Here's to Basketball, Boot Camp, and Being Braver Than We Believe...

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the Big Picture is not a focal point in my life. I almost always miss it. I desperately wanted both of my children but rarely let my musings of what life would be like as a mom go beyond strollers, onesies and finger paints. It amazes me still that each time I get to a new place with The Tornado, I think - how did I not see this coming? How could I have not realized that all the experiences I feel like I just barely survived as a kid would be mine to manage once again but from a far more excruciating standpoint - as the person charged with guiding him through it? Fuckin’ Hell…

My Tornado is a sporty kid, and now I have to figure out who I am in the world of youth sports parenting. My own sports dreams began and faded with Mary Lou Retton the moment I realized what I looked like in a leotard. A hockey game will keep my attention as will highlight films of those 400 pound line backers trucking people, but that’s the extent of my interest in professional sports. Recently, I’ve realized I have no wisdom… no experience to offer my boys in this area and I’m sick about it. I’m the Sassmaster, fer fuck’s sake… every other time in my life that I haven’t known something for sure, I could skim a few paragraphs and bullshit the rest. I can’t bullshit basketball. I can’t even wanna give a shit about basketball most days. I do love to watch the Tornado play, though… at least until recently when my calm, cool cucumber was sent off the court by the ref after getting too physical with the other team and repeated fouls.


Next practice he was a bit snarly during the scrimmage too. As I watched two teammates repeatedly avoid passing him the ball (that almost never makes it from his hands to the net), and listened to them berate him for not covering his man well enough, I noted the sparkle fade from his eye and the crestfallen slump of his shoulders with a walnut sized lump in my throat.

*It’s noteworthy to mention that although I am a person who most often finds great joy in children, I was calculating how much force it would require for an “accidental” hip check to send the rat-faced one sprawling…

Knowing what my reaction would have been at 8 years old, I’ve been waiting for the moment he tells me he’s all done playing basketball. It still hasn’t come… in fact this is the conversation we had after practice on Monday:

Me: I heard some of the stuff the other guys were saying to you at practice tonight… What was that like for you to hear them get on your case?

Tornado: Meh…no big deal, but they’re kind of jerks. They think they’re the best.

Me: I noticed that too… when you make mistakes on the court or your team doesn’t win, do you feel like you want to keep trying?

T: Sometimes I want to quit but I just keep telling myself “Don’t give up, don’t give up…”

Me: Wow… you know what? When I was a kid, I would have told Nana and Gramp I was never going back to basketball. In fact, I didn’t play softball, soccer or keep dancing because I wasn’t super good right away and I was too frustrated to work at getting better. I quit all the time. It makes me feel so proud that you don’t want to give up because it took me until I was a grown up to realize that it’s worth it to work hard to get better at stuff. You’re pretty great.

T: You mean you messed up at that stuff and then just stopped doing it? Why?

Me: ‘Cause it was hard… and I didn’t have much self-confidence when I was a kid. I thought I wasn’t good enough if I didn’t get it right away.... You know how you said that inside you kept telling yourself “don’t give up?”

T: Yeah…

Me: (sheepishly) when you play games, I say over and over again while I’m watching you, “I love you, don’t give up… I love you, don’t give up…” I say it so much and so loud inside myself that I hope I’m sending it right from my heart to yours. Do you ever feel that? Do you feel a little tingle?

T: I think so (his voice is neither convincing nor disbelieving… doesn’t sound like he thinks I’ve gone bat-shit crazy. Cool!)

I realize at this point that while I can’t advise him when it’s too early to cross the center court line (Hell, if I didn’t have such a good command of the English language, I wouldn’t even know where to look for the center court line…) I can help him avoid my quitter legacy. I can love him through the crappy games, and I can show him that his tenacious heart has reaching affects, so I say:

Me: You know, your Don’t Give Up attitude has inspired me… Remember last week when I went to Boot Camp class* and it was so hard and my whole body hurt all week long?

*Boot Camp is an hour long foray into exercise Hell where a smallish, peppy instructor requires you to jump, squat, push-up, and repeat until you can't function past the tremor that wracks your whole body...*

T: (laughs) You got butt cramps when we were sledding…

Me: Right! And I said to myself - Well I’m never doing that again! But if you aren’t giving up, then neither am I. I’m going back to Boot Camp…

Fast forward to tonight… I am waiting in the hallway for Boot Camp class praying that the Viking has a poop accident before class begins so I don’t actually have to go in there. Everyone heads in and I look back at the window where I can see the Tornado flash me the I Love You sign…

Completely unable to give up at that point, I take a deep breath and go in to have my arse handed to me. Well, tonight I’m still vertical whereas last week, I’m convinced my horrified body induced a migraine after class just so I would have to stop fucking moving… Tonight, I worked hard, but struggled less than last week. In the car, I said to the Tornado, “Well, I did it! I went back to Boot Camp and I didn’t give it up! What do you think?”

His response was: “Hey! It’s kind of like I’m teaching you…”
Yep… Every single day.

And there it was… another moment of grace, all shiny and warm and ours :-)

The Margarita's Always Greener...

I can't deny from time to time that I miss my pre-mom life. And yes, even as the words are formed in my head  and transferred to the screen, I remember the countless hours I spent face down, sobbing on my bed, devastated by another negative pregnancy test... But, as thoroughly as I wished for my children, there are moments on any given day when a person sitting quietly in a cafe with a book, or an FB status about someone's travels to places I can just barely afford to read about, gives me a deep pang of longing for more than 5 minutes of solitude.

At the end of the summer I drove my mother and my two children five hours up into the Maine woods. I had the first of such pangs during the drive north when a woman who looked about my age passed me in a light yellow Thunder Bird with the top down. There was no car seat in the back and I suspected that the seats were free of juice and stale Goldfish and no one had ever left a crusty layer of boogers on the door. I also imagined that she could choose what was on the radio and how loud it was playing...
I smirked to myself remembering the National Lampoon's Vacation scenes on the highway and I realized I was having a Clark Griswold moment, as I couldn't take my eyes off the woman and the Thunder Bird. I didn't want to fuck her though, I just wanted to BE her...
She got off at the Salisbury beach exit and I imagined there was a beach chair and a bag full of books in the trunk, with a bottle of wine and a hotel room key on the seat next to her. By the time I was wondering if her husband was meeting her there later or was waiting in the room with chocolate covered strawberries, I was practically up the ass of a mini van with a Baby On Board sign dangling in the rear window.
OK... so I'm not sliding out of my convertible into the arms of my husband bound for a weekend of books and sexcapades at the beach... but I'm also not driving a mini van (ACK!!) with a squalling infant in the back. I counted my blessings and my mood lightened just a tad. I would love to tell you the pangs of longing for the other life dissipated in a matter of hours but it was the beginning to 3 days in the Maine woods with my mother, my kids, no electricity and a potty-training toddler with a combined total of 12 hours on the road. On the way home, I thought, if I saw that bitch right now, I'd key the T-Bird and dump the contents of the potty chair into the backseat.

The other more recent instance of Nobody's Mommy Envy happened this weekend after 24 hours of  almost constant rain that was accompanied by a soundtrack of:

THUMP, BUMP, THWACK, SCREECH, CRY, SCREAMING mommydragonlady, sniffle, sulk. Repeat...

On days like this, the soundtrack is on constant rotation unless I give in and decide to ignore the hours of television creating that slack-jaw, zombie-fied peace and quiet that makes your sense of Mom-worth plummet. Fortunately I was able to drown out the nagging horror of nine hours of television with two cocktails and five hours of "Girl Time" with one of the most fabulous women I know, on Saturday night. Raise your glasses and toast to "putting it all out there, " poppets! Now say a silent prayer of "thanks and blessings" for The Dad who, while irritated by my lack communication through those 5 hours, knows I deserve them.

The setting of "Girl Time" was a  restaurant/bar I had frequented some 15 years earlier during the "Thou Shalt Barely Remember" phase of my life. My sense memory brought things back so clearly and almost instantly - the clink of glassware, noisy atmosphere stuffed with bodies and the delightful smell of beer and grilled food. I thought, "Oh... I have missed this." You know, leaning over to your girlfriend to drunkenly yell something like, "My underwear is so far up my ass right now!" just as the music dies a bit and the 87 people within hearing distance are now fully apprised of your wardrobe malfunction. FUN, right? OK, so not so much stuff like that, but who are we kidding? One more shot of Cuervo and the moment is gone forever except in the memories of the 87 strangers snickering all around you...

What I was momentarily missing were the pre-mommy days when wiping up the vomit was not MANDATORY, but completely at your discretion (especially if it wasn't YOUR apartment.) The days when sippy cups were for not sloshing your cheap wine all over the dorm as you staggered from floor to floor "studying." I momentarily missed the days of taking 3 hours to get ready for Saturday night, all for your bangs and make up to be completely effed up as many hours later from dancing until your feet were going to fall off...

 

Two minutes later, my margarita was in my hand and all frothy at the top. It tasted like 21 felt in my 35 year-old memory: sweet, tangy and devoid of responsibility to anyone other than myself. The night wore on and my girlfriend and I talked and talked and I never once looked at a clock until 11:30.

Before we left, I was in the bathroom while a group of younger women were re-applying make-up and examining their reflections for a hair that may have escaped the flat iron, or checking the appearance of their asses in their skinny jeans. I smiled to myself thinking about getting ready at my house earlier in the evening. I had almost climbed the walls by 5:30. Just before dinner there was a spill, an injury, and a meltdown over twisted underwear (not mine, though it is fair to say that by the time I got into the shower, my panties were most certainy in a bunch.) I snuck into the bathroom and got into the shower but had forgotten to lock the door. Before I even had my hair lathered up, the sliding door opened to reveal a naked Viking telling me he was going to come in too. Defeated, but still focussed on the prize of the evening - my 7:30 departure time, I stepped aside and let him in.
We spent the next 20 minutes washing up and then fillng the tub with warm water and talking about our favorite super heros. The Viking delighted in filling his cup and dumping the water on my back and hair as I sat with him in the tub, my arms wrapped around my knees which were drawn up to my chin (where they previsously didn't reach because 40 pounds of chub was in the way). I was delighted that we BOTH fit in the tub, and there would be no need for axel grease to free me from the porcelain. After that, he sat on the sink and handed me items that fascinated him from my minimal make-up arsenal, "Mom, what IS this?"  "Do you like to have this one next?"  "I is be so good at helping." 

Someday, all too soon I'm going to be longing for these days... the ones right now, with sticky finger-prints on my cell phone, thumping, wrestling, giggling boys and the weight of a small body relaxing into me as I slide into bed (at 1:30 a.m), completely happy I've come home to a house where I am Mom, Queen of Everything, Finder of Lost Crap, Fixer of Twisted Underwear and Reader of Books with Pictures and Goofy Sound Effects.

My Cup Runneth Over.... or "If any more AWESOME gets crammed into this day I just might blow up and turn into Mary fucking Poppins...

I really want to get this posted while the high is still a fresh tingle in my spine... please excuse any typos.

First an update:

Weight Watchers is not the Hell I imagined and besides a few minor derailments that astonishingly did NOT involve Nutty Bars, is much easier than I expected it to be. After the first white-knuckle night during which I went through every emotion imaginable simply by virtue of the fact that I'd disrupted my usual routine of  bored? shove high fat/sugar stuff into pie hole. avoiding some task? shove more crappy food into pie hole. sad? angry? you know what to do, Porkchop! shove something with cream filling into your pie hole...
So I actually had to feel every feeling that I had for a few days and the experience made me want to come out of my skin. I also felt the urge to throttle random citizens and loved ones for no obvious reason other than it looked as though they might be breathing within 3 feet of me.
Thankfully that phase has passed and all people in my life, big and small are present and accounted for. No lumpy rolled up carpets, or weighted river dumps. Congratulations for surviving Chubby Girl DTs, everyone. And thank you for your patience.

We are once again members of our local YMCA. Haven't been back since renewing the membership except to take the boys for a swim. However, I am encouraged that the thought no longer drives me to the cupboard in search of a spoonful of Fluff. We've been incredibly sick this winter with what I'm going to call chronic Pan-American Death Flu. I almost grabbed the kids and headed to the gym this afternoon when the thought of the childcare rooms with the Death Flu strains they are, no doubt still crawling with, turned me into Agrophobe Mommy and I opted for mounting the elliptical machine/towel dryer at my house. We just got better for Christ's sake...
errr... update complete.

Today I felt some more of the feelings I'm so used celebrating/stifling with cream filling and I may not sleep for hours yet because there's still a palpable buzz in my being from all of it. This afternoon I got on the elliptical/towel dryer for 30 minutes and instead of watching the clock and feeling ashamed of the jiggles and all the clicking I heard my hips doing I felt AMAZING! What a relevelation! My head is a riot of words right now trying to find the best way to describe my exercise experience today...
Anyone who knows me will tell you I am the self-proclaimed poster potato for couches. Yesterday I would have told you I only run when chased... today I felt like I could run a marathon (except I would totally sacrifice time for a bathroom break when I need one - No way will anyone catch me crossing a finish line with a melange bodily fluids running down my leg.)
At first I was just thrilled about not sucking wind inside of three minutes but as my legs found that familiar rhythm and pace of the machine, I felt stronger and stronger and sweaty, and tired, and stuff started to get sore and I lost my balance a little bit, but then all those glorious endorfins that failed me during labor and childbirth flooded my system and stronger took over again. I felt some anger I recognized had been ruminating inside me for a few weeks and the angrier I got, the better I felt so I let it go and pushed harder with my body... Music I love was blaring in my ears and I didn't care about where my children were... or what family and strangers had done to incur my wrath. I pumped my legs and punched the air. I thought, "Somebody line up Glenn Beck and Ted Nugent. The SassMaster is ready to kick some ass." Poppets, I smiled and flailed and moved and sweated and closed my eyes and head banged through a work out... and I loved every minute of it. Fuck me. Who'd have thunk?

picture this with curly hair and much more "jiggle" or if that visual is too much for you,

 just enjoy 10 seconds of Brad Pitt

The second bit of awesomeness to grace my day was my brother. He continues to triumph over the train wreck of his not-so-distant past and is all the inspiration I should need to keep moving forward no matter how many obstacles I put in my own path. He's a recovering alcoholic who is in his umpteenth stretch of sobriety at the ripe old age of 29. Today he walked into the kitchen and reached out for the Viking with hands that didin't shake and a solid, grounded stance, a clear and contented gaze and I handed over my baby without an ounce of trepedation... just trust. I couldn't do that 6-8 months ago. I couldn't be sure my brother was sober enough to keep himself upright, let alone manange my squirming toddler without ending up ass over tea kettle. The best part was that I didn't let our history of dysfunctional communication stop me from telling him how proud I was of how far he's come and how happy I am to look into his face and recognize the person looking back at me.

Coincidentally, my BFF whose father is still struggling with his disease posted this today:

God, grant me the patience to relish each second of this day,

the courage to learn from and let go of yesterday,

and the passion to pursue tomorrow.

Jen, I think I got the best of this one today, but I know your Grace is due... and until then, I'm here to listen and respond with irreverence and sarcasm, as always. xo
Keep yours eyes open for your Grace, poppets... it doesn't always jump on your face and wiggle, but it's happening around you, of that I'm sure.



I know about God because I grew up Catholic. I have spirituality because I've been involved with Al-Anon and I know Grace because I am a mother. As I've gotten older, I recognize that I am now more spiritual than I am Catholic. Dictionary.com sites one of the theological uses of Grace to mean: "the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them."

The Scene last week:
The Tornado and I are ready to leave the school building and I have just dropped the "we have a few stops to make before we go home" bomb. I was cringing inside waiting for the procession of scowly faces, stomping feet and "humph" noises that typically follow such an announcement. But they didn't come... I eased my finger off my crazy-mom trigger and re-holstered it hesitantly... We made it through the grocery store and to another school site to pick up classroom supplies in a comfortable quiet that was interrupted only periodically by the soft command to "turn it up, please" when he heard the Beastie Boys rattle the already-blown speakers in the car. Our last stop was the library:

{Please excuse the following A.D.Detour...}
 It's really lovely, as a parent when your child shares a common passion, and for The Tornado and I, it's books. We don't go to the library to get a book. We go to get BOOOOOKSS!!!! We then pay lots of FIIIIINESSS because we are not so good at the returning things on time part of the library adventure. 
{umm... The End}

Although I walked into the library, like I always do, with the sense that some wonderful treasure was waiting for me to reach out and grab it by it's skinny spine... I actually found very little that inspired me. However, the Universe was about to remind me that, tonight I'd brought the treasure with me... and for some strange reason on that Tuesday, he was wearing his father's socks pulled way up past his knees. (God, I love that kid...) I was ready to hit the road with the few books I had half-heartedly piled up when The Tornado loped over with a big grin and an arm load that included a World Atlas, Valley of the Dinosaurs, a book about fresh water mammals and Junie B. Jones. The selections were so totally Tornado, it was impossible not to smirk. On our way out, he said as he held the door for me, "Here, I'll take some of those too, Mom. Then you won't have all the load." As we walked to the car I told him he was growing up to be a real gentleman. He said he hopes that means someone who's getting a cheeseburger for dinner. Just as we reached the parking lot, The Tornado looked up and spotted a single star in the sky and started to recite:

Star light, star bright...

I wish I may, I wish I might

Have the wish I wish tonight.

So, I made a wish. I thought it was a pretty great wish... Who wouldn't KILL for Bavarian eclairs that made you lose weight, right??? (By magic, I threw in at the end... none of that shit-yourself-skinny business) Most clever wish I ever wished... I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until I heard from the back seat,

 "Mom? Did you wish that we would always be together?

Humility hit me like a pile driver but I didn't miss a beat. "How did you know?" was the only acceptable response, of course. And his self-satisfied expression confirmed that he's still too innocent to see right through me.

I get discouraged about the things I forget to do, put off doing or don't have any energy to do in a day... I beat myself up about being late, too heavy, financially irresponsible, too loud and completely unfit to prepare a meal that is not 90% boxed or frozen.

You see, there are a great many things I don't like about me. But what I DO like about me is that those moments don't get lost. I recognize and honor the times when God tosses me a shiny bauble.
Ironically, I went into the library looking for fairy tale books that wouldn't make me gag. I feel fairly certain that cheeseburgers were not among the "tokens" typically bestowed upon a gentleman in days gone by, but once upon a Tuesday, under a single star, a budding gentleman scored himself a McDouble for charming my socks off. 

*Wow... God AND fairy tales. This post is a two-fer! You're welcome.