THE HOCKEY LIFE
PART ONE: THE INTERNSHIP
Hockey is addicting. All it takes is one game to get a person hooked. Even the least sporty people can fall in love with the sport as easily as one, two, three. I guess that was why it only took a second for me to fall in love with it.
Hockey has always been my life, ever since I could remember. My dad swears I was born to love hockey. He told me a story about how I always got all smiley as a baby whenever he had a game on. He also said that my first word was hockey, but that was just a funny lie. My mom would always get annoyed when he made up stories like that. She wasn’t quite as easy going as my dad. And I knew that she hated when he rubbed it in that I loved the sport, just like him and my brother.
My mom had a son first, my older brother, Brian. She loved him, of course, she still does and always will, but she had wanted nothing more than a daughter. My dad had his fun with Brian, though. He got Brian into hockey when he was young, and Brian has carried on with it ever since then. When I was born, my mom was overjoyed to finally have a daughter. She was excited for dress up, tea parties, Disney Princesses, ballet, the works. She bought tons of dresses and pink outfits for me. She even gave me the name Lena, because she thought it was beautiful and feminine. However, I wasn’t the girly girl that she had always wanted. I was a tomboy, and my dad had been right - hockey games excited me even when I was a baby. I started on a team as soon as I could, and my mom hated it. She called it “a guy’s sport” even, but nothing stopped me from playing.
My mom and I have never really been that close, but at least now I like going shopping with her. I’m girlier now, but I still love hockey. Because of that, she still holds back with me. I think it reminds her of how she never got to have the experience with her daughter that she wanted, because after me, her and Dad never had any other kids.
I thought about this when I saw her number come up on my phone, sitting on my bed in my tiny apartment. The phone call had interrupted my studying - being a senior in college was a lot of hard work.
“Hey Mom,” I answered, finishing a sentence on Microsoft Word simultaneously.
“Hi Lena. I’m just calling to see how you’ve been.”
“I’ve been fine. Midterms are coming up, so I’ve been pretty busy with schoolwork lately,” I answered.
“Sounds fun. Are you doing okay in your classes still?” My mom had always stressed good grades, on both me and Brian.
“Yes, I’ve kept my grades up, Mom. Don’t worry about that, I’ll still be graduating in May,” I promised.
“I’m just checking. How’s your team been doing?” It was the question I knew she dreaded having to ask. I had continued hockey in college. It was more of a recreational team, but we still had games and moved on to championships. It wasn’t quite as official, because that would make it too hard to focus on school, but it was still something.
“Good. We’re actually on a winning streak right now. You should have seen my goal the other night. It was the game winner, actually,” I began to ramble. I couldn’t help it. It was so easy for me to go on for hours about hockey.
“I’m sure it was amazing, Lena. But don’t let that distract you too much from your classes, okay?”
“I know. I won’t.”
“Okay, well, it looks like Puck needs to go out, so I’ll have to let you go.” Puck was my beautiful Siberian Husky. I had always wanted one, and I finally got him at the end of high school. He couldn’t come to college with me though. My apartment didn’t allow dogs, so even after I got out of the dorms, I couldn’t keep him with me. My parents kept him at home, so seeing him was always one of the biggest highlights of my visits when I went back home.
“Okay. Tell Puck I miss him!”
“I will. I’ll talk to you later Lena. I love you.”
“Love you too Mom.”
I hung up the phone and my best friend and roommate, Tess, walked into the room. Tess and I were super close. We had known each other ever since the peewee years of hockey, and we had always been on a team together, even now that we were almost done with college. After being friends for so long, I didn’t know how we could ever live without each other. I was the brunette to her blonde, the peanut butter to her jelly, the macaroni to her cheese.
“What did your mother want?” she asked, plopping down on my bed. Well, on the little space that was left on my bed. I had textbooks, notebooks, binders, -pretty much all of the contents of my backpack - scattered everywhere.
“The same old stuff. Just checking on me. Making sure everything’s okay and checking on my grades. Asking about our team but not sounding very interested when I go into details about how well her only daughter is doing. But whatever.”
“Hey, you’ve let that bother you for years, you need to just ignore it. You know she loves you and it’s obvious that she wished you would have done other things besides hockey when you were younger, but the older you’ve gotten the more supportive she’s been. She absolutely supports you. She just isn’t the biggest hockey fan, that’s all. That’s what you have a dad for.” This was probably my favorite thing about Tess. She always knew exactly what to say when I was down about something. She gave the best advice, which was something I wasn’t sure I was all that good at.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re right as usual,” I said.
“The game is on in a minute, you better not plan on getting any of this crap done tonight,” Tess reminded me. I saved my document and closed the lid of my laptop immediately. I began stuffing everything back into my bag and once I was done, I set it down on the floor and headed to the living room with Tess.
Not only did Tess and I love to play hockey, but we loved watching it too. Since we had lived in Illinois in forever and we still did, our favorite team was the Chicago Blackhawks. Whether we were hanging out at my house or Tess’ house, if it was hockey season, there was always a Hawks game playing on one of our Tvs. Both of our families loved the Hawks, and it showed. I had a bad habit of buying a lot of Hawks stuff, clothes mostly, even though I definitely didn’t need it. Tess was the same way, but dare I say it, even worse than me.
“Hey look, there’s Kaner!” Tess announced when she turned on the TV and there was a close up of him on the ice. She looked right at me to see if my cheeks would turn red. I was a big Patrick Kane fan. I had his jersey. And as Tess would say, I had the hots for him. But his looks hadn’t been the only thing that had drawn me too him, as much as people often thought they had. The first time I really noticed him was when I saw him making good plays, scoring amazing goals, doing crazy fakes in shootouts and graceful spin o ramas. My dad, as a long time, dedicated hockey fan and ex player (he was a star in high school), understood the real reason why he was my favorite player. All that other stuff was just the cherry on top.
“And there’s Tazer!” I said when I saw him. Jonathan Toews was Tess’s favorite player. For his great hockey and captain skills as well as his looks. I guess because of this, I was the Kane to her Toews as well. We seemed to have that same love-hate relationship. Sometimes we annoyed the crap out of each other, but we couldn’t stay mad at each other for very long.
“He’s looking good tonight!” Tess decided, and I laughed. The rest of the night was filled with pizza, pop, and our cheering and yelling. The Hawks won against the Pittsburg Penguins, 4-2. It was a pretty good game, I had to say. I felt lucky that I still had a few days to study before my papers would be due and my exams would be given, because Tess had been right. I hadn’t gotten much done, even though I had tried to work during the intermissions.
Even so, I knew I needed to do a little more. I got my laptop back out to work on my paper again. It took me a while, but I finally finished my paper. That was one less thing to do.
“I’m done! I’m finally done!” I screamed, a feeling of relief flooding through me.
“I’m not!” Tess yelled back.
“You better get on it, Tess, it’s due in two days!” I reminded her.
“It’s okay, I just have to finish the last paragraph. Most of it is done already. And besides, I think I’m better off studying for my tests. Those, I’m actually worried about,” she answered, coming out of her room and into mine. When I saw that she was in her pjs and she got comfy in a chair without her laptop or a textbook, I realized that she was done with schoolwork for the night too.
I decided I would stay up for a little bit, browsing the web. Maybe even doing some online shopping, which was my weakness. But first, I decided I needed to check my email. Little did I know that checking it then was probably the best decision of my entire life.
I signed in and saw that I had four unread emails. Three of them were from stores - I had a bad habit of signing up to receive emails from every store I shopped at and then never using any of the coupons or savings I got from them. The newest one, however, was from the Chicago Blackhawks. It was an acceptance email, telling me that I had been chosen for their winter break internship.