Untamed - Glennon Doyle Page 0,87
field, and task ahead of her are so big. She keeps walking, though, away from us, toward the sideline bench where the other girls are sitting. As soon as she makes it to the bench, she and we realize: Oh my God. Oh my God—there is no room left on the bench for her. She stands awkwardly off to the side. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She is on the fringe. She is outside the Golden circle. She does not belong. She is not one of them.
Abby grabs my hand. “You okay?”
ME: No. This is a mistake.
ABBY: This is not a mistake.
I grab my hand back and pray: Please, God, if you exist, make them be nice to my daughter. Make them invite her into the circle. Make the ball go into the goal every time she touches it or just create some other kind of soccer miracle so she’ll somehow make this team. If all else fails, send an earthquake. But please, God, let this be over soon, because my heart cannot take this.
Tryouts begin. Tish doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing. She loses the ball often. She isn’t as quick as the other girls. She looks over at Abby several times, and Abby smiles and nods at her. Tish keeps trying. She has a few good moments. She can complete a pass, and Abby insists that she has some kind of vision of the field, an understanding of the game that seems to exceed the other girls’ vision. But the hour is tough on her. And me. After it’s over, we walk to the car together and climb in. Tish is quiet the whole way home. After a while I turn around and say, “Baby?”
Abby puts her hand on mine and shakes her head no. I turn back around and stay quiet the rest of the way home.
We go back to tryouts the next day. And the next. We go back every night for a week. On Friday night, we get an email from the coach. It says, “She’s got a lot to learn. But she’s got a spark and she’s a hard worker and a leader. We need that. We’d like to offer Tish a spot on our team.”
I cover my mouth and reread the email twice to make sure I’m understanding it correctly. Abby is doing the same thing silently over my shoulder. I turn around to her and say, “Holy. Shit. How did you know?”
Abby has tears in her eyes. She says, “I didn’t know. I haven’t slept through the night for three weeks.”
Craig, Abby, and I sit Tish down and tell her together.
“You made it,” we say. “You made the team.”
* * *
It’s been a few years since those tryouts, and now we are parents who spend our weekends carting our child all over the state and spend our money on gas and hotels and tournaments and cleats.
Tish is strong and solid now, not because she wants to be a model, but because she wants to be the best athlete and teammate she can be. The stronger she is, the more her team can count on her. Tish does not consider her body an end in itself, but a means to an end. She uses her body as a tool to help her achieve a goal her mind and heart have set: Win games with my friends.
Tish is a leader now. She has learned that there are great athletes and there are great teammates, and they are not always the same people. She watches her teammates, and she decides exactly what each needs. She knows who is hurting and who needs encouragement. After every game, win or lose, she sits in the back seat on the drive home and sends her teammates messages: “It’s okay, Livvie. Nobody could have stopped that ball. We’ll get them next time. We love you.” The girls’ parents write me emails saying, “Please thank Tish for me. She was the only one who could console my girl.”
Tish is an athlete now. When drama hits at middle school, it doesn’t shake her badly because those hallways are not where she finds her identity. She doesn’t need to manufacture false drama in her social life because she has all the real drama—the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat—on the pitch. The other day I heard her say this to a friend of Chase’s: “Nah, I’m not popular. I’m a soccer player.”
Soccer