I Play Pickleball

It took everything I had to walk into that huge gymnasium alone.  I clutched my stolen pickleball paddle and walked as confidently as I could across the room, towards the informational pickleball poster hanging on the cinderblock wall.  As I carefully digested the drop-in rules of that facility, a voice sounded behind me. 

 

"This isn't your game."  it said.

I turned around to see the owner of the voice. He was motioning with his paddle towards the group he was playing with.  The rule I had just read, Rule #4,  stated: Observe the games in progress to determine which group best matches your skill level. This player was making sure I clearly understood what that meant.  He was confident in his assessment of my skills, even though he had never before laid eyes on me.

I must have looked like a total newbie.  I was.  I'm guessing my Chuck Taylors were the giveaway. If you are new to pickleball, you should know....Chuck Taylors aren't exactly court shoes, especially if they are covered in glitter. 

Fortunately there were more voices in the gym that night.  Someone else a few courts away called out "Put your paddle down here!"  Whatever that meant.  I made my way across the room to a pile of paddles on the floor, trying to casually spin-toss-catch my paddle as I went.  Yes, my paddle was stolen, but only in the sense that it belonged to a former boyfriend.  I had never given it back after the break up.  

And that is how I met my pickleball family. 

In just a couple months, it will be four years since I walked into that gym all by myself.  Not only was "alone" a new thing for me at the time, being divorced for just a little while, but sports were new to me then as well. That's why it took everything I had to walk into that gymnasium.  

But what it took is nothing in comparison to what it has given back. It has given me play. And boy did I need play.  Sometimes you have to go back, before you can go forward. I needed to go back to that sandlot (which in my neighborhood was the street)  where I played ball until the street lights came on.  Then it was inside for some dinner before heading out again, this time for capture the flag. 

Photo credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/202028733255230469/

When we play we recreate.  We re-create.  Life continually puts us in situations that require us to do such.  Either re-create or break, baby. It's your choice.  I choose the former.  I choose to learn and laugh.  To push myself mentally and physically.  To adjust...and heal.  And I choose to do these things in good company.  In other words, I choose to play. 

If you choose that as well,  I hope you pick something like pickleball.  Something that is accessible to a vast participant group (One of my favorite rallies to date included a player 40 years younger than me and another one, 20 years older).  I hope you pick something social, where the time and space between players and plays just so happens to be the same amount of time and space needed to build comradery.  Simply put, it's like a support group, only with paddles. 

And just so you know: "this isn't your game" guy?  We are now good friends. 

 

Before I Broke Your Heart

 

Before I broke your heart

Our sentences 

Would gradually fade

Into gentle smiles and thoughtful gazes.

The words that we thought we'd say

Appeared instead as silent sighs of “oh...there you are. I've been looking for you."

No, we wouldn't finish speaking

But these moments,

The ones that felt like peanut butter whiskey

Said it all.

What was it we were going to say, any way?

These moments 

Before I broke your heart, 

I miss the most.