As soon as the match began it was apparent that he was far better than me. I was taken down twenty seconds in and quickly altered my strategy from trying to win to instead keeping it close until the end, at which point I’d try for a throw. My mother kept yelling. I was losing nine to four heading into the third period. I earned a point by escaping but got desperate, took a bad shot, and got taken down again. I escaped again with thirty seconds left, but every move I tried was countered and the match ended. The final score was eleven to six.
I walked off the mat breathing heavily. My mother hugged me. I went to the locker room, changed, walked out, and we climbed into her car. Before we pulled out of the parking lot, she stopped and looked over.
“You did great,” she said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t win it for you.”
“Hey,” she said. I looked at her. “You did great.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I reached into my bag and removed a jewelry box that contained the triple-hoop earrings I had bought the day before with money I’d earned mowing lawns, which I did every summer. They weren’t expensive—only seven dollars—but I thought they’d look nice on her.
She opened the box and lifted them out. “They’re beautiful,” she said in a breathless sort of way that embarrassed me. That’s how she always was, overly sentimental and impressed by simple gestures. She put them on and asked me how they looked. I told her they looked great.
“Thank you, Bubby,” she said. “But I still think that tournament was a better gift.”
I rolled my eyes. “No way.”
“Yer going to be my little state champion someday. You might not believe it, but you are. You’ve busted yer butt to accomplish every goal you’ve set for yourself thus far. How many of your friends wrestle in every tournament?”
“None.”
“How many wrestle year-round?”
“Zero.”
“Exactly. Yer workin’ harder than everyone else and yer gettin’ so good. It makes me proud to watch you work as hard as you do.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“You don’t have to thank me; it’s true. And when you win it all, I’m gonna be the proudest mom in the whole world.”
Remembering that moment, I found the extra push Gene had talked about. I sat reliving the memory for twenty minutes and, at one point, laughed out loud when recalling how out of place my mother had looked sitting alone in the coach’s chair, cheering me on. Then I picked up the pencil and started writing.
twenty