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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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Legends of the Fall and the Alchemy of Football

This weekend was a tough loss. I don’t know that I’ve ever been as invested in a group of players and coaches’ families like I have been with this group. And it’s been three years of continuous wins. Of glorious, riotous, practically-perfect wins. And Friday night hurt. And if it hurt me – a marginal member of a legendary football dynasty — I can’t imagine the pain of the players and coaches. Although I did bear witness to it. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me tell you what I see and know about these boys and their leaders.

For the past two years, from the stands and practice fields, I’ve witnessed this team pour all of everything they have into the game, purifying their sweat and blood and spinning it into gold. And purple. Because these athletes are alchemists. They have transformed common elements of a typical Friday night under the lights into the stuff of legend. They are legend.

And I’m not talking individual legend – though we have that too. We have region and state and national legends among this team. But, no, I’m talking legends of discipline and legends of character. I’m talking quality of soul and purity of heart. They are good fellows, the whole lot.

They own and are the stuff of legends. And victory was theirs. For so many seasons

And then, last night, it all ended in seconds. And in silence.

And the loss was so sudden and so heavy and so hard.

And what I saw after, in the belly of a field house they’ve called home half a year every year for their high school careers – a field house witness to half-time harangues, post-game heroes, and now postseason heartache – was the purest pain I’ve ever borne witness to. Players wrapping themselves up in the arms of their football family for strength and support. Searching for a way to handle the hurt. To shoulder the hurt. To weather the hurt. Padded shoulder pressed to padded shoulder, coaches patting heads and rocking giant bodies while whispering words of comfort and wisdom… and love.

This team knows love. The fans love them. The community loves them. And we are all hurting with them.  But those coaches have a different love for their players — a love unfathomable to those of us who have never played the sport. But I see glimpses of it from the practice field and the sidelines and the field house. I see its power. I see how it builds confidence and character and futures.

Yes, these boys know love. And they know disciple and determination and how to win big. And now they know how to lose big.

And I know this loss – with its devastating, season-ending sting, a sting they will always feel somewhere deep in the marrow of their being –  will prove valuable to these players and their coaches alike.

Because football is truly an alchemist’s sport. And it gives players the skills to transform baser matters into gold – and this loss, this harshest of base matters, is their biggest challenge yet. But they have what it takes to sift and sort through the pain and then forge ahead into the brightest of bright, golden futures. They have the stuff. The stuff of legends.

Your fans are in awe of you, Hurricanes. And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for showing us how you spin sweat, blood, and tears into purple and gold.

*Huge photo creds to Cathy Sharpe, Cartersville Purple Hurricanes sideline photographer for capturing this beautiful cover shot.

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Hay Bales and Husband and Hercule, Oh My!

This time of year, three of my favorite things — football, teaching, and family – all make my world spin at dizzying speeds. And while I try valiantly to juggle all three, there are just some days – and weeks – where things get out of balance, and I must regroup. This was one of those weeks.

To calm the chaos, I find comfort and joy in a couple of shaggy-haired boys with sheepish grins, a movie night with the hubs, and hay bales.

I’ll start with the hay bales. Yes, hay bales. They make me happy. They’re so simple. They’re so round. They’re so simply and perfectly round. And they smell so good — like sunshine and fresh air. And they send tiny little flecks of their sunshine-smell up into the actual air, where they dance around in the sunlight like flying little flickering fairies of dusty hope.

I love them. They make me sneeze, but oh, how I love them — big, round, sneezy blessings of promise and hope.

This time of year, the landscape is trimmed with their texture– giant swells of them collect in the fields of my hometown like nub on sweaters, or they nudge up to the fence lines in scalloped hedgerows.

I get this calm in my soul when I see them. I can be totally caught up in the chaos of my day – the football frenzy and the toddler tornadoes and the Halloween costumes still not found – but when I pass by these laid-back haystacks I feel… better. It’s hard to explain.

In a world full of jagged edges and complexity, sometimes it’s just nice to see roundness and simplicity. They are gentle reminders that the storms of today will mellow into the golden grains of tomorrow. All shall be well.

But they are also gentle reminders that time marches on and seasons change, and we should embrace the present, no matter the chaos that swirls around it.

I passed hay bale after serene hay bale on the way to the home to curl up on a Wednesday night with a glass of wine and some Murder on the Orient Express on cable. I am an absolute sucker for some Dame Agatha and her mustachioed-marvel, Hercule Poirot (second only to Sherlock Holmes in my whodunit hero worship).

The movie is breathtakingly beautiful, with sweeping vistas of Balkan mountain ranges and Edwardian opulence. And Poirot and his little grey cells never disappoint. Nor does a nice glass of red with a big bucket of popcorn.

If I love hay bales for their simplicity, I love detective movies for their ability to deconstruct complexity — to unravel chaos and lay it out in a seamless, satisfying denouement. And I know the world isn’t so easily solved. I know that chaos and sickness and sorrow exist, and there’s not much that can be done to dismantle the darkness and wipe it all clean. But mystery movies curled up with my husband help sideline the reality for a bit.

And then there’s my shaggy-haired rapscallions with sheepish grins — their hair a mixture of hay straw and loam, their faces a mixture of shimmer and shenanigans. They leave riptides of Legos and crushed Cheetos in their wake. But even through all the bruised heels and stained carpets, they bring me such joy — such breathtaking, heart-splitting joy. Today they’ve both cuddled me and clobbered me on more than one occasion. But oh, how I love them so! From the minute they were conceived — tiny little round he-bales of embryonic perfection – they’ve complicated everything. And they’ve simplified everything.

They add chaos to my world, and calm to my soul.

Yes, this week, the world has spun in super-duper, frenetically-fast fashion. There’ve been faculty meetings and football practices and parents-in-law visits to juggle. And I love it all. I really, really do. But I also feel jittery and disjointed at times. But that‘s where my husband and mysteries and hay bales come in. My recipe for soothing a weary soul.

comfortandjoy

 

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It’s the Most Wonderful Ball of the Year: a Postseason Sing-Along

championshipprayer

It’s the most wonderful ball of the  year

With the brackets all forming

And top-seeds all donning their jerseys and gear

It’s the most wonderful ball of the year

 

It’s the most treacherous postseason ball

Proven dynasties going, some underdogs showing

With some bound to fall

It’s the most treacherous postseason ball

 

They’ll be one seeds for hosting

And die-hard fans boasting

And painted torsos for the teams

You’ll see hurry-up offenses,

stout, hard-nosed defenses,

coaching staff powerhouse schemes

 

It’s the most wonderful ball of the year

With those shotgun formations and smash mouth foundations

And Winners-Take-All

It’s the most wonderful ball of the year

 

There’ll be uprights for splitting

And ‘backers for hitting

and running backs rarin’ to go

There’ll be scary near-misses

And tales of the blitzes of

Quarterbacks taking a blow

 

It’s the battle to clench #1 time of year

There’ll be much missile-throwing

And scoreboards all glowing when trophies are near

It’s the battle toclench #1 time of year

 

There’ll be offense aggression

With deep penetration

From the gunslinger’s merciless blow

There’ll be defensive glories

And big tales and stories

Of championships seized from the foe!

 

It’s the most wonderful ball

Yes, the most wonderful ball

It’s the most wonderful ball of the year!

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A Little Allegory of a Parent’s Soul

To introduce the concept of allegory to high school students, I use Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.” It is the first book I ever remember receiving as a gift. I still have that original copy. It’s inscribed with a birthday wish and a life blessing. Its edges are tattered and curl softly from use, and its insides are  tatted up from Crayola abuse.

I loved “The Giving Tree” from the beginning, although I didn’t understand its complexity back then. Instead, I loved it for its simplicity and purity — the modest black and white sketches, and the story of the tree who loved a boy – loved a boy from every depth and breadth and height her soul could reach.

A boy and his tree. I loved it. But I didn’t get it. I didn’t.

And then I became a mom.

And KA-POW! – deeper understanding hit me like a felled oak straight to the noggin. This wasn’t merely the story of a boy and his tree. I mean it was, but darn, it was so much more, too! It was a little allegory of a parent’s soul. And for the first time ever reading that story, I cried. And ever since, every single time I read that story… I cry. I can’t even read the last line, I get so choked up.

The truth and power of its message gets to me: the unhesitating willingness of a mama to hew off whole parts of herself to raise up her young with the necessities and tools to survive in this world.

Like I said, I introduce the concept of allegory to my high school juniors – and they can see it, the multiple meanings hidden in its seemingly simplistic lines. They see the sacrifices the tree makes to keep her boy happy. They see her wide-open love through the gifts of her leaves and her apples; they see the unflinching sacrifice of her limbs and her trunk; and they think they understand the final grand gesture in the giving of her shriveled, old stump. Yes, they can definitely see it. And they think they get it. They interpret the allegory in one of two ways…

Some of my students connect it to parental love – those blessed enough to have parents who have shown them true, unconditional love.

But sadly, some don’t get it at all because some of my students haven’t felt that sort of love from their moms and dads. The stories I hear — the stories I see – students whose parents have left them surfing couches in friends’ houses, students whose parents are locked away in jail or whose love is locked away in addiction, students who are parenting siblings — students mere saplings themselves — playing the role of the Giving Tree.

It’s an impossible task for them. They lack the depth and breadth and height of maturity: their leaves are too tender, their fruit is too green, their roots are too shallow to support and sustain another soul, much less themselves. Their stories are enough to crack open a planet-full of hearts and send them weeping.

And speaking of planets… some of my students see another allegorical interpretation: humanity’s blatant misuse of Mother Earth and her resources. In this version, the boy takes and takes and takes with no regard for the Giving Tree’s sacrifice – the more he needs, the more he takes until there’s nothing left but a shriveled-up stump – and even that gets used.

And yes, the depletion of our planet’s resources is a valid and compelling argument — easily seen and scientifically supported, regardless of those who might say otherwise. And in this political climate – when the Environmental Protection Agency is being run by a fossil fuel magnate and the current POTUS is playing a nuclear-annihilation game of chicken with his Asian doppelganger, it is an interpretation with grave importance.

But I prefer the little allegory of a parent’s soul. And I really do believe it was Silverstein’s intent. Because after each sacrifice, after each leaf and apple and branch and trunk that is taken, his prose simply reads: And the Tree was happy.

And the earth cannot be happy being plundered and pillaged. That just cannot prove true.

But as a parent, that happiness statement rings true every single time. When my girls need me. When my boys need me. When my small and humble breasts sustained them all as infants. When my wide and ample hips carried them all as toddlers. When my long and lanky arms surround them as both youngsters and adults. When my eager, willing heart beats for all four of them always and forever with joyful abandon… I am happy.

For them, I would give all. Willingly. And happily.

That’s how I know “The Giving Tree” is a little allegory of a parent’s soul.

This past week, I introduced my boys to Silverstein’s masterpiece – my original, 45-year-old birthday book, its edges all tattered and curled from use, its insides all tatted with Crayola abuse. My boys were mesmerized. They loved it: the simplicity and purity of its prose, the modest black and white of its sketches.

This story of a tree who loved a boy is timeless. This story of a tree that readily hands out huge chunks of herself never gets old. The tree herself may get old. She may lose apples and branches, and her tattoos — if she had any — may wrinkle like that ME + T heart scratched into the core of her being, but no matter what, if her kid finds happiness, that tree finds happiness.  No matter the hardship, the struggle, the pain…

Yes, my boys loved the book.

And this tree was happy.

giving tree

 

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Pogonophobia: When you’re Allergic to Warm and Fuzzy

I have pogonophobia — the persistent, irrational fear of facial hair.  It is far from unwarranted, however, as you shall soon see…

The propensity of beards these days makes my skin cringe and my teeth crawl. Solid visual, and no lie.  It’s a systemic thing, beginning in the marrow of my memory board and sending out shock waves of revulsion to every fiber-optic channel of my being. My belly flips, my spine convulses, my shoulders pinch inward, and my lip curls upward. It’s a reflex — less gag and more fight-or-flight – and I don’t know that I’ll ever overcome it.

But through the years I’ve learned to control my freak-outs over facial hair with deep-breathing and soul-searching. — soul-searching of the men who wear them, not my own.

These days, many men see them as the ultimate form of manliness. For me, though, beards are the ultimate symbol of oppression — of misogyny at its highest order.

You see, I was raised surrounded by men with masterfully maintained beards, charcoal gray suits, and ties locked in place with gold bars. They wore their beards as mantels of old testament stewardship over me and all the other women in our fold. They were unshaven shepherds, and I was supposed to be a sheep – or at least a docile damsel, wallowing in gender apathy and waiting on a bearded knight in antiquated authority and dogma to lord over me.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

But lots of bearded bullying occurred. I remember one occasion in particular. There was a massive, dark study, a heavy oak desk, and many, many elders with dark, perfectly-trimmed facial hair. I don’t remember how many men. I know at least four. I also don’t recall the conversation. I deliberately locked myself up tight inside my chest wall — MY chest wall — no Adam’s rib to be found. These men had no right to spelunk around in my soul.

I do remember a phrase that echoed round and round that dimly lit, cavernous office… “We want change, not conformity.”

They would get neither.

I was supposed to be weak. And willing.

I was neither.

Back me into a corner and I become quite stubborn. That has never changed.

“Nevertheless she persisted” became my favorite rally cry from this past year. Why? Because that has been my philosophy for a long, long time.

Those men in their power suits and power beards tried in vain to squash my will. God may have given man freewill, but apparently that freewill did not extend to women. Not according to that bearded patriarchy.

Nevertheless, I persisted… and eventually broke free of their mutton-chopped mandates. And I will continue to persist. To rage against the wrongs still perpetuated toward my sex to this day.

No, I am not a fan of beards.

I am, however, a fan of many men who wear them. Like I explained before, I search the soul before dissing a beard-wearer. I may judge books by their cover, but I do crack them open and see if I’m wrong before writing them off completely. And I have found some very solid souls under bristly chins. I know several coaches who are mighty fine people. I know former students – some of my all-time favorites– who now wear whiskers. I’m not so irrational that I hate the fuzz AND the fellow. That fuzz tho…

Yes, beards are currently everywhere I turn: hipsters grow them as art forms, athletes as playoff totems, and celebrities as eye-catching photo ops. Even months are getting in on the action, with November dedicating its entirety to healthy beard cultivation.

So to all you beard-wearing boys of the world, I apologize for my visceral revulsion. I know that often times, you wear them simply because they are fun and antidisestablishmentarian. I know it’s often for the exact opposite of the oppression and hate for which I associate them. I know my fear is stupid. I know it is. But I just can’t quite get past it. It was a fear instilled long, long ago.

I just can’t become a fan.

 

 

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It’s Rape, Not Romance: Legends of the Fall

I love the dark as pitch morning skies of autumn. Some can’t wait for daylight savings. Me, not so much. I love the cool, velvet air settling over my skin as I walk the boys out to their Daddy’s truck and load them up for day care. On the way back to the house, I glance up at the sky and find the dotted outline of the highly visible and celebrated constellation of the mythical hunter Orion striding confidently in the darkness.

I used to love me some Orion, beginning with a next-door neighbor crush long, long ago. This neighbor was the most golden of mortals with sun-kissed hair and stardust eyes. He drove a gold Trans Am and wore royal purple under the Friday night lights. Football or female, he caught nearly any prey he pursued. He was the stuff of legends, and his middle name was Orion.

From there, my fascination with Orion’s mythology grew, despite the numerous slanderous stories against him. His lore is peppered with sexual assault and harassment – from the violation of a vulnerable young princess to the rape of a chaste goddess and hunting partner. Still, I chose to focus on the legends that cast him in a kinder light, a star-crossed-lover light. He and Artemis were in love and her twin brother, Apollo, was jealous. The sex was consensual and her brother tricked her into killing Orion with a little target practice from a tremendous distance.

I chose the stories of romance over the stories of rape.

Enter Harvey Weinstein. The stuff of legends. A highly visible and mythical hunter striding confidently in the darkness amidst the stars of Hollywood.  Apparently, the rumors have been swirling around him for year. Rumors of sexual misconduct and worse. But he was big. He was powerful. He could make wannabes into stars.

Over the past few weeks, horrific accounts from young ingenues and established actors alike have been tumbling out of painful places and into the light: white bathrobes and expensive hotels; egregious propositions and loathsome acts; massages and masturbation and molestation and rape. All under the guise of normalcy.

It’s a tale as old as time, this raw abuse of power wielded over extreme vulnerability. And sadly, the victims are abused first by the aggressor and then by society. The two conspire to silence or ignore or brush aside the allegations, so the mighty hunter might continue to shine and seek new prey.

Society chooses romance over rape. Everybody loves it when a star is born. Nobody wants to know what happened behind the breakthrough. Nobody wants to know the dark bits behind the glitter and gold.

Think of all the powerful hunters in the past who’ve had allegations of sexual violations come to light, yet somehow remained the victor, starting with the leader of the most powerful nation in the world: Donald Trump. Society HEARD him brag about assaulting women, yet he was STILL elected president. All that glitters is definitely not gold there. It’s orange. And rotten to the core. But celebrated, nonetheless.

And there are so many others who have been accused — some still celebrated, others not so much — but all remain out of prison: Bill Cosby. Woody Allen. Ben Roethlisberger. Roman Polanski. R. Kelly.

Harvey Weinstein is merely the latest of many high and mighty hunters. He should not get away with his crimes. None of them should. But if society doesn’t change its ways, history is doomed to repeat itself.

Yes, his name is mud. Yes, he’s been removed from the Academy. Woody Allen is still a member. So is Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby, for that matter… so maybe we’re finally taking a step in the right direction. But something tells me he’s just a sacrificial lamb. He’s being thrown out in disgrace so others might remain to hunt their prey in the glittering darkness of Hollywood desire.

Weinstein’s behavior was extreme, to be sure, but the #metoo social media firestorm has uncovered just how endemic sexual harassment and assault truly is. We all know those 1 in 4 numbers. But those numbers don’t include harassment. Add that to the mix, and the numbers run closer to 100 percent. That’s ridiculous. That’s bullshit. That’s patriarchy at its most vile.

Me? #MeToo. I’ve been harassed. I’ve been manhandled. I’ve said no. That no was ignored. I never considered it rape because we were romantically involved. I was taught to believe it’s only rape if it’s a stranger. It’s only rape if it hurts you physically. It’s only rape if it’s violent and vicious and you’re terrified for your life.

And yes, that is most definitely rape. But so is sex without consent. Period. That’s what I’ve read and heard. That’s what I know in my heart of hearts is true.

But even though I know that, sometimes I feel like maybe I’m just twisting things up. He was just drunk. And strong. And persistent. And sloppy. And on top of me. And I couldn’t get him off me.

But remember, I was taught its only rape if it’s violent and vicious and you’re terrified for your life. And while I was terrified, I never thought I might die. And I thought, this is normal. This sort of thing happens. I chose romance over rape.

In some lore, Orion was killed by a scorpion’s sting. And up there, in the night sky, he is constantly pursued by Scorpius. He can never rest, as Scorpius is forever on his trail and ready to strike again.

Those women (close to fifty and counting) violated by Weinstein, I see them all as scorpions. And they’ve caught that motherfucking predator. And every deadly sting is one more nail in his coffin.

No, not every story is romantic and not every superstar should be celebrated. Some should crash to the earth with a momentous and terrible force.

Fall, Harvey, fall.  And as for you, Orion, go join him in Hades.

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Coaching Wives and The Metaphor and Metamorphosis of the Grind

This one’s for all the football coach’s wives out there raising young children on your own for roughly one-half of every calendar year. We go through some crazy mental and physical demands in our football life. We know and understand the legendary football grind, just like our husbands and their players do. It’s a different sort of grind, but then again, it’s the exact same too.

The grind is both metaphor and metamorphosis. It involves the forging and grinding of iron to steel.  And that process demands four key qualities: hardness, strength, flexibility and balance.

And so it goes with football. Luckily though, what it demands from us all (players, coaches, families), it also gives back to us, tenfold. So keep the faith, coaching wives,  particularly those of you with young children. Having little ones at home makes the grind that much harder — I’m not gonna lie. I’ve lived through that intense heat – with twins (have mercy!). And I’m still in that brimstone today — because they’re only three years old this season.

But I’m also living proof that you can make it through. Deep inside you, you have what it takes to survive the grind of the season. And the next. And the next. And so on. Because yes, football demands hardness and strength and flexibility and balance, but it also gives you hardness and strength and flexibility and balance. So you can do this hard thing.

With regard to the hardness of it all… That first season with our twin boys (they were only four months when August rolled around) felt impossibly hard – like running-a-ten-week-marathon-with-whining-crying-cranky-infants-dangling-off-my-breasts hard. But I got through it. Notice I didn’t say I triumphed. Because I didn’t. It was far from a winning season for me. I felt like I was losing at motherhood and at life every single day. I cried. Every. Single. Day. I remember setting up camp on our king-sized mattress on Sunday afternoons when Mike headed out for meetings – wagon-loads of diapers and wipes for the babies and Kleenex and chocolate for me — and I wouldn’t budge from that spot till he got back home six to eight hours later. I was in total defense mode.

Now, four seasons later, the hardness is still there— again, not gonna lie. But it’s only like running-a-ten-week-plus-playoffs-we-hope-marathon-of-whining-crying-cranky-toddlers-hanging-off-my-hips hard. And I can honestly say I haven’t had a single, solitary mattress camp, so I really have come a long way. Moral of this story: if I can do this hard thing — with twin boys and lots of chocolate—  you can too.

With regard to the strength of it all… For players, strength is built in the weight room and on the field; for coaches, in the war room and on the sidelines; and for wives of young children, it’s built at the dinner table, the bathtub, and the bedside. Alone. Just you and your young charges. And the strength is not merely physical – although toting slippery twin toddlers in and out of a soapy tub most definitely builds muscle tone. It is also strength of character. As your youngsters throw attitude and tantrums and Spaghettios, the strength it takes to shoulder the load all by your lonesome feels ungainly. But it can be done. Yes, you may lose your temper — and occasionally your mind — but it can be done.

There will be fumbles and flags along the way, but you’ll get stronger and more resilient. You’ll get better at defending your end zone, running pass interference, recovering fumbles and most importantly, executing your game plan. Because the best defense is a good offense. And after that first season of pure defense, you can finally start generating an offense. And while sometimes your schemes will fail, many days you’ll find yourself ahead. Each season, you’ll get stronger. Remember that old adage that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? It’s true. You are strong. You are Wonder Woman in training.

And Wonder Woman is nothing if not flexible — that third quality of the grind. She defies the laws of physics in gravity-cheating twists and turns (and bustier), along with acrobatic sword play. I wish I could say I’m as flexible as she is. But I can say I’m getting better.

Now that first season with twins, flexibility was my biggest weakness. If Mike said he’d be home at 7:30, by golly, he’d better be home by 7:30. My blood pressure exploded otherwise. And seeing how often his deadlines came and went without him walking through the door, it’s a wonder this woman didn’t stroke out (see what I did there?😀) I was bitter and exhausted and alone. The boys’ bellies hardened with colic every night at 7, and my heart hardened with rancor at the exact same instant. Once Mike finally came in, I fell apart.

Flexibility is hard to find when you’re in such a fragile, brittle state. And some of you are there right now… and I feel your pain. But it does get better. Your kids won’t stay that age forever. They grow and so do you. Your exhaustion subsides and your hard nose softens. You allow yourself to relax, and eventually you find you can stretch into a season routine that fits you best.  It’ll never be effortless; it’ll never be comfortable – the grind is never comfortable — but you’ll be flexible enough for it to fit without too much pain.

Which brings me to balance – the final quality, and a tough one at that. Wives carry a lot of weight during season. And sometimes we need to redistribute the burden so we can keep moving forward – or at least stay upright. And that’s not always possible to do on our own.  But the thing about football is, it’s a team sport. Nobody goes through the grind alone. Nobody. Otherwise, no one would make it through. You need teammates. You need people blocking for you, running interference for you, and occasionally carrying the ball for you. Because even the strongest and hardest and most flexible among us can’t carry the weight all by ourselves. Part of being balanced is knowing how much weight you can take on without toppling. So when that load gets too heavy, find a teammate to help. Find a friend, a family member, another football wife.

Now it’s kind of hypocritical for me to tell you all to ask for help when I’m the absolute world’s worst at doing it myself. I don’t ask. I’m too proud — which just plain makes me stupid. Don’t be me.

Luckily, I have family and friends and the most amazing group of coaching wives on my team. They yank me out of rotation when I’m just about ready to fall over, and they save the game every time. My mother and my best friend are my biggest backups. I remember that first season and months and months of no sleep – as in twin-boys-up-fourteen-times-a-night-for-over-a-year no sleep. But they tag teamed, took a night shift, and put me on the bench. It was a game changer — a grind changer, if you will.

These days, my mom comes once a week to play with the boys and give me some air. And the coach’s wives and I meet up at the practice field on Wednesday afternoons to share stories and laughter and the occasional lament. It helps us remember we’re all in this together – this team sport of football with its legendary grind.

So when searching for a way to balance the overwhelming weight of the season, find someone who’ll help you redistribute the load — if only for a little while. It’s not quitting. It’s resting. It’s all part of the game.

Yes, this one goes out to all the coaches’ wives as we forge our way through the second half of our season. Uncover the hardness, the strength, the flexibility, and the balance within your soul. You’ve got it in there. I know you do. The grind is both a metaphor and a metamorphosis. Turn your iron resolve into steel. You’ve got this.

 

 

 

 

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What the Ronald McDonald House Means to our Family

I’ve tried on at least three different occasions to write about the Ronald McDonald House and what it means to our family– specifically the one in Chattanooga across from Erlanger Hospital – and each time, words  have failed me. I’m trying one more time…

The birth of our twins was a chaotic, emotionally-fueled time in our lives. Our boys were in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and we found our heads full to overflowing with medical details and our hearts bruised to bursting with love and fear for our boys. We spent the vast majority of our waking hours swimming in an exhausted state through the dim and beeping expanse of the NICU. There were scrubbing stations and hand sanitizers and security procedures and crib after crib of sick babies to navigate just to reach our own babes. And then once there, there were machines and syringes and tubes and wires to navigate before we could ever hold them. And holding them was our life raft. Holding them calmed the seas of frustration and fear and soothed us all.

But if holding the boys was our life raft, the Ronald McDonald House was our rescue ship. Because on the fourth day, I was discharged from the hospital – and the boys were not. And we were going to be separated – and I really didn’t think I could weather that emotional storm.

But then the house named after the clown that sponsors the largest fast food chain in the entirety of the universe opened its doors to us. Seems crazy when you think about it that way. But I’m telling you right now, it is far from a joke. It is the real deal. It is the best of what humanity can do for its own.

The Ronald McDonald House is the place where parents of children hospitalized and far from home are given shelter and support and a place to eat and sleep and cry and pray and struggle through the days and weeks and sometimes months of helpless and hopeless feelings without having to feel homeless too.

It is a sanctuary. There are warm beds and warm dinners and warm showers. And there is privacy. Privacy to pray or cry or both – in a small chapel or a serenity garden or on a soft, comfortable mattress in the quiet, comfortable guest rooms.

And there are supplies — toiletries and snacks and various and sundry necessities that help families get through the toughest of times when they don’t have the time to think about such things, much less shop for them. It is all available and there for the parents.

And all for the whopping cost of $10 a day — if your family can afford it. But absolutely no family is ever turned away. Ever. The RMH philosophy is that sick children need their parents and no parent should worry about daily needs if a child’s health is at stake. They also know and understand that young patients have far better medical outcomes if their parents are near. I, for one, agree for a couple of reasons.

Beyond the obvious — that we wanted desperately to be close to our babies — we also needed to be close. Because a mega-majorly important part of our boys’ treatment plan was breast milk — that thick, nutrient-and-calorie-and-immunity-rich mama medicine was just what the doctor ordered. And being just down the hill from the hospital (we’ll talk about that hill in a minute), made it so much easier to keep my milk supply in fresh and steady supply —  as opposed to being shuttled over an hour away in an ice-packed cooler from back home in Georgia. So in the cozy comfort of our private guest room — complete with an extra queen bed for my mom and Mike’s parents (who provided endless hours of assistance and support), I pumped and Mike delivered (up that aforementioned hill) – like clockwork every three-and-a-half hours every night for almost a full week. Until Parker was discharged at nine days old.

But back to that infamous hill; that doozy of a mother of a hill; that steeply slanted, sidewalk-striped gauntlet-of- medieval-proportions hill. It was torturous to say the least. But Mike navigated it like a knight in shining Under Armor — or a milk man — a gallant, modern-day milk man. He toted bag after bag of freshly-pumped breast milk up that hill. He even pushed the milk maker up the hill in a wheelchair on more than one occasion (since I’d had a c-section and wasn’t supposed to climb anything). Good thing he pushed linemen around in college because I was definitely a heavy load – a heavy, post-partum-post-twins kind of load.

And speaking of heavy loads, everything about that time in our lives was heavy. Our hearts, our hurdles, our hospital bills… but the Ronald McDonald House lightened our burdens on so many levels, and we can never repay the kindnesses heaped upon us while there.

But we try. It has become our charity of choice. We’ve written checks, we’ve sprinkled change in drive thru boxes, and we’ve ordered the annual Ronald McDonald House Christmas ornament with our boys’ names inscribed. Every single year. I want to give more. To do more. I wish there were one closer to us.

Mostly, I would love to help cook warm meals for families  — because that was perhaps the most comforting of all the blessings RMH bestowed upon us: those hearty, healthy meals. I recall tuna noodle casseroles and giant pots of southern green beans, big, baked lasagnas and fresh garden salads. Meals were prepared nightly by sorority houses and church groups, fraternity brothers and book clubs. Those meals were nourishment not only to our bodies, but our boys’ bodies, as well. Generous, kindhearted strangers cooked up the very best suppers that helped me cook up the very best sustenance for my newborn twins. I can never thank any of them enough.

The Ronald McDonald charities really do provide boundless blessings for families of sick children all over the world. They certainly kept us afloat during that most precious and precarious time in our lives. I cannot say enough positive things about them. Please consider throwing a little change their way in the drive thru of your local McDonald’s. Or volunteering at one of their local chapters. Or ordering one of their lovely ornaments. Or writing a big check. Please.

Families of sick children everywhere thank you.

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Stitching Together the Constellation of Us

I’ve focused on a lot of topics in my blog over the past year – twindom, football, politics, family, and school — but one topic I’ve never really discussed at length is the extreme distances that were overcome in order for me, a small town girl living in a lonely world and Mike, a city boy born and raised in south Detroit to become what we are today: a crazy, chaotic well-blended postmodern family, complete with toddler twin boys, grown adult daughters, a couple of grandkids (with another on the way) and an arthritic dachshund.

allofus

Now our love story is far from typical. But then again, it’s also classic. And I think you could even argue it’s entirely commonplace. I guess it’s a little of everything all rolled into one.

And it was definitely written in the stars. Stars in alignment long before we knew one another. Stars that were galaxies and galaxies apart. Stars scattered like fairytale breadcrumbs, like metaphysical connect-the-dots, like paint-by-numbers serendipity. Stars patterned by God and physics and football to bring the two of us together.

Mike grew up in the frozen tundra of pure Michigan. A place of legends. A place of snow and ice and everything nice. I remember the first time I ever visited. It was the holidays. There would be snow. On Christmas. It was gonna be epic. And then I landed. “Welcome to Detroit,” the pilot announced. “The temperature is currently zero degrees, and there’s a wind chill of negative fourteen.”  Hmmph. Maybe not so epic after all.

And me, I grew up in a hotbed of humidity, where we steam your dumplings and sauce your giblets. Where it’s too hot for Satan – which is the real reason we’re known as the bible belt. Where swamp ass ain’t just a condition, it’s a way of life.  Mike came here for the football — the second reason this is known as God’s country.

So, yes. There were some miles between us to overcome. But that was nothing the universe couldn’t handle. But then, there were also the years…

You see, my husband and I are eleven-and-a-half years apart — and not in the traditional, socially-acceptable, romantic Hollywood couple sense because… well, I’m the older one.

Did you hear that? The tires screeching? The record scratching? The world’s axis grinding to a halt?

Yeah, me neither. But I did worry about that in the beginning, when we first started dating. I was totally stressed out that I was upsetting the natural order of things and that the world would suddenly stop spinning and people would start staring. And pointing. And judging.

And believe it or not, even though I write a blog that encourages me and you and  everyone else I know to stand up against injustices and double-standards, encourages us all to go against the grain, to be individuals, to be rebels, and lovers, and fighters, I’m still an incredibly private and sensitive person who has deep-seated insecurities. It’s really easy to be brave when hiding behind a computer screen in the privacy of my own home. It’s another thing entirely when I can see and hear people talking smack about me. And I know for a fact that we got some of that in the beginning of our relationship.

Now I told you our love is the trifecta of contradictions – it’s atypical, classic, and commonplace all at the same time. And since I’ve explored the major atypical bits, let me jump ahead to the commonplace…

We met in THE most common of places: work. And after half a semester of lunches ‘round the teachers’ work room table, I invited him to my Christmas shindig.

Now let me say right up front, there were no, as in absolutely ZERO, ulterior motives behind the invite. He simply ate with my crew at lunch –and since I’d invited all the rest, it would’ve been downright rude not to invite him. Besides, he’s hysterically inappropriate, and every party needs a heaping helping of that. Plus vodka. It needs that, too.

So he came to my party. He brought the jaeger. I supplied the potato juice. Things progressed quickly. It was a match made in heaven – truly an orbital realignment of stellar properties from the very first kiss.

Yeah, that kiss threw me ass-over-tea-kettle right from the get-go. But I was also really, really terrified to let it show.  I was forty-one, after all, and he was two weeks shy of thirty.

I got a lot of cougar jokes. (I know you were wondering.) I got bookoodles of cougar jokes. They cut me. Every time. I would shrug them off, trying hard to deflect the pain with a joke or a giggle, but they knocked chink after chink into my relatively flimsy confidence.

And I also had concerned and loyal friends who worried about me. Worried a lot. It’ll never last, they said. Your heart will be broken, they said. Watch out, they said.

And to be perfectly honest, I was afraid they were right. I did my research. I tried to find couples who matched our gender/age ratio who were actually going the distance. I found a few celebrity prototypes: Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins; Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon. They gave me hope. They boosted my confidence. But then, over the course of Mike’s and my relationship, those rare and beautiful unicorns crumbled under the weight of Father Time’s death march. Both couples separated and divorced.

So I feel a bit like we are in unchartered, unsanctioned waters. Even to this day my insecurities get me at times. Twelve is a lot of years, David.

But then I think about the classic nature of our love and how it is made of far sterner stuff than time. It is made of two hearts beating to the syncopation of the stars that stitch up the constellation of us. They blaze and gleam in the wink of his eye, the flicker in my pulse, the flash of his smile, the flare in my chest, the heat in his soul and my answering own.

Our love is dense and wide and galactically strong. It is timeless.

us

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