Landon abandons his food on the table, and carries a plate to his mother inside. Apparently, she’s not coming back out to eat with us. An unknown yet familiar worry twists my gut.
Without a word, Landon exits the house and sits down beside me and takes a bite of his cheeseburger.
“Everything okay?” I’m not sure why I ask. It’s none of my business. Yet it feels like I need to know.
Landon lowers his voice, making sure the kids don’t hear him. “She has MS.”
I set my burger down on my plate. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
He nods, keeping his focus on his food while he continues. “She was experiencing some strange symptoms for a while, but no one was able to pinpoint exactly what it was. Then one day she got so dizzy that she fell and hit her head. The doctors at the Emergency Room ran some tests, and that’s how we found out.”
“That’s why you came back.” After all the years he spent away from home, I was surprised to see him back here. Now it makes sense.
His hazel eyes flick to the house. “I didn’t want her here going through this alone.”
It’s the same reason I attended a college close to home. Regardless of how upset my father was that I refused to go away to school, I knew in my heart I needed to be here for him. To enjoy our last few years together.
Watching my father deteriorate was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through. He was too young, had too much of his life left. But I understand his decision to end treatment and go out on his own terms.
As much as I can’t stand Landon, I have respect for someone who gives up his life in order to be there for his family. It’s not easy. Selflessness is commendable, but comes with its own myriad of issues. You lose a piece of yourself, of your life. And though you’d make the same choice all over again in a heartbeat, that doesn’t make it any easier. Especially when you don’t have siblings or any other family members to lean on.
I scoot my chair closer to Landon. “Hey, where’s your dad?”
His jaw works under his skin. “Hopefully somewhere getting the karma he deserves.”
I nod in understanding. “Karma comes for everyone at some point.”
He shifts in his chair as he takes a sip from his soda can. “How’s the burger?”
“It’s good. I like the seasoning you put on it.”
“It’s the cyanide. Gives it that extra flavor.”
I grunt out a laugh. “You’d love that. Then you could be head coach.”
“I already am head coach.”
I roll my eyes. “If you had a choice between varsity and JV, you saying you wouldn’t take it?”
“I wouldn’t.” His eyes stay locked on mine, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s telling the truth. “I like the idea of working with the girls who have unlocked potential. Training them and helping them to grow and get better at the game. It’s not always about being the top team, or winning.”
Here we go with the inspirational lecture.
“Winning is how you measure growth. If you keep losing, something’s not working.”
His head jerks back as he sets his burger down on his plate. “You can measure growth in other ways. Teams can still make good plays within a losing game. Points on a board can’t tell you a story the way these kids can.”
The girls turn their heads, stopping their conversations to listen.
“You remember what it was like back then,” he continues. “All that we were struggling with on and off the field. It’s the same for them. Sure, we need to teach them how to play the game, but we can teach them a hell of a lot more than that.”
I look around the table at these teenagers, and I see myself. Too young to be going through the things they’re faced with at this age, from divorced parents to body image issues to social media—and that’s not including the usual things we see on the news, like poverty and war. Add in the beautifully harrowing fact that they’re women in a world where we’re told we’re less than, and have to work twice as hard to prove ourselves to people who will never truly appreciate all that we are.
I turn to our teams. “Lacrosse was an escape for me. My dad got diagnosed with cancer when I was in high school, and we didn’t catch it early enough. Playing was a way for me to take out my emotions, to channel them, and it was something I could control in the midst of feeling like my world was spiraling out of control.”
“My little sister had leukemia,” Dominique says, her voice quiet and her eyes cast downward. “She died last year.”
Last year, when I told her she didn’t make varsity.
