I shrug. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” I echo her words from before.
That earns a quiet laugh from her. “You know what you’re doing.”
“Maybe I’m guessing.” Truth is, there was a fifty-fifty chance that it would backfire. I’m glad it didn’t. “You missing him extra hard today?”
She looks up, searching the air for answers, then locks eyes with me. Finally, in a soft, broken voice, she says, “I always miss him. He was my favorite person. Him and my mom, truly. But he was definitely the one I could talk to about…things, especially with sports. My mom…well, she tries, but she doesn’t really get it. She’s not athletic, happily so. But my dad played football. He understood what it was like to work hard for something, even when the outcome wasn’t what you expected.”
I nod, feeling the weight of her words and knowing them oh too well.
“I don’t like talking to my mom about what I’m struggling with either,” she continues. “She lost him too, you know?”
I know exactly what she means. It’s not the loss itself—it’s the pressure to be strong, to be ‘okay’ for the other person. I tell her, “I get it. I’m not your dad, and I’m not your friend, but I can listen. I know what it’s like to struggle with a sport. I know what it’s like to want something badly and not get it for reasons you can’t control. And I also know what it’s like to grieve, to miss someone so much that all you can do is cry.”
She looks at me for a long moment, her tears slowing but still there. “I think…I think that’s why I cry,” she admits. “Like, I’ve been holding all this stuff in, and then—” She wipes her eyes again but leaves the tears there.
I give her a small smile. “Maybe tears are your heart’s way of releasing everything that’s been building up. Kind of like when we exhale after holding our breath for too long. Our hearts can race or slow down, and we can’t help but feel those emotions, even when we try to suppress them. When it can’t hold them anymore, it releases them as tears.”
She nods then lets out a shaky laugh. “I just…I don’t know. Sometimes, I wonder if I’ll ever be good enough at sports. I mean, I work hard, but I don’t feel like I’m as good as the other girls.”
“Why do you do it? Why do you play?”
She shrugs.
“Some kids do it because their parents want them to. Some do it because their friends are doing it. But why doyou,Isabella, want to play hockey?”
“I think it’s cool. I would love to say I wanted to be a figure skater or a ballet dancer, but that’s just…not me. I like running, speed, sweat. I’m not all graceful and pretty like the other girls.”
She sighs. “I know that dancers and gymnasts and figure skaters sweat, and run, and have speed. I know that, trust me. But they pull all that strength into grace, and I don’t think I can do that.” She continues as if run by a motor. “I don’t know. I like contact sports, like flag football, hockey, soccer. I like the team aspect—working with others but also competing against them. But I’m not that agile. I feel like I’m letting my team down. It’s hard.”
I nod again. “It is hard, especially working so hard for something, to want it so badly, and not get the results you expect. But you don’t strike me as a quitter.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t quit. My dad didn’t, so why should I?”
“I like that,” I say, a small smile forming on my face. “He sounds like he was a good man.”
She smiles softly, a tear slipping down her cheek that she undaringly lets rest there. It’s almost like she wants to let it exist, to let the emotion show. What a beautiful thing it is to love someone that much.
“I really miss him,” she says quietly. “He was the best. And I feel so…useless without him.”
I lean forward, my voice soft but firm. “It’s okay to miss him. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay not to know what to do when you wish you could talk to him again.”
For a moment, we sit there in silence. I don’t know what else to do. Once, I thought this was what I wanted, to help kids process their emotions as my therapist once helped me and my little sister, but I have too much grief of my own not to project, too much grief not to fuck it up, so I’m doing the next best thing.
“Do you think I can still do this?” she asks, her voice so small. “Play hockey?”
I smile at her. “Kiddo, you’vebeenplaying hockey.”
“I’ve been falling during hockey.”
“You’ve fallen? Really? I wouldn’t know,” I joke.
She chuckles. “A lot.”
“Huh? You must probably do something really fast every time. I wonder what that would be?”
“I get back up again.”
I nod. “That’s all you can do,” I say with a wink.
