Growing up I never really got into sports … particularly team sports.  I was on the swim team and I did compete in rollerskating but those were still mostly individual.  There were two other sports I loved but my family did not have the money for me to pursue; horseback riding and tennis.  I do still have my original wooden Chris Evert tennis racket, which I was so proud to get as a little girl.  At a time when sports was still a man’s world, this American woman was ranked the world’s number one tennis player.  She won eighteen Grand Slam singles championships and three doubles titles.  Chris Evert also won a record seven championships at the French Open and Serena Williams is tied with her record of six champions at the U.S. Open.  Evert went pro in 1972, the year Title IX was enacted.  The U.S. Congress signed Title Nine into law proclaiming there could be no act of discrimination against females in any educational program or activity receiving federal financial aid of any type.  Even though it wasn’t my thing, I noticed when I was in elementary school girls’ soccer teams were beginning to form and that it was a big deal.  Three decades later I have a cousin who will be attending college next year on a soccer scholarship.  I am so proud of her and for her.  She has worked incredibly hard since her early childhood, with the tireless support of both her parents and grandparents.  It still seems wild to me that a girl could get into college for playing a sport.  When I was in community college passing a sport was required to count toward my bachelor’s degree.  I chose tennis.  I really loved that semester and didn’t dread it like I always had gym class.  I was told I was pretty good and I got an updated racket.  My husband’s paternal side is truly sports royalty and yet what has always bonded us is our shared love of reading, museums, and travel.  The travel part I have only been blessed enough to enjoy since I got married.  So I have had two rackets in my arsenal and I broke them out when I asked my husband if he’d like to play tennis with me.  I gave him my beloved Chis Evert and I played with my college one from twenty years ago that has broken strings.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed just hitting the ball back and forth to each other.  One of the many things I love about my husband is that he is simply not competitive.  He enjoys playing whether he wins or loses.  I, on the other hand, have an innate desire —no, need, to win.  Playing with him made me know I wanted to really be in the game.  However, it took a LOT for me to muster my courage and go try to enter tennis courts where women were hypercompetitive, had already formed their own cliques, and knew how to play.  I do not like doing things if I cannot do them well.  I didn’t want to wear the white pleated short tennis skirt and I began to get cold feet trying to play at 48.  Armed with my “newest” racket, I was good-naturedly laughed at.  The tennis rackets now are like AIR compared with my old one!  And my original wooden one is like trying to hit with a brick.  I think I have settled on a racket I like and I have learned that several factors go into choosing one:  grip, size, weight, strings, how one hits, etc.  So I have started really learning tennis and I could not be happier.  Helen Wills Moody, an American tennis player, has been said to be arguably the most dominant tennis player of the 20th century as well as the greatest female player in history.  Ranked number one in singles in 1927, she won the Grand Slam Singles at French Open in 1928, 1929, 1930 and 1932.  She won the Grand Slam at Wimbledon in 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1935, and 1938.  In the US Open, she won the the Grand Slam singles in 1923, 1924, 1925, 1927,1928, 1929, and 1931.  She was ranked highest in Doubles in 1924 and won Grand Slam Mixed Doubles in the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open as well.  Representing the United States, she medaled gold in Singles and Doubles at the 1924 games in Paris.  Moody said, “I love the feel of hitting the ball hard, the pleasure of a rally.  It is these things that make tennis the delightful game that it is.”  I could not agree more.  “Love” may mean “zero” in the game, but I have discovered a love “match” with tennis:  it is a no contest.

My mother loved taking pictures.  Thanks to her I have a wonderful pictorial timeline of my life growing up.  It is interesting to watch the evolution of people in photography — from those first formal black and white portraits with families posing stiffly to the more casual color photos we see today.  Thanks to my iPhone, I always have my camera with me, and I am able to capture completely candid moments like this.  We were waiting at the dentist’s office and my little girl struck up a conversation with another little girl near her age in the artless way that children do.  I listened to them talk for awhile, comparing where they were in school to the number of teeth they’d lost.  I glanced up at one point and saw this.  Both little girls were examining an almost life sized bronze of a little girl about their age who was reading a book.  Something about it struck me, and I was able to get the shot before the minute passed.  Life is made up of moments big and small.  In the past it was important to have the big ones photographed for posterity.  Now we have the luxury of photographing the little ones, and they can be just as meaningful.  Unlike a painting, subject to the interpretation of the artist, the lens does not lie.  The American photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange once said, “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”  She was best known for her work which humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography.  Although my degree is in journalism I consider myself a photojournalist as well, following in the footsteps of my mother as both a writer and a photographer.  Life will not always be perfect or go the way we’d planned.  How we choose to view the blessings we have been given in this life, however, can always make it picture perfect.

A couple of weeks ago we went to an American Girl doll luncheon.  This was outside the official realm of the American Girl doll store and restaurant.  I have always loved plush animals of any sort but just never got into dolls; it didn’t matter if they were baby dolls, young girl dolls, or Barbie dolls.  So when my mother-in-law suggested getting my daughter her own American Girl doll for Christmas I had no idea how it would go over.  Like me, my child is in love with all types of animals.  However, she seems to be more feminine than I was and I must confess I like seeing her in dresses … which I REFUSED to wear unless it was the first day of school or for church.  My mother-in-law and I both studied the dolls at length and tried to get the one that most resembled my child.  It has my daughter’s deep, dark brown eyes and auburnish hair, although it is straight and its skin is darker.  Right before Christmas I was happy to be at the American Girl doll store where I had lunch with my grandmother-in-law and my mother-in-law, along with my daughter.  We had four generations there plus the doll, whom my child named Paris.  I could not believe all the things they sold:  high chairs, travel packs, clothes, accessories, furniture, animal companions, jewelry, and so much more.  The most jaw-dropping thing for me was the hair salon.  They had actual people braiding, straightening, curling, and cutting the dolls’ hair; of course it was by appointment.  Her grandmother bought Paris got her own special chair (which acts like a child’s high chair that attaches onto the sides of tables.)  For dining there her doll received her own miniature gift bag containing a plate, cloth napkin, cardboard table setting, and (my personal favorite) a glass of sparkling pink lemonade in a goblet.  Paris had already scored a tiny cell phone complete with an American Girl Doll “credit card,” a library card, and five very realistic looking dollars.  In addition, the cell phone has a screen that can be manually changed from weather to games or calls.  I was surprised to see a little boy eating there with his doll.  He had straight blonde hair in a cut indicative of the ’70s, as did his doll.  I covertly watched him love and nurture him and thought, wow, someone is going to be very lucky to have him as a father one day.  F.H. Bradley, the British idealist philosopher, once said, “We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother.  It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.”  I would disagree.  Motherhood is very real.  It is sobering, shocking, and straining, but — in my opinion — it is also life’s greatest joy.  It is not without pain, hardship, sacrifice, doubt, and worry.  When I see my baby doll buckle her doll in the car before herself I know she will be an incredibly loving mother.  Maybe Bradley was right; I really do love playing with my very own American Girl Doll.