Everyone is dressed up nice in jeans or skirts, sweaters or blouses. The cafeteria might not be the ideal place to have our end of season banquet, but with this program, I can't really imagine it anywhere else. The old projector is playing a slideshow of action shots from games and girls smiling with their plates full at team dinners. There are group pictures against the awe-striking sunsets that would paint the skies in the evening, before inevitably turning dark and leaving us to practice under the lights.
The lights over me now are florescent and flickering across my face as I stand to receive my recognition. They glisten off of the senior pictures strung across the wall, just behind my coach who is standing in the front of the room. The table next to him is layered with plaques that are soon to be awarded. And although my applauding hands become more sore with each name that's announced, my voice never waivers, cheering for the teammates I have spent the last three months with.
It's weird to think how they all came into my life at different times yet somehow we are here together all at once. Some of them I met now, at seventeen. A few I met at fourteen and another at eleven. There's one I met when we were only seven years old. When I was the new girl in a school full of strangers. When I used my play cash register to learn which coins were which because I hadn't been taught that at my old school. I wanted so badly not to be embarrassed in front of the class when it was my turn to do the morning report. All the other kids new the difference between a nickel and a penny and that a dime is ten cents.
But when it was my turn I did it. A quarter, a nickel, two dimes, and a penny. Fifty-one cents. The weather was sunny because it was May and I called my new classmates my their names only one day after learning them. I felt a sense of accomplishment wash over me. A smile flashed across my face. My hands held each other in front of my waist, my feet were pressed together, stuck to the carpet, and I twisted side to side, my nerves swallowed by pride as I stood there in front of my audience of first graders.
I know now that as the next decade flies by, my days of presenting to seven year olds will be long gone. The grey rugged carpets will vanish, leaving the cold of tiled floors to bleed through my shoes. And they do.
Instead of soft, innocent, little faces, I look out to see tables filled with parents and siblings, friends and family. Their faces are expectant; yet, I can tell by their eyes they have no no expectations. They are hopeful and bittersweet and unsure and excited. Waiting.
I gather the cards I have carefully made for each player. We call them senior superlatives: most-likely-to’s, inside jokes, and shoutouts. Usually together the seniors name one to each player, but instead for this, just as for most things this season, I have taken the lead. I stand up and get ready to speak. I plant my feet which have been chilled by the cream speckled tile and smile. I cross my right leg over my left, channeling the same nerves I’ve always had just in a different way now. And although they’ll never know this, I always will…
The confidence they hear isn’t coming from the young woman they see, but from the little girl she knows is still inside her.