sometimes you just need to take a moment

I’ve arrived.

I know you aren’t supposed to say that. You aren’t supposed to insinuate that your journey is complete, especially in America where we feed off a sense of dissatisfaction with our lives. Somewhere along the line we get the message that growth must come from a never ending well of inferiority and by saying ‘I am where I’d always hoped I would be’ which is the thought that crosses my mind occasionally, I’m somehow content with mediocrity; like someone who stops a marathon at the 20th mile, happy that they got that far.

Obviously I don’t sit around twiddling my thumbs repeating to myself how awesome it is to be me; the simultaneous absurdity and magnificence of my life hits me rarely and suddenly. I’ll be walking to practice weaving around orange trees and dodging taxis on the streets of Athens, thinking to myself ‘I’m doing exactly what I’d always dreamed I’d be doing’. Of course, I didn’t know that arriving here would have been such an adventure; who can ever predict the path. But I did have some crazy notion in my head from ten years old that I would play professional basketball, despite the fact that I’d never heard of a woman being paid to play. For some reason, as I fell asleep at night, I believed that by the time I was of age, if I had worked hard enough, the opportunity would present itself.

The realization of goals usually comes about so slowly and incrementally, that by the time you arrive, one can hardly remember how distant the starting line was. But just sometimes, a memory flashes back so vividly, that it starts a procession of your past and you feel like the whole journey is flowing through your mind like a movie.

This summer I had one of those moments when I found myself playing against Sheryl Swoopes in open gyms and rec league games around Seattle. I played with her some days, guarded her others; we’d exchange high fives or elbows and complain about younger players calling fouls over incidental contact (seems like I became a veteran player overnight). Most of the time we were on the same team because we chose to be, throwing each other dimes and applauding good defense, happy to be on the court with someone whose competitiveness and
fire mirrors our own. It was just as much fun as I’d always imagined it would be.

Sometimes I would have flashbacks to when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. It was the year before the Atlanta Olympics, and the year that the seed of women’s basketball was planted in the collective mind of America. Finally there was a visual of women playing basketball, not girls, but women. It was monumental and Sheryl was on that team, traveling around the country playing exhibition games, showing little girls what possibilities lay ahead and finally giving men in the stands a reason to doubt their superiority in sports that they quite possibly had no talent in.

I’d had dreams of greatness on the hardwood long before I saw Sheryl and her teammates practicing against men at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. But the visual gave me something very concrete to lock my dreams to. Prior to that, I dreamt in abstraction or stretched reality; like me and Michael Jordan sharing the backcourt. After Colorado Springs, the goal was no longer a figment of my imagination, I saw 12 flesh and blood professional women’s basketball players; there was even talk of creating a league so they could play in the USA.

I remember driving through the beautiful landscape of Colorado after that day. I sat in the backseat staring out the window as the sun set over the mountains; I was in a trance, like someone who’d gotten an omen showing them the way. At that moment, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I distinctly remember that feeling, fully and completely surrendering to my goal, no looking back. I knew I was willing to do it, sacrifice had never been a problem for me. But that day gave me hope and conviction and the realization that regardless of where I would eventually land, the journey of giving myself to the game was a worthy one.

And so when I say I’ve arrived, I mean I’ve done what I intended to do on that memorable day in Colorado. There’s much more to be accomplished, and goals from other days that still remain elusive. But sometimes it’s nice to take a minute and reflex on one that’s been reached, to remember that mind of a fourteen year old clinging to a distant dream, and to celebrate this long and wonderful journey.