Today was a revelation.
An amazing, extraordinary day.
For the first time in years, I had a day off at SN early enough in the proceedings that I wasn’t already completely exhausted, too tired to do much of anything except wander over to the venue and aimlessly watch fencing.
So what did I do on this extraordinary day, when I had the energy to thoroughly enjoy my time off?
I wandered over to the venue and watched fencing.
First, of course, I slept in. Christie had a day off, too, though only from being a referee—she had kids to coach and for once had to get up earlier than I did. I dozed, and eventually checked email and surfed the web, and eventually got up, looking forward to having a small exorbitantly priced Jamba Juice for brunch instead of one of the Purple Parrot’s cholesterol plates. (It was just as good as I thought it would be, too.)
I talked to people from my daughters’ old club. Some of the fencers I had known when they were first fencing in the Youth 10 Men’s Sabre, and it was great watching them compete in the Junior event. One kid, now twice as tall as when I first knew him, was a particular treat to watch, since he’d finally figured out that he is tall and dominated his pool.
Conveniently, the fencer my daughter was coaching was on the strip on the other side of the scoring table from the one I was watching, so I could see from a relatively discreet distance what she looked like as a coach. Watching her reminded me of the rules she made for me for tournaments when she was 12, one of which was “Don’t say anything corny.” So I won’t.
Late in the afternoon, I toddled off to Dave and Lisa’s, where we sat in the backyard and watched the sun go down. Their house is in the foothills to the west of town and the view is spectacular.
Quail wander through the yard and it's too dry for mosquitoes.
Dinner was equally spectacular, with ribs and beans from the smoker and veggies from the grill.
All in all, though, nothing particularly unusual about the whole day, nothing really all that different from other days off at SN. What was so revelatory about this particular day off?
I had fun.
I remembered that I used to have fun like this all the time at tournaments and realized that it had been years since I’d had this kind of fun at a Summer Nationals. I’d completely forgotten what it used to be like to have fun at national tournaments.
And that is a real problem.
Mary Griffith 