whisper words of wisdom

I’m running low on things to say in situations where I’m pretty much forced to say something but have nothing to work with. Everyone reading this will know exactly what I mean although many won’t admit to it.

My situation involves baseball. Not major league or little league, but baseball for fourteen year olds. Unfortunately, they are not natural athletes and the scores show it. 22-1, 25-3, 20 -1..ouch.

I’m a sports mom, or at least I was in my past life. My sons ran CC in the Fall, wrestled year round, and pole vaulted in the Spring. At wrestling, they were Champions. I’m not ashamed to brag on it. My younger son was three time Country and Division Champ and went to States a couple times. I was lucky enough to be along for the ride. But at CC and pole vaulting…eh, not so good. So I know the ways to say “good effort”, “way to try” , “stay strong”. I can say those things with motherly love and mean them every time.
Now, we’re talking baseball and a team that’s not so good. They regularly lose and the scores are usually 23+ – 1 or 2 by the time the game is called and it is usually called. “You’ll get them next time” just isn’t cutting it anymore.

My heart goes out to the kids whose seasons don’t involve a trophy or a First Place banner. They’re what sports are all about. They sign up and give their best year after year. I’ve followed this small group of kids for many years now. Not my kiddo but close enough to be my own in a Brady Bunch kind of way. Not gifted athletes, entheusiastic at the beginning of the season, somewhat beaten down by the end. Half the kids they joined t-ball years ago with have moved on and up to better leagues and school teams.
These kids, a Charlie Brown gang, are happy where they are. They play because they love the sport. They rotate positions and know each other well. They probably will not play any more years, the standards go up when you hit HS.
Their parents gamely show up in team colors and cheer. We shake our heads when our boys and girl strike out or miss a pop fly the might’ve gotten caught if it’d only fallen a half a foot to the left.
We cheer on base hits, go nutty over runs, and laugh with the kids when two outfielders run into each other in a Sports Center moment. You should hear us when the pitcher strike out the opposing batters. The noise echos for miles and our smiles stretch just as far.
Sure the other teams are better, the other parents more rabid, the other practices more hard core but I doubt they enjoy every triumph as much. This team has it’s stars but everyone matters and the coaches are there with a back pat or high five when it’s needed and we spectators try to cover the rest. I worry about running out of things to say as the season winds down but writing this now it occurs to me that all I need to say is “good job” and “great effort” and “I’m proud of the way that you tried”. Those are the perfect things to say because baseball is about winning but more than that it’s about loving the game and while these kids may not win on the score board when it comes to loving the game there are no greater Champions anywhere.

won’t you still be my neighbor? or if my life were like the Gilmore Girls

 

I think my neighbor has died. I’m not exactly sure and not sure how to ask. I don’t think it’s proper to knock on the door and say “excuse me, I’m Tia from next door and I was wondering if your husband passed away on Sunday”. Something tells me she won’t give me a cookie for that. 

I have an iffy relationship with these people. I’ve only lived here since November and Winter kept us from getting to know each other. Her bitchiness kept us from knowing each other this Spring. But thanks to my granddaughter we have started to speak. And now we have evolved from casual waving, when it’s unavoidable, to me helping carry their groceries in when I see them struggling. Of course, some might say I do that for the cookie she gives me every time I help. Some might be right, those are some good cookies.

Many of my friends know I woke up on Mother’s Day to the sound of an ambulance backing into their driveway. Since then no ones really been around but for the past day and a half a few people have been around. The cookie lady, her children, her brother-in-law, but not  Frank.  I think Frank passed away and I’d be so happy to be wrong. He may be grumpity and he may be loud but it isn’t the same not seeing him out there riding his John Deer back and forth across his way too small for a John Deer mower sized lawn. Next Winter’s first snow storm wouldn’t have him out with his way too large for his small driveway, snow thrower. He won’t run outside every time I head into my yard with a garden tool. He won’t pretend he was already out there anyway. I won’t go chasing his shirts when the high winds send them flying from their laundry line and out into the yard and down the street. I got two cookies for that act of bravery.

Now if my life were like the Gilmore Girls I’d run over and pop in with a box of muffins, she’d exchange witty banter or sad stories with me, we’d hug and quirkiness would follow for the next forty five minutes. We’d share a box of tissues and we’d look through her photo albums and I’d head back home both saddened and uplifted while my viewing audience wrote tributes on my message boards.
My life isn’t like the Gilmore Girls. Some times I almost wish it was. Not many day but some.
If my life were more like the Gilmore Girls my broken heart would mend in less than a week instead of still hurting eight months later, I’d outlast every speed bump I hit, and somehow everything would always turn out okay.  If my life were more like the Gilmore Girls I’d wear what I want, follow every dream, mend the ties with my parents, and exchange only cute and funny quips with my kids. Everyone  I know would be happy and healthy and somehow extremely good looking, and there would be nothing an hour of time and the occasional laugh track couldn’t fix.

The Gilmore Girls wear the right thing, do the right thing, and say the right thing. They’d know the right way to find out if their neighbor has died. They’d know the right thing to do if he had, and how to be a good neighbor to people they really don’t know.

But my life isn’t like the Gilmore Girls and won’t be anytime soon. And while I am okay with it, I still think my neighbor has died and I still don’t know how to go ask.

New book day

There’s no better day than new book day. Unless new book day falls on clean sheet day and then it’s practically magical. Lucky me, both fall on my today.

I love a brand new book. Unopened by anyone else. Crisp pages, unbent corners, spine still rigid and uncreased. New books have a feel to them. A special heaviness that comes from words not yet rummaged through. New books have a crisp clean smell, like fresh ink and a new pad of paper. Or a back to school section of the store.

I have in front of me my new book. One I’ve waited for and eagerly anticipated. Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I bought it with my shiny new B&N gift card. A Mother’s Day gift from my son. He knows the path to my heart is paved with books. He is my favorite child. Today anyway, don’t tell his brother though. He’ll be my favorite child tomorrow. I like to switch it off, keep them on their toes.

My new book still has it’s cover on it. I’ll remove it when I start to read. Otherwise it gets all grimy and sometimes torn. This book’s a keeper. When I’ve read and reread it it will go up on my shelf with the others in the series. A rare honor. Very few books make my shelf.

I won’t open my new book yet. I’m savoring it. I’ve waited two days to go back and get it. It only came out today. I’m waiting until the house is empty and I can lose myself with old friends I met years ago in the first of the series. I’m sure they’ve changed. Gotten older, gotten smarter but they’re like friends to me because we’ve shared so many hours together.

I’ve always loved new book day, from the time I was a child ordering my books through the Scholastic sheets my teacher would hand out, all the way up until today. Some women love shoes or purses, I love books.

New book day. It seems like such a minor thing but to me it’s a celebration. I could read the ebook or hit a site on line to read but to me it’s not the same. New book day isn’t just about the reading. It’s also about the anticipation followed by the purchasing and of course, the enjoying. The curling up and slowly cracking open the book. It’s the sound the spine makes as you leaf your way to Chapter One. It’s the smell of untouched pages and the licking of your finger to turn to the next page. The diving head first into a story and tuning out the world around you as you turn page after page.

So tonight I won’t be watching tv or gabbing on the phone. I’ll be laying in my clean sheets and hanging out with Aloysius Pendergast and Lt. D’Agosta and loving every minute of it. It’s new book day, what’s not to love!

let’s go to the video tape

I spent a portion of yesterday going through video tapes. Most were events in my children’s lives. I sat facinated by who they were then and who they are now.
Who they are now was a room and a corner away laughing and playing some video game together. It was a little strange to hear the grown up versions while at the same time the younger versions were on the tv in front of me.

In our rummaging and sorting we found video tapes and set them aside. If they’d been labeled we could’ve decided earlier but then I’d have missed out on such treats as a three hour long tape of a pinewood derby, compete with me saying “Chad settle down” every 5 minutes.  Looking at them now I see that he was just fine, it was me that needed to settle down and let him be a kid.

We have tapes of the zoo, tapes of t-ball, softball, and then baseball. Tapes of birthdays at Chucky Cheeses and holidays with various Aunts, Uncles, and Grandparents. Tapes of them losing wrestling matches, meets, and tourneys and more recent tapes of their wins. There are powder puff games where they put on cheerleader outfits and gamely cheered for the girls wearing football unis. Pre-prom night jitters, graduation day pride. Kindergarten graduation on the same tape as HS graduation. One of the few times I thought out the taping.

Someday they’ll inherit this box of old tapes, I only hope they have something to play them on. Maybe this summer I’ll pick up a couple old VCRs at garage sales and put them aside just in case. I know I’ll be looking for a slide projector because my folks have given me my childhood and it’s all in slide form.
I remember cringing when my parents would take roll after roll of photos on those deelightful disfunctional trips through the States. My kids cringed when I pulled out that bulky video camera and taped every birthday and Christmas and Pinewood Derby Day.

When you’re living the moment you don’t want to look back or think about looking back but someday those memories are nice to have. Whether it’s photos, video tapes, or the god-awful slide shows. We can’t remember every thing so a visual noogie is good to have. The tapes are put back now, no one but me was interested and I got bored pretty quickly. There’s too much going on now with my granddaughter and I don’t want to miss a second of it if I can help it. She, and her parents, will be moving on soon and until them you’ll find me hovering in the background taking pictures to go in a box and be dragged out again someday to look at and remember back when.

what’s your mental Kryptonite?

[gallery]everyone has some. Those things that hit you hard, rendering you emotionally helpless and curled up in a little ball on the floor of your mind.

I know mine, it’s being ignored. Being treated like I just don’t matter and I’ve gotten a good dose of it lately.

Sometimes it seems to come from every side and none of those force shields I put up keep it out. It isn’t loneliness, I don’t mind alone time, I actually like it. People are fun but I admit I also like my Tia time to read and relax, play some poker, write a little, and just follow my little patterns.

What gets to me is feeling invisible. Like I don’t matter anymore. Like I’m only kept around because of my uses but when something better comes along I’m put back on my shelf like an old shoe, not useful or important until the next time I’m needed. That’s what makes me going into a funk.

And that’s when I know it’s time to recharge and refresh myself. Usually it involves some bonding with Mother Nature or some form of a change to remind me that I am important, at least to myself.
This time it’s two new toys. Two new old toys is more correct. Two antique pinball machines I’ll restore and probably end up selling. But for now they’re a project, a goal. Something I know I can do even though I’ll get frustrated and curse once or twice. As I work on these new old toys of mine I’ll rebuild my confidence and relearn my importance. It will come from inside me and slowly I’ll feel better and stronger. The confidence won’t come from the people around me, my family and friends. It will come from me and that’s the only way it works. Others can lift us up and make us all full of joy with their praise and their back pats but those things fade quickly if we don’t feel pride in ourselves.
And that’s my kryptonite: lack of self confidence and self pride causing me to forget who I am and feel invisible to others.
Self confidence and self pride. Things we all say we have but I think most of us don’t have. Little fears and cracks that we hide from everyone else lest they think we’re less than we are. Things we all feel but rarely admit to.

The best way to grow past them is to start with a seed of confidence in one little thing and water it by noticing the things we do, the accomplishments and goals we meet. Then as we notice those things we become more sure of ourselves and no amount of ignoring or overlooking by others can break us down. No mental kryptonite can defeat us. My metal kryptonite won’t touch me as long as I do what I do best and remind myself daily that I make a difference and I have mattered, even when I don’t think anyone around me remembers it’s true. So in my garage sit two seeds that need tending to remind me that I am good at what I do and maybe what I do isn’t for everyone, it is for me and it is part of what makes me …me. Not invisible, very important, and no amount of kryptonite can take that strength away from me.

here come the brides

 

I’ve been thinking about marriage. Not because I plan to walk the aisle of doom any time soon, but because I am watching a marriage trifecta unfold in the lives around me.

One soon to be wed couple, one soon to divorce couple, and one married almost sixty eight years couple. The beginning, the middle, the end.

 

I’ve been married before. It didn’t take too well. I was all in but unfortunately my husband was all in too, just in someone else’s arms. I had a problem with that. 

But that was over twenty years ago and I like to think I’ve healed up nicely.

 

And I have. I’m still a big fan of marriage. I tear up as the bride and groom say “I do” and I am always sad to hear of a marriage on it’s last legs. I don’t think marriage is a necessity or a automatic ‘get out of hell free’ card. I think it’s an honor and a privilege to love someone so much that you want to pledge all you are to them for your forevers.

People say marriage is only a piece of paper and not important but I think it is. 

We have so little in life that’s really truly our’s. Our name, our word, our lives and to give someone your’s as a sign of your love is special. To pledge to wake up each day together and face what happens side by side and to end each day face to face is the best bond of all. It isn’t the ceremony that matters. Although some people need to have those ribbons and bells and $2,000 wedding cakes, others opt for a few words in Vegas before their favorite Elvis impersonator or a quiet beach at sunset surrounded by their family and friends. It isn’t what you wear or how many groom’s men and bride’s maids you have.

It’s making that vow to face life hand in hand and see each other through it all. That’s what’s important.

Next month I’ll watch two people, I once held as babies, commit to each other and I’ll cry. I’ll also lend my shoulder and my ears to two dear friends whose roads are now going to be separate after twenty years together and yes, I’ll cry then too. And then I’ll celebrate with an Aunt and Uncle as they savor the past sixty eight years of life they’ve shared. Big surprise.. I’ll cry.  

I’ll look through photo albums and see each step they took. I’ll meet their newest great grandchildren and even one great great grandchild. And I’ll think about the vows they took when they told each other they’d be there no matter what. It’s more than a piece of paper and a ceremony. It’s a giving of all you are and meaning it. It’s trying your hardest to make it work and being able to pull it off. It’s a beautiful thing when it works and I’d like to think most couples go into it with plans for forever. Not all make it and that’s sad but some make it all the way and that gives hope to those starting out.  It doesn’t matter how you make the promise, it only matters that you make it with the best of intentions. Maybe some don’t make it but many do and I think that’s pretty amazing. I hope the wedding I attend is one of the ones that lasts forever.

won’t you be my neighbor?

SANDY RUN, S.C. – Mary Sue Merchant died of  natural causes in her tightly locked house on 25 acres in this small community, with only a dog for company. Now her small town is reflecting on why no one noticed for 18 months

_________

 This isn’t the first time I’ve recently read stories like this. People not noticing neighbors.  People living side by side so caught up in their own lives that they don’t notice those who live around them. We pull up our driveway into our garages and the door comes down shutting out the world around us. We can find other countries, other worlds on our computers and television sets but we don’t know the first names of the people next door.

I know some say that’s a good thing because of the perverts and sickos among us but when we shut out our neighbors we shut out so much more.

I grew up in a house on a street in a neighborhood of people I knew. My parents let us outside alone in packs safe in the knowledge that the people who lived around us knew us too. Our street was like family each house another branch on the family tree. Mrs Rietano next door babysat us. My first babysitting job was for the family on the other side. My oldest son named for their little boy, a man now with boys of his own. We celebrated birthdays, had street picnics, mourned losses, and we children played outside year round. WE waved at each other when passing in cars and when someone was ill we pulled together to help out. One memorable winter the men n the street dug us out house by house after a particularly bad snow storm.

There were bad things about living on a close-knit street like I did. I could get in trouble at one end of the street and my folks would know about it by the time we’d all pedaled back home. Each house had a story. One family retired missionaries, another the large family of the local Police Chief, a childless (by choice) couple, an immigrant from Italy and her adult unmarried daughter. We had 6 Kodak families, two from Case-Hoyt, a widow with 8 children who always was first to help out anyone who needed anything. one always unemployed man who took his anger out on his wife and kids time after time even after one by one the other parents would call the police for help. We looked after the weak ones, cheered on the athletes, and helped each other put up and take down Christmas and Hanukkah decorations. Kids got to play outside after dark, parents felt safe knowing who was around us.

It sounds like a silly old fashioned life to live but there’s a security and happiness in knowing your neighbors. I know mine now, it’s second nature for me. I wave and say hello and send over baked goods to the nice elderly widower on the corner. I don’t want to be the person who one day is quoted in the paper saying “I hadn’t seen her in a while but I was so busy I just never noticed” My life is busy and yes, I pull up the driveway and into the garage and close the door shutting out the world around me but I always make sure to know the people around me because life is full of strangers already, I don’t want to live surrounded by strangers too.

a penny for my thoughts

 

in for a penny, in for a pound…. putting in my two cents… spend a penny, spend a pound…the penny drops

 

 

I miss pennies. Not that they’ve gone missing but because they don’t matter any more. Pretty soon pennies will be gone completely. Nothing costs a penny anymore and people just throw them away as if they don’t matter. The parking lots at grocery stores are littered with them, no one picks them up or makes a wish. We just step over them like they’re trash. If you save them, roll them up, and turn them in to your bank you get looked at funny. I know, I’ve tried. No one likes the sound of change jingle jangling in their pockets, it’s easier to carry a card to swipe through a scanner. It eliminates the need to count change or figure out sale’s tax. It’s quicker and quieter to avoid loose change. Machines still take quarters although they seem to prefer dollars.  And pennies have fallen by the wayside.

When I was growing up pennies mattered. My parents were afraid of debt. They’d grown up pinching pennies and they stressed it to us. I’d probably still be grounded if they’d seen me throw one out. We kids saved them up. In the summer we’d all walk up to the Mole’s and spend our money. He sold wonderful things like Coke in glass bottles for a quarter, comic books for fifty cents, and things like sour gum and snappers to scare and delight our friends with. He sold bait in a cooler right next to a freezer full of Popsicles, Fudgesicles, and Dreamsicles. He had coffee, maps, and other things our parents might send us up for but his biggest business, I would imagine, was his wall of penny candy. He had a stack of plastic cups and we would take one and fill it up with penny candies. Atomic fire balls, root-beer barrels, BB Bats ..I like the banana ones. Charm pops, candy rings and bracelets, bubble gum with comics wrapped around each piece. We could have caramels and lemon drops, licorice laces and peppermints. He sold Pixie sticks, sour balls, and those long strips of taffy in wax paper. As long as we had the pennies, he had the candy.

We’d each stand there and make our selections, these were important choices we knew how many pennies we had. And then we’d hand our cup to him to turn over and count out on the  big wooden shelf. He’d add them up one by one on his cash register and after we paid he’d put our bounty in a small white paper bag and we’d head back out into the sun to  make the walk back home. That candy could last the whole day, maybe two if we were patient. I never was though. My brother was and he’d deliberately eat the ones he knew I liked first so I wouldn’t beg anything off him at the end of the day.  

 

I can still buy those candies on line, but not for a penny or even a dime. I still have my comic books from the Mole’s and I still have some pennies but nothing costs a penny anymore, pennies just don’t matter. We throw them out or give them up, or like me save them in a big glass water bottle. Pretty soon they’ll go away and our grandchildren will be fascinated to hear they ever existed but I’ll have my memories of  penny candy and making that trek on a warm Sunday morning down to the Mole’s with my pennies in hand and back home again with my bagful of candies and even though the candy doesn’t leave a sweet taste in my mouth now, the memories are always going to be sweet in my mind.

discombobulated

 

 

that’s a fun word. sometimes I think my life’s a snow globe. Every time the haze clears and I can see clearly…someone (usually me) comes along and gives it a good shaking. As I pack to move and at the same time face an uncertainty and probable heart reshaking soon to come, discombobulated is a good word for me.

There are a few constants though.. my faith, my sons, the fact that no matter how much pain my day holds the next morning I awake with hope.. and a new blessing too. My granddaughter. I promised an update and here it is:

 

She is an amazing child. It’s a whole new kind of love and one I’m grateful to feel. That she adores me in return is a blessing as well. I get to spend a bit of time with her now, a couple days a week while her Dad’s at work and her Mom’s in class..

A bonus blessing because someday soon she and her parents will be moving off, setting their own family path and making their own family traditions but until then, I’ll take the time I get to spend with her. She’s made it past her first Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and recently her Christening.

These milestones don’t mean much to her. If she can’t put it in her mouth she really has no use for anything. The rest of us consider every “first” a photo op. I can’t say I’m the guiltiest party, she has a Grandpa Tom who may eclipse me in the photo taking category. He and I joke about it every Monday morning when she comes to spend the day with me. He and I threaten to arm wrestle for the right to take her to our favorite local places like the science center and toy HOF. I have a feeling those outings will be shared because her parents aren’t willing to let us fight over them.

 

She’s a magical child with special powers. She nicens up Uncle Trevor, coaxes smiles out of him and makes him do things like use baby talk and buy stuffed animals. No matter how broken I feel, she heals me with a smile and a gurgle. She makes the little things seem big and the big things seem not so huge. She heals family wounds like the ones between her Father’s Father and her Great Uncle. She gives exes common ground and a reason to smile and laugh without past anger and resentments. She is amazing. Such a tiny little thing yet such a huge part of our lives.

 

This Grandma gig isn’t so bad, I can’t remember why I was dreading it. And I’m counting my blessing and my special times with her before it’s time for her life to go on and mine to branch off. She’s an amazing child, I can’t imagine the world without her and we so have a few more firsts to share…it’s almost Easter time after all and then Baby’s First Yankee’s game

I know my writing’s rusty, I’ve been away from it for a bit so it’ll take me some time to regain my footing. please bear with me.

blocks and brick walls

 

 I’ve been in a writing slump. My words dried up and I had no way to find them. It’s a terrible feeling to have no words, to not know how to start them again. Thanks to some new friends at blog-catalog I think I’m ready to try again. I have been afraid to sit here and try to write, afraid of failure, afraid of never getting my words back again.

 

 

 

I asked my new friends to give me advice and they gave me some good stuff to start from: looking at photos, reading something new, updating old blog entries, all good ideas. But one idea sparked my interest and made me think. I’m not sure he intended it to be a real idea but it got my hamster (named Brian) running a little.

 

Memories of childhood. Not the ones I’ve already written about, memories of my mother’s cooking. I’m not sure how my brother and I made it to adulthood. My mother did her best to take us out with just about every meal she served. Undercooked chicken that set everyone but me to the hospital while we were camping in Colorado.  Casseroles involving spinach, bleu cheese, and ham mixed with cream of mushroom soup. Meatloaf consisting of ground meat, oatmeal, and ketchup on top, JELLO concoctions, ex: one involving kidney beans… that made a hangover worse than it needed to be. My mother invented some doozies. Her meals were the stuff of neighborhood legend. Other children compared their mealtime experiences to see who got the best worst meal from my mother’s kitchen. I think my father started getting jealous because he took over in the summer.

The man could over or under grill anything. His crowning moment was when he grilled pork chops and served them as mostly char with no visible meat showing when you cut into it. That takes some kind of talent. 

I know the Fitzmorris boys enjoyed their weekends at the lake with us. My parents cooking was grist for conversation even up until a few years ago. I bet if I called Mr or Mrs Fitzy today we’d end up laughing over old stories of meals their boys survived.

 

When I was a child I was embarrassed by it all, now I’m older, wiser, and much more amused. The fact that they are in Florida and I’m in New York probably plays into it just a little too.  My sons suggested that forcing them to eat at Grandma’s was the equivalent of child abuse but I remind them that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger so they should thank me.  We laugh about it now, it’s part of our memories and now that we no longer sup on toxic waste (mixed with JELLO of course) it doesn’t seem so bad.  When I was thinking about this last night it made me get off my lazy tush and dig through a box I’d just packed. I have that JELLO cookbook and I’m thinking it might be fun to close my eyes and pick a page and scare my boys a little. I’m not sure why my brother and I survived our childhood but it sure is fun remembering how we did.