Thoughts on Tennis
The summer before I turned 9, my dad taught me about Arthur Ashe, the first Black tennis player to be selected to the United States Davis Cup team and the only Black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. I think he’d learned through the parent grapevine that one of my classmates was Ashe’s not-so-distant relative.
That summer was hot, as most summers in Richmond, Virginia. I remember the late afternoon heat of summer in particular because my dad and I spent evenings playing tennis. In the beginning, I was determined to sabotage each practice, wanting desperately to return to the oasis and solitude of my bedroom. Eventually, he enrolled me in a weekend training camp offered by the Ashe family. I remember my classmate, tangled alongside me chasing the brightly colored tennis balls to the edge of the court. I recall being so upset, in that 9-year-old way, pleading with my dad to see the reason to let me return to my air-conditioned palace to no avail. This enraged me and my dad would tell me to aim my frustration at the ball; to use my anger to fuel my follow-through; to diffuse my rage on the court. Soon my game would improve, at least to where I could return the serve to my dad’s delight.
We trained together for the summer and I grew to love what the tennis court represented not only for myself but for my dad as well. Eventually, my mom would join us on the courts, where we would all play into the late evening. Accompanied by the symphony of cicadas, we would play for hours until our clothes were drenched in sweat.
There were a lot of summers like this, where my dad pushed me to experience something out of my comfort zone. And while I resisted every new foray, I did learn a thing or two, which now I understand to be his intent. Exposure and experience, particularly in discomfort built self-awareness and strength. Frustration with whatever new skill or experience would become fuel for accomplishing and pushing through to the other side where I was granted the choice to re-enroll or move on. When I caught onto this, I tried so hard to prove that I’d learned the skill or the lesson within the first few weeks so that I could end my torment and return to whatever it was that I was so eager to do at that time, but my dad knew better. He knew that I needed the process to absorb the true lesson, which wasn’t about tennis or piano or public speaking, it was about me. About my likes and dislikes, my strengths and my limits, and how my emotions could be controlled and rangled to fuel and calculate my next steps.
Today, as I think about how I will adjust to this new life, I think about that summer playing tennis with my dad, missing how he pushed me through rather than letting me skip over or quit. I think about the value of getting to know yourself in an uncomfortable or unwarranted situation. And while this pandemic, this quarantine, and the new lifestyle that it will usher in pales in comparison to my sweaty summer, there’s a lesson to be learned. The capacity and strength to process your way through, allowing yourself to feel all the frustration, all the anger, all the fear to fuel a greater blooming. This is more than finding a silver lining. It’s about accepting the feelings as they come, allowing them to wash over you, to consume you, and then finding your consciousness within the emotional climax, channeling it into something new.
