My childhood sports dream was, don’t laugh, pogo sticking. I didn’t know if it was a sport, but I believed I could make it one. Practicing day and night, I could become a master of pogo sticking. I’d jump higher, farther, faster, and longer than anyone had ever done before. I’d set records, break my own records, and amaze everyone including myself.

But first, I needed a pogo stick.

The Sears & Roebuck Catalog was what mom gave us to circle gifts we hoped Santa would bring for Christmas. My first pogo campaign, I circled the pogo stick. Also, a troll doll and box of silverware—not real silverware, just gray plastic. Christmas morning came and I got a set of plastic knives and forks, but no wacky-haired troll. And no pogo stick.

Next campaign, I circled the pogo stick and a Hands Down board game. It had four plastic hands, each a different color—a game of reflexes and I was good at that. Santa brought the game, but no pogo stick.

Third campaign, I circled the pogo stick and—such a brilliant plan—a pogo alternative: jumping shoes. These were basically springs that you strapped to your shoes. Christmas morning: no pogo stick, no jumping shoes. Santa brought me an Easy Bake Oven.

Fourth and final campaign, I double-circled the pogo stick. In large block letters, I wrote “For Susie” in the margin, then drew undeniable crayon arrows around the item. I circled nothing else. I got a Skipper doll.

My brother Chuck opened his presents and out spilled a waterfall of sports equipment: baseball bat, fielding glove, three new baseballs. He and dad went straight to the cellar to put neatsfoot oil on the glove and snug the baseball into the center to make a pocket. Chuck was eight and on his sports trajectory. I was ten and my pogo dream was crushed. Here’s Skipper, Barbie’s kid sister. Not even a fashion Barbie, but her pint-sized sister in a striped sailor suit.

I put Skipper in the Easy Bake Oven.

Dracut Junior High had a gym. By then, I was beyond circling toys in the Sears catalog, ready for whatever happened after childish dreams. The girls’ gym uniforms were horrendous. You snapped yourself into one like a prison jump suit. Not orange, but blue. The school mascot was a Middie—a kind of sailor, I supposed. Gym was fun. First day, we lined up to vault a pommel horse. There was a springboard that you jumped on to propel you over the horse. Very pogo like. And we did team sports: volleyball, basketball, tennis.

Tennis, now that was my sport!

“When you get to high school,” my gym teacher told me, “you should try out for the tennis team. You’re good.”

Not many people in my life ever said I was good. I made a mental note: good at tennis. Problem: I didn’t own a tennis racquet. In gym, they handed out the racquets at the beginning of class, collected them at the end. If I was going stay good, I needed to practice. I recalled that we had a deluxe five-in-one lawn game plastic pack in a closet somewhere. I rummaged and found it. No tennis racquet, but there was a badminton one. It’d have to do.

I took a how-to-play-tennis book out of the library and studied the proper way to hold a racquet for forehand and backhand, how to move through each stroke, how to serve, how to crouch and position myself to return serve. The book had exercises to improve my footwork. Didn’t even need a racquet for those.

I was in heaven.

Why not simply ask my parents to buy me a tennis racquet? Operative word is “simply.” Nothing was simple in our family. We didn’t celebrate birthdays. And as for Christmas presents—well, I’ve gone through that already.

Did Chuck ask for his hockey equipment or his collection of baseball bats and gloves? They seemed to drop into our living room like manna from heaven. That room was more locker room than a place to sit and watch TV. Mom may have rolled her eyes at the expense of it all, but what can you do? Boys need sports. Girls—not so much.

My older sister Denise had a pair of roller skates. They didn’t fall from heaven, but were gifted by a rich friend or the godmother she had been blessed with. Mine had a drinking problem, but that’s another story.

By the way, is roller-skating a sport?

Now tennis—that is a sport. And something you could be good at even if you were born a girl. Girls had won Wimbledon. I didn’t one hundred percent know what Wimbledon was or where located, but I liked the sound of it, as in the newspaper headline: “Evonne Goolagong wins Wimbledon.” The sports section had a photo spread of Evonne’s win. She hoisted a huge silver cup over her head.

A girl could play tennis—if she was good.

I did not try out for the tennis team at Dracut High. Wanted to. Planned to. Trained myself as best I could to improve in badminton-tennis. But I didn’t go there. When I turned fourteen, my parents sent me to a parochial girls-only high school. It had no sports teams. The school was in a brick building that used to be an orphanage. There was a small parking lot, a trash incinerator, and no gym.

Tennis? That was for the Phillips Andover crowd.

However, somewhere, somehow, I swear I played tennis. I remember practicing my swing and not just in my room. My memory’s foggy. Did I really only use a toy badminton racquet? That thing had red and white nylon strings all shot to hell and with sticky black electrical tape on the handle.

I played tennis. I had to have owned a tennis racquet. Perhaps my parents gifted me one. Yes, immediately after they’d signed me up for private tennis lessons at the Vesper Country Club. And under the Christmas tree, they laid out all this: a tennis dress, a pair of Dunlop Green Flash tennis shoes, two cans of MacGregor tennis balls—pressure packed and factory fresh. Pop them and hear the swoosh sound poof of air. Good times!

Vesper County Club tennis lessons, no, that was never a thing. And Christmas presents, post-Skipper, were limited to Orlon knee socks, flannel night gown, and the occasional paint-by-number set.

Still, I insist I did play tennis. I was clever enough and fully capable of shoplifting a tennis racquet from the Lull & Hartford sporting goods store. Did I? And I was resourceful enough to claim wayward tennis balls that fell outside the chain-link courts of nearby Carrick Field. Balls that had lost their bounce and were caked with mud, but serviceable enough, after I’d washed them.

I’d load those tennis balls into my bicycle’s wicker basket, balance the stolen tennis racquet on top, and bike down Lakeview Avenue to Dracut Junior High, locked tight for the summer, but with an expanse of asphalt playground and unwindowed brick walls. There, I played tennis for hours, volleying madly against the wall until dusk, returning my own serve.

Did I really steal a tennis racquet? Volley on the Junior High walls? Award myself prizes? Argue with invisible umpires? I think so.

***

Joseph. Joey. Little Joe.

I’ve mentioned by brother Chuck, but not Joe, six years my junior, baby of the family, loved by all, but invisible—over-shadowed by older brothers. Waiting for life, Joe watched everyone and everything. He inherited Chuck’s old sporting equipment, but in time, got his own. Oddly, mom signed him up for organ lessons, hoping he’d become the musician of the family. Her way of saying sports isn’t everything, my son can do more. Her defiance.

I regret I didn’t see Joe. I failed to look in the shadows. I was hung up with my own pogo dream and tennis larceny plots.

There’s a family photo of us at Easter, standing in front of dad’s station wagon. Me, Chuck, and Joe. Ages: 11, 9, and 5. I’m wearing a scallop-brimmed hat that looks like a cupcake. My face reads: I look ridiculous in this. The elastic is digging. I’ll rip this hat off the minute you take the photo, dad.

Chuck holds an air rifle and looks full of himself. He glares at the camera. The rifle is in low ready grip. Joe, a foot shorter than Chuck, also holds a rifle, but smaller. His body leans forward. He’s not looking at the camera; he’s looking at me and my silly hat, smiling to let me know he’s nailed the this-hat-looks-ridiculous telepathy. Hey sis, I’ll shoot that hat off your head, if you want. Is someone bothering you? Well, I’ll shoot them, too. Just say the word.

All those years and I didn’t know I had a hero.

I’ve been unfair to Chuck. It wasn’t his fault he was encouraged and supported in sports. That was a combination of family dynamics and the times. He was—and still is—athletically gifted. I’m happy for him. Chuck having his sports dream become reality isn’t something I’m jealous about. I’m past the blame game on parents, although you’d think they’d at least have noticed I had an interest in tennis, that I wanted a chance, the opportunity to be good.

Joey noticed. Little brother, hiding in the shadows. He noticed.

***

My senior year of high school, I had a physics assignment to complete at home. But I needed a partner. Denise was married. Earlier that year, they’d lost their first child. I wasn’t going to bother her with physics. Chuck? He was moving from bantam to midgets in youth hockey, logging ice time for the start of the season. Mom? Next question. Dad? Only if he wasn’t working (always was) or off to the American Legion (ditto). What about Joe? Who? Joe, Joey. Little guy. Plays organ. Home most afternoons.

The conversation went something like this:

“So, Joseph, old buddy, old pal, how about giving me a hand with a science project?”

“What?”

“A science project. You mark the time while I coast my bike down Vandette Avenue.”

“Down that hill?”

“Yeah. I might crash. Could be interesting.”

“Cool.”

I kept that project write-up for some God-only-knows reason. Fifty years on and the notebook paper has yellowed, the cursive blue ink is faded, but still legible. I’ll summarize:

Physics Project: A Study in Motion.

What: The linear motion of me on a bicycle going down a hill.

When: Oct. 5, 1972.

Where: I rode my bike to the top of a hill, Vandette Avenue, and let myself be propelled down.

How: I didn’t pedal the bike, but rather let it take me. My brother was stationed at points along my route (1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and at the finish line). He marked the time, to the second, at which I passed. This required several iterative runs.

Why: To graph time vs. distance, speed, and acceleration.

Problems? All in all, the course was good. Occurrences that I encountered were a few potholes in the road, a car also trying to get down the hill, and my brother’s friend on a bicycle standing nonchalantly right in the path of my bike.

Suffice it to say, the project was a success (I got an A) and Joe and I had fun. Moreover, I didn’t crash.

By then—as I’ve said—I’d given up on sports. I was never going to win a medal or hoist a trophy. If I got my name in the newspaper, it’d more likely be like: “Dead at Seventeen.” Because, frankly, I’d given up on a lot of things and was just going through the motions: high school (check), boyfriend (check), weekend job at DeMoulas produce section (check). No time for sports, in any case.

No time. t = zero.

***

1973 passed and I entered college. In my linear motion. Freshman year, I moved into a dorm, but sophomore year I came back home and commuted to class. The dorm had overlooked the college tennis courts.

There were other, deeper pains.

Christmas, when I returned home, I was depressed. I’d hoped things would improve by reclaiming my old room. I switched majors. Science, schmience. I wasn’t sure what was ailing me, but I was going down the hill.

I was nineteen; Joey was thirteen. He had, in fact, just turned thirteen two days before Christmas.

Christmas morning, I expected nothing under the tree, stayed in bed.

“Let’s go, we’re opening presents!” a voice called up to my bedroom.

I ignored it.

“Susie, there’s something here for you.” I recognized Dad’s voice and he sounded surprised.

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled and turned over.

Then footsteps and a knock on the door. Chuck. “Look, there’s one present left and it’s a big box and we’re all dying to see what’s in it because mom and dad don’t know and I don’t either. So get the hell out of bed.”

I let myself be propelled down.

The tree was in front of the picture window, as it usually was.

New hockey equipment was strewn around the torn open Christmas wrappings, as it usually was.

Mom was in the kitchen, as she usually was.

Dad was on the recliner, where he usually was.

Chuck stood holding the large wrapped box as if it ought to be his, as it usually was.

Joe sat in a corner chair, leaning back and smiling. Something about that smile reminded me of the Easter photo. I’ll shoot that funny hat off—if you want me to. The gift tag said: “To Susie, From Santa.”

But I knew it was from Joe.

I opened the gift.

I’d never seen anything so beautiful!

I’m a writer, but words can’t describe how I felt holding that white vinyl tennis bag, with its royal blue piping and red-and-blue diagonal stripe across the attached tennis racquet cover. And the tennis racquet itself: a Wilson T2000 with wire-wrapped aluminum tubular steel, clear gut strings, an oval head, and an open handle down to the faceted grip, the grip itself covered in perforated tan leather.

That racquet had strength, flexibility, power.

It was the Olga Korbut of racquets.

Beautiful.

I may not have cried outwardly, but inwardly I cried. I’m crying now.

Chuck’s jaw dropped at the sight of it.

Mom stepped into the room and looked at dad. Dad looked puzzled, a look he kind of always had. I looked at Joe. “I hope you like it,” he said.

The gift was so much more than the vinyl travel bag, its carry strap, or the racquet. The gift was someone having faith in me when I’d lost faith in myself. A brother—the baby of the family—being the adult. His reassurance and love. A brother who did, in fact, run along with me to the next point.

It was the best gift I ever received, bar none.

I still have that racquet. I don’t have trophies or cups or sports medals. I didn’t win Wimbledon. But with that racquet I learned to play a decent game of doubles with friends in college. They loved the white travel bag. It held a towel, sweatbands, a can of fresh Spaulding tennis balls, and a water bottle.

“That’s a Jimmy Connors racquet,” one of them said.

I had no idea.

That bag also held—still holds—someone’s belief in me. A brother’s love.

***

A few weeks back, I texted my brother and his response was the icing on the cake.

4:41 pm: Joe, do you remember some Christmas in the 1970s when you gave me a tennis racquet and a carrying case? The bag was white vinyl. I’m writing an essay about it. Where did you ever get the money for that? You were just a kid.

4:42 pm:   I sold two Mylec hockey sticks to Sam Camara, the kid who lived on Vandette Street.

5:59 pm:   You serious?

7:24 pm:   Yeah ❤️

***

Susan April is a Pushcart Prize nominated author and artist. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, she holds an MS from the University of Chicago and an MFA from Vermont College. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines, most recently in The Forge (www.forgelitmag.com)and Little Fruits Magazine (www.littlefruitsmagazine.com). Find her at susanroseapril.com and @susanrapril.