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I don’t play tennis anymore.

But when I was in high school I played four to six hours a day, five days a week all summer into late October. Winters I slacked off to a few hours a day.

And you know, I only miss it occasionally.

I fell in love with running my senior year and when I left high school I basically put my racquet away. I’d feel the absence every fall for a decade, but I wouldn’t play. For such a long time being good at tennis was so important that I couldn’t stand to play unless I was in top shape. And really, if I couldn’t blast my opponent off the baseline what was the point?

All that time and effort, learning how to move and react. All those hours watching other players, thinking of strategies. All those nights when I couldn’t sleep before a big match. Gone. Poof. Like I went to sleep an athlete and woke up a jogger. It doesn’t get much sadder than that.

But you know, things have a way of getting into your blood stream when  you’re sixteen going on seventeen. You learn stuff you don’t even know you’ve learned. At least for me, tennis was/is like that. I had an amazing coach. David Porter. He was ultra competitive. He was merciless on all of us cute little girls in short skirts. But he taught us to keep our mouths closed when we dropped a point, or a set, and move on. He taught us to run drills and sprints and play and play and play in the scorching heat. He taught us to focus on the ball, not to swear at the line coach, at least out loud, and when things look bleakest you just have to get out there and play your game. The one you have in you.

In the winter when the heat was gone we had to drag our sorry carcasses out of bed and show up for “optional” practice at 5am at the only indoor courts in town open at that ugly hour. I’d rub the sleep out of my eyes in time to hear him say, “Chandler, do you need a pair of roller skates out there?”

But here’s the thing, I’ve had a lot of things happen to me since that time that are harder than getting up at 5 in the morning. I’ve had things hurt more than blisters and sunburns and pulled muscles. I’ve had bigger loses than the state finals. Those are first world problems in the first degree. But a few of things I learned from tennis hard wired me for dealing with real stuff.

I remember the first time I realized this. I had to have a hideous growth taken off my knuckle. The dermatologist told me, as he knitted together his overgrown eyebrows, “I’ve numbed this bugger up but it’s still going to hurt like the Dickens.”

“Okay,” I said, eyes widening. What does the Dickens feel like?

“Think of something,” he said. “Something you can concentrate on.”

So I thought of standing at the net. I imagined my partner Tiffany standing behind me ready to throttle me if I missed my volley. I had to be ready to punch and then punch again if it came back in my face. Then I imagined I was racing for a ball on the baseline that had my name all over it. I was bending my knees, reaching, keeping my racquet primed until the last moment. Then I’d connect. Sweet spot engaged. Florescent yellow ball hurdling through space. And bam. You dead!

I just kept doing that, until my finger was sufficiently carved up and the doctor sent me home with drugs and a compliment. “You’re a tough kid.” His look of surprise was way better than the drugs.

Now I run marathons.  The equipment’s cheaper and the scenery’s better. And I don’t run against anyone but myself. But you know what, when things get rough, I don’t see finish lines. I find myself rushing the net, focusing on the next point not the last, remembering that I can crush the ponytail across the net with my serve if I’ll just focus on the serve and not the ponytail.

Today, heaven help me, I write novels. And it’s so much worse than high school tennis. But also so much better. And today, because I don’t know what to do, or how to do it, I am sitting here writing about tennis. Because it taught me how to be tough. When things look bleak I have to play my game. The one I have in me.