The proving ground

You know the day will come. You want it to come – but you also definitely want to forestall it for as long as possible. The day, that is, your kid bests you in an act of physical strength or skill, something you think of yourself as good at.

That ship has sailed for me in, say, running a mile. When my then-12-year-old, Kai, ran a 7:02 minute mile in a fun run last summer, I tipped my hat to those long legs and started calculating Vegas odds. Seeing an interesting dynamic in the making, I’ve offered $50 to the winner of a mile race between Kai and her dad. It’s a race I’ll be watching with sneakers off. I never was a distance runner.

But I think – I think – I can still beat my eldest in a 40-yard dash. I know I’ve still got her 9-year-old sister, Juno, because we both enjoy busting into a sprint now and then. (Their little brother, Dion, inevitably “wins” these races, insisting on an insurmountable head start.) But each time, I feel her little legs pushing closer, my hamstring screaming louder, my lead shrinking from split second to millisecond. We finish gasping, laughing, me with the elation of a sentence deferred mixed with pride in my mini-me, Juno with some mélange of hunger and the knowledge that her day is coming.

Then there are more complex contests that combine physical prowess with mental toughness. Tennis is the one that, growing up, was our family’s proving ground. I watched my older brother, even as he grew to be a strapping teenager with gorgeous topspin strokes, continue losing to my mom until he gave up playing her altogether. Actually I really couldn’t watch – I sort of glanced out of the corner of my eye from another court. It was too painful to witness Peter’s misery. He knew better than anyone that he should not have been losing to this diminutive white-haired lady with the funny flat serve and the jaw set in determination.

Did he ever beat Mom, I asked him recently. Yes? He couldn’t remember. He remembered beating Dad, definitively, in the men’s final at the club we grew up going to. “I was terrified the whole time,” he said. If Dad, possessed of a nasty slice, had taken a set, Peter was sure he would’ve taken the match. What he remembered about playing Mom was “hating myself,” he said, deadpan, totally silent while I snorted on the other end of the line.

I’m not a serious tennis player like my mom, who captained the first women’s tennis team at Yale and went on to become the winningest player in the history of platform tennis. I never so much as contemplated playing an actual singles match against her, especially not after seeing what kept happening to poor Peter.

My younger brother and I, however, spent what felt like a lifetime battling – on the tennis court, the ping-pong table, the world reduced to the proportions of that rectangle. It got heated: a ping-pong racket was once hurled through a plate glass window in rage at a 23-21 loss (there was some money on the line, too). Not naming any names.

What is it about family rivalries, our first and fiercest, that drill themselves into our psyches? All I know is that it’s real: the agony of a defeat to a younger sibling, the flood of relief in holding it off. When my girls end up across the net from each other, much as when Mom played Peter, I can only glance out of the corner of my eye, acting real casual to disguise the fact that my heart feels like it’s in two pieces, one on either side of that net.

Recently the kids and I have taken up pickleball, after years of looking down our noses at those tennis-court hoggers. Now the battling can continue year-round. There is, I’m learning, the finest of lines between smashing a ball at your kid so hard it brings tears to her eyes, and not hitting it hard enough to win the point.

When we play doubles, it’s me and Dion versus his sisters, and we’ve developed our house rules, of course. If a shot of Dion’s is not going to make it over the net, for instance, I can hit it again from the air – yelling “bippity-bop!” while doing so.

Pickleball is a remarkable equalizer. I can still overpower the girls, but they’re learning fast – how to push me to one side of the court, then drop shot to the other, or hit behind me as I recover. When I come up for air, breathing hard, and see those fists pump in a rare moment of sisterly solidarity, I can’t wipe the grin off my face.