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.”

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.