[Full disclosure: Your storyteller grew up pre-Title IX ; she’s never played on a team.]
What I’d most wanted for my eightieth birthday was for as many of my far-flung grandchildren as possible to come for Thanksgiving/my birthday celebration. And had been beyond ecstatic when five grandchildren were able to come!
Given how rich and family-full those precious late-November days had been, and given that I am now officially old, you’ll understand, I hope, why the extraordinary story I’m about to tell slipped my mind until this week.
I’d been seated in my living room chatting with two granddaughters, one on her Salt Lake City high school’s lacrosse team, the other on her Sleepy Hollow, New York high school’s field hockey team, about a recent incident here in Massachusetts—when a transgender girl on a soccer team had injured an opposing team’s player.
To my recollection, the story in the local news had focused on parents’ outrage; implicit in this telling was the injured player’s victimhood. Which, of course, I’d reacted to. Of course you’ll react when your children are hurt. Of course! Any loving and protective parent would. I’d reacted as a no-stranger-to-victimhood woman; I’d reacted as a mom. And as the mother of four daughters.
My two sports-playing granddaughters had a completely different reaction, however. “Grandma,” they’d gently reminded me. “We’re on a team. We know each other. We have each other’s back. We practice. We have plays, strategies. If there’s an aggressive player on the other team? We know how to counter that.”
Oh.