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“My Gutsy Story” Patricia McKinzie-Lechault

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Cornfields to City of Lights –

Gutsy Globetrotter Breaks Barriers In Basketball

 

“What kind of operation?” Mom inquired

“Will she walk again?” Dad asked the doctors.

What if I couldn’t play basketball? I fell into a restless sleep with my legs trapped in traction. The phone ringing beside my hospital bed woke me at midnight.

“Allo, dis ze trainer for Asnières Club de Basket. We want you play in Paris?”

“What? I can’t understand you.”

“You play basket in France wiz us?”

“Yes, but I have a back problem.” I said.

“What you say? No problem? We pay you go back. We pay plane. We pay flat and car. ”

“No. It is my health.”

“’Ealth? Sink about it. I call few days.”

I hung up the phone, bewildered. He was talking about the star forward. Not me, the invalid, who couldn’t crawl to the bathroom.

Weeks later I had rehabilitated from a slipped disk in time to debut in America’s first Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL), but my team declared bankruptcy at Christmas. I was one of the causalities, limping from a bad back and broken heart. However, when Francis, the French coach, called back the next summer, I was ready to forfeit all to embark on an odyssey playing basketball abroad.

“What about your coaching contract?” my dad asked when I broke the news.

“I got out of it,” I answered tying my shoelaces. I was dressed in shorts, T-shirt and high-tops, always ready for a game.

My dad rattled off arguments as to why I should quit playing professional ball. He was right. I would never make money, or have job security.

“What about your back?” he asked.

My back. I squeezed my eyes shut and saw my crippled body strapped to a white hospital bed. My mind echoed Dad’s words, “No, no, no,” but my heart spoke louder, “Go, go, go.”

“When are you going to get a real job?”

“Dad, I’m only 23. How many chances will I have to play? To live in a new country, meet new people?”

My dad, first to disagree with my decision, was also the first to help me to prepare. I shot baskets; my dad rebounded in a musty fieldhouse as stifling as a sauna.

But what was I thinking? I dropped out of French class in school and had no idea where Paris was. In 1980, small town midwestern girls rarely left the State and never crossed continents. My friends, also clueless, told me to pack tampons and toilet paper as if I were moving to a Third World Country.

A week later, standing in a strange airport, my heart pounding, I spotted a man, waving a sign printed, ASNIÉRES, and yelling, “Potreesha!”.

I thought my dream to play basketball abroad had come true when my plane touched down in Europe. But when I looked out Francis’ car window and saw little people pecking cheeks and scurrying down cobblestone streets with baseball bats (baguettes) slung over their shoulder, it hit me, “Oh my God, I’ve landed on another planet.”

For the next six hours, I smiled and struggled to understand the conversation over dinner. First we drank the apéritif. Then wine with fish. Wine and meat. Wine and cheese. Dessert and champagne. I stared at the claret liquid, debating what to do. I grew up in a coach’s family, where drinking was taboo. How could I imbibe alcohol in front of my coach?  Yet to avoid offending the hostess, I tipped my glass at regular intervals. Alarmingly, as soon as my glass was half empty, Francis filled it again.

My stomach ached from the new foods; my head pounded from the new words. And our first practice almost never started. A dozen players greeted one another by kissing each other on the cheeks four times. On our first road trip, before boarding a caravan of cars driving us to Belgium, we repeated the ritual under a street lamp. Then I hopped in Francis’s car, whisking us through Paris as the early morning mist rose above the Arch of Triumph and the deserted Champs Elysees.

Near the border, Francis asked, “You have your passport?”

“Passport? No, what do I need my passport for?”

“Customs!” Francis pulled the car off the side of the road.

“Dehors!” he shouted, his face crimson. “Out.”

I feared he would abandon me on the roadside. Instead, he opened the trunk and pointed.

I crawled in, folding my long limbs into a ball, imagining the news headlines, “American superstar asphyxiated when smuggled across the border in the boot of a car.”

During our first game, I was so rattled from the ride in the trunk that my hands shook. A teammate came in off the bench and whispered, “No pass. Shoot.”

I swished the next ten shots. We beat Holland in the final. At the awards ceremony when they announced, “Patreesha Mackencee, meilleure joueuse,” a pair of hands pushed me forward to accept the MVP trophy. I smiled as I shook hands with the tournament director, and then turned to face my teammates’ cold stares, longing to crawl under the floorboards.

Later, I joined the others in the bar, a standard fixture in European gyms where sports were as social as they were competitive. There, submerged in a cloud of smoke, teammates leaned on the table listening to a story. Just as I sat down, they burst out laughing.

Living in a foreign country was like always being the only one who doesn’t get the joke.

Still, at the end of the year, I did not want to leave France and felt devastated when the French Basketball Federation banned foreigners. Luckily, I received another garbled phone call in guttural German. What play ball in Germany? Learn a new language? Adopt a new culture? No way! But I boarded a train, crossed the border and fell in love with Marburg, the fairytale town immortalized by the Grimm Brothers.

…Ah, but that is yet another gutsy story.

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 Patricia McKinzie-Lechault Bio:

Pat McKinzie, a pioneer in the early infancy of Title IX, was the first female athletic scholarship recipient in Illinois, drafted into the first women’s professional basketball league, and part of the premier wave of American ball players in Europe. As a globetrotter, she traveled across Europe and lived in Paris and Dijon, France and Marburg, Germany, and Geneva, Switzerland. The columnist turned blogger, teaches and coaches at International School of Geneva. She lives outside Geneva with her French husband, Gerald Lechault, CEO of a Swiss printing company. Raised abroad, her Third Culture Kids, a daughter, now a pediatrician, and son, finishing his teaching degree, reside in the USA. Her book Home Sweet Hardwood, A Title IX Trailblazer Breaks Cultural Barriers Through Basketball will be published soon.

Please visit Patricia’s wonderful X-pat files from overseas  website  and join her on Twitter @PattyMacKZ. You can also join her on Facebook.

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Sonia Marsh Says: I loved your “Gutsy” attitude and what you said to your  “Dad, I’m only 23. How many chances will I have to play? To live in a new country, meet new people?”

Obviously you never regretted your decision to move, and now live in Geneva, married to a French man. What a complete change you made in your early twenties.

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Please leave comments and questions for Patricia below. She will be over to respond.

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Voting for your favorite October “My Gutsy Story” starts on November 1st-14th. The winner will be announced on November 15th.
Do you have a “My Gutsy Story” you’d like to share?

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here.

Three other October stories are up. So far we have Duke Marsh “My Gutsy Story” and Don Darkes “My Gutsy Story,” and Kim Brower’s “My Gutsy Story,” and Doreen Cox, “My Gutsy Story.”

I hope you enjoy the “My Gutsy Story” series and share with others through the links below. Perhaps you’d like to submit your own. Thanks.


Are French Parents More Gutsy?

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After reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about “Why French Parents are Superior”  by Pamela Druckerman, it finally hit me that some of my child-rearing methods are actually more French than I care to admit. I’m not French, but I spent a good chunk of my youth growing up in the suburbs of Paris.

My three sons are adults now, and grew up in the U.S., however, Druckerman brought up one main difference between French parenting and American parenting that struck a chord.  She said, “Who’s the boss?” She then gave the French answer:

French parents say, “It’s me who decides.”

  • Who’s the boss, you or your kids?

Right after my husband, Duke and I, made the decision to uproot our family from Orange County, California, to Belize, Central America, I remember being asked the following question, almost daily: “So what do your kids think about your decision to move to Belize?”

At the time, I thought this was a stupid question. Now I realize why.

Belize, Ambergris Caye, near our house.

Below is an excerpt from a chapter in my book: Freeways to Flip-Flops: Our Year of Living Like the Swiss family Robinson.

I’d become obsessed with Belize.

I’d tell anyone who cared to listen–including complete strangers in supermarket lines or at the gym—about how we were uprooting our family to live in Belize. Sometimes I imagined a glimpse of envy on a stranger’s face. That’s when I shifted into salesperson mode, trying to push them into doing the same.  Duke warned me, “Don’t tell everyone about Belize; we don’t want people flocking there.”

Some people thought we were crazy. Others were skeptical.  “Yeah, sure,” they said. “Let’s see if you really go ahead with it.” The second group always asked, “So what do your kids think?” to which I snapped back, “Who makes the decisions in your family, you or your kids?” Many looked shocked, but my European accent helped. It allowed people to classify me as an alien, despite my U.S. citizenship.

There are many times in life when you are faced with tough choices, and you need to make a  decision. As parents, we cannot always cave in to what are kids want; we have to decide what’s best for the entire family. We need to guide and lead, and my experience with French parents, is that they are more strict, and perhaps more “old-fashioned” when it comes to child-rearing.

I could go on about so many aspects that Druckerman covers in her article: “Why French Parents Are Superior.” For example: teaching your kids polite manners, family eating habits, and disciplining your children, because I’ve seen it done the French way and the American way.

Since I’ve lived in both France and the U.S., as well as the U.K., Denmark and Belize, I can pick and choose what’s right for my family. That’s what I love about travel, and the expat life, you get exposed to different ways of looking at the decisions you make in your life.

What about you? Who’s the boss, you or your kids?

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Do you have a “My Gutsy Story”?

To submit your own, “My Gutsy Story” you can find all the information, and our sponsors on the “My Gutsy Story” contest page. (VIDEO) Submission guidelines here.

 

BELIZE BUZZ Wednesdays

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What great comments you shared. I hope you answer some of my questions below.

Jacki said…

How sad it is when you consider that dogs here in the US get better health care than most, if not all, developing countries around the world.

Many times I sit and wonder what could be accomplished if people took the money they spend on their pets for luxury items (like dog bakeries and day spas) and donated it to charities.

Pets give us so much joy and we love the way they offer us “unconditional love.” What I found strange is that dogs in Belize don’t react the same way when you want to pet them. They seem very wild, and mistrust people. They don’t seem to offer that “unconditional love,” so maybe it’s our treats and pampering that make our pets into true pets. I just came up with that. What do you think?

Jody Hedlund said…

Wow! What a contrast! Sometimes we forget how rich we are in our country. Even the “poor” in our country have it much better than most poor around the world. A great perspective to remember at this time of economic hardship in our country. If we can afford exotic doggie treats, than are we really suffering?

I think we need to ask: 1) Who’s spending $5.00 on a designer cake for dogs.
2) For some people a dog is their CHILD. Many who don’t have kids, spoil their pets
in the same way as some parents spoil their kids.
What do you say?

Lady Glamis said…

I haven’t seen vets places like that, but I have seen kennels that are INSANELY expensive and ridiculously posh for canines and felines. All of this really does make one wonder how much our economy really is suffering, you know? Like Jody says.

Let’s look at who pays for those expensive kennels. My husband used to work in a “cheap” kennel where they hose them down with running water and there’s cement runs. Not the carpeted and TV rooms for dogs, so they can feel like there’s still at home.

LadyFi said…

It has long been known, however, that dog and cat food sold in the UK is more nutritious than the food served up to old people in England. That is truly sick!

I can’t believe that. What do they serve the old people? I went to boarding school in Felixstowe, and perhaps the same applies to what they served us there. I’ll never forget the disgusting Shepherds pie. I have no clue what was in it. Perhaps imported Chinese dog meat?

The worst case was the Canton market in China where the dogs were hung up by their necks (after being strangled) and skinned. Still, if you are prepared to eat cows and cute lambs or horses, why not dog? (I’m vegetarian so don’t actually indulge myself..)

When did you become a vegetarian? During your time in China?

The Blonde Duck said…

The first vet I went to overcharged us terribly and told me Bitty needed doggie braces! It was ridiculous!

Now, that’s outrageous, although I have heard of teeth bleaching for dogs. Have you?

E said…

Tomorrow we will take these goofy lambs to the vet for shots and neutering etc. The vet will think we are nuts, but while we wait she will serve us a latte. So who is the nut?

Did you get your latte? Do lambs go to a regular vet in an office or is this a special farm vet?

Brenda said…

In Paraguay their are so many emaciated ill dogs running around, but no one does anything about it. I never understood it. When we asked, people always told us it was someone elses responsibility, but we never knew who that “someone else” was.

Yes, those stray dogs don’t seem to belong to anyone in particular, yet they also have their own stray buddies and remind me of teenage gangs when they prowl around neighborhoods.

There HAS to be a happy medium between what we do in the west and what is done in developing countries.

Jungle Mom said…

All too familiar.
I should mention that in one of the tribes in the jungle, the hunting dogs were a prized and cherished possession, of value equal to and perhaps greater than the wife. If the dog needed food and there was none, a nursing woman would be made to nurse the dog. I have seen this done.
Not a comfortable thing to watch when a small infant is crying for food!

Now that is shocking. Never heard of that. Does it still go on? I love hearing from all around the world.


Little Me said…

I lived in Paris for a good long time and in certain Parisian classes little dogs are given treatments I could not afford to give myself.
What kind of treatments? I’d love to hear.

A few years ago I heard of a dog bakery being opened, by an American woman in fact, but I will have to google the details. It must have been a good 5 years ago. I wonder if she was a success. Please let us know what you discover.

BLOGitse said…

Traditionally calling a human as a dog is an insult, mainly in Arab countries but here too.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a tiny monkey in a cage, again the cage too small.

I don’t understand why we humans want to put animals into cages to suffer.

I guess it’s the same all over the world, here too, rich are richer and poor are and will be poor.

An animal is an animal. It doesn’t understand if his food is beautifully decorated or not.
We humans are really stupid and selfish!

Yes, I always feel sorry for animals in cages. Even in the zoos. The most amazing zoo I saw was in Belize, where the animals still had their jungle environment. It was the most eco/animal friendly zoo I’ve ever seen.

Anonymous said…

As I was filling out two pages of cat adoption forms and promising to never ever let kitty go outside, I had to wonder about all the children who need homes. I think priorities are sadly misplaced.
The problem is most want babies without problems, not orphans who are older with physical and mental problems.

Miss Footloose said…

What bothered me sometimes was going out to eat in a nice restaurant in whatever country we were staying, have a meal, a glass of wine, and spend 40 bucks or so and then feel guilty because 40 dollars would feed a local family of four for a month … and here we were just spending it on one meal because we felt like eating out.

I am in the US for now, and what really bothers me is people complaining about how expensive things are.
What do you think? Things are cheap here compared to say, Europe? I’d love to hear your views.

Rob-bear said…

I don’t know what “outrageously expensive” is when it comes to vets. Last time I took our dog for a check up, it cost about Cdn$50.00. ….We worked hard to keep our dogs healthy, so about once a year was as often as they needed to go; $50. a year isn’t bad.

Too bad kids in Belize can’t be looked after for $50 per year, for food. Or even kids in the U.S., for health care.

So I guess you don’t get your dogs teeth cleaned where they put them under anesthesia. That costs a fortune at most vets in the U.S. The expensive vet I mentioned with granite countertops, wanted to do blood work first on Cookie, for $90.00 before he would clean her teeth, which was another $250. Forget that. Others wanted you to sign up for a monthly dental check-up. Not even I go for cleaning every month, so why should my dog?

I don’t know how I would manage living in places of truly grinding poverty. My stomach gets upset just thinking about it.

3) Monday is Belize Day-"Just stop by." Not used to that.

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“Just stop by,” the expats would say. So I did just that, something rarely done in Orange County especially when you hardly knew the person.

We had a new life in Belize and I needed help. Advice on schools, grocery shopping, what local Belizeans were like, where I could get a supply of fresh milk.

Carol, a French Canadian who lived in Corozal, was the only expat I knew with kids. Her front door stood wide open maximizing on sea breezes from the bay of Chetumal. Air-conditioning was non-existent in most houses. Carol invited me in for some refreshing watermelon juice. Her house was the size of a large bus and squished on the side sat a trailer they’d brought with them from Quebec. Carol told me they preferred the trailer to the house, “because it’s air-tight. Mosquitoes can’t get in, so we sleep in the trailer,” she said. I found this very strange that they’d pay for a house, yet sleep in the trailer.

Carol needed to talk just as much as I did. We sat on a couple of Mennonite chairs in her shower-size kitchen when a truck drove by and Carol knew, from the sound of the engine, this was the “Crystal” water guy. He walked straight into her kitchen and dropped off a 5 gallon plastic container of water. She searched for a coin in her soap dish container, to pay him.

Carol answered all of my questions regarding shopping and then handed me a gringo expat list of names and phone numbers for me to keep. I was amazed at how everyone helped one another here. I complained about the bug bites and Carol lifted her trim body from the kitchen chair and tiptoed to her bathroom, returning with a tin of cream she’d made herself. “What’s it made from?” I asked.
“I invented it,” she said. “I mix beeswax, olive oil and herbs. “Here,” she said, handing me the tin. “Try it. Tell me if it works.” I thanked her and spread a dollop on some swollen mounds on my legs. Carol stared, waiting to see my reaction. I smiled and told her it was a miracle cream. She wanted to market it locally, and called it her “very secret recipe.”

A guy on a scooter stopped in front of Carol’s house and honked. “It’s the mailman,” she said. She greeted him and returned holding only one letter, no junk mail. I thought how wonderful to live in a country where trees aren’t cut down and turned into junk mail. Back in California, I never bothered to look at junk mail. I hated the glossy photos of garages that looked better than many living rooms around the world. I felt embarrassed that people would need a granite-looking garage floor to park their perfectly shiny SUV or Mercedes. Who cared what the garage floor looked like, certainly not the car. I used to throw junk mail into recycling, without even looking at it.

I’d like to know where you live now and whether you can just stop by to visit? Do you have to call first, or make an appointment to visit with a friend or neighbor?

Any comments on junk mail, and whether you read it, need it, etc?

Any questions or comments you have, I shall be happy to answer on BELIZE BUZZ Wednesday, where I link your question to your blog, and answer it.

Thanks, and have a great week blogging. Enjoy life.

1) Belize Buzz Wednesdays

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Thanks for all your questions and interesting comments. I’d love to hear more experiences from others who have lived or perhaps just traveled around. Doesn’t have to be far, even in your own backyard. Please keep them coming. I shall answer your questions in my Wednesday Belize Buzz.

LadyFi said…

Please tell me more about driving to fetch fresh water! Was there none in the village? No pump or anything? Or did you mean drinking water?

In Consejo Shores, the first place we lived, we had the sulphur reeking water from a well. Let’s call it sh*t smelling water. The expat developer believed this water had healing powers and drank it himself, but my kids refused to take a shower in it for a week, until they stank more than the water did. We had to drive the 7 mile migrating pot-holed road to Corozal, to buy 5 gallon bottles of water for drinking and cooking.

How big was the house on stilts?

It actually had 3 bedrooms and 2 showers interconnected with long non-windowed hallways, with screens to supposedly keep the outdoor wildlife outdoors. More later.

Jientje said…

It reminded me of the butcher in France, where the butcher makes your hamburgers, grinding the beef and molding it while you’re waiting. Or if you want lamb stew, he takes a shoulder of lamb and removes the bones. I love to watch him do it!

You’re right Jientje. I almost wrote about how the Louis Vuitton butcher in Corozal, reminded me of the French butchers who take their time to cut up the meat to your liking. They seem to take pride in their work, unlike the butchers at my local Ralphs and Albertson’s supermarkets in Orange County.

Danie said…

What made you choose Belize as opposed to any other place? Please check out Danie’s book, “The Expat Arc” on her blog. I just ordered it from Amazon and love reading about her life with her husband, son and dog in Chennai, India. Lots of great color photos too.

Great question. In my travel memoir, I tell our funny story on how we were introduced to Belize, not having ever heard about the country. Since my husband isn’t gifted in languages, (unlike me, hahaha) we had to select a country where English was the main spoken language. All of Central America has Spanish as their first language except for Belize. Also the education of our 3 sons who came with us.

Miss Footloose said…

I would also love to know what made you choose Belize. And are you still there?

The answer to your first question is above. We stayed in Belize for one year. Could it have been because we missed the comforts of California, the lack of money, the humidity, or something more dramatic? I’ll let you guess. Let me just say for now, we had planned on staying for the rest of our lives. Miss Footloose, your stories sound fascinating though. How old are your kids now?


Gramma Ann said…

How did you do your laundry, because with five of you, there surely was dirty laundry? Did you go to the river and pound it clean on the rocks? LOL

Believe me from the day we moved to Belize, I learned to lighten up about laundry. I did have an ancient washing machine, underneath the hut and was worried the wooden stilts would crack and I’d end up with a hut on my back. There was no hot water, only cold, so I had to boil the water in saucepans. I shall write about the whole experience. What a story!

Lady Glamis said…

Did you get sick when you first moved there? I know that’s normal and just wondered if it took you awhile to get used to the water and different germs floating around. 🙂

I never thought of that until you brought it up. Unlike Mexico, we didn’t get sick, although there was a scary incident with my 13-year-old got hospitalized, but not for that.

Rob-bear said…

Sounds like you had a wonderful time in Belize. How long did you stay there?

One year, although that was not the original plan. There could have been many reasons why we left. What do you think?


Jacki said…

I am curious to find out about the Belize diet if the meat from the grocery stores isn’t the the most fresh. Are they mostly vegetarians?

Belizeans eat mainly chicken and fish with rice and beans. Most locals can’t afford steak. Vegetables consist mainly of onions, peppers and carrots. Things like salad, mushrooms, green beans, asparagus. Forget it. Coleslaw is common though.

BLOGitse said…

how long did it take to settle down? (i mean time after the honeymoon period=3 months) It took us about six months to finally settle down.

what do you miss from you ‘previous life’? I missed good coffee, books and stimulating presentations and lectures where you learn something. Your brain can easily stagnate on an island.

could you live there rest of your life? why? (yes or no) 🙂 NO, but 3 months/year YES

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