There I was, sharing air with Iga Swiatek.
“OH my goodness, I’m standing next to the best female tennis player on tour right now!” I thought to myself. Iga Swiatek is probably not known to any of you reading this blog but she has been absolutely slaying women’s tennis since Serena retired. She’s young, maybe only 20 or 21, but she is at the top of her game.
I did some googling, and she had just won the Stuttgart Open and had taken a flight from Frankfort, Germany to Madrid, Spain. She was competing in the infamous lead up tournament to the Grand Slam Roland Garros here in Madrid and little did she know, I had VIP tickets to the women’s quarterfinal match. It was something I had purchased for myself before even leaving the US and I was excited to be there to witness the best tennis players in the world; what could be better than that? Well, now I was standing next to the top ranked player in the tournament.
I dared not make eye contact and focused on the baggage claim carousel. I pondered if I should make a joke about how baggage carousels are a lot like our own lives; it goes around and around, and we carry everyone else’s problems. I hesitated to say it because it wasn’t profound or funny. What would you have said if you were standing next to an athlete that you enjoyed and respected? Would you even say anything?
I thought about asking her for a selfie but perhaps she wouldn’t appreciate the unnecessary attention. We stood in silence and her bags were first to come around the carousel. Two large tennis bags, and four maxi-sized suitcases. She loaded all of them herself and was about to leave the baggage area. Right before she turned, I managed to softly say, “Good luck this week, I´m rooting for you!” She nodded in appreciation and said ‘thank you’ in an even softer tone. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t make a racquet and attract undue attention to her. (Tennis joke)
In her short career, that young lady has won $16 million in prize money. She was traveling in economy and porting her many bags by herself. I had a newfound respect for her because the 30-year-old in me would be milking that for all its worth.
As I was waiting for my own bag, I wondered, should I take a deuce before I get on the train home? (Tennis joke)
I made it home, unpacked, and passed out at the hour of 9pm. The next day, bright and early, I arrived at my office at 7:45am. I was in a fantastic mood. Not only had I met a celebrity athlete, but I had also felt refreshed from traveling to Germany the week before. To my surprise, my boss had a list 12 miles long for me. I stayed at the office until 8pm with him and by the time I got home, it was bedtime.
The following day it was the same schedule. In the US, I had been used to a laxer work culture where I was able to take breaks and go to the gym daily. Since I moved to Spain, I had lost about 20lbs, mostly of muscle. The gym is how I was able to release stress and making time for it had been a priority for me. We all need to be able to separate work from our personal lives, even if you don’t go to the gym.
In Spain, the schedule is something that I have had trouble getting used to. They arrive at the office at 9am, lunch around 3, and leave the office around 7. With an hour commute, that gets me home around 8 if the buses and trains are running on time. That hardly leaves room to grocery shop, go to the gym, and catch up on my shows – let alone go on dates or take myself to social functions. Why did I move all this way if I was just going to waste it all at the office?
Also that day, my boss sprang a last minute trip for us to go to France in the next week. It sounds like heaven, but I had just gotten back from Germany and hadn’t had any time to catch up on sleep or things I enjoyed. I curled up in my bed and I allowed myself a moment for a short cry. This trip to France also meant that I would miss the Tennis tournament that I was so looking forward to.
My sadness turned into anger and rage. “Am I even going to be able to have a life here?” I screamed out of my apartment window. Everyone on the streets walked with a happy and careless fervor that I both envied and detested. “Don’t they have to work… or is that just me?”
I became more conscious of my emotions and recited a quote from my favorite book by Tori Murden McClure that I wrote about in my first post. “Whatever the weather, it is my weather, and I must do my best to enjoy it.” I took a deep breath and looked at a shelf in my room that contained some letters.
My friend Jamie had written some notes to me in case of hard days. There were five in total, and they covered several “Open when” scenarios. “Open when you first arrive.” “Open when boys suck, and not in the good way.” And then my eyes centered on one letter in particular… “Open when you need a pep talk.”
If there was any day that I needed a pep talk, it was today.
Jamie is the type of friend that knows me so personally and that can be tremendously scary. If you know someone in this way, it’s important to make sure your relationship is full of love. A person who knows you like this has the power to uplift you in the most substantial way imaginable, but also can destroy you in the most gut-wrenching circumstance should they choose.
She was proud of me for what I had accomplished, but I thought, “If only she could see the slump I’ve fallen into here alone.” I continued to read, and her words brought me comfort. At the end of the note the tone went from encouraging to something a bit more firm. “James, imagine where your grandparents have come from and where you are now. They fought through the hardest times for you to be able to choose this kind of life.”
Both sets of my grandparents had been farmers and they had never left the country. My Mom’s parents, who are still with us, live in their own home with assistance and can even use their ipads to text me! My dad’s parents, however, were tenant farmers in Eastern Kentucky and didn’t have an indoor toilet until well into their marriage.
My papaw had lived inside of a school bus until he married my Mamaw, who herself only had an 8th grade education. My Mamaw passed in November of 2020 and left a void in my extended family. She was a product of a harsh raise, which is common in Appalachia, and it afforded her a very fierce personality. Fiercely opinionated, fiercely protective, and filled with fierce love. If she were here now, what would she say to me? I closed the letter, wiped my eyes, ate some gummy bears, and went to bed.
The next day I went to the office determined with an attitude my Mamaw would’ve appreciated. Fierce. My boss arrived around 9:30am (I had already been there for an hour) and asked me how quick I could turnaround a new project before we left for France in the coming days. Without thinking I responded with, “The hurrier I go, the behind’er I get.” My eyes widened as the phrase had left my mouth without my brain filtering it.
My boss stared at me blankly and in total confusion. English was his third language and I’m sure the Appalachian slang left him in total disarray. The phrase had been something my Mamaw had hung in her kitchen and it was ingrained into my memory.
She was someone who was staunchly loyal in her Christian faith, but also believed in Appalachian Mysticism. A blue jay that landed on her window might represent someone she had been thinking about, or even a cold chill in her bones meant something bad was about to happen. However, in this moment where I had recalled a phrase she had uttered repeatedly, I knew she was there to give me a pat on the back.
I explained what the phrase meant to my confused manager, and he understood. That day, I left the office at 5pm and made time for myself that evening. On the way home I gave myself a pep talk, “I am capable of balance, and I am strong enough set boundaries. I will not succumb to my own helplessness, and I’ll be damned if I don’t enjoy this opportunity to live in Europe, something that both sets of my grandparents would have never dreamed of.”
When I got home on Friday, I threw my things in the floor and immediately began to shower. I had tickets to the opera.
Madrid is home to the Teatro Real, a grand Opera house, that was home to such classics Don Quijote and La Forza del Destino. Tonight, I was not watching a Spanish Opera, rather I bought box seats for Tristan and Isolde. This opera originally premiered in Munich in 1865 by the brilliant Romantic era composer, Richard Wagner.
While the US was ending a civil war, Germany/Prussia was entering a new age of collective identity, one that was characterized my high art, and none more globally pervasive than Opera. This story gets a lot of flak because viewers tend to think of it as a more macabre Romeo and Juliet story, however Shakespeare actually had taken inspiration for his play from this Celtic folktale.
Spoiler Alert, Tristan and Isolde end up dying together in the end – which is why most see the resemblance between Romeo and Juliet. The key difference, however, is that Tristan and Isolde are well in age. They have been through pain before when it comes to love, and even caused some of their own. Where it’s easy for the young to immediately fall in love as represented in Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde mistakenly take a potion that binds them together.
I sat in my box alone. This opera doesn’t have any familiar arias that would be recognizable to the passive opera listener, but the orchestral accompaniment is so rich that one could just attend for the sole purpose of listening to the music.
If you have been to a musical, you know that the acting is much more over the top than in an Opera. In this art form, you can convey powerful emotion through subtlety and, for me at least, garners a more intense reaction from the audience.
During the production my thoughts turned to what an opening night would’ve been like in Munich in 1865. Ball gowns, three-piece suits, and the elites from Prussia and Austria-Hungary all seated to witness an Opera that would be the pinnacle of romanticism. Today, nothing about the opera was altered, from the German lyrics to the characterization. In a way, watching this Opera was like reaching through time to connect with its first viewers.
Nobody in the audience spoke and it was still. So much so, that I heard someone sneeze on the other side of the room. The performers didn’t wear microphones because they didn’t need to. There was a collective understanding of why we were all there and I felt comforted by that.
After four and a half hours and two intermissions, the Opera had concluded. Catherine Foster who had played the role of Isolde took in four variations of standing applause. If you don’t like Opera, you could not admit that opera singers are not immensely talented. But, at 12:30am I was tired after the long week and decided to end the night early.
On Saturday I woke up late at 9am and decided to catch up on a few things for work. I turned the TV on to find Iga Swiatek playing in the third round of the tennis tournament I had had tickets for. I sighed, with my new travel plans I would be unable to watch the quarterfinal match in which she would have most likely been. After a few minutes, I looked to see if there were still some higher up tickets available to watch the night’s matches. Carlos Alcaraz (Spain’s new darling) was playing Gregor Dimitrov. I decided to purchase tickets and travelled to the stadium at 8pm.
What I love about Tennis as opposed to other professional sports, is that typically the spectators are there to enjoy the match. Unless it is a big-time player, the audience doesn’t have much loyalty to either; they just enjoy watching great tennis. However, this was not the case this evening.
Carlos Alcaraz was a clear favorite, so the Spanish crowd was not too worried. The match after, however, between Danish Holger Rune and the Spanish Alexandrov Davidovich-Fokhina, was less assured. Fokhy understood this and got the crowd riled up after each point. They even jeered when Rune would score. It was starkly different than what I had witnessed the night before at the Opera where you could hear a pin drop.
As I was leaving, Iga Swiatek walked past me in the corridor. She caught my glimpse last second and cocked her head as if she recognized me. She didn’t stop and nor did I, and as I walked to the train station, I laughed how funny circumstances can be. I looked up at the moon and noticed Stella staring back at me. I winked at her and went home.
Overall, I was happy to have gotten to witness a major tennis tournament. Things might not have worked out the way I planned but do they ever? I’m writing this on the train from Paris to Grenoble and it’s a rare evening where I can see the partially full moon at sunset. I am trying to remember to expect the unexpected, plan for unpredictability, and stay happy in moments of uncertainty. Whatever the weather, it is my weather, and I must do my best to enjoy it.
