the pennant

The Cubs played a double header on Thursday night to determine tournament standing and today they played at 9:00 a.m.  Which means batting practice at 8:00 a.m.  Which means I drove to the city at 7:00 a.m. to pick him up from the home of his bff and bring him back here to warm up.

His godmother traveled up for the big game.  And I was so happy to see her that I jumped up to give her a big hug and knocked her large coffee to the ground – not sparing her clothes or the bleachers.

I might have turned around and driven home if somebody had done that to me, but she’s such a good person and devoted godmother that she stayed.  And when the Cubs won the 9:00 game, she stayed for the 11:00 game.

By the end of the second game, she was calling those boys by name and she could tell the twins apart by their numbers and she knew which players were the coaches’ kids.  We cheered up a storm.  Then we took our all-star rookie out for pizza and she gave him a ride back to the city to get in another 24 hours with his best friend.

And I took a nap.

Three months ago, my son didn’t know any more than the very basics of baseball.  3  strikes, 3 outs, what a home run means.  Now he’s talking about RBI’s and sacrificial bunts and decoding the batting coach’s sign language.  He steals bases every chance he gets.  He isn’t just talking about RBI’s and home runs, he’s producing them.  He is fully engaged in the game.  He loves his coaches and works hard to please them, and they can tell.

His teammates have told their parents how proud they are of Wade’s progress as a player.  He’s now looking forward to middle school because the twins will be there.  They have already warned him about the eighth graders.

During the second game on Thursday night, another mom suggested that I take my younger two home since it was after 9:00 and said that she would bring Wade when the game was over.

I don’t know how we could have a better spring than we have had playing baseball.  Wade (and the rest of us) have been accepted as members of a team in a town we moved to six months ago without knowing a soul except the man who hired me and the realtor I found online.  One of my coffee shop friends suggested that I sign Wade up for baseball and told me how to effect a late registration since I had (of course) missed the deadline.

So we walked into the season not having any idea what to expect.  I have not been disappointed.  It has been good in every possible way.

When I see those coaches tend to their players, correcting them, cheering them on, telling Wade for twentieth time: “if you swing, you’re running!” when he hits and then looks up to see where the ball went.  For a boy growing up without a dad in the house, the eight hours a week of man-attention-time is so welcomed and so essential.  And then to see that time and attention and training pay off in the last weekend of a full season is a wonderful reward.

They may not win the championship game tomorrow, but when Wade got up out of the booth in the pizza joint and showed his godmother and me how he’s learned to hold the bat and swing it just so, and he’s more enthusiastic than embarrassed and he doesn’t even notice that he’s not on the field – that he’s actually in public, in the middle of a crowded restaurant – then I know that we’ve gotten our money’s worth.

may 16

This is what’s going on around here:

3 baseball games this week in the evenings.

A trip to the Blue Hole to go swimming.

A pedicure date with my daughter.

A small glimmer of an adult social life for me.

End-of-year teacher conferences.

A baseball tournament for the upcoming weekend.

A new church building.

Plans with out-of-town friends this weekend and next.

More rain than I have seen in eighteen years.

Fine arts day, Field Day, Talent Show Day, Pre-K Graduation.

Routine medical tests that I have always believed were for people older than I.

Otherwise, not all that much.

 

what he knows

The other morning at 6:00 a.m. Henry crawled into my bed and said “Hey mom.”  And I said “Hey Henry, whatcha know?”  And he said this:

“Well, I know about the universe.  Pluto isn’t a planet anymore because it’s too small, so they made it a dwarf star.“

uncommon

My favorite blog readers are the ones who send me books.  Thank you Fae!  I was so excited to receive The Uncommon Reader.  My children were disappointed because they thought the package must be for them, because it almost always is.

I am going to read it this weekend.  How thoughtful of you!  I hope that you and Tom are well and that I will have a chance to see you soon.

how to know

The friends God gives you knows your kids come first because they have to.  When you have to cancel your plans for, say, Thursday night, because your child just informed you that in addition to his baseball game, he is also starring in the school play singing a solo in “15 miles on the Erie Canal,” the friend God gave you says “I understand.  We’ll reschedule.”  Or better yet “Can I come?”  And best of all “You can’t be in two places at once, Let me help you with that.”

The friends God gives you expect that y’all will weather this rough spot just like you have every other misunderstanding over the last few years.

They understand that turbulence in your personal life translates into a short fuse with children and a failure of all desire to perform housework or aspire to noble causes.  They do everything they can to extend the olive branch so that your life doesn’t become more stressful than it already is.

The friends God gives you know that some hard times require the benefit of doubt on both sides.  A lot of patience, more love than you think you have left, and all the goodwill you can scrape up.  Plus a dash of perspective and another shot of charity.  Add more ingredients as required to maintain the friendship, even when strained.

These friends remember that Christ is in the reconciliation.

The friends God gives you hurt when you hurt.  This is because they know that you hurt when they hurt.  Because you are living members incorporate in the very mystical body of Christ.

The friends God gives you prayed for you before they ever met you.

They miss you when you’re not there.  They pick up the phone when you call.  They call you when you say you need them.

The friends God gives you want to see you.  They are happy when you are with them.  That’s because they see how happy you are to be there.  And because being with you makes them happy.  They say things like “C, you are like medicine for the soul.”  And then you cry a little.

The friends God gives you treat you like you and those three children are no trouble at all.  They absorb the chaos you bring along wherever you go like they enjoy it.

They go to your son’s games and your daughter’s musical because they know that you need someone there to turn to and say “Isn’t he/she just the greatest?”

They make a big deal about your children’s accomplishments – even when it’s just answering a question right in Sunday school or Trivial Pursuit.

They always leave you feeling better for the time you’ve spent.  Even when there may be hard work involved.

Their love is constant and not fickle.  That is how you will know.

friends with books

Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What, you too?  I thought I was the only one!’

Mr. Lewis said that.  He says all the great things.  I think because he really noticed what went on between people and how we relate and where we fail in our efforts.  And what it takes to form friendships.

About a year ago, when I was still living in West Texas, my mom and I were talking about friendships and how they rise and fall, and I was relaying some of what I had perceived as mean-girl treatment.  She observed that women who are insecure don’t make good friends because they need to compete and the need to compete with one another is highly detrimental to friendship or any relationship really.

Those of us who don’t have too much in the way of worldly goods and picket-fence lives don’t have all that far to fall, so we have to make peace with who we actually are.  We learn to laugh at our mistakes and surround ourselves with people who can do the same.  My favorite communications are late-night texts from friends who say “I did the exact same thing!” or “I thought you would appreciate what I told my child.”  I don’t even care if you laugh AT me.  That’s how secure I am.  I know that I am funny.  And not in a stand-up comedy way.  Just funny like “omg, what now?”  It’s okay, though, because I have already started the children in counseling.  They’re surely going to need it.

So getting back to my conversation with my mother, she concluded “You need to find some friends who read.”  I completely agree with her.  So I started a little book club and then I moved away.  And here I am a year later.  Still thinking that what I need are some friends who read.

And luckily, I have a few.  None of them are exactly my demographic: divorced mothers in their forties with three children and a more-than-full-time job, because people like that don’t read.  They don’t have time.  I barely have time, but it’s the one activity I can do while drinking coffee and lounging in bed every other Saturday, so I read on.

And I believe that I have found my favorite friends like Mr. Lewis noted:

“You love that book too?  I thought I was the only one!”

Some of my best old friends and I were raised on the same books: maybe that’s why we love our school chums so much?  Because of what we read together in our formative years.  I do know that a shared library gives my friend Iska and me a common language.  We can say “remember in To Kill a Mockingbird when the teacher called Scout ‘Jean-Louise’ and wouldn’t let her read because she hadn’t learned how the right way?  Well, that’s what I mean.”  And we both immediately know what my experience was like.  We speak a common language and relate in common experiences.

My soulmate, Frederick Buechner, said in his memoir (that I don’t have on hand because I have lent it to one of my besties, who probably won’t read it because Fred’s theology is too loose) that he believes that we need to tell our secrets so that we can understand that we all have the same secrets.  That’s what good literature does: it explains what our secrets look like in other people’s thoughts and actions.  We learn that the same secrets transcend different childhoods and youths and statuses and professions and living conditions.  I think that if you don’t read, you can miss out on this essential truth.

It’s Biblical, too.  All those kings and widows and disappointed old barren couples and grieving fathers and prodigal sons and good Samaritans and the betrayers?  They’re us.  We are all Naomi and we are all Ruth.  We’ve all been asked to sacrifice the source of our laughter like Abraham.  We have all felt ill-equipped and forced to lead anyway like Moses.  We have all been knocked off our steed and blinded by the light like Saul, now Paul.  We all have our Nineveh.  Mine was Texas.

In a Biblically-literate society, we understood our common plight better than we do now.  We had a language and a point of reference that I think – to a large extent – we have lost as a society.  In part because our religion is a private matter and not a family-wide, community-wide, taught-in-public-school, discussed-in-the-public-square sort of practice.

I understand completely.  I accept that we are a country set up specifically to be free from religious persecution and to be free from government-rule.  I am a huge fan of the constitution and even the first amendment.  But something has been lost in a country that fiercely protects the rights of the individual and I think it’s the group-think that many of us grew up with.  Yes, it may have been crazy, but it was a common language that we all knew and in which we were fluent.

Now I find that I can spot my peeps mostly through what they read.  Or if they read.  We can still be great pals if you only read books written by existentialists – the works that Iska and I read in “Alienation in World Literature”, one of our 11th grade English classes.  Even if you subscribe to an alien philosophy, as long as we know what it is, we can talk about it.  Or other things.

If you watch too much Real Housewives or Jersey Shore or even Mad Men, we probably can’t converse as well because I don’t speak that language.  And because screen wisdom or philosophy doesn’t stick to my bones the way written words do.  It’s a character flaw in me.

Lately I can tell whether we will be friends and soulmates by your library.  My friend the Baptist preacher has a drop-dead gorgeous, shelf-lined, packed-to-the-gills library of so much diverse theology that it makes me proud to be a Christian in an era that believes Christianity is for the simple-minded and the hayseed.

So if you invite me over, and I linger overly-long at your bookshelves, just know that this could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

verdict

I’m sorry for keeping you in suspense.

After three long days of testimony, the jury found the defendant guilty and assessed his punishment at ten years in the penitentiary in each case: Aggravated Assault with Deadly Weapon and Aggravated Kidnapping.

While we waited for their decision in the halls of the closed-for-business courthouse after five p.m., I was busy coordinating with my children’s father’s girlfriend and my babysitter.  Z (our superstar sitter) was watching Wade compete in The Battle of the Books, a sort of spelling bee for reading.  Wade was on his school’s team competing against fifth-graders from 7 other elementary schools.  Anna was with her.

Henry was still at school.  School closes at 6 p.m. and Z couldn’t leave Wade and Anna to go pick up Henry. Their father and his girlfriend were trying to pick up the children for dinner.  They didn’t plan on picking up Henry, but I was in trial, Z was with the big kids, Wade was in a sudden-death-overtime round of Battle of the Books, and 6:00 p.m. was fast approaching.

And the judge wanted my attention and my boss was giving me tips on my closing argument and all I could think was how poorly it had gone, and I was worried about my little one being the last man standing at preK and some teacher having to take him home with her.

But all’s well that ends well.  The children were retrieved, the verdicts came in.  I notified our witnesses and then I decided to take to my bed.  With a glass of wine.