Please don’t take this as just another grandmother brag, but in our phone conversation last night my grandson William taught me something really important about dealing with loss and the disappointments that accompany it.
William is a 24-year-old soccer player, attempting to live out his dream of playing on a professional soccer team. He came in with the right genes for such an endeavor, his mother having been a high school gymnast and cheerleader and his father, a University of Nebraska football player. As a toddler, he would attentively watch golf on television and page through pictures of the golfers in the golf magazines his father didn’t have time to read. The family joke at the time was, “Is there a golf gene?”
Being in a sports-minded family William played Little League versions of most every team sport available, baseball, soccer, basketball, and eventually football, though that step carried a bit of trepidation for his physical therapist mother. By high school, he was singled out for the basketball and soccer teams, and playing soccer became a big part of his college experience. Last summer his grandfather and I visited him in Sweden where he had earned himself a place on a semi-professional European team. At the time of our visit, William was on the injured list so we didn’t get to actually see him play.
Fast forward to this season – since last summer he has had two surgeries on his knee and he’s rehabbing in the Los Angeles area, having joined a community team whose practice and playing schedule is not as intense as professional teams maintain. If this works he will get his groove back and move up to a more challenging situation. If the knee cartilage doesn’t continue to rebuild and repair on its own, his doctors have a piece of his cartilage growing in a lab dish somewhere. They will do a surgery to implant it. This could mean a full recovery for his later life, but if that surgery becomes necessary, that’s the end of his playing career.
As I’m hearing these details I’m marveling at the advances in medical science and at how my grandson is handling the potential loss of his dream. He reminds me that experiences of injury, physical pain, and disability aren’t reserved for middle-aged and older folks, though you might think so hearing the way we complain about them. Young people, especially those like William who are doing the dedicated work to realize a big dream, live with an awareness that they risk big losses too.
Listening to the calm, grown-up tone in his voice as he recounts the details of his reality, I feel proud, grateful, and inspired to call on that part of myself the next time life hands me an unwanted difficulty.
