Getting a Grip Read online

  When 2004 dawned, I made a resolution. My resolution was to not make a resolution. I’d been making weight-related declarations for years, and I’d always blow them before January was up. I wasn’t falling into that trap again. My foot was still giving me problems and my doctor told me that if I wasn’t going to have surgery, then my only option was the cast. Deep down I think some of my hesitation had to do with my fear of getting fatter. When I’d been doing therapy for the last six months I could at least be a little mobile, but in a cast I’d be in trouble. There’d be no hiking in rain forests or diving in the Bahamas. But if I wanted a chance at coming back again, I had to do it.

  It was an adjustment. A big one. With the cast keeping me homebound, I was bored out of my mind sitting around all day, so I decided to put myself to good use. With the help of my crutches, I one-legged it to the storage closet in my garage. I sifted past boxes and boxes of things I didn’t remember owning until I found what I was looking for: a neatly stacked pile of rectangular storage containers. They were all labeled the same: Monica’s Pictures. It took six trips for me to bring them all into the living room, but I did it. Over the years my dad had taken thousands of photos of me and they’d been hibernating in the garage. I opened the boxes and started sifting through them. There were at least three thousand in there, and they weren’t in any discernible order. I started taking them out, one by one, when I noticed some yellowed newspaper clippings lying on the bottom. The more I dug through the pictures, the more clippings I found. My dad had saved every article on me that he’d ever come across. They were cut along the margins with great care and, other than the discoloration, hadn’t suffered the effects of passing years. I dumped everything on the floor and got to work.

  It took me two weeks of sitting hunched over the boxes for eight hours a day, but I did it. In the end I filled twenty photo albums with a pictorial testament of my life. From the moment I joined the tour, I didn’t have a spare second to reminisce about anything. I was too busy making travel arrangements and warming up for my next match. Leafing through the pages was like reliving my life. He’d saved every Sports Illustrated feature and Grand Slam final write-up. He’d even lugged along the clippings from my junior playing days when my parents left Novi Sad. I had a bad-hair flashback when I came across an article in Vogue. I was seventeen, I’d just cut my hair off, and I spent the better part of the morning’s photo shoot painstakingly flat-ironing my two-inch locks. We were in Florida and the humidity was overpowering. I ended up looking like a Q-tip in the pictures.

  And then there were my dad’s photos . . . There I am, sitting in the top row at Roland Garros the first time I’d set foot in the stadium. Before he took the picture, he’d just spent twenty minutes telling me all the reasons I shouldn’t be nervous. There we are at the fancy restaurant in Paris after winning my first Grand Slam, and I’m wearing the beloved vintage dress I’d bought in New Orleans. Every member of our family is smiling from ear to ear. There I am, standing on UCLA’s legendary track with my hands on my hips, listening to my dad explain our next workout. There we are in the players’ lounge after my comeback win in Australia, my parents looking more relieved than anything else. It had been a long road. There we are, making snowballs in the middle of a Minnesota winter when we thought his cancer had a good shot at going into remission. For two weeks I laughed and cried as I put my life in order in the pages of those albums. And somewhere, between the first album and the twentieth, I finally started to grieve for my dad.

  43

  The Little Black Dress

  My foot’s second six-month prison term was almost up and I was in New York for two weeks of therapy. I’d graduated to a walking boot cast; it was as fashionable as it sounds but at least I could get around again. Kind of. Walking in Manhattan is a challenge even when both feet are in perfectly good working order; at my far slower, boot-impaired pace, I spent most of my time dodging important-looking people rushing along the sidewalk to get to their important meetings. In between a therapy session and a doctor’s appointment, I had a couple of hours to waste, so I hopped on the subway and headed to my favorite store: Century 21. Just saying the name gets my competitive shopping juices flowing. Scoring good loot there is for the eagle-eyed, fleet-footed shopper; although my boot was going to hold me back a bit, it was worth a try.

  Within the first five minutes of walking through the door I found it: a little black dress. Actually, it wasn’t a little black dress; it was the little black dress. The simple, classic dress that looks appropriate in any venue. The dress that exudes a casual elegance that would make Audrey Hepburn smile with approval. The kind of dress that every woman dreams of finding. And it was on sale. Oh, how I love Century 21. Just one problem, though: it was a size four. I’d lost some more weight (I weighed 159 the last time I’d checked), but I wasn’t anywhere near a size four. In fact, I hadn’t been a size four since I was nineteen. I was about to put the dress back on the rack when a simple thought stopped me. Why not? I’d been asking that question more and more lately. Why shouldn’t I buy it? I was already down two dress sizes. What was to stop me from going down some more? I didn’t have a deadline set, so who cared if I never fit into it? At least it would be hanging in the closet in case I ever did. I headed back uptown for my therapy session with my new purchase in hand.

  A few weeks later my boot cast finally came off, but things weren’t going as well as I’d wanted. I tried playing on it, but dagger-sharp pain kept shooting through my big toe, and my Vioxx consumption was back in full force. Around this time the news about the possible negative side effects of the drug was starting to surface. I panicked. If I couldn’t take it anymore, what chance did I have of playing? The pain had transformed me from someone who viewed Gatorade as an extreme supplement to someone who couldn’t set foot on a practice court without a shot of cortisone and a mouthful of painkillers. It was beginning to dawn on me that, like masking my emotional issues with food, I was again engaging in self-sabotage by masking the physical pain with drugs. What was I doing? At what cost was I going to stay in tennis? Was it really worth it? The mental strength that had been my ally in close-fought matches was beginning to work against me. My body was saying no more, but my head was refusing to end my career. Some days I’d hit for hours and my foot would feel fine, while other days I could barely walk on it. But my dad’s mantra that I should have a good life after tennis kept echoing through my head. What was I risking my health for, anyway?

  There was one thing that kept depression at bay. My little black dress was hanging in my closet, but unlike the other small sizes that had been hanging untouched in the back of my closet for years, it didn’t taunt me or make me feel discouraged. Every time I caught a glimpse of it while reaching for a flowy dress, I felt a little spark of inspiration. I was beginning to realize I had a say in whether I was happy or not, whether I was feeling strong or hopeless. I had the power to control what I put into my mouth and over the thoughts I chose to obsess upon. I didn’t have a coach or a nutritionist or a boyfriend giving me the answers. But somehow that little black dress was becoming a symbol of reclaiming the real me—my true core.

  By the end of the year I was down to 153. I’d lost twenty pounds in a year without trying. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did try, but my efforts were so different from those I’d made before that it didn’t feel like I was “trying.” There were a few big changes I’d made in my thinking, which then affected some deep-seated behaviors I’d struggled with for years. First, I refused to say I was on a diet. Being “on” a diet implies that I would one day go “off ” it. I also banished the absolutes. Instead, I lived in the liberating and calming gray area of moderation.

  I stopped classifying foods as “allowed” or “forbidden.” After all, what’s more tempting than something forbidden? If I wanted a piece of cake, I’d ask whoever I was with if they wanted to share it. If they didn’t and I really still wanted it, I’d order it and eat a quarter of it and wait ten minutes. If I still
wanted more, I’d eat another quarter and wait again. Very rarely did I end up devouring the whole thing. It wasn’t easy—I had to work at slowing down during my meals—but it was empowering to begin to eat consciously. Taking the time to taste my food was nothing short of revelatory, and the more I did it, the easier it became. The first time I tried implementing conscious eating was at a pizza parlor in Florida. Okay, here we go, I thought as the heavenly smelling pie was placed in front of me. In the past I’d get anxious and start eating like I was a contestant in a Coney Island eating contest. This time I approached the pizza like an athlete perfecting a new technique. I took a couple of deep breaths and, with my full attention focused on my food, took a bite. Chewing each piece calmly, I savored my food. In between bites I talked to my friends and sipped my drink. This is not a race. This is not the last pizza I will ever see for the rest of my life. I don’t have to inhale the whole thing tonight. By the time I finished my slice, I wasn’t hungry anymore. I’d just experienced firsthand the meaning of quality over quantity.

  Another change in my thought process was that more isn’t necessarily better. I was learning to question the value I placed on excess. In professional athletics, more is better, faster is better, stronger is better: more, more, more. But in everyday life, especially in American grocery stores, we’re constantly battling against the soldiers of excess. Extra-large bottles of soda, two packages of cookies for the price of one, three boxes of sugar cereal for the price of two . . . more, more, more. But what if I didn’t want more?

  I’d lived my life in such extremes—seven-hour workouts followed by five-thousand-calorie binges—that I wanted a change. I wanted less. Just the word “less” sounds soothing when it rolls off the tongue. I started carrying the concept with me everywhere, viewing the word “less” as connected to the word “lesson.” Every time I made a choice that emphasized the “Less is more” theory, I gave myself a little symbolic pat on the back. I was learning how to live my life more fully by choosing less. At the grocery store I filled my cart with less. I passed over the fat-free items for whole-grain options. Anything that advertised itself as being “free” of something didn’t go into my cart. Fat-free, carb-free, sugar-free? No, thanks. I wanted to stay as far away from processed foods as possible. A piece of multigrain bread with almond butter kept me fuller for longer than an entire bag of pretzels. The “less” theory affected my workouts too. Even on days when my foot felt good, I didn’t go to the gym or hit the beach for a run. Instead, I walked—not at a furious pace or with the intention of getting somewhere, but just to walk. It felt good to move my body without feeling like I was inflicting a punishment on it. Henry David Thoreau once said that the moment his legs began to move, his thoughts began to flow. That is exactly what happened to me during my year of walks.

  Poring over my dad’s photos was the key to opening up the long-locked door to my grief; lacing up my shoes every evening empowered me to walk through that door without fearing what was on the other side. It was the most powerful therapy I ever had. In the past I used exercise to outrun my demons, to exhaust myself beyond the point of rational thinking. Walking was a gentle salve that gave me the time and space to sort through the layers and layers of thoughts and worries that had built up over the years. Step by step—literally—I was getting stronger and closer to knowing who I was and what I wanted. On these walks I slowly and sadly came to terms with my life. I lost my dad way too early and it was agonizingly awful. I missed him so much and I hated knowing that I could never again pick up the phone to tell him about my day. We’d never again hit a ball back and forth as we argued over whether I was bending my knees enough; I used to dread those arguments, but now I would’ve given anything to have one. I hated knowing that I’d never see his hand busily hovering over a dinner napkin as he dashed off another cartoon for me. A part of my heart would always be broken, and the frustration over what “could have been” if I’d never been stabbed was still in my head; but as I wrestled with these emotions, something was growing deep within me.

  In my very core I finally knew that I would be okay on my own. I would be okay if I never won another Grand Slam. I would be okay if justice was never served. I would be okay if I never played another professional match. I would be okay if I had to find a new purpose, find a new reason to get up every morning. As an athlete, the “No pain, no gain” credo was deeply ingrained into my psyche. But something totally unexpected happened during those evening walks in my neighborhood. My walks helped heal the rift between my mind and my body. These soothing walks did more to quiet the demons in my head than any of the punishing workouts I’d endured. The weight loss I achieved that year felt almost effortless.

  44

  Just Jump

  You’re doing what?” Martina Navratilova looked stunned. “I’m going skydiving,” I answered.

  “No way, I don’t believe it.” She was shaking her head and laughing as she packed up her tennis bag.

  “I swear, I am. I really am!” I insisted.

  “We’ll see,” she replied. That was all I needed to get me going. A challenge issued by one of the greatest athletes of all time. I’d show her. We’d just finished the second of our two exhibition matches in New Zealand. At the beginning of 2005 my foot felt good, so I decided to give it a test run to see if I still had a chance to get back on the tour. It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip and I brought my mom along for the ride. My body was feeling strong and healthy, and I was going full speed ahead with my desire to get as much as I could out of my travels. After our matches in Auckland and Christchurch, I decided I wanted to shake things up a little. My foot hadn’t held up as well as I’d hoped and I needed to do something fun. When I asked the locals for a must-see recommendation, I got the same answer over and over: “You have to go to Queenstown!”

  For an adrenaline junkie, it was the place to go. At that moment it sounded perfect. As soon as I saw it, I knew I’d found the right place. The town is nestled on pristine Lake Wakatipu and sheltered by soaring mountains. I wanted to go skipping through town, doing an impersonation of Maria from The Sound of Music. Everyone looked like they were headed for the X Games. Jet boating, river surfing, canyon swinging, whitewater rafting, paragliding . . . I had my pick of hardcore adventures. Did I want to terrify myself by land, water, or air? I’d always been terrified of heights—anytime I stayed in a hotel room on the tenth floor or higher, I refused to look out the window—so I decided that jumping out of a plane would be a surefire way to conquer my fear. However, I chose to ease myself into it by warming up with a bungee jump.

  Since Bahia, I’d been taking small leaps at life that shook me out of the fog I’d been living in for so many years. I’d spent too long living in my tennis bubble and being worried about injuries. I was bursting to make up for lost time. Now I was ready to take a big leap of faith right off a bridge.

  My legs shook as I stood at the top of the bridge, stealing quick glances at the water hundreds of feet below. My mom stood next to me ready to make a fast getaway as soon as her crazy daughter came to her senses and decided not to jump. I came close to bailing out when the very ruggedly handsome “bungee expert” (I don’t know what technically qualified him as an expert, but I prayed he knew enough to get me down safely) was adjusting my harness.

  “How much do you weigh?” Wow, he just got right to it. I barely knew the guy and he was already asking me the most personal of personal questions. I caught my mom’s bemused look. Well, this should be interesting was written all over her face. Hmm, this is a tough one, I thought. I had two choices:

  Number one: slide back into my old insecurities and shave fifteen pounds off my real weight, even though I’d be risking death or serious bodily injury strapped into a harness that might break under the pressure of weight it was not prepared to handle.

  Number two: get real, get honest, and get over myself by putting my real weight out on the table. Who cares? At least I’d survive the jump.

  “One hundred and f
ifty-two,” I said in a clear voice. He didn’t flinch at all. I survived the bungee, miraculously didn’t break my back, and graduated to the plane the following day.

  I met up with Mel Jones, a friend of mine from New Zealand who never says no to a new adventure. I wasn’t sure I could make the jump without the support of a friendly face nearby and Mel was a willing volunteer. During our ascent in the tiny plane, he tried to calm my nerves.

  “There’s nothing to it,” he insisted. “You’ll love it!” I glanced down at the landscape that was rapidly growing smaller and smaller beneath us. It didn’t seem like nothing to me! After watching him gleefully leap out of the plane, I was as ready as I was ever going to be. Strapped to an instructor who was another “expert”—this time I really did hope he knew what he was doing—I didn’t have to do much. My only responsibility was to take the first step out of the plane. It had to be my choice. I stood on the edge for twenty seconds with clouds whipping by beneath me.

  Ten thousand feet is really, really high. I could barely make out the land below. I adjusted and readjusted my goggles at least six times. Finally, I took a deep breath and jumped. To be completely honest, it was more like a hesitant shuffle forward aided by a helpful nudge from my instructor’s knees. Good thing he took that initiative, because I would have stood at that threshold messing around with my goggles all day. The first five seconds were a blur of screaming and wishing my feet were still on solid ground, but the initial shock quickly disappeared and I settled in for the most amazing flight of my life. I don’t think I stopped laughing and smiling until we hit the ground. Much like dating an Italian, it is a life experience that everyone should try once.