday morning it would have been “stuck.”  At the last minute, the teenager texted me that he’d forgotten his gym shorts, could I please drop them off at the main office at school?  Because the teenager is more apt to get into a college on his grades, rather on any sports scholarship, I agreed.  I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the school ruin his GPA because of gym.  So, already a little late for tennis, I ran into the high school with gym shorts in hand, only to be stopped by the Entrance Monitor.  These are people who, at first, appear as if they might function like a concierge, directing you helpfully toward points of interest at the high school that you surely don’t want to miss.  But in fact they’re there to thwart efficiency, requiring photo ID and a monotonous sign in process before you’re able to proceed to your destination.  As if there are so many adults in this world who actually want to spend that much more time with a teenager that they would try and sneak into a school and attempt to procure one.  That desk at the high school – that was the first place I was stuck.

Next I was stuck behind a school bus.  No further explanation needed there.

Then, the parking lot was full of snowdrifts and plowed piles, reducing the available parking spots by a third.  Women were stuck in parking lot limbo, waiting for others to get in their cars and leave so they could take their spots.

When I got inside, the older women from the next court had just amassed in the lobby and were descending the stairs.  They take the stairs slowly.  One step.  Then a little rest.  Another step.  Rest.  It’s hard to believe these are people who are about to play tennis for 90 minutes.  I was stuck on the stairs behind them.

I wasn’t even the last one to arrive.  After I’d gotten settled in, Laura the Tennis Pro announced she’d just received a text from Gina.  “I’m in the parking lot but I can’t come in.  My effing key is stuck in the ignition.”

I always marvel at Gina’s ability to be ladylike.  To use “effing,” instead of “fucking” even in a private text message.  Even when she’s stuck.

Eventually, she did get her key out and came down to join us.  During the break, she and I imagined ourselves twenty years hence, taking the court steps one at a time – maybe having a twinge of arthritis that slows us down even further – and when we do, pulling out our trusty iPhones to message the other ladies in the group.  “I’ll be a little late today,” we’ll tap out with our rickety old thumbs, “I’m stuck on the effin steps.”