A Good Day

Sunday was nice. To start with, I got to wear my new “artist’s smock” black coat with my skinny black jeans and (are you ready for this?) heels. Yep, those who know the Bleu personally are all fainting en masse, ‘cause this girl is an official ballerina flat/flip-flop sportin’ fool on a normal day. (Last semester, I wore the tiniest of heels--about a half inch or so--to my Comp class, and two of my students noted right away, “Mrs. M, you’re wearing HEELS!”) And more miraculous, I didn’t fall down once—YES! Maybe I am on my way to becoming a grown-up…

Once at church, I was part of the worship service (I am in the choir) and the songs we sang were just too awesome to believe—a perfect blend of hymns and contemporary music, lots of fun to sing. When I got home, it was to the ever-so-pleasant discovery that MyGirl and Casey had made lunch for us all. They had pulled out Casey’s tried-and-true hometown cookbook from Wyoming and fixed a dish he used to make for me when we were first married: hamburger roll-up with cream cheese center and salsa atop. My parents joined us for lunch (I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, I l.o.v.e. having them so close by) and we watched a movie my dad brought from his last trip to India—called Chak De India, which means, roughly translated, "Let's go, India.” It stars my favorite actor in the universe (and yes, I’m going to mention again that MyGirl and I have seen him in the flesh—get over it, it was a monumental highlight of my life) Shah Rukh Khan, and it was about girl’s field hockey. Which made it even better, because the ONE sport I played in school in Kenya was…field hockey. No basketball, no soccer, no volleyball, no tennis—but baby, I liked me that wooden stick. Don’t let the flirty skirties fool you; field hockey is as close to rugby, in terms of rough behavior, as a girl’s game can get.

Watching the movie brought back so many memories—I loved seeing the familiar moves as the girls bandied the ball down the field, scooping it up in passes and into the goal. I thought of the many bruises on my shins that I wore with pride, and the equally happy way I distributed bruises to other girls’ shins. Prior to hockey, I had not been very athletic at all; I think I was too unsure of my abilities to even try. We played field hockey one semester for p.e., and our dreamy p.e. teacher, who was also the coach, told me and a couple other girls that he expected to see us at try-outs. I obeyed, and made the JV team as a fullback (defensive position). The coach made us sign an agreement, saying that we would run 50 miles during our month-long vacation, and required a note from our parents, attesting to the fact that we had lived up to our agreement. My parents, blast them, held me to it and I begrudgingly ran five miles a day, all that long month.

Needless to say, I loved everything about field hockey. I loved practice, I loved the games, I loved the feeling one gets when one is a part of a team. My boyfriend loved that he got to see my legs for the first time (I had refused to wear anything but jeans before making the team)—I think he was secretly relieved to discover that they were not horribly disfigured or something. And of course, I loved the times when he came to our away games and we were able to have some quiet moments alone in the dark corner of the bus…

When we moved to the States towards the end of my tenth grade year, I was shocked to discover that no-one had even heard of field hockey before. I was terribly insecure in this new society and fled to the only other school activity I had done, singing in choir. I was soon to discover that while being in choir in Kenya was cool, being in choir in the States was one step removed from being a band geek. So that was me in the States—a non-athletic choir geek, who did, on occasion, now show her legs.

I’m not sure I’ve changed much since then, hence the flats and flip-flops. But I’m growing, dear ones, I’m growing. And I’m seriously considering finding a couple of sticks and a ball off of Ebay or something and teaching MyGirl to dribble the ball around our woods. We can be the team of two and I'll try not to whack her shins...

...too much.

Ahh, Chak De Memories.