Chapter 25
In the days before I had to leave, I laid out the bags I was bringing with me.
They were spacious enough, I supposed, but the decision of what to pack overwhelmed me.
There was a lot of stuff that I would need directly for competing, from my skates and dresses to an excessive number of tights.
Once I left home, anything that I had forgotten could be difficult or impossible to find.
It was smartest to pack plenty of extras.
Usually duplicates would do, but in my nervousness I had bought an entire second makeup kit and half a dozen extra pairs of the tights I would use during my performance.
The rest was harder to decide on. I would be gone for a long time, but I didn’t know how many of my usual tricks would be helpful.
I knew that the buildings the athletes were staying in had been hastily constructed in recent years, specifically for the Games.
The construction of so many buildings that would only be occupied for a month had brought heavy criticism from environmental and human rights groups.
I had gone down that rabbit hole late one night while scrolling the internet endlessly, thanks to my insomnia.
What I didn’t know was what the laundry situation would be like.
Most of the hotels we stayed at during competitions were large chains that had laundry on-site, for a price.
I realized that I had no idea if that would be an option this time.
If not, would there be a laundromat nearby?
Could I even go to one if there was? I knew the city would be overwhelmed with athletes, coaches, and tourists.
Things would be hard to find even if they did exist. Plus, there was the safety issue.
Ever since my mother had heard that large sporting events were often targeted by human traffickers, she had been paranoid that somebody was going to snatch me up one day.
She would hate the idea of me walking around because I hadn’t packed properly.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialled one of the few numbers I knew by heart. After a few rings, I heard my mother’s voice. “Hello? Hazel?”
“Hi Mom,” I said. “I’m trying to pack and am struggling not to under or overpack.” My eyes settled on the clothes I had tossed in a steadily growing pile near my pillow. “How much do you think I’m going to need?”
She didn’t answer right away. I wondered if she was surprised that I’d called her for advice. I hadn’t needed tips packing for a competition in years. When she found her voice again, she said, “I’ll be over soon.”
Less than an hour later, there were three sharp knocks on my door.
When I opened it, my mother was standing in the hallway with a tote bag over one of her shoulders and a glass dish in her hands.
“I made some soup yesterday. I thought we could have some tonight.” She slid off her shoes and handed me the dish as she spoke.
She placed her tote bag on the ground and unwrapped her soft plaid scarf from around her slender neck.
“I assume your things are in the bedroom.”
After I put the soup in the kitchen, I found her in my bedroom looking over the haphazard piles I had scattered around the room.
“Let’s get everything sorted first. You are going to want to save as much space as you can and to keep things organized.
That’s where these come in.” Reaching into her bag, she pulled out the well-loved packing cubes I recognized from my childhood.
“We’ll put your skating things in the black ones and your everyday items in the blue. ”
It was comfortingly familiar to have her take control of planning the logistics. As I started following her instructions, I asked, “How are Dad and Isaac?”
“Your father is looking forward to taking time off work,” my mother said.
She was comparing the sizes of the packing cubes and laying them out near my piles accordingly.
“He has been staying late at the office, trying to finish up a couple of projects so he won’t have to be thinking about work or constantly checking his emails when we are watching you. ”
My parents had booked the time off ages ago.
They had only been watching the other competitions this season on TV to make sure they would have as few work commitments as possible during the Winter Games.
I knew that my father especially had been hoarding vacation days so he could take three weeks off in February.
“That’s good. Well, he probably isn’t enjoying it now. What about Isaac?”
My mother sighed as she rolled up a long-sleeved t-shirt tightly.
“He always seems to be up to something. He and his friends have a game they play in the rec room every other weekend. I can’t follow the rules, but he seems to enjoy it.
They can be a bit loud, but they’re mostly good kids.
They don’t leave beer cans on the table or chip crumbs everywhere, at least.” The same could not have been said of Levi and his friends back when he was a teenager.
Whenever our parents had left him alone at night, without fail he would have people over.
He would then have to spend the next morning rushing to pick up the giant mess they’d made, all while he was hungover.
Having my mother tell stories about what the rest of my family or close family friends were doing while keeping my hands busy with mindlessly folding, rolling, and packing helped take my mind off of things.
I purposefully asked open-ended questions, knowing that her happiness that I wanted to hear about people would keep her talking for a while.
I listened to my mother’s stories as I packed socks and underwear as compactly as possible in one of the packing cubes.
It wasn’t as neat as what my mom was doing, but the state my undergarments would be in when I unpacked was inconsequential.
I was only half absorbing everything she was saying when something grabbed my attention.
“Of course, Levi is so excited to be able to come with us. He says that he would have come even if he’d had an exam scheduled, but thankfully it hasn’t come to that.
He has been working nearly as hard as your father to get as much done on his term papers as he can now, so he doesn’t feel like he must work on the trip.
He and Isaac have been texting about all the ways they can pass the time on the flights over. ”
Now, sorting through my possessions and listening to Mom talk about my brothers, the importance of what was about to happen was really hitting me.
In a matter of days, I would board a plane to see how good I was compared to everyone else.
Soon, I would know if all the years of hard work and sacrifice had paid off.
I had been expecting the significance of what was coming to hit me hard.
This had been my life for so long. But now, talking to my mother about the impact it was going to have on the rest of my family, there was a different sort of pressure.
I wasn’t the only one who had sacrificed.
My parents had given so much time, money, and emotional support for me to have a chance at gold over the years.
Even my brothers had had to sacrifice. My parents had tried not to drag them around to all my skating events, but sometimes it was inevitable.
Especially as I had started competing nationally and internationally, my skating had taken up a huge amount of our family’s time.
My brothers had no say in the matter, but like it or not they had been along for the ride.
When I came back from the bathroom with the toiletry bag I always kept packed, I had a hard time focusing on anything else.
I put the bag down on top of my dresser and unzipped it.
Since I travelled so much, I found it easier to always have the basics in one place so I wouldn’t forget anything.
There were only so many times you could forget a toothbrush or a razor before you realized it was smarter to have duplicates of everything specifically for travelling.
Not having half a dozen hotel toothbrushes at any given time was a bonus.
I began looking through the striped bag, checking how full everything was.
It was no use. All I could think about was how much my entire family had done to get me to this point.
Not only was my dream and Dom’s dream at stake, but something they’d all sacrificed for.
“Mom?” I said, keeping my eyes on what I was doing.
It felt safer to ask something that had been weighing on my mind when I wasn’t facing her.
“Yes, Hazel?” She sounded concerned.
“Do you think…” I tried again. “Now that the Games are so close, a lot of stuff has been running through my mind. About if things don’t go well. I mean, if Dom and I…” I trailed off.
“If you and Dom what, sweetheart?”
I turned around. “What if Dom and I don’t do well? What if we screw up after everything?”
My mother stopped in the middle of folding one of my pullover sweaters. “If you don’t skate well?” she asked, sounding confused.
I nodded. “What else would I mean?”
She waved a hand, brushing the comment away.
“You just need to do the best you can. You can’t do any more than that.
If it gets you a gold medal, that’s great.
If you place fifth, that’s great too. And if you get fifteenth, that’s great.
We will all still be so proud of you. You two have put so much work into this.
I promise that we will all think that you are fantastic, regardless of the outcome. ”
My eyes burned. I hadn’t expected to tear up.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I blinked rapidly, trying to keep the tears from falling.
I hated crying in front of people. Trying to change the subject, I said, “What else would I have meant? I don’t have the brainpower to think about anything other than skating right now. ”
My mother smiled and resumed her folding. “It’s nothing, dear. I was just wondering if there might be something else you were worried about messing up.”
I froze. Every part of my body was tense, from my jaw and shoulders all the way down to my feet.
Did she suspect something? Or was she just doing that thing that mothers did, where they worried about their children even if they didn’t have any reason to?
I hoped it was the latter, even though it was silly.
If she wanted to worry about me, she could worry about the same things that were causing me stress instead of coming up with her own reasons.
I forced myself to go through the muscle groups in my body step by step, trying to relax the muscles.
If she wasn’t already suspicious, being visibly on edge could blow it.
“I think worrying about blowing my shot at a medal is enough,” I said with what I hoped was a natural-sounding laugh.
She looked me over, her head tilted slightly to the side. “I see,” she said. I held my breath, waiting for her to continue pressing the issue, but she turned back to my bed, now nearly empty of the piles.
I didn’t think she believed me, but at least she wasn’t pushing it.
That was good enough for now. Maybe I would talk to her about it someday.
But that would be a day long after the Winter Games, if I wasn’t comfortable talking to one of my friends about it.
And even then, it wouldn’t be my first choice.