The Olympics just ended. I love watching them, especially the games we Americans don't get to see much. But my friend Merrill at Sunday school this week helped me to remember a lot of other people...
Coach Janice had been expecting this conversation.
Kelly walked into Janice's office and closed the door.
No one ever closed the door unless their world was becoming unglued. The girls left the door open to complain, to celebrate, to thank her, to curse her, to give her news and to give her grief.
They only closed the door when everything was falling apart.
Janice nicknamed it the Unhinged Door. It only closed when someone was unhinged.
Kelly threw a crumpled note onto Janice's desk and barked out her indignation.
Janice didn't read the note. She knew what it said. Kelly didn't get the scholarship, or Kelly wasn't accepted, or Kelly didn't qualify. Kelly didn't make it.
The note politely said that Kelly's gymnastics career was over. Kelly's dream was dead. Kelly would never hold a gold medal in her hand while they played her national anthem.
Kelly was angry, but it wasn't real anger. It was a fake anger, and anger she'd been taught. It was the anger she'd been told to feel when she fell off the beam. It was the competitive anger her teammates, her parents, her coaches had taught so that she could face failures, big and small, and put it behind her.
Kelly had been taught an anger that could effectively cover her pain, and hide the little thing that died inside her
every
single
time.
Coach Janice let Kelly talk. She didn't ask questions, she didn't try to tell her how to feel or what to do. Kelly had a lot to say, and Janice fully intended to listen to every word. There was not much more she could do for Kelly now.
Kelly was a very good gymnast. She loved the sport and she loved the competition and it showed. She loved winning, but she also loved flying over the vault or tumbling across the mat. She was very, very good.
But there are thousands of girls in the world who are very, very good. Only three of them every four years get to stand on a medal platform in front of the world. Kelly would not ever be one of them.
Kelly stopped to take a sip from the plastic bottle of water she had in her bag. Janice did not fill the silence.
When Kelly asked Janice if she was listening, Janice assured her that she was. When Kelly asked if Janice understood, Janice would say she did or she would say she didn't, whichever Janice thought Kelly wanted to hear.
Janice did understand. She didn't understand everything, each moment like this was different, but she knew the contours and curves.
After a half-hour of Kelly yelling and cursing and blaming her parents and blaming her teammates and blaming her friends and blaming Janice and blaming the people who wrote the crumpled note, after all that, Kelly started to cry.
Janice had Kleenex, but Kelly pulled a dirty handkerchief from her bag, stained with make-up and the tears she cried earlier, before she saw Janice, before she remembered to be angry.
Kelly told Janice that all she ever wanted was to win gold at the Olympics. She'd tried as hard as she could, she'd wanted it as much as she could. She'd gone from sleep to practice to school to practice to homework to sleep every day, knocked around her life like a hockey puck, always at full speed. Smack smack smack.
She'd go to a movie once a year or so. She'd get to sleep late maybe once a year. She didn't read what she didn't have to for school.
Kelly worried about her parents. They'd sacrificed so much. She'd run them nearly as much as she'd run herself. They had so much faith in her. They'd spent so much money on her. They'd believed in her even when no one else did. What was she going to say to them? What was she going to say?
Then, Kelly started apologizing to Janice, telling her she was sorry for not being the gymnast Janice deserved, for taking up her time and being such a downer.
Janice finally spoke, silencing Kelly's continued pleas.
"Don't you ever apologize for the time you spent on my team or with me!" Janice said in a voice that was calm and firm. "You've been nothing but a gift and a blessing to me and this team. Your parents are lucky to have a girl like you, and they know it."
"Gold, silver, bronze," Janice continued. "What are they? They show accomplishment, yes. They show excellence, yes. But their glittering blinds people to all the excellence, all the accomplishment there is that doesn't glitter like some tawdry showgirl."
"You have given your best every day," Janice said. "You've proven to yourself and to the world that you are an amazing girl and you are becoming an amazing woman."
"Gold, bronze, silver," Janice said, allowing her voice to rise just a bit. "Forget them. They aren't for you, but there is so much more that is. You've flown through the air and made people gasp in amazement."
"Now go!" Janice said. "We're all watching to see what wonders you do next!"
Kelly got up, walked around the desk and hugged Janice. Then she opened the Unhinged Door and left with a thank you.
Janice had given something like that speech dozens of times. She believed it every time. The girls were all different, of course. Some were headstrong, some were meek. Some had been injured, many more were just not as good as they'd dreamed they were. They all ended up apologizing. None of them needed to.
Just as Janice didn't need to apologize all those years ago when Coach Flannery gave her that same speech.
Copyright 2012. Timothy H. Ruppel. All rights reserved.
This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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