Ties that Run Deep
While walking out of the clubhouse after dinner a few days ago, I was arrested with a startling, heart-rendering sight.

Kids who come and go at Sanchez-Casal are an almost-weekly occurrence.  These souls drift in for a taste of training, and just as they're settling in, they are inevitably whisked away by the next wind of change.  For obvious reasons, friendships formed with others are scant, and family bonds that bring these players here dig deep.

One of the kids I've noticed in the past week is this young teenage Indian boy who's been walking around the Academy with his mother.  While he's on court hitting balls, she's sitting by, sipping coffee.  While he's in the gym, she's standing by, holding jackets.  Her kind of parental love obviously comes in deafening devotion, devoid of distraction and unabashedly unadulterated.

But I suppose that's only half the story.  All too often while the tennis world gripes (read: criticises) professional players with over-protective, close-knit families, they forget the most important thing.  Without family, it's almost always, bloody impossible to make it big.  The media negates the stress families go through, the stressful re-locations, painful spousal-separation, heavy financial challenges.  Most crucially, the bonds between parents and child are tested and re-tested, time and time again.

That evening, that little Indian boy's father had finally touched down in Barcelona.  Just as I was shuffling out of the restaurant, his dad was running into the foyer from the cold.

"What's this?--" I thought,

and before I could think any more,

he had swept his little boy into his arms.  They stood there for a good thirty seconds, still.  The boy's cheek was plastered tightly against his fathers coat, his eyes closed, his arms locked around his father, who, with his face buried in his boy's hair, was smiling and rocking him gently from side to side.  All this while, the woman stood by, smiling.

"How nice," I thought.
"I know how that feels," I thought.
And then suddenly the tears started creeping into the corners of my eyes.

I hurried out into the cold--reluctant to impinge on their private moment.  Reluctant, also, to feed that welling hollow in my heart, yearning for my family.

- Think about other things, Sarah.  Think about other things. -

Maybe about my stilted breath that broke into clouds against the still, cold night.  Or about my numb fingers, as I stuffed them into my jacket pockets.  Searching deeper and deeper for warmth.