sense, home is where I will always be, even after I am physically gone from this world.
39
Believe
I love Roger Federer. For those of you who don’t know, he is, most would say, the greatest male tennis player of all time (GOAT!). I’m more of a Federer fan than I am a tennis fan. It all started when I met Josh, who was and is a lover of all sports (other than hockey and soccer), but tennis seemed to throw him especially into alternating periods of gut-wrenching anxiety and euphoria, and Roger Federer especially so. He would watch Wimbledon or the Australian Open matches on tape delay and absolutely despair when Federer dropped a set. I didn’t know anything about Federer back then and thought Josh was just crazy; how stupid to care so much about two men hitting a tiny ball back and forth. I’d secretly go online and find out Federer had won the match—Josh hates watching sports with anyone who already knows the outcome—and then tell him lovingly, “It’s going to be okay, honey.” Back then, Federer was in his prime and racking up Grand Slam titles at an astounding pace as he sought to surpass Pete Sampras’s Grand Slam record of fourteen. Josh, as do most people, loves to watch dominance, to marvel at human physical excellence, and Roger Federer was a prime example of the incredible feats that the human body is capable of. My feigned interest in basketball and football disappeared after we got engaged and then married, but my love for Federer persisted.
After our wedding, in the fall of 2007, Federer’s physical decline began. Josh and I would watch matches together with greater stress as the odds of his victory decreased with the passing of the months and years. When Federer sought to tie Pete Sampras’s record at the 2009 Australian Open, we got up at 3:00 A.M. to watch the finals against Federer’s archrival, Rafael Nadal, the other arguable GOAT. It was a disastrous match for Federer; he crumbled under the pressure of history. Our household of two was in mourning that day. And yet, I’m pretty sure that Mia was conceived that night—as they say, out of the ashes of defeat…
When I was seven months pregnant with Mia, we forked over the big bucks to go see Federer play in the fourth round at the U.S. Open on Labor Day. We sat in the front row, right behind the service line. You could see us on TV all day long. I was in ecstasy to have my tennis God so close.
Federer would make it to the finals of that U.S. Open, but he would lose to Argentinian Juan Martín del Potro. Josh went to the finals while I stayed home to watch. He would call me during the commercial breaks to give me his impressions from the court. I would tell him what John McEnroe was saying on TV. I had become as crazy as he.
Federer, however, would go on to win more slams. The last, number 17, was the 2012 Wimbledon championship. The morning of my colonoscopy on July 7, 2013, the day I was diagnosed with colon cancer, Novak Djokovic lost the Wimbledon final to the hated Andy Murray; Federer had been eliminated in an earlier round. How apropos. Josh had watched the match early that morning, before he came to the hospital to be with me as I was wheeled away. We were in California, which meant even more of a time difference. Wimbledon barely registered to me that year.
The following year, Federer again made it to the Wimbledon finals. As I had so many times before, I watched in my apartment, glued to the TV and yet throwing a blanket over my head during the high-pressure moments. Even though I knew it was ludicrous, I told myself that if Roger Federer could win another slam despite becoming an old man in tennis terms, then I could beat cancer. Of course, at that point, my cancer had not metastasized to my lungs. Federer lost in a five-setter to Djokovic. I was devastated, for him, but mostly for myself.
In the years that followed, Federer didn’t win. He made it deep into many Grand Slam tournaments, quarters and semis but no finals. Injuries began to plague him as he moved into his mid-thirties. I stopped watching. I told Josh it was game over for our beloved Federer, that it was time for him to retire with grace, that I