My daughter is a member of the new
championship girls’ softball team for all New York
City public middle schools! She’s one
of three 6th-graders on the team. They are three friends–one is a budding
superstar and the other two, my daughter, Elena, and her pal, Jenna, don’t
play all that much. In fact, they didn’t play in the championship game. Still, if Elena’s skills don’t quite align with her hopes, she brings something else to the
team that I greatly admire and consider one of her best qualities. —
It is simply this: Elena participates, and she invariably does it with aplomb and a positive attitude. In the course of her 12 years, she has often challenged
herself to do things that she’s not the best at, but thought they’d be fun to do
all the same. Elena sings her heart out in the Hebrew School chorus, but she will
never be trying out for American Idol. Elena learned to ski, even though my wife
and I won’t go near the slopes. She’s been playing softball for four years now
and perseveres even though she still swings like she’s on a one-second delay. For
me, the best award she’s ever gotten for anything came at the end of her first
year on a competitive swim team. She wasn’t the fastest or the slowest swimmer, but
the coach chose to recognize exactly who she was: the most improved. That
award taught her more about the virtue of hard work than all my platitudes ever
did.
I couldn’t make it to
the championship game, but I was there for the semi-finals. It was one of those gorgeous
temperate spring days last week. Elena and Jenna both got some action that
game, but not that much. When it was over, they gave each other the
hugest high-five and just kind of took off, running back to the school,
propelled by the joy of victory.
It was a proud moment
for me too.
––Eric Messinger
