As a young girl in love with an older man who often let me down, I remember being told constantly by him that when I got older I wouldn’t get so disappointed. At the time I was in my 20s and he was in his 40s. I have never forgotten him telling me that and I did, eventually, resign myself to disappointment (when he suddenly couldn’t accompany me to my brother’s first wedding where I was singing; when he suddenly couldn’t come up to Perth for the weekend because the cows were calving; when he forgot to remember my birthday; when he didn’t ring me for over a week; when he asked me to move in with him and then changed his mind ETC.)
Don’t get me wrong. In the end, all of those disappointments were cancelled out in a happilyeverafterish way and Anthony and I had an exceptionally wonderful first year of marriage (and many more), which included Ming’s entry into our lives, before Anthony was struck for the first time with cancer and had to have his kidney removed. Mutual devastation and, yes, disappointment but with a lot of hope too.
Two years ago, Ming was playing football for a local team and for his school when one day he took his guernsey off after a game and I saw how twisted his back was. Now, before you ask why I hadn’t seen this before, it was winter, so I hadn’t seen him with his shirt off for ages. We knew he had a scoliosis and he was being treated regularly by a chiropractor, osteopath, physical trainer, physiotherapist in order to prevent it from getting worse. But on that day, I saw that what had previously only been visible in an X-ray was now visible to the naked eye. I felt a bit sick and quietly asked the coach to take a look … long story short Ming was very suddenly seen by our doctor and a spinal surgeon and told he would have to quit football immediately. This verdict was given a day before his school’s annual football finals in Perth. The disappointment was not only Ming’s but also the two teams he played for, and Ants’ and mine of course because he had been showing great promise and was passionate about football and very good.
There is a lot more to this story including Ming’s sobbing the day we were told he had to stop playing football immediately, that he would have to have surgery and that he would never be able to play football again. And I remember telling him, on the two-hour drive home from this appointment, that the disappointment would ease off as he got older. Instead of resisting this, he dried his eyes and nodded his head in acceptance. “I’ll still be able to ride my motorbike, won’t I, Mum?” he asked.
It took me few ticks to answer this because I had been told by several professionals that he should not be riding a motorbike.
“Of course you can!” I said.
At the end of the football season that year, I didn’t think we would be invited to the presentations because Ming had stopped playing, but on that day, a couple of the mothers of other boys in the team rang me to say we must come because they had something to present Ming with and I was not to tell Ming because it would be a surprise. Well it was a huge shock. The team had ‘retired’ his number 20 guernsey and had it framed with photos of the team and of Ming in action. I was standing at the back of the room chatting to friends when Ming’s name was announced. He had no idea and was just there to cheer his buddies on and I smiled thinking that he would be given a small token. So the shock was pretty huge!
In terms of size, it was the biggest award given that night with lots of cheering for Mingy and I had to bite my lip not to cry. Ming had to give a little impromptu speech and nearly got teary himself and everyone was taking photos but I didn’t have my camera so took the one above the next day. Ming was 16 then.
Well before this event I had told Ming about Anthony’s philosophy of disappointment and I remember Ming wondering about this. However he did turn his football disappointment into the joy of reading the literary classics (hahahaha – that is an absolute joke) – into the joy of music (that is true).
And now, two years down the track, it is Anthony’s disappointment that I somehow have to alleviate. I said to him the other day when he became disappointed about not being able to come home overnight anymore, “You told me once that the older you get, the less disappointed you feel.”
“I was young then,” he said, reaching for my hand.
jmgoyder 