Elegy - Chapter 17

The rest of Saturday evening was a disaster. I’d begged off meeting Chef, claiming I had something with the band that I needed to take care of, and the show was worse. Even Marco asked if I was feeling bad after I’d lost the tempo the third time, causing the rest of the band to scramble to adjust to me.

I just couldn’t get my act together, my mind constantly on Sydney and what I was going to do. There was a simple answer, of course. Just not one I was willing to do. If I’d had trouble saying those three words to her in the moment, because I wanted to make sure they weren’t insincere, saying them after she was noticeably angry at me would basically go against everything I’d said … and believed.

It only got worse once the distractions were gone and I was alone in my room, staring up at the ceiling, alone with my thoughts. I kept playing the scene over and over in my head, like watching a train wreck. What I really wanted to do was stay in bed all day Sunday, curled up and ignoring the world.

I couldn’t though. I still had a show I couldn’t put off, because I owed too much to the band, and I had to go to training. Chef might let me call off every once in a while, with other responsibilities, but two days in a row, and I’d have to come up with something better than just telling him I had band stuff to do. Lying wasn’t an option. He would smell it a mile away. So I pulled myself out of bed sometime around one in the afternoon and trudged to the Blue Ridge, mostly looking to just get through the day so I could go back to wallowing.

I should have known it wouldn’t work like that. Training was just as much of a disaster as I feared it would be. I couldn’t focus, missed instructions from Chef, and messed up moves I’d done perfectly hundreds of times before. I was a mess. Chef noticed immediately.

“Watch your form! Focus, Charlie!” he barked.

I tried to concentrate, throwing a series of punches and kicks, but everything felt sloppy and poorly timed.

Chef sighed, shaking his head in disappointment. “Do that again. And fix your stance; it’s weak!”

He moved around me as I tried, and failed, to make the connection. There are a lot of things that go into fighting, whether it be against an opponent or just doing combos into the air for practice, but the biggest factor is focus. You can have all the power and speed in the world, if you aren’t focused, your aim will be bad, your power will suck, and you will miss half the things you try to block. Which pretty much summed up the first ten minutes of training after we finished warming up and stretching.

“What is wrong with you today? Your head isn’t here,” he demanded, poking me in my forehead. “Get it together!”

I mumbled an apology, which only caused his annoyance to grow. Confidence and respect were two big keys in the philosophy behind Kung Fu, and mumbling your responses broke both of them. I knew this firsthand after doing many lunges and crawls as punishment while having that lesson repeated to me.

This time, there was no punishment.

Instead, he said, “We’re done for today. Come on with me.”

Before I could say anything, he turned and headed into the restaurant without another word, expecting me to follow.

I trudged after him, dreading the conversation to come. Chef could read me like an open book. How was I going to tell him that the reason I was disrespecting his training time was because my girlfriend was mad at me? I mean, it was, and I thought it was a legitimate excuse, but I couldn’t imagine he’d feel the same.

Chef led me to an empty corner of the dining room and slid into a booth. While the Blue Ridge didn’t close between lunch and dinner, it was a ghost town and only had one or two people in it, not counting staff, so the area far away from the stage, bar, and kitchen was always empty at this time of the day. I didn’t say anything but slid in across from him, clasping my hands nervously in front of me.

We were both silent for almost a minute. I knew he wanted me to explain, but I was embarrassed and felt a little bit foolish about the whole thing and couldn’t bring myself to talk first.

Finally, he opened his palm towards me in a ‘go ahead’ gesture and said, “What’s going on?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, looked down at the table, and said, “I had a big fight with Sydney on our date yesterday, and … I think we might be over.”

“Okay. What was the fight about?”

“At the end of our date, she, uhh, said ‘I love you,’ and I couldn’t say it back. Not because I don’t, or at least, not because I don’t like her, but because I’ve seen what my parents went through and how much they keep hurting each other even still. I’ve never really thought about this, not consciously, but as soon as she said it, everything they ever fought about ran through my head, and I just froze.”

“Did you explain this to her?”

“I tried, but she didn’t want to hear it. I could have done it wrong. I told her all about why I was hesitating and that I just wanted to make sure I was completely, a hundred percent sure before I said it, and she took it to mean I didn’t love her and just shut down. After that, she didn’t hear a word I had to say or even look at me. I tried, but it was like talking to a brick wall.”

He was quiet for a minute, his steepled fingers against his chin as he thought.

Finally, he said, “I can offer you two pieces of advice, one that will not be helpful right now, but that I think is important to understand, and another for how you can deal with this.”

“I’ll take whatever I can get because this is killing me. I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Unfortunately, that is my first piece of advice. There’s nothing you can do about it. This is something she has to figure out for herself. You’re both very young and haven’t experienced a lot of life. Experience is the best teacher in life, and for people your age, especially in this area, neither of you have enough experience to know how to deal with the emotions you’re feeling. It doesn’t help that you’re both in the period of life where you’re flooded with hormones, making your emotions more extreme than they would be if you encountered this later in life.”

“So we’re just overreacting?”

“That isn’t what I’m saying. I’m saying that her first reaction might not be the one she’ll land on if she had more experience. She was disappointed, expecting one response from you and getting another, and her immediate response was anger. That very well might not be her end response. Yes, you explained why you wouldn’t say it back to her, but it’s likely she wasn’t really listening. It’s hard for people your age to look past your immediate feelings in the moment, especially when those feelings are overwhelming. Given time, she might change the way she feels.”

“So, wait and do nothing? You’re right, that doesn’t make me feel much better.”

“I know. If you were older, her reaction would have probably been different. Right now, every decision feels like the most important thing in the world, every rejection like an unrecoverable setback, every setback like an end to all options. Experience will eventually tell you none of that is true, but nothing I or anyone else could say would change the way you feel about it. I don’t mean for just you and how you’re dealing with her response, but for her too. It’s why she took your ‘not yet’ as a ‘never’ and reacted the way she did. You don’t need to do anything with this, just keep it in mind. Her response and your feelings about this are both vast overreactions that only time can fix.”

“Okay,” I said.

It made sense, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with that information. It didn’t change how I felt or her response. Maybe it was true, but I still felt like crap.

“Like I said, it won’t help you right now,” he said, reading my thoughts. “The other part, and the one you can do right now, is to learn patience. Focus on what you cancontrol, your reactions and choices, and just wait on the things you can’t … like how someone else feels.”

“I’ve tried that. I thought back to what you’ve said about the tenets and tried to meditate, but it didn’t make it go away. I can’t just stop feeling what I’m feeling.”

“I’m not suggesting you stop your feelings, and I’m not saying what you’re feeling isn’t valid. There are different ways to exhibit patience, and none of them require you to pretend like the thing you’re waiting on isn’t happening. What they require is that you continue with your life, knowing that these things are happening and understanding that you can’t do anything about them at the moment.”

“How do I do that?”

“It’s not easy, and I’ll admit that I struggled with this as well. What helped me was understanding it better. There are three keys to patience: forbearance, acceptance, and perseverance. I was taught in the temple that mastering these three things would help me find inner peace.”

“I could use some inner peace.”

“Everyone could. The first is the easiest of the three to grasp, although that doesn’t make it easy to understand. Forbearance is counted as one of the six perfections on the spiritual path. My master told me that the key to forbearance was to be a calm pond on a windy day, my surface refusing to be moved or swayed by the winds above it.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” I said, trying not to sound frustrated.

“I know. While these principles sound simple, they’re actually incredibly difficult to master. Men spend lifetimes at the temple trying to understand these ideas in their fullness.”

“I don’t have a lifetime to study these. Sydney’s pissed at me now.”

He chuckled at that. I hadn’t meant it as a joke, and I knew he wasn’t laughing at me, but it still annoyed me.

“I was trying to make it clear how difficult these ideas are, and that it’s okay to not get it right away.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good. The simple way to explain this is that you have to recognize that life has its own rhythm that we cannot control; much like the pond can’t control the wind. You can try, but all you’ll do is make waves, and the wind will still be there. What you need to do is embrace the moment, resisting the urge to rush ahead to the next one. Those who master it live for now and wait for the future to come as it will. I’m not saying you need to do that, but the thing to take away from this is that you can’t control what’s happening.”

“You always told me that just reacting is waiting to get hit? How isn’t this the same thing?”

“Because it isn’t about reacting or not reacting. It’s about approaching a situation with a calm mindset, resisting the urge to act impulsively. Allow the moment to pass over you, react with calm and considered thought. It makes it easier to de-escalate conflict.”

That sounded impossible, really. No matter how mad someone else got, I was just supposed to stand there and take it, hoping things got better? I mean, I guess I understood what he meant, and it wasn’t bad advice. I should think things through calmly instead of flying off the handle. I’d actually been thinking about that a lot lately, but he made it sound a lot easier than it was.

“Okay,” I said, knowing he could lecture on this for a very long time if I let him and ready to just move on. “You said there were three parts.”

“Yes. The next is acceptance. It’s actually more important than forbearance for dealing with conflict. Forbearance is more like step one. Giving yourself the time to do what’s next, which in this case is acceptance. You embrace and acknowledge the reality of the situation and your feelings. Understanding that other people’s feelings are valid and accepting that it’s how they feel, even if you don’t agree, which is how we have empathy. You don’t think your girlfriend was listening to you, which seems fair from the way you described it; but what you have to accept right now is that this is how she feels. You can tell her she misunderstood what you are saying, but what you can’t do is tell her she isn’t feeling upset and unloved. Once you accept her feelings, you can then address them and try to work through them. Trying to gaslight her into feeling something else will either not work, or it will work but also build up more long-term resentment, which you don’t want.”

“Even if she’s wrong?”

“Like I said, you can be wrong about what’s happening, but you aren’t wrong about how you feel at that moment. Instead of addressing the feelings, we want to acknowledge the feelings, make sure the other person knows you accept them as valid, and then address the underlying misunderstanding.”

“At least that’s easier than just accepting she’s pissed at me.”

“There’s a reason forbearance is one of the six perfections.”

“No kidding.”

“The final step is perseverance.”

“So not giving up on us. Keeping at her until we fix it.”

“Not exactly. I’m not suggesting you go all stalker. Again, you can’t look at this as something you need to do, but a way you need to do things. It’s a methodology, not a playbook. In this case, perseverance means a determination and commitment to see things through to their conclusion. Note; this doesn’t mean it will always lead to a happy conclusion. Sometimes, the end result isn’t the one you wanted. What it means is, just because things feel bad, as long as you’re continuing to take them on with forbearance and acceptance, you’ll work through it. The commitment should be to resolving the conflict, not winning. This is important. Remember, these are the keys to patience, and patience isn’t about winning, it’s about how you take on challenges. Does that make sense?”

“Kind of, but not really.”

“I know what you mean,” he said, again with the chuckle. “I felt the same way when it was all explained to me. Give it time, think about it, and try to make choices instead of reacting. It’s a lifetime struggle and I can guarantee that this won’t be the last relationship battle you will have.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better. Okay, I’ll try. Now I just have to get her on the phone.”

“That’s the perseverance part of it,” Chef said. “Do you feel a little more clear-headed now?”

“No, but I feel less anxious.”

“Good enough. Now you have a lot of laps to run to make up for not paying attention.”

It was my turn to chuckle, even if it was in a sarcastic way. Of course, I had to pay for my distraction.

***

Nothing had really changed, but I did feel better after talking to Chef. I wasn’t sure I’d just be able to let go and wait for things to get better with Sydney, but I at least wasn’t stuck in a pit of despair anymore. Which was good because Monday night we had a baseball game.

Especially since we were playing Harding High School, our biggest rivals. We’d beaten them to get into playoffs last year, and the game had been closer than any of us had been happy with, so we wanted to show them who’s boss. Since they were one of the closest towns to us, it seemed like half of Wellsville made the journey to see the game. The stands were filled with fans, about half with ours and half with Harding fans in their navy and gold. This was going to be exciting, if nothing else.

The whole team was feeling nervous, either because we wanted to do good or because of the number of people out there watching us. Coach noticed. He started off with his normal pep talk but added something new this time.

“I know everyone’s keyed up. That’s fine. This is a big game, but keep your heads down and stay focused. You’ve practiced hard and we played a good game last week, so you guys are ready for this. Just do what we practiced, stick to your fundamentals, and we’ll send their fans home disappointed. Got it?”

Our response was a little more than was called for. We were all a bit too keyed up. We yelled like idiots.

“I like it. All right, get out there.”

The crowd was as worked up as we were, and we jogged out onto the field to a mixture of boos and cheers.

I took my usual spot in right field, feeling the still frozen hard ground crunch beneath my cleats on the gravel and the familiar stitching and padding of my glove as I stretched my fingers inside it. My focus was on the here and now, and I was ready to play some baseball.

The game turned out to be another pitcher’s duel, just like the previous week. We had a different starter, but he was on fire. Unfortunately, so was their guy. By the bottom of the fifth, we’d cycled through our entire lineup, and none of us had even gotten a hit. I struck out so hard I almost fell over when I missed the ball.

Their guy didn’t have a lot of finesse, and we weren’t seeing curves or sliders or changeups. It was all fastballs, all the time. The problem was that the guy had a cannon of an arm. The pitches were rocketing in so damn fast it was hard to gauge the timing. I wasn’t the only one to go down swinging.

Of course, the problem with a power pitcher like that is that his arm was only good for so long. His pitches started slowing down in the fifth, and we finally managed to get a few hits. The inning still closed with the score tied nil-nil, but things were starting to look a little less impossible. We were all certain they were going to bring in a closer in the sixth inning, which is why we were so surprised when the same pitcher walked out to the mound for another inning.

We’d already brought in a relief pitcher the previous inning, and our guy wasn’t throwing anything like theirs. His last pitch had been noticeably slow, and only a bad hit that popped up to left had kept us off the bases in the fifth. Maybe they were hoping for a perfect game, since we only had two innings to go, or maybe they had some kind of problem with their roster, but they made a mistake by bringing him back in.

They followed it up with another mistake as our guys started getting hits. By the time I was up to bat, it was almost an exact reversal of the game last week. We’d managed to fill the bases and were down two outs, just like the last batter faced last week. Of course, we had David up and fresh last week, and I was facing a quickly fading pitcher who should have been pulled last inning, so it wasn’t exactly one-for-one.

The real question was, could I get a couple of my guys over home plate or would I waste this chance? I pushed that thought out of my mind. Chef said I needed to just be a calm pond, do what I needed to do now, and not worry about what might happen. Take each pitch as it came.

That thought actually helped a little bit. I was still thinking about what might happen if I missed, so I didn’t have it down all the way, but I was able to focus a little better as I stepped up to the batter’s box. I gave a few practice swings to loosen up, keeping my eye on the pitcher, who kept looking at his coach.

I might strike out and miss this opportunity, but he had a chance to tank the game right now. We only had one more inning to go, and we already had our closer warming up, and they were near the bottom of their lineup next inning. If we got one or two runs now, it might be the end of their game. He looked nervous, and I could tell he was thinking about it.

I stepped up to the plate and pulled my bat up. The pitcher went into his windup and hurled a bullet straight across the plate. I missed it by a mile. Maybe he wasn’t as winded as I thought he was because that might have been the fastest pitch I’d seen all night. The Harding side of the stands erupted in cheers as the catcher tossed it back to the pitcher.

I stepped back and collected myself, trying to be the calm pond. That was one pitch. I got two more. I just had to take them as they came.

The second pitch was also a scorcher, but I timed it well, predicting he was going to go with what worked and that he still had the juice for it. I almost had it, but I’d mistimed my swing, catching only a small piece of the ball. I’d put a lot into my swing, causing the ball to shank way off to the left, sailing over the short high school baseball field and into the parking lot. A beat later a car horn sounded. Two strikes, no balls. He just had to get another one by me, and the inning would be over.

I was just about to swing for the fences again when I held back. I don’t know what I saw, but he looked tired, and something didn’t feel right. I jumped back as the ball flew by on the inside of the plate so close it nearly tore the front of my shirt off. I could feel the wind from it as it sailed past.

Their catcher must have seen whatever I saw because he got his glove up in time, grabbing it out of the air before it banged off the backstop, not that our runner at third would have chanced the sprint home with two outs on the board.

The pitcher shook his arm, trying to loosen it up and almost dropped the ball when the catcher threw it back. Either he was trying to psyche me out, and the next one was going to be just as fast as the first two, or he’d given everything he had for those pitches, and he was completely out of gas.

He hadn’t thrown anything but fastballs all night, so I doubted he had a curve or something else tricky in his pocket, waiting for this moment. I was positive it was coming straight across the plate again. The only question was, how fast?

I gripped my bat tight as he lifted his leg, starting his windup. The pitch was straight over the plate, and slow enough for me to get all of it. If I were a better batter, I would have probably cranked it out of the park. As it was, it went in a long arc, above the heads of the outfielders, and landed on the warning track, where it bounced, ricocheted off the back fence, and then rolled to a stop.

Everyone took off as if a starting gun had fired. My teammates and I sprinted as hard as we could. It wasn’t out of the park, but it was almost exactly between center and right field. I couldn’t have placed it in a better spot if I’d tried, except, I guess, over the fence.

I rounded first by the time the outfielders got close to it, with our first runner crossing over home plate. I poured on the speed, rounding second and churning for third, my teammates shouting encouragement from the dugout. I was about two-thirds of the way to third when the line coach started signaling for me to slide. The third baseman was next to his base, glove outstretched. I dove hard, stretching for the base, my fingers clutching the bag when his glove slapped against my back.

“Safe!” the umpire yelled.

My team went absolutely wild. It wasn’t a grand slam, but I’d take three RBIs and a triple any day of the week.

That took everything out of Harding. They pulled their pitcher after that. I was brought home by the next batter before they finally managed to close out the side. The next inning, they all but gave up, with our closer shutting them down by taking out three batters in a row.

As soon as the last batter struck out, our team and fans broke onto the field in pandemonium. You would have thought we’d just made state with how everyone was going crazy, and not playing the second game of the year, but Harding was a big game for us. We’d struggled against them last year, so this kind of blowout was everything.

Kat ran up and launched herself at me, forcing me to catch her. We were spinning in circles, with the rest of the team gathered around us, when I thought I caught sight of Sydney in the stands. By the time I got turned back around, she was gone, but I dashed for the sidelines anyways, pushing past my teammates, but there was no sign of her.

“What?” Kat, who I’d put back on the ground before I ran to try and find Sydney, said, coming up behind me.

After one last futile look around, I said, “Nothing. Let’s celebrate.”

She took my hand, and we rejoined the team, screaming like maniacs.