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Eileen - Day #310 - Monday
Daily intake goals:: < 35g carbs / < 1700 calories / > 64+ oz. water
Exercise yesterday:: 60 min. tennis + 40 min. swimming + 60 min. 4-Square
Net carb grams yesterday: 30.1 Calories: 1345
Weight today: 236.2 Change: +0.8 Total weight loss: -49.0
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Okay I need to type out what happened today. I don’t know that it’s as pressing a need for anyone else in the world to read it, but I really need to write it. Just a warning, this might be a long post because I tend to process as I type.
This morning when I got ready for work, I threw a pair of shorts and a light t-shirt into a grocery bag and brought it with me. I knew I wanted to put an hour of tennis in after work and since it’s Monday (Kevin’s night for Youth Group), I figured I’d be doing my hour behind the grocery store by myself.
Okay now fast-forward to this afternoon. I was talking to my friend D. and telling her about the wonderful Mother’s Day weekend I had and all the exercise I put in, and also about the difficult time I had with Paige (my daughter) yesterday. I shared with her (D.) that I really love playing tennis now and that I regret all those years that I wasn’t active. “Maybe if I had gotten out and played with my kids years ago, maybe things would be different now. Maybe Paige would be different now.”
D., who has known us both since Paige was a little girl, rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, right, Paige would be totally different if you’d only handed her a tennis racket all those years ago. It’s probably good you didn’t give her something she could hit you with!” I laughed but went on to explain that what I meant was that all three of my children would have benefitted from fresh air and exercise and the opportunity to interact with their mom in a physical activity. D. went on to explain that what she meant was that even though I wasn’t all physical back then like I am now, all three of my children had plenty of opportunity to interact with their mom and that they all turned out very differently and Paige’s penchant for drama has nothing to do with whether or not I played with her outside. I just shrugged. Who knows?
D. said, “A good friend of mine always says to me, ‘Things happen for a reason.’ There’s a reason you’re doing what you’re doing now and there was a reason then for things to play out the way they did then. You can’t second-guess how things might have turned out if you’d done things differently.”
Yeah, I’m that friend that always says Things happen for a reason. I truly believe they do. What happened next definitely hit it home for me today.
One hour after that conversation, I got a call on my cell. It was Paige, calling from her school in Tampa. She was so sorry, she said, but she accidentally missed her bus to go home. Would I come and pick her up? Yes of course, I said, I’ll be there as soon as I can. So what, that she was rude and nasty to me just yesterday - on Mother’s Day - my daughter needed me so none of that mattered.
Thinking that I’d cruise by the grocery store for my tennis match with a wall on my way home, I grabbed that grocery bag with my exercise clothes and brought it with me.
On the way to Tampa (at least a 45-minute drive), I had time to think. I thought about that conversation I had with D. and about the strained and uncomfortable interaction I generally experience when I spend any amount of time with Paige. It’s unpleasant for me and I’m certain it is for her, too. She’s 19 years old but in many ways she’s still just a child. Wasn’t it just yesterday that I typed the words, I have given up on trying to “fix” it? Have I really given up? Is it really too late for me to do anything? As it has been her whole life, the responsibility for making things better still falls on my shoulders.
So after picking her up at her school, on the way to my mom’s apartment, I explained my daily exercise goal to her and asked her if she wanted to play tennis with me for an hour. She immediately said, “Yeah, I’d like that.”
We both changed into our shorts and t-shirts and went to the tennis courts there in the apartment complex. There were four courts and they were all deserted. I gave her one of the rackets in my trunk to use. She warned me, “I suck at tennis,” and I said I wasn’t great at it either and she said, “No I mean I reallllly suck at tennis.” Well okay yeah she couldn’t even hit the ball over the net from eight feet away - but no one had ever showed her how, either! I was a little nervous because Paige typically gets very defensive and nasty whenever anyone (especially me!) tries to teach her anything, but I offered to show her how to serve on a bounce (wasn’t even gonna go to an overhead serve, not yet).
I showed her where to stand and demonstrated, then had her try it. I told her what she was doing wrong and she applied what I said. She never got defensive, never got nasty, she just took the help offered in the spirit it was given. She got very excited the first time she hit a perfect ball over the net. For the rest of the time we played I made sure to offer lots of praise while still giving her tips.
Not even fifteen minutes into our hour, she was sweating and breathing hard and had to stop for a drink. Incredulous, she asked “OMG how do you do this every day for an hour?!?” I had to laugh. This is my daughter who weighs 110 lbs. soaking wet, and I have more endurance right now than she does!!
The entire hour was pleasant. No disrespectful words. No nasty looks. It was actually fun, I think, for both of us. Fun is something that my daughter and I have not shared for a very long time. Near the end of the hour, she asked me, “Do you think maybe we could do this again, like one night a week?”
Things do happen for a reason. And yeah, maybe it’s not too late.
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