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.