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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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coach’s wife

Summertime — suck it up, buttercup — for tomorrow, it ends

There’s a reason I hunker down on my porch in the summer – the only season of quiet that exists in my life.

Through June and July, I sip at the slow, sultry, syrup of summer like an addict, soaking my marrow in its sweetness, doing my best to bottle it in memory so I’m sustained when it’s gone — which happens tomorrow.

Tomorrow, summer leaves me.

And I pray there’s enough liquor of peace in my core to help me remember that it won’t always be like it’s about to be —

where time (and I) will take a beating:

a brutal, full-on assault of seconds bruising and buckling into

minutes, bleeding into pulpy, pulverized

hours, shredding to hard, dusty

days, bled dry into

months completely exsanguinated, drought-fed, and strung out like jerky, tough and leathery and jerking me around, seeming without end.

And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow spins out in its frenzied pace of work and

acting class and

football practice

followed by homework somehow and then

work again and lesson plans and

voice lessons and

football and

homework somehow somewhere and — I forgot about dinner! and

again work and lesson plans and teaching and

piano lessons this time and

football and homework where? when does it get done? and dinner how? and

here’s work once more and lesson plans and teaching and

Wednesday afternoon laundry and help me Jesus! homework and maybe dinner for real, a table and everything and

dance class and

football and maybe homework and maybe snacks instead of dinner and – showers dang it! we can’t forget showers – and

God help me, I’m going under and I forgot all about grading and feedback and

now it’s time for the Friday Night Lights that stretch and twist and warp like an elastic band thinner and thinner until they catapult us finally into

Saturday and more football and laundry, and

hair appointments maybe? and grocery shopping somehow? and selfcare, is that even a thing? HA! and

… and Sunday, bless-ed, blesss-ed Sunday – breathe in, breathe out on thank God for recovery Sunday, but

no husband, no daddy, no real time with just us at all and then, oh God! here we go again and

rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat and rinse and repeat, ad nauseum.

And tomorrow, it begins.

I’m scared y’all. This year, I’m really, so very afraid that I’m not ready.

So here I sit on my porch shot-gunning as much of the final sweet seconds of summer as I possibly can. And trying my best not to panic and and and andandandandandandandand…GULP!

I don’t think it’s working.

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The Season that Eclipses our Seasons

It’s the first week of August

Heat shimmers off asphalt

Tomatoes wither on the vine

And in fields everywhere —

In small towns and big cities alike —

Players are planting their cleats in the turf 

And sewing reps for the upcoming season

And coaches are planting kernels of wisdom 

Pouring their heads and hearts

Into the storehouses of our future

So that soon

Footballs with hang times 

As high as the mercury

Will tee off and inkblot the sun

In half-second oval eclipses

To kickoff the season that eclipses our seasons.

When Friday Nights light up the sky

Scorching skirmishes 

On lines of scrimmages

Linemen brawling

Helmets flashing

Shoulders clashing

Turf pellets scattering like buckshot

Behind the blazing feet of the skills fleet

While the quarterback searches for split-second targets

and sheets of sweat slick everyone’s neck

and the drumlines roll

and the symbols clash 

and the whistles keen

and the fans all dream

Of cooler nights

As they wait for the relief of

Halftimes

Under velvet twilights;

Where fans collect

To dissect

The first two quarters

Hair and skin draped in soggy blankets of sweat 

While moths bash their bodies in cataclysmic ballets 

beneath blazing stadium lights 

and starlings and swallows 

scoop them like popcorn from the sky

While actual popcorn

clutched in white paper bags

perfumes the air below

Butter dripping off dipping fingers

As the dew point drops to

collected condensation, while the crowd’s conversation

turns to playoff runs, and championship sights

and cooler, so much cooler nights.

And the coaches in the locker rooms

Adjust and turn

And the players in the position groups

Listen and learn

grow and glean kernels of wisdom

in victory and defeat

in the season that eclipses our seasons.

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A Strange and Beautiful Win

“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.” — Edgar Allan Poe

Last night was a beautiful win — but oh, the strangeness.

Come-from-behind wins in the final minutes of a game are the stuff legends are made of. The stuff that makes victory taste even sweeter.

But they are also some of the strangest game-scenarios of a coach’s wife’s life.

They are not my favorite. But they are. They are a paradox. (And as an English teacher, I love a good paradox.)

Last night was a hard-fought defensive battle. (As a defensive coach’s wife, you love it AND you hate it. Again, with the paradox.) And what you really love when your husband coaches defense is a shut out.
And our defense DID shut out their team’s offense, but THEIR defense… well, that’s where their 14 points came from.

And you have to hand it to that defense. They played hard. They hit hard and charged hard and sacked hard.And our offense will feel the effects of that HARD for awhile.

But our defense, they played hard too. They hit hard and charged hard and stole that ball hard when it mattered most.

And our offense scored when it mattered most — and scored just enough when it mattered most.

And while we might have liked a few more points on that final scoreboard, and a few less battle scars at the end of the fight, it was still beautiful.

Yes, there was some definite strangeness in the proportions — but oh, what an exquisitely beautiful win. #CANES

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There are Three of Us in This Marriage: Confessions of a Football Wife

There are three of us in my marriage. I knew I’d be sharing my husband when I married him. And I also knew it wouldn’t be easy.

I get jealous sometimes. (Who am I kidding? I get jealous a lot.)

Because the third member is demanding and competitive and physical and fast. Oh, and hot — incredibly, extraordinarily HOT. And then there’s all the penetration. So much penetration. (For this one, it’s all about the grind!)

And I can’t compete with that. (Well, I could, but it’s not really me. I’m the quiet, reserved one in this marriage.)

So I support. And watch. And cheer him on. And I’ve been told that’s hot too. ;b

You see, my husband is a high school football coach, and he’s been married to the game for a really, really, long time. They were a thing long before he and I were a thing. And when we started dating, I had to come to terms with the rules of engagement.

But lucky for me, I love the game, too. I had worshiped it from afar nearly my entire life. I was drawn to its passion and intensity. And then I got incredibly lucky and was able to merge the two loves of my life in holy matrimony. And we’ve been happily married for the last six years. And I love it, I really, really do.

But like I said, sometimes I get jealous.

Football has its way with my husband six nights a week, five months out of every year — plus summers and even a couple of weeks in May. It steals a lot of his time… our time.

That means I don’t get many candlelit dinners and date nights in the fall. (Who am I kidding? As a family with twin boys, we don’t get many of those ANY season — but definitely not during football season.)

Needless to say, because of its unforgiving nature, football can be a homewrecker if you aren’t careful. So you have to be vigilant. And creative. And snag time whenever and wherever you can.

And since Spring Ball just ended for us after a hot and heavy ten days of full contact, Mike and I will be making the most of it for the next two weeks (before summer workouts begin…).

We’ll be eating cozy dinners together — as we referee our forty-pound, twin four-year-old boys while they fight over parental time and attention. Having Daddy home to help share the love (and war) every night is a blessing that I relish while it lasts. And while that may not sound very sexy to you, it is more than a tad bit sexy to me.

And we’ll be spending a lot of time in bubble baths — wrestling those forty-pound twin four-year-olds into and out of the water. Having Daddy home to help snag the slippery little suckers and wrangle them into pajamas every night is a blessing that I cherish while it lasts.  And while that may not sound sexy to you, it is mega-sexy to me.

And we’ll be snuggling up on the couch – with two forty-pound four-year-olds in our laps demanding four stories, complete with sound effects and occasional hand motions. Having Daddy there to read while I administer asthma and allergy meds every night is a blessing I treasure while it lasts. And while that might not sound sexy to you, it is super sexy to me.

And we’ll be giving and receiving a whole lot of loving in bed – as we tuck those two forty-pound four-year-old boys of ours beneath the covers and sing them lullabies. Having Daddy there to give real-life kisses instead of surrogate ones every night is a blessing I hold dear while it lasts. And while that might not sound sexy to you, it is uber-sexy to me.

And we’ll be taking a couple of vacations – family ones — and by family vacations, I mean our little family will be visiting our larger, extended family (including the boys’ big sisters) during the dead weeks between now and the start of football season.Having Daddy there to help contain and entertain twin preschoolers on incredibly long and arduous cross-country road trips to see the people we love most in the world may not sound very sexy to you, but I find it sexy as hell. (Well, the travel will be hell, but my husband — he’s sexy.)

Now don’t get me wrong. My coaching husband and I do have some time to celebrate US with just the two of us. We do. We make time. And sometimes it’s as simple as popcorn in bed while we catch up on our crime dramas and each other. But we do manage to squeeze in the occasional candle-lit date night, too. We even have one planned for tonight. Mike set it up and surprised me with it.

And I think that’s ANYBODY’S definition of sexy.

Yes, there are three of us in this relationship (not to mention a couple of forty-pound preschool boys). And sometimes it feels like football gets more time and attention and energy than the boys and I ever do. It is definitely demanding. And physical. And competitive. And passionate. But boy, is it HOT.

Football – and my coaching husband – they’re HOT.

So, it’s always worth the work. It’s always worth the grind. As a matter of fact, it’s all about the grind. And that, my friends, is sexy.

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Football Gives me All the Feels: Confessions of a Coach’s Wife

It’s the beginning of the football season once again, and there’s not too much I can say about the football life of a football wife that I haven’t said before.

You already know I love it. And you already know it makes me crazy. Some days I can’t sing its praises enough. Others, I want to wring its disembodied little intangible neck. It robs me of time and it showers me with blessings.

It is a paradox of ginormous proportions.

This past Sunday morning I sat on my back porch, the silken and slippery humid air settling and sliding off my limbs, making everything feel slow and sweet simply because it was Sunday morning.  You know, all easy like.

So I breathed in the easy. I breathed in the sweet, succulent calm, and I held it deep down in core of my soul.  And there it remains. My future calm in the storm of the impending football season.

Wordsworth was fueled by powerful emotions recollected in tranquility. Me, I’m fueled by the opposite: tranquility recollected during powerful emotions. Because starting tomorrow, and for the next five months, my life will be FILLED with powerful emotions. Wave after wave of powerful emotions. No doubt about it.

Starting with love. I’ve always had a hard, strong love for the game. It began in middle school, when I fell hard for the Dallas Cowboys of my youth and the TCU Horned Frogs of my hometown. This was no puppy love. It was true and it was deep and it was eternal.

And with that love comes butterflies – a tickling, nervous anticipation every, single game night. When I see those stadium lights, haloed in the gloaming, sparkling with the wings of a thousand frenzied moths, saluted by the cheers of a thousand frenzied fans, my belly goes downright giddy.

But along with all the love comes intense jealousy — jealousy of the time it steals away from our family, the demands it puts on the man we love most. It keeps him from us for most of the week and it keeps him from most of what our family holds most sacred: meal times and bath times and story times and bed.

He came home late the other night – for the third time this week — calves flecked with paint from lining the field. It was well past the boys’ bedtime. They had missed him. Again. And they had said so. Again. Several times. And it’s only the first week of many, many weeks we will miss him this season.

So yeah, I get jealous sometimes — of the time that it takes. And sometimes it makes me sad. And sometimes it makes me mad. Like that other night, when Mike came home late, all paint-flecked calves and sweat-stained shirt and flat-out worn-out…

But when I saw him, a calm settled over me, my Sunday Morning Calm. I remembered. I remembered that this is my love — this man and this sport. This is my life and this is my destiny — a destiny written long ago, in the helmeted stars of America’s team.

Yep, football makes me crazy. And happy. And angry. And happy. And jealous. And happy. And frantic. And happy. And, well, you name it, I feel it. All the feels. The great, big, powerful feels. Except for sorry. Football never makes me feel sorry.

 

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