Keeping Dreams Close

When I returned home from VA, my husband had an article that he wanted me to read. You see, I had gone to VA to compete without telling a lot of people. Part of me was scared to tell anyone for fear of jinxing myself. But part of me just wanted to focus without a ton of questions from well-meaning friends and family; "How are you doing?", "How'd you play?", and the most dreaded of all, "Did you win?"

I also didn't want the curious, but judgmental questions that come from people not so close to me; "What are you doing, trying to win Wimbledon?", "How much did it cost to do that?", or "What are you doing that for?"

There are only so many times I can roll my eyes and answer, "Cuz!"

Back to the article.

It was a column written by Rochelle Riley that appeared in the Detroit Free Press. Riley spoke about how sharing her dreams as a young woman left her vulnerable to criticism. She spoke of a writer who was a friend of hers who wrote, "Sometimes, the only way to become what you were meant to be is to hide your dreams in your heart."

My husband often tells me, he fully expects to come home one day only to find out that I have accepted a job in another state doing something he had no idea I was interested in and my response to his jaw dropped to the floor will be, "Didn't I tell you?"

I think some of it, like the failure to fully disclose the details of my VA trip to everyone is by design, but some of it, lately, is the ability to focus so completely on the things I want to achieve.

I told the manager of the gym where I work out about my moderate success in VA. And I started to say, apologetically, like I have to so many people, "I would have told you beforehand, but..."

She stopped me and hugged me. And told me how proud she was of me and how she knew this was going to be my year. She's seen me sweating through sprints on the treadmill when the doors of the gym open in the AM. She's seen me waiting my turn at the squat station among guys whose pecs are so broad their arms rest at 45 degree angles. She's waved by to me on her way out, leaving me to my cardio and the night manager to his vacuuming. "I knew you were working hard for something," she said.

If I felt good returning from VA, I felt even better leaving the gym that day when seven days after my trip, the reality of the hard work needed for the next goal has set in.

When my dad was alive and was threatening one of us about one thing or another (who really remembers why parents are so agitated?), he would say, "Okay, I can show you better than I can tell you."

How thoroughly appropriate that seems right now.

Stay tuned,
KS