At seventeen, Nicky confides in cheer team mentor Alexandra Flowers and Tara Summers about her family’s dysfunction and also her fears and doubts about her body. Her hips, breasts, and stomach are more developed than her peers, she is getting looks from older men, and she’s uncomfortable in her own skin and with others. She sits in the bleachers talking with the two women.
“My dad’s an alcoholic, Alex,” I confided while she waited with me in the outfield bleachers at the Goliaths baseball stadium.
It was shortly after I had graduated from my sophomore year in high school that I came up with an idea to bring together two of my favorite things: Goliaths baseball and another after school activity in which I could participate, padding my resume for college.
I planned to study business marketing and wanted to do it at Stanford. From talking with my guidance counselor I knew I needed to be aggressive, somehow standing out from the thousands of students wanting to go there.
So I surveyed Goliath fans via social media, researched and gathered data which supported my idea, and put together my plan for a cheer team.
I proposed we sing and do gymnastics to carefully selected songs approved by management, which would also play over the public address system.
Cheering on a professional baseball field had never been done before. I knew if my plan was accepted, Stanford would follow. After reviewing and editing it more than a dozen times, I finally sent it off to Jose Vasquez, the Entertainment Marketing Manager with the Goliaths. In December of my junior year I got the call that it was accepted.
Our cheer team consisted of six members: Colleen, who was also my best friend, Sharon, Lorraine, Marilyn, Patty, and me.
All of us grew up together in the same neighborhood and had been friends since grade school. We kept our fingers crossed that this adventure would be our ticket to college.
Was I nervous about walking onto a professional baseball field and performing in front of forty-thousand people? Hell yes. With every performance I fidgeted and had butterflies in my stomach.
Like a “deer in the headlights,” is how we felt, our eyes wide open, afraid, nervous, and excited. Two women, Tara Summers and Alexandra Flowers, noticed, and immediately took us under their wings, especially me.
Tara was married to Matt Summers, a pitcher on the Goliaths. She was a small, petite, gentle soul with long, strawberry blonde hair. Her face was dotted with freckles and she generally wore jeans or loose flowing pants in earthy colors and materials like cotton and muslin.
Her very good friend, Alex, was engaged to Darrell Sweet, also a pitcher on the Goliaths, and she couldn’t have been more different. She was a tall woman with reddish brown hair who had such striking features that she’d been a model since high school. When she wore jeans, they were often paired with heels and a designer blouse or sweater.
Something just clicked between the three of us and we bonded immediately.
It began with long talks in the bleachers, which led to requests made only of me to water their plants, or housesit when they were away, volunteering with them at their favorite charities, and then eventually, we began socializing together.
Our first performance was a Friday night in early April. It was usually cold for night games in San Francisco, until early autumn when “Indian Summer” came to the Bay Area, bringing calm breezes and warmer temperatures.
The Goliaths games generally sold out; they’d been competitive for the previous ten years, and their fan base was scattered throughout a one-hundred-mile radius.
And so, as thousands of people sat in their seats waiting for the game to begin, we performed the routines we’d rehearsed almost every day for four months. Each was two minutes long, and we took the field before the first, third, fifth and eighth innings.
I remembered sitting in the stands with my father at six, seven, and eight years old, all around the stadium, slurping up a hot fudge sundae or eating a pretzel. Actually being on the field, among the baseball men I’d cheered for while sitting next to him, was surreal.
Now it was our sixth game, and we waited behind the outfield fences for our first performance. The noises of the crowd surrounded us, and drifting by were the smells of hot dogs and popcorn.
I hadn’t gotten over my nervousness, and still, my stomach turned over. I was self-conscious and had anxiety from just about everything.
It was a Saturday afternoon, as Alex waited with me, and I told her about my alcoholic father, and the battles for survival my sister and I faced daily.
1. HOW DO YOU/DID YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR BODY AT SEVENTEEN?
2. DO YOU LOOK BACK NOW AND REALIZE HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE/WERE?
3. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE FEARS ABOUT YOUR BODY THAT STAY WITH YOU EVEN NOW?
4. WHAT WAS THE MOMENT, IF YOU’VE SURVIVED ADDICTION IN YOUR FAMILY, YOU REALIZED SOMETHING WAS WRONG?
#alcoholism #comingofage #women #newadultromance #romance #contemporary romance #family #addiction
MAR
About the Author: