Looking For Calm

It could have been one of those experiences that I treasured. It turned out to be a long hour and a half. I try to refrain from “should” although with moderate success. As a mom I am aware that our expectations for what we do not accomplish, as opposed to what we do, can get the better of us and we can feel as though we never measure up.

My family, just the four of us, were together on the tennis court. This has not happened much, because our daughter has taken to tennis just recently across the last couple of summers,  and our son finds any sport with a ball to be challenging and therefore avoids them readily.The warm Florida sunshine cascaded down on us. It was quiet with very few people around. We are hundreds of miles away from home, away from work, demands, schedules and lists of things to complete. The children have finished their exams, 2017 is on the horizon, and we really have very little to do except enjoy our time together with family. So why was it so difficult for me to enjoy those moments playing a fun game of tennis. ANXIETY. The intersection of my anxiety and our 15 year old sons can be laden with emotion and frustration. If there were a large enough piece of Velcro and it were attached to my back, my son might well attach himself to me. And as many who suffer from anxiety know, this extra weight can feel burdensome, tiring, emotional and in moments downright exasperating. This the point I reached on the court. Knowing in my heart that I should simply breathe while my amygdala was getting highjacked. Before long I had “Flipped My Lid.” Neuroscientist, Dan Siegal, explains this is what happens when our brains go into fight or flight mode. What was the most difficult part for me as I stood across the court from my son, whose body language spoke volumes? He was trying really hard, the task to return balls was and is difficult. Across his young life, he has taken to the courts only a handful of times. He was feeling defeated. Why did this activate me? Was it that there were two young phenoms on the court next to us playing and watching? Why was I so anxious and short on patience? And then our son ducked once as if an airliner was about to land on his head as opposed to the Penn 1’s with which we were playing. I felt myself coming unglued. I was muttering under my breath in one moment and barking at our son in the next. Yes, I was barking at him! I also hit a few balls hard enough to clear the fence, which felt great by the way. My very patient husband and my moderately patient daughter  were each trying to help Jamie with form and technique. Too many voices for someone with auditory processing challenges to decipher, but yet I continued to add my voice to the chorus of suggestions.

And then we asked the kids on the next court about the ball machine. Next thing I knew the Playmate had been rolled out of the small storage shed, we were filling it with a basket of balls, and had it firing on the court. Our daughter received about thirty balls first and we encouraged our son, who had taken to the bench at court side by this point, to jump in and receive a few. The rhythm of the machine and its steady mechanism that shoots balls out with ease and lack of effort, began to calm me down. I stopped “coaching” and began to pick up balls with the handy tennis ball Pick Up Hopper. I had removed myself from the situation and let the ball machine do the work. I allowed our son to receive each one and do his best to get set before the next one fired. It took me back briefly to the first rapid fire shooting drill I faced as a lacrosse goalkeeper with the US Women’s team. I missed every single shot during that drill, got hit in the head by at least 10, but eventually found each shooter and the ball and a rhythm that was mine. Our son was finding a rhythm of his own too.

One of the things that has been amazing about raising our son, Jamie, has been his resilience, quiet fortitude and strength. I have learned much from parenting him and from the moment he was born, he has moved at his own pace. He did not talk until he was almost four, rode a bike when he was 9 and went on his first overnights away from family at 14. This pace is slower than I think it should be sometimes and much slower than mine, but it remains consistently Jamie’s pace. While the waiting can seem interminable, we eventually get there and he gets there. The anxiety that surfaces has required me to examine more closely my own anxiety and how mine bumps up against his, especially in moments when we are both fearful or stressed. I in no way have the answers, in fact in many moments, I feel ill equipped and as though I am failing as his parent. I know that I can let my frustration get the best of me, and in these moments, I try to take a break and simply “begin again” with a slightly more positive perspective, more humility and hopefully with a dose of grace. I think as soon as the sun comes up, we are going to head back to the courts for some more tennis and ball machine work.