The Forge and The Float

credit: Robot Brainz via Flickr

This story begins with a woman in labor.

I am that woman, and I am bringing my child – my son – into the world.

TBF and I are driving a swift, quiet ribbon of interstate under a clear late-winter sky. The contractions roll through my body, the contractions subside.

The lights atop the windmills pulse a steady red. I lean into the music, the music I’d carefully chosen for this very drive. I’m calm, I think. I’m ready.

As Amos Lee sings about working on the night train, I do not yet know there’s no such thing as ready. Not anymore. There is only surrendering to what happens. There is only showing up.

*

In the final weeks of my pregnancy, a friend spelled it out for me.

The truths of motherhood are always a mixed bag, she wrote.

I didn’t want to believe her. I wanted to believe that if I could do motherhood well, I could be free from feelings of inadequacy, disorientation, aloneness, despair – all those things I’d been working my whole life to avoid.

I studied hard for the baby’s arrival. I read posts on mommy blogs and marked chapters in parenting books. During childbirth class, I took pages of notes. I did all this as if having the Knowledge and collecting some Answers would spare me from the fear that comes with not knowing exactly what to do.

One of the refrains from childbirth class was “the baby will come when the baby wants to come, how the baby wants to come.”

I secretly thought this was bullshit.

I believed that if I prepared enough, if I kept up my long walks and yoga sessions, if I did everything the acclaimed midwife Ina May Gaskin suggested in her book and kept my mind right, I could have the natural birth experience I was hoping for.

Never mind what the baby wanted. Never mind that in reality, I had so little control.

*

In the fourth hour of being one centimeter away from full dilation, I found myself on a new plane of consciousness. I pedaled my feet against the wrenching waves of pain. I chanted nonsense. I stared at the Franciscan cross nailed to the wall.

I was in my body completely and somehow not in it at all.

Maybe pushing will help, my labor nurse said. Maybe pushing will get things going again.

Maybe. But it didn’t. The delivery I was hoping for wasn’t meant to be.

For what felt like the first time ever in my adult life, I let go of what I thought should happen and accepted what is.

The operating room was lit bright white and teeming with angels – or were they women? – going about their work with sure hands. The only man in the room was TBF, who sat at my left temple, chatting and joking to keep us both calm.

When it was time, they told TBF to stand up and look over the blue curtain. A moment later, I heard my baby cry.

*

Of everything I’d read to prepare for labor, there was really only one piece that proved to be essential, and it was hardly about childbirth at all.

Long before I was pregnant, I’d been reading Kevin Moore’s Reembody blog because he thought and wrote about fitness in a way I’d never heard before. I loved what he had to say and how he said it.

I read his post “The Great Things About You – And Everybody Else” when I was about six months pregnant. The third section of the piece titled, “You Can Do This,” broke through all the other shoulds and shouldn’ts I’d been reading. Especially this part:

Mothers, would-be mothers, long-awaited mothers, unwilling mothers, thrilled mothers, natural mothers, modern mothers, frightened mothers, mothers who don’t yet know they are mothers:

You can do this.

… I know that you are strong because strength is not the hammer; it’s the forge.

“You’re as big as a house!” you’ll hear. Bullshit: you’re a mountain and the wind blowing hard through the timberline booms with a voice that says, in no uncertain terms, do not fuck with me.

 HECK. YES.

These paragraphs were my very own “Eye of the Tiger” as I trained for the title fight. They were my prayer for the journey and my private rallying cry.

So when the contractions hammered away at my sense of what I thought I could endure, I hung onto the belief that I was the forge.

Go ahead and try me, I thought. I am the g.d. FORGE.

credit: Paul David Photography via Flickr

But when the real work of motherhood started, I was not the forge.

When it was two-, three-, or four-something in the morning and the baby was twisting in my lap, struggling to latch and crying from hunger, when I swore I could feel my incision coming apart and couldn’t tell whether the wetness on my face was tears or sweat, I was not the forge.

I was The Worst Mother in the World and stupid for thinking I could handle being a mom.

While my child screamed, I was convinced I was setting records for incompetence. To confuse me further, what worked to help the baby eat/sleep/stop crying one day wouldn’t work the next.

But what was a “day” anyway? The light came and went at regular intervals, but it didn’t matter. There was only feeding and changing and holding and bouncing and walking and the occasional moment when I’d close my eyes for an hour or two, but there was no end to one day and beginning of another. There was no closing things up for the night and starting fresh in the morning.

During those late-night feedings, I feared everything that hadn’t happened yet.

What if the baby wouldn’t latch or wouldn’t get enough milk or wouldn’t go back to sleep and so I’d be up walking the house like a rocking, shushing ghost until the sun came up? Or worse: What if I fell asleep and dropped the baby or fell asleep and didn’t hear the baby cry out for me or heard the baby cry but felt so completely spent that I didn’t care?

What if I started resenting the baby and his constant needs so fiercely that I completely shut down, handed him to TBF, and walked out for good?

When in those wee hours after tears were shed (some his, mostly mine) and the baby eventually did latch, I would pick up Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year and read an entry or two.

She is so honest and so funny and so scary in those pages that there wasn’t room for my own fear-gripped “what if?” voices.

I started dog-earing passages that felt particularly breathtakingly true not so I could mine them for parenting advice but so I could return to them in my lowest moments and know that I wasn’t alone. I could be reminded there was at least one other person in this wide world who’d felt completely undone by motherhood and wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

Here’s where she nails it:

When Sam’s having a hard time and being a total baby about the whole thing, I feel so much frustration and rage and self-doubt and worry that it’s like a mini-breakdown. I feel like my mind becomes a lake full of ugly fish and big clumps of algae and coral, of feelings and unhappy memories and rehearsals for future difficulties and failures. I paddle around in it like some crazy old dog, and then I remember that there’s a float in the middle of the lake and I can swim out to it and lie down in the sun. That float is about being loved, by my friends and by God, and even sort of by me. And so I lie there and get warm and dry off, and I guess I get bored and or else it is human nature because after a while I jump back into the lake, into all that crap. I guess the solution is just to keep trying to get back to the float. (216-217)

*

Many things are described as “a marathon, not a sprint.” Having run both, I can tell you: Motherhood is neither a sprint nor a marathon.

Firstly, it is not possible to train for motherhood. Secondly, in a marathon, once you’ve run your 26.2 miles, you can stop. You can even take off work the next day and get a massage. Motherhood, I’ve learned quickly, is a feat with no endpoint, no final buzzer, no victory lap.

About a month into the not-marathon of motherhood, I was telling a friend how the baby and I were starting to get out more. It was becoming easier to take him places and handle feeding, changing, and everything else outside the familiar confines of our home. With a sigh I said, “We’re getting there.”

I paused, hearing my own words.

“Except there is no ‘there,’ huh?” I observed.

My friend, a mother herself, smiled. “Yep. There’s only ‘getting.’”

In that moment I noticed one of my fingers still clinging to the idea that parenthood could be approached like any other challenging thing I’d faced in my life; that is, if I could be prepared enough, smart enough, and bust my ass enough, I could stay on top of things.

Or, instead, I could let go.

I could let go of the idea that motherhood is a project. It’s not a race or a series of boxes to check or hell’s idea of a to-do list. It isn’t a thing to figure out or master or even attempt to stay on top of.

Maybe, like everything else, motherhood is just a whole new set of nows to live into and let be what they are.

*

On this, my first Mother’s Day, I’m laying out some hopes:

I hope I can do the work of mothering mostly with my heart and my gut and turn down the volume in my head.

I hope I can embrace the wildness inherent in raising a human and trust myself enough to let go.

It will help to remember what Kevin Moore’s post told me long before my drive down the interstate on that clear winter night, before the hospital and the labor and the nurse holding up my son:

You’ll change—oh yes, you’ll change—and what you’ll be when you’re done is two people and if that doesn’t blow your mind it’s because you haven’t really thought about it yet.

You are not diminished; you are enhanced. Whatever you thought you were before, you’re better. Whatever scares you now, you’ll conquer. Whoever you were is exactly who you are still going to be, only with more love and less fear.

You are a lightning bolt, and you can do this.

My gut tells me he might be right.

TBF and I

The Bachelor Farmer (TBF, for short) first appeared on this blog when I wrote an elegy for my grandfather in October 2012. At that point, TBF was an old love I was beginning to see again. Since that post, TBF has become a permanent fixture on this blog and, more importantly, in my life.

Last September I mentioned that TBF and I got married and started a life together on his family’s farm. “Mentioned” is the right word. It makes me chuckle to notice how I stated that a few things had changed for me but barely acknowledged the gravity of those changes.

I didn’t dig further into my new life on this blog until November, when I wrote about “re-seeing” my new life and getting used to my new hometown.

My reticence makes sense to me, though. I needed to live and process and live some more before I could attempt to make heads or tails of things.

Almost two months ago, I started working on a longer piece for an online magazine I admire. The piece was supposed to explore some aspect of my experience living and making a living in a rural pocket of the Rust Belt.

(While there are many and nuanced definitions of the term “Rust Belt,” I tend to think of it as a region in the U.S. that was once known for its industrial manufacturing centers and is now in the midst of forging new economic identities.)

I am proud to have grown up in a suburb outside of Youngstown, Ohio, which is often considered a Rust Belt city. For what it’s worth, I believe I do have a Rust Belt sensibility, and so I was (and am) excited to write about my new hometown and how my experiences are informed by my Rust Belt roots.

The essay turned out somewhat differently than I expected, which is exactly why I write. I write to surprise myself and learn something I didn’t know–about myself, about other people, about being human.

In its final form for the magazine, the essay ended up telling the story of TBF and me, including how we got (back) together and how we got to where we are right now. I hope you read the story and other pieces in Belt Magazine, like this thoughtful essay about LeBron James by Carl Finer.

My essay, “The Farmer and I: In the Middle of It All,” begins like this:

The farmer and I, we married quickly. From our first date to our wedding day, barely four seasons came and went.

The romantic spin on our fast work is expressed well by Billy Crystal’s clincher in When Harry Met Sally: “… when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

We were a lot more like Harry and Sally than I care to admit, which is to say we had known each other a long time and had made a few false starts before we ended up together.

… continue reading at Belt Mag

 

On Mothers

A fact about me: I have no children, no people I’m raising and caring for every day.

Don’t be lulled into complacency. She’s a killer.

TBF and I don’t even have a pet, unless you count Trip, the cat who wandered onto the farm a few years ago and never left. You really can’t count her because she doesn’t depend on us. Except for some food from TBF the Elder, Trip takes care of herself, hunting small things and snatching birds from the air. (Not kidding. TBF saw it happen once.)

Lately, ESPN’s got me thinking about mothers. Here’s another fact about my life: There is a direct correlation between how much laundry needs doing and how much Sportscenter I consume. I used to watch the show for college football highlights and punchy ad lib. Now it’s just an old habit and good background noise while I fold clothes.

Early in the week, I undertook washing large amounts of bedding, including some linens my mom gave me on my last trip to Ohio. I broke out the bleach and hung the freshened stuff on the backyard clothesline. I marveled at the simple utility of clothespins and how quickly things dry in direct sunlight.

While I smoothed pillowcases, I watched managers get tossed out of baseball games and listened to the latest on whose NFL draft stock was rising and who was rapidly falling out of the first round.

Tucked in the thick of the repetitive analysis and commentary was a brief Spike Lee-directed piece about NFL quarterback prospect Teddy Bridgewater. Except it wasn’t so much about him. It was about his relationship with his mom, Rose.

This piece by Andrea Adelman tells the first part of the Teddy and Rose story. To pick up where Adelman’s story leaves off and thus spoil the Spike Lee piece for you, Teddy makes good on his promise to Rose.

Of course it wasn’t the big pink Escalade that moved me to tears. It was a son’s innocent expression of love for his mother and the unabashed mutual devotion between two people who have been through a lot together.

Shortly after I recovered from that story, ESPN replayed excerpts from Kevin Durant’s NBA MVP acceptance speech.

KD offered words of appreciation to each of his teammates, members of the Oklahoma City Thunder organization, his family, and everyone who supported his rise to the top of his profession.

“I had a lot of help,” he said simply.

I cried so hard into the heap of dust ruffle on my lap that I needed to hang it outside again.

Had I known what KD was going to say to his mother, I would not have let my emotions crescendo so early. I can’t do the moment justice, so I encourage you to watch the speech here (KD’s tribute to his mom starts at 23:29) then read Steve Pierce’s essay for The Classical on why Durant’s expression of emotion is a good thing for the way we think about sports and manliness.

As I did my laundry and watched these very accomplished, very muscular children praise their mothers, I started thinking about my friends who are—or are about to become—mothers. It still feels like new territory for me, seeing women my own age have children and transform into these beings of astounding ability and tenderness.

To you, my friends who are mothers: I imagine your little ones growing up and becoming individuals with rich and realized lives, thanks to your encouragement and support. Maybe someday down the road your kids will give you a Pepto pink Escalade. Maybe your child’s entire professional athletic team will give you a standing ovation during a nationally-televised press conference.

But even if such grand gestures don’t happen, may your children have a moment—many moments, I hope—when they know deeply what a gift their mother is. May their love for you be plain and open, like a cleansing rush of tears or a light cotton sheet flapping gently on the line.

That, I imagine, feels like plenty.

The Greatest Love Song of All Time

Having recently returned from my honeymoon, I might be a little shmoopier than usual, but since this is the nationally-recognized day for all shades of shmoop, I submit to you my unequivocal nomination for Greatest Pop Love Song of All Time.*

You may know it as the song from National Lampoon’s Animal House or the song that inevitably makes the playlist of banquet-hall wedding receptions across the American Midwest. It’s “Shout” (parts 1 & 2) by The Isley Brothers.

It’s much more than an old favorite, though. It’s the perfect pop love song.

You been good to me, baby.

“Shout” really does have everything a pop love song should have: an earnest profession of love; praise for the beloved; a bit of narrative (“I still remember/when you used to be nine years old…”); lightweight conflict; a healthy dose of pleading; and of course passion—the innocent, hyped up, heart-rate cranking, almost-out-of-control kind.

I invite you to give it a listen with fresh ears. For listening purposes mostly, the following video is the best I could find on YouTube. I wanted the video I posted here to have a) both parts 1 & 2 (Did you even know the original single was in two parts? I didn’t. The A-side of the 7” released in 1959 was Shout – part 1, and the B-side was the “even wilder” Shout – part 2 ), b) stereo quality, and 3) visuals that weren’t too terribly distracting.

This one fits my criteria well enough.** You’ll notice that the video is slightly out of sync with the audio and that it’s actually two separate performances stitched together, but them’s the breaks. I do like that we get a chance to see the Isleys and their enthusiastic performance(s). They’re pretty cool cats.

I love the roots of the song, too. The Isley Brothers started their career performing gospel music. Then they went secular and crossed over into doo-wop, and with inspiration from Jackie Wilson’s call-and-answer style in “Lonely Teardrops,” they made “Shout.”

Many groups would go on to cover the song. Some would even have more commercial success with it. But for me, The Isleys’ version is the best, most joyful of them all.

My love for the track began long ago. Growing up, we had a red radio/cassette player in our kitchen. Most of the time, it was tuned to Oldies 93 WBBG, and whenever “Shout” came on, we went nuts. As soon as the opening We-eee-eeellll… came through that red radio, it was game on. My mom would chase us around the house, kicking up her heels and throwing her arms up for every “shout.” (That, Dear Reader, is why my mom is an awesome mother.) Admittedly, the ritual was a little terrifying, like running from the Boogeyman, but it was mostly a huge thrill. When the song was over, we’d collapse on the kitchen floor, panting and laughing.

Remember what I said about “Shout” and wedding receptions? Well, a different female relative of mine (who will remain nameless) has a fantastic reception prank: She gets the DJ to play “Shout” twice. This is no small feat, as “Shout” is a very physical song. According to Wikipedia (This is just one example of why Wikipedia slays me), “‘Shout’ has woven itself into many iconic American mediums such as a dance song in which people progressively crouch down to the dance floor as the song gets quieter.” There’s also the small detail that wedding DJs don’t usually like to repeat songs.

So how on earth does Anonymous Relative pull this off? A little while after “Shout” is played the first time, she finds the bride and asks if she can request the bride’s favorite song. She then immediately goes to the DJ and requests that “Shout” be played again per the bride’s direct orders. When the DJ (inevitably) balks, she gets the bride’s attention. Not realizing what she’s approving, the bride gives a thumbs-up, and so “Shout” gets its second play of the night.

Total genius.

Anonymous Relative notes that the crowd is invariably less enthusiastic during the second play of “Shout.” The guests get a little less softer now, jump a little less high. But it’s still worth it.

So go ahead and play it again, Dear Reader. Wherever you are, whatever your feelings (or non-feelings) about Valentine’s Day, kick your heels up, throw your hands up, throw your head back.

(Don’t forget to say you will.)

________

*With lyrics written in the English language and recorded within the last hundred years, according to me and only me. Backstory: Once upon a time, I asked a sampling of friends to tell me their all-time favorite love songs. I got everything from R. Kelly’s “12 Play” to Sarah McLachlan’s “Ice Cream.” It was the best survey ever.

**A couple of videos that didn’t make the main cut but are interesting nonetheless:

• Part 1 only with Dick Clark and a very subdued audience at the Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnOjpNHf54U
• A recording of parts 1 and 2 from the original 45 (gotta flip it over in the middle): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPd7C3kEoZI

On Sweetness

Summer, it seems, is on its way out.

For a while it has felt like this summer might continue forever. It was our wedding season, you know. The Bachelor Farmer’s and mine. In a garden overlooking my hometown, we said sweet words and made big promises. Then we drove west to the land of Jimmy Chitwood and Johnny Cougar – my new prairie home.

First there were pears. Golden, fragrant bushels of them. Then a zucchini, whose size would impress even the likes of Bud, and the fourth wave of little red Romas. Imagine my amazement at learning to use Mason jars as they were originally intended – for water bath canning, for example – instead of as vessels for writing utensils or cut flowers. Imagine also my chagrin when, with just a few too-many pulses of the blender’s blade, my first attempt at salsa became a languid pink gazpacho.

Now the apples are coming. Treesful. They are my first hint of fall while everything else still feels like summer: the heavy heat and evening light, the litany of baseball box scores and walking the earth on sockless feet.

One of many. (credit: C Rousu)

Last Saturday, we threw a party in the new shed out at the family farm. Friends came from near and far to celebrate with us. We did farm-y things like roasting a hog and using a metal feeding trough as a beer cooler. What an unfamiliar but wonderful thing, to spend a September Saturday in a sundress and straw hat, visiting with new neighbors and old friends, playing with kids and picking ground cherries from the vine. Somewhere Michigan and Notre Dame were playing football. Somewhere else, in a land far away, other teams were winning or maybe losing. None of us were keeping track.

We sat around a fire and ate more s’mores than any of us could really stomach. The whole thing was good. Actually, it was great – all the love I could handle hemmed in by eight-foot corn.

The next day, we lazed around for a while then returned to the farm to clean up. We collected bottles and cans, folded up chairs and tables, and soon the shed was a shed again, ready to house equipment for harvest.

We poured a glass of wine and sorted leftovers. Amidst the bountiful platters of cookies was a box of cupcakes the fruit flies had found. I took the box outside and set it at the edge of the field. “Pitch ‘em,” my mother-in-law, Gayle, had advised. So that’s what I did.

The first toss felt incredible. The cupcake had heft and was just sticky enough to ensure a good grip. End over end it arced into the afternoon sky, flinging its icing and blessing the corn. The next one and the one after that felt good, too.

I stood there winding up and winging cupcakes until only two remained. Remembering the fruit flies, I hesitated but then took a bite out of each.

I looked back at the house, and there was Gayle, watching. I gave a sheepish smile, my lips thick with frosting.

“I was wondering if you were going to taste one,” she said. “Nice arm.”

I laughed. It was sweet. All of it: this summer, the cupcake, and the untempered hope that comes with the beginning of every new season.

Chuckstrong

credit: AP Photo/ Michael Conroy

Once upon a time, I couldn’t stand Rick Reilly. I knew him as the guy who wrote the column at the back of Sports Illustrated, and I disagreed with everything he ever said. In fact, a column of his made me so mad once that I wrote him an impassioned letter that expounded all the ways in which I thought he was wrong. And a jerk.

(I think I was twelve at the time.)

Reilly was in good company, though, being the recipient of one of my letters. No one was spared from my wrathful pen — not even a local TV station, The Pleasant Company (maker of American Girl dolls), or a priest at my church.

Come to think of it, I ought to thank Rick Reilly and his incendiary views for helping me get into college, since I wrote one of my admissions essays about how much I disagreed with his opinions on sports and culture.

These days, Reilly writes a regular column for The Mothership’s website. I read it from time to time, and I find myself disliking his opinions a little bit less and appreciating his perspective — and scintillating similes — a little bit more. Maybe he has softened, scaled back his m.o. (i.e., being inflammatory). Or maybe my tastes have changed. Maybe I like his work now.

Reilly’s story about Colts head coach Chuck Pagano may have iced the deal for me. Yes, the situation is heart-rending to begin with. And yes, it’s about a football coach and his family (like shooting fish in a barrel to get a reaction from this girl…). But what Reilly does right this time is let himself into the story in a meaningful way. We come to understand how Pagano’s health news has hit Reilly on a deep personal level without the focus leaving Pagano.

Reilly’s humor keeps the story from becoming all gentle crescendoes and slowed-down shots of Pagano gazing off into the distance, and in terms of sentiment, the quotations from the family and Andrew Luck do the heavy emotional lifting so Reilly can show, not tell, us about how the people around Pagano are affected by his illness.

Perhaps the “ailing athlete” trope gets overplayed; perhaps we’ll never feel quite like we felt when we first read or saw Brian’s Song. No matter how familiar the premise or theme, these are still stories worth telling. Not for a cheap pull of the heartstrings, but to remind us that even the top-of-the-world guys are fighting great battles — whether a story is written about them or not.

Elegy for Bud

Bud on his wedding day, Feb.1950

I am named for two men, you know. The fathers of my parents.

The two men lived and worked in the same town for most of their adult lives. One of them coached young people, won ball games, ended up with a street named for him and a spot in a hall of fame. I never met this man. At fifty-six he got sick and died young — a year and a half before I was born.

I have known the other man for the full stretch of my life. He led a machine gun outfit in The War then fixed cars for a living. For fun, he bowled, pitched softballs, and grew too much zucchini and, for my appetite, never enough sweet corn. He had five kids and zero unkind words to say about anyone. He kept a cigar in his cheek and his complaints to himself.

For all the ailments and illnesses of his later years, only once did I hear the limitations of the human body get the man down.

“Don’t get old,” he told me a few years ago. “Just don’t get old.”

This man — my grandpa — died on Saturday night.

He is Bud to us, but his birth name is Carl. It is fitting that he gives me the C, is the C: unassuming curvature both gentle and sure, a shape that accepts and yields and leaves a space open for listening. He is the C also for calmness and compassion. In the midst of this hard world, the C is a pliable spine.

I knew Bud best during his retirement years, when his kids were all grown up and living elsewhere. I knew him as someone with a lot of time and few ambitions.

I needed to know about that kind of peace.

I needed someone to show me that I could pull small mauve clumps from the bushes behind the garage, pop them into my mouth, and experience the joy of raspberries, unsullied by packaging or processing or time. I needed to learn about Dutch Masters — the smokes, not the painters — and see that anything could be fixed or rigged or wired, provided you had a few afternoons to spend on it. I needed to know that Frankie Yankovic was a polka god and that kielbasa is best eaten boiled and straight off a toothpick. I needed to know I could be an unserious kid and life would still go on, with tenderness and jokes and stockpiles of hotel shampoos and unreliable pens.

What can I do now to remember him, to honor the way he lived?

On Sunday, I climbed a ladder and cleaned out the gutters on the house — his house, the house he built that I am lucky enough to be living in.

Before winter comes, I will turn the earth like he did, plant shallots and garlic from the garden of The Bachelor Farmer.

In the darker, colder months, I will find new ways to prepare zucchini. I will look for things to ply and fix. I will go down to the basement and run my hands over the tools on his workbench, let my fingers sift the jars of nails and screws.

Come springtime I will hang the metal wind chime and dance the Too Fat Polka to songs on old vinyl.

On summer nights, I’ll sit on the back porch, watch the lightning bugs, and wonder if I’m smelling the faint fragrance of cigar smoke or if I’m just imagining it. In those moments, there Bud will be, the gentle presence he has always been for me.

For Jams, With Love

Jams Monroe, 5th President of the United States of America

My father is a man of many accomplishments. Consider the following highlights from his nearly 33-year career:

• Happily attended three separate fifth-grade orchestra concerts that always featured the same painfully out-of-tune renditions of scintillating standards like “Hot Cross Buns” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”
• Nimbly dreamed up bedtime stories about a family of crayfish who lived in the backyard creek
• Gladly bought enough fundraiser candy bars to rot a full mouth of teeth twice
• Patiently jogged down the street in pursuit of hundreds of wild pitches launched by his notoriously inconsistent middle child
• Humbly took “measure thrice, cut once” orders from his son, a wood-working wunderkind, whenever they were in the shop
• Quietly intimidated a small yet intrepid cast of young men hoping to date his daughters, who, according to him, were not allowed to date until they turned thirty anyway
• Willingly drove to and sat through admissions information sessions at most of the four-year institutions in the near-Midwest and Mid-Atlantic regions
• Coolly sank a walk-off 3-point toss in Bags the first time he ever played the game at a family reunion
• Proudly traveled 750 miles to hear this author read ten minutes of fiction

Being a father, I imagine, is no easy task. When a father commits acts of love for his kids — even seemingly minor or ordinary acts — the effect can be enormous. I think of the story that gave Anne Lamott’s inimitable book, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, its name:

…thirty years ago, my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get  a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin at Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’

I was in a similar predicament in fourth grade. I was supposed to memorize important facts about James Monroe, the fifth President of the United States, and deliver a presentation to my class, but the night before the project was due, I was at a complete loss. Like Lamott’s brother, I sat at the kitchen table with a big blue encyclopedia, my social studies book, and a heart full of despair until my dad sat down with me. I can’t guarantee transcript accuracy, but it may have gone something like this:

“Having trouble with your project, Co?”
[Grumpy pout] “No.” 
“Are you sure?”
[Feigned absorption in blank notebook page] “Uh huh.”
“Are you sure you’re sure?”
“…”  [Stubbornness continues to win]
“What have you got so far? Will you show me?”
[Obscures blank page with forearm; eyes start to fill up]
“Who’s this guy?” [Pointing at the portrait accompanying the encyclopedia entry]
[Stubbornness reluctantly yields to irritation or perhaps desperation]: “James Monroe.”
“James Monroe? You know the song about him, don’t you?”
“No…”
[Loudly, while rapping the table to the beat]: “JAMS! MON-RO! JAMS, JAMS, MON-RO!”
[Cracks a smile, shakes head at father who must’ve lost his mind.]
[Repeats the, er, chorus]: “JAMS! MON-RO! JAMS, JAMS, MON-RO!”

The crazy song worked. I told him what I knew about “Jams” to start, and with each fact we found and added to the presentation, we chanted the song together. At some point we added choreography, which, admittedly, looked a lot like raising the roof. (To be honest, most of his dancing looks like raising the roof. Or shrugging. But at least he dances.)
With all those musical interludes, it probably took us hours to complete the presentation. He didn’t have to sit with me and make me laugh. He would have been totally justified in lecturing me about waiting until the last minute to start the hefty project. Instead, he sat down and helped me along.

For all the violin recitals and pitching practice, for the college visits and crayfish lore, I am grateful for my Jam(e)s — the man who has taught me the most about love.

…And speaking of love, I am also grateful for the rapid approach of my thirtieth birthday, so I can finally start going on dates.

For Mom, With Love and Tube Socks

C & C, 1995

Dear Mom,

There are so many things I should thank you for: your unconditional support, your boundless patience, all those years of Chicken Paprikash… If I started listing everything you have done for me, I would never write anything else.

On this day, in front of this audience, I want to thank you for two specific things. The first thing is a bit of advice you gave me when I was a sophomore in college. The second thing is something I may not have told you yet.

As you know, I used to be a terrible procrastinator. (Aside: If you’re one of my students or players, stop reading RIGHT NOW.) In college, putting off my writing assignments got so bad that I would work myself into a deep state of fretting then totally freeze.

One day, I did my usual pre-writing ritual — stuffing no fewer than three pieces of Dubble Bubble into my mouth and thus grossing out Aa, my long-suffering but awesome roommate — took a long, steadying breath, and then… immediately got up from my desk to pace the room. (Note: Facebook was a mere glimmer in M. Zuckerberg’s eye, Mom, so I didn’t resort to aimless stalking. I’m glad you don’t really know what that means…)

As I paced, I thought about how painful writing the paper was going to be and how badly it would turn out. Eventually I psyched myself out so thoroughly that I couldn’t type a word. With the deadline on the horizon and only getting bigger, what was I going to do? The only thing I could think to do: call you.

When I finally came around to telling you what was really on my mind, you got to the heart of it all with one question: “What are you so afraid of?”

The depth of my desperation and the pain in my jaw from chomping all that gum had made it so that I couldn’t come up with anything but the truth: “I’m afraid my writing’s going to suck.”

Do you remember what you said? It’s only the best writing advice I have ever received: “Well, now is the time in your life when you need to suck — and it’s always going to be ‘now.'”

…!

You were so right that I scribbled your words on the nearest bit of scrap paper and taped it to my desk. It now lives on an index card that I look at every day before I sit down to write.

And the second thing I want to thank you for:

The term “soccer mom” gets thrown around too much these days, and it has acquired a certain flavor of contempt, which makes me uncomfortable. You did your share of soccer mom-ish things, if making sure we got to extracurricular activities [mostly] on time and in [marginally] clean clothes counts. Your efforts to encourage my interests do count — a lot. But you didn’t just encourage me by carting me around or cheering from the stands; you modeled and you believed.

Remember the parents vs. players game during my sophomore year of basketball? Recall how you ran our asses up and down the floor and handled the ball so well that Coach said he’d cut me if he could have you. The thing is, he meant it.

You never told me that girls could play sports — you just played. You never told me that I should stand up for myself — you just stood up for yourself. You never told me that working my tail off doesn’t always garner recognition but it does produce opportunities — you just worked your tail off.

Today Z finished pharmacy school. He’s a doctor! All along, you believed he could do it. You believed W would make it in Manhattan, and she has. Big time. You believed that I would write stuff somewhere someday, and I am. How lucky we kids are that you believed in us with no reservations. How lucky we are that you are you.

Love,

C

Baseball Bites: an Introduction

Sweet stance, clean pants (1995)

Baseball and I have always had a love-hate thing going on.

The sport was my first love — before basketball, even. I had a knack for sending lasers back to the pitcher and a hunger for fielding so aggressive that I ended up with a broken collarbone — and that was only mushball.

By the time I was fourteen, however, baseball* and I were on a one-way train to Splitsville. I didn’t enjoy playing the game anymore, and my life as a spectator had entered the inevitable loss-of-innocence rough patch: The Cleveland Indians had broken my heart in ’95 and ’96, and I was starting to know a little something about the business side of MLB and why the Tribe felt they had to *sob* trade Carlos Baerga… Meanwhile, my artistic tastes were developing, and if I was forced to listen to another dramatic reading of “Casey at the Bat,” I was going to ralph all over the place.

I’m not sure when exactly baseball and I began to reconcile. I dated a baseball player in college, but I can’t say that sitting through doubleheaders in the fickle, freezing Chicago spring did much for my appreciation of the game.  I have fond memories of attending many Dollar Hot Dog Nights at U.S. Cellular Field née Comiskey Park (or U.S. Comiskular, as a friend likes to call it) and the occasional game at Wrigley.

In my early adulthood, I found myself watching the Yankees — quelle horreur! — because a dear cousin was working in their organization. My original American League allegiance (to Cleveland) was further challenged by a move to the Twin Cities, where I couldn’t help but like the modest Midwestern pinstripers who were simultaneously inspiring and slaying some of my closest Minnesota friends. Having experienced a game or two in the Metrodome, I must admit: Target Field is a lovely place to watch baseball.

What really brought me back to the game, though, was playing it again. My first spring in MN, I joined The Valley Girls — a women’s slowpitch softball team in a southern suburb of Saint Paul. It was like getting together with a former sweetheart and realizing that a spark really was still there, however small. I played shortstop (badly) for that team, and gradually, I remembered everything that I had loved in the first place.

Four springs later, I’m still playing softball two nights a week — on one women’s team and one co-ed team. I’m helping out with a high school fastpitch team, too, which offers a whole new way of seeing the game and understanding it.

It’s not all love, all the time, though. I tend to get antsy at games that I’m not playing or coaching in, and the length of the major league season is staggering. Similarly, I am both delighted by and skeptical of all the literature devoted to baseball. Along with boxing, baseball seems to be the thinking writer guy’s sport of choice.** Some of that writing borders on hypernostalgic or fetishizing, but I suppose that’s the nature of any subject that has been done and done and done — especially by people who deeply, devoutly love it.

Where in my heart does baseball stand today? Let’s say it’s batting fifth or sixth in the line-up, behind some heavier hitters and some reliable on-base guys. It may rise in the order as spring becomes summer, but I bet I’ll be thinking football by fall.

Where in this blog does baseball stand? In small bites and shorter bursts; in brief recollections and lazy singles to shallow right.

NOTES:

*For the purposes of this essay, I’m lumping baseball and softball into the same category. I do recognize that the games are quite different, but the spirit of both have always been the same for me. Perhaps I will get into the distinction (or lack of distinction in my own mind) in another essay.

**Some of the people whose baseball writing I most enjoy happen to be women. Links forthcoming in future posts, but check out my blogroll (bottom of the page) in the meantime.