Category: Family

baseball, Family, parenting, Women, Women Worth Knowing

But She’s Just a Girl

the outside lane

My mom and I were watching Thor’s batting practice tonight.  As always, she was watching the coach with one eye, and Thor with the other, muttering praise, or worry as the coach did this, or that.  With most mothers, that would be some armchair quarterbacking, but with mine?  Mine knows her baseball from the inside out.  My mom played baseball for years.

She was squinting at how Thor was standing and I asked, “Which team was it that came and scouted you?”

“The Cardinals,” she said.  “St. Louis.”  That turned her around in my direction.

“I always get that wrong,” I said.  “I always think it was one of the sock teams And tell me again how they found you?”

“My coach.  Coach Ball.  He was talking about Jo Young, telling them how good this Joe Young was, and they thought he was talking about a boy.”  Now she was squinting at me.

I smiled at her.  “And tell me what the scout said.”

“He said I was amazing.  He told my coach that everything he said about me was true, and I was one of the best they’d seen.”

“But you couldn’t play.”

“No.  I couldn’t.  He said, ‘She’s everything you said, but she’s just a girl.'”

I have zero body intelligence, as we’ve discussed before.  I can barely do yoga.  So, the idea that I might not ever be allowed to play sports professionally has never bothered me.  I don’t care that I can’t play baseball professionally because I have XX chromosomes because I can’t play baseball anyway.  You would have to Bionic Woman me to even get me on a playing field with the AAA rookies.  But what if someone told me I couldn’t write professionally because of my sex?  The level of devastation would be overwhelming.  If you’re good enough, what’s your junk got to do with it?  Why should your gender stand in the way of your earning power?  And I say earning power because ARod makes a helluva lot more money than Crystl Bustos.  Who?  Exactly.

At dinner I asked my mom, “How did it feel to know that you had the same, or better ability than some men, but weren’t going to have the same opportunity to make a living doing something you loved?  That you weren’t going to have the same opportunity to create wealth for yourself doing something you were born with a natural ability to do?”

She shook her head, “It was hard.  It was always hard.”

How different, how much better, how much more fulfilling could my mother’s life have been, had she been afforded the opportunity to play professional ball?

I told her I wanted to do a video interview for the blog.  She squinted at me some more, then cocked her head to the left.  She said, “All right.” And went back to her dinner.

Thor went home with her, where he’ll be practicing the drills the coach gave him to do.  No one better to show him the way than the Mighty Jo Young.

18870_108291952519991_7387379_n

A Day in the Life, Beauty, Explaining the Strange Behavior, Family, Friends of Mine

It Girl

the outside lane

I can’t sleep.  Part of it is the snoring that was coming from beside me, and part of it was the coughing coming from the other room, and part of it was good old fashioned insomnia.  I tried to entertain myself with fantasies of being on the X Factor.  I can usually tell myself stories to sleep–generally, I would zonk out halfway through my audition fantasy, but tonight I made it all the way up to my Top 3 song choice before giving up and getting out of bed.  By the way, my Top 3 consisted of a really hot girl who sang like Whitney Houston, and a cutie patootie boy band.  I was eliminated in that round, but not before Simon Cowell said I was his favorite contestant ever, and had a hissy fit that I’d been voted out.

So, I looked down tonight, after I’d gotten into my pajamas, and I thought, “Good lord!  My boobs used to be a lot higher!  When did they fall down there?!”  You would think that having read and/or listened to so many women talk about the changes time and gravity bring, I would have internalized some expectation of it.  Not so.  Time and Gravity continue to be startling shocks to my system.  I know where things were.  I know where I think things should still be.  Joke’s on me.  They ain’t there no more.

Lately, I am coming to realize I need reading glasses, too.  My optometrist has been telling me this was coming.  The past few eye exams, the doctor has said something like, “After 40, vision changes rapidly, and you may find yourself needing reading glasses.”  I guess I thought I was special, or impervious, but the other day a client loaned me her readers “just to see” and it was like–  Well, it was like I need reading glasses.  I’ll have to find a chic pair so that my transformation into Little Old Lady isn’t quite so sudden.

I’m not complaining about aging.  I am enjoying my age.  I wouldn’t turn back time at all.  I like where I am, who I am, and who I have around me.  The little niggling changes are all worth the exchange.  I don’t like the wrinkles, but I really don’t mind the wrinkles either.  Some of the people I love most in the world have a whole lot of them, and it doesn’t change how I feel for them one bit.  The people who love me feel the same way.

Isn’t that lucky?  I think it is.  I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by, and loved by people who see past my flaws.

I feel about bodies, the way I feel about houses.  Curb appeal only really matters if a) you intend to sit outside in your front yard a lot, or b) you’re trying to make a sale.  Of course you want your exterior to be in good shape, and as attractive as is feasible to maintain because the health of the exterior is what protects the health of your interior, but it’s what you find past the front door that makes a house a home.  How comfortable are you inside?  How good does it feel to just kick back and relax?  How happy are you when it’s just you and the clock ticking?

I’m pretty happy.  Happy enough to get myself through to the Top 3 on X Factor!

It's been a few years since I've hit the stage, but I still plan performances.
It’s been a few years since I’ve hit the stage, but I still plan performances.

 

 

A Day in the Life, Explaining the Strange Behavior, Family

Teen Angst

the outside lane

You know, there are a thousand little indignities suffered by teens every day.  It is a testament to the will to survive that so many of them DO make it to graduate from high school.  They deserve more than diplomas.  They deserve medals.

I don’t know what made me think of it, but I remembered this horrible span of about 6 weeks out of my Senior year (during which I hid in various places around the school–or off campus, but you didn’t just see that, Dad–during the lunch hour because I was dodging the well-orchestrated vendetta of a boy I had dated briefly.) and thought, “Not for the faint of heart.”  Teenagers are such twits.  I was a twit anyway.

I’ve said before that whenever I run into someone I knew between ages 15 and 23, I feel like the first thing I need to do is apologize for having been that age.  I was awfully sanctimonious and eye-rolly.  How do high school and undergraduate professors manage all those horrible children?

(Side note, has anyone else ever noticed that the guitar riff from Under my Thumb sounds a lot like the bassline to Bang a Gong?  That would make a great mash-up.  Someone do this for me, please.)

A friend of mine was talking about one of her teenaged rituals of watching a specific video documentary every day, and said this: “[It] would make me cry sometimes.  It was just so intense and pure and even though I couldn’t really process it with [my] little brain, I knew in my bones that was what life was really about: getting out there and doing something.  So I’d just cry [because] I didn’t know what else to do as a teenage girl.”

I think that sums up the teenage experience beautifully.  These kids know in their bones that there is a life out there for them, but the slow reveal of adventure and adulthood is always just beyond their grasp.  It is frustrating, and it is a deep, pure anguish of desire–they can’t put their hands on it, and they can’t quite understand what it is they are trying to grab hold of.  So they act like teenagers.  What else is there for them to do?

1989. Boom Pa and me. I was a teenaged turkey.
Explaining the Strange Behavior, Family, Friends of Mine, parenting, Thor

What Kind of Pizza do You Like?

the outside lane

I see pizza a something of a perfect food.  You can eat it with your hands, or with utensils.  You can load it with veggies, with meats, with cheeses, with sauces of all variations and nutritional values.  It’s easy to cook.  It’s easy to serve.  And, as a bonus, most people really enjoy it.  Nothing in the world wrong with a pizza.

That said, I won’t touch one that has sausage on it.  I hate sausage.  I’m weird about meat, and if there is any potential for gristle, or fat, or anything that resembles where the meat comes from (like tendons, veins, you get the idea), I won’t eat it.  Sausage is a gristle fest.  So, no matter how good it smells, how much the gooey cheese makes my mouth water, I won’t touch it.  I don’t even want to pick the sausage off because inevitably there will be a little ball of it hidden somewhere under all that delicious cheese, and I will be the one to bite into it, and it will be a hidden ball of gristle, which will ruin the entire experience for me.  I just-say-no to sausage pizza.

One of my sweet friends called the other night, worried that her daughter was dealing with a pre-school mean girl.  Meangirl was taunting our Princess, saying she hated her, didn’t want to play with her because she didn’t like her, and (more worrisome, even though they are all 4 year olds) that she’d like to kill her.  She asked me if I would tell the Princess to confront and challenge the Meangirl, or if I would tell the Princess to try to come to some peaceful understanding with the Meangirl.  My advice was to tell that little Princess about pizza.

When Thor was about that age, he had a boy he wanted to play with, and that boy kept telling Thor he hated him and insisting that Thor go away.  When I was trying to figure out how to approach it, I wanted to do a few things:

  1. Explain to Thor that there was nothing wrong with him and help him maintain his self-esteem and self-confidence.
  2. Explain to Thor that other people have the right to avoid contact if they want to.

The first because he is my boy, and I want him to feel good about himself.  I want him to be able to make good choices in the future, and good choices start with healthy self-esteem.  The second because I never want to get a phone call saying that my son has forced himself on someone–get my drift?  So I’ve wanted him to understand that no-means-no from an early age.  He has the right to say no, and so does everyone else.  I talked to him about pizza.

We all like pizza, I told him, but we all like different flavors.  We laughed about my sausage issues, and how he hates veggies on his, but we agreed that any pizza is ultimately good pizza–just sometimes the toppings get in the way.  I said that people are like that.  We’re all good and worthwhile, but some of us have toppings that others of us don’t care for.  You can’t argue with taste.

I told him that if Little Johnny didn’t want to play with him, that was okay.  Little Johnny liked cheese pizza, and Thor was a pepperoni pizza.  I told him that he should leave Little Johnny alone, to stop trying to force him into friendship (or trying to change to be what Little Johnny wanted in a playmate), and to go find himself some people who are into pepperoni*.  And, I told him I bet if he left Little Johnny alone, Little Johnny might see that pepperoni pizza isn’t so bad, and maybe Little Johnny would want to come play later.

Imagine my surprise–and I’m being honest here–when that worked.

Imagine my surprise when I realized it worked for me, too.

In Dianne Brill’s book, Boobs, Boys, and High Heels, she talks about the art of creating the perfect social donut.  Everywhere you go, there are cliques, or donuts of people.  At the center of every donut is the social cream.  The idea is to make friends with the center of every donut so that you end up as the social cream of the most awesome donut in the place–and end up as friends of all the donut rings by proxy.  You can’t be that awesome donut cream if you are a follower, if you are easily led astray by peer pressure, or if you lack self-confidence.

I want Thor to always be confident in his worth as an individual, and not seek to find his validation through the approval of others.  That’s why it is important for him to understand that it is okay if someone else doesn’t like him**.  That’s normal.  That’s the world.  He doesn’t have to conform.  He doesn’t have to change.  All he has to be is respectful of other people, respectful of himself, and 100% Thor.  The same goes for that Princess.  All she needs to be is herself.  It’s okay if Bullygirl doesn’t like her–Meangirl probably just doesn’t think she likes pineapple on her pizza.

What kind of pizza are you? 

(I am a half cheese, half pepperoni with pineapples and green olives.)

 

*Note that this isn’t a situation where another child was actively seeking to hurt Thor.  It was just a kid who didn’t want to play with him, and only became vocal when Thor tried to insert himself.

**It’s okay if people don’t like you because you just aren’t their taste.  That is normal.  If you never meet anyone who likes you, then there might be a greater issue at hand. 

 

A Day in the Life, Beauty, Family, Health

How I Lost my Baby Weight!*

the outside lane

With so much attention focused on how quickly mothers can “lose their baby weight” (in scare quotes because…scary how obsessed the media is with how quickly celebrity moms can lose their baby weight?), and with my favorite “how quickly did this celebrity lose her baby weight” getting lots of publicity today (click the link, you’ll get a good laugh), I thought I would share the things that concerned me in Thor’s early days, weeks and months.  You know, the things that so many women are concerned with, when not being shouted at and called fat by the media for having dared to gestate a human being.

  1. My first and most oppressive concern was in getting the child fed.  We didn’t get the nursing thing down pat for several weeks, and I felt I had already failed as a woman by having been induced in a low-level emergency situation because I had planned an earth-mother (or water mother, actually, since I wanted to float around in a birthing tub), natural delivery.  Not being able to nurse him as easily as the lactation specialist seemed to think I should consumed me. 
  2. Right alongside feeding him, was the cost of feeding him.  Since he rejected (with a forceful stream of used formula, right across the room) the first few formulas we tried, we were told to buy one that many families (ours included) might find cost prohibitive.  Fortunately, we were only tied to that as a mainstay for a couple of weeks, then it was only as-needed to top off his tank.
  3. Was he breathing?  You ask any new mother which is a top concern: Her weight or whether or not the new baby is breathing.  You cannot know the number of times you feel the need to check just to be sure until you are responsible for one of those baby things.  It is insane.  You feel insane.  But you go check again anyway, because some experts tell you that if the baby is on his back and he barfs, he will choke and die.  Some experts tell you if the baby is on his stomach, he will smash his face into something soft, suffocate and die.  Some experts tell you that if the baby is in a crib with a bumper, he will die.  Some tell you that if the baby is–do you see where I am going?  Not even the experts can agree, so you go check again.
  4. The baby’s laundry is now ankle deep.
  5. Is he pooping?  If you have ever had a constipated baby…  He cried.  I cried.  None of us were happy.  And then I introduced the baby suppository.  Wow. 
  6. He won’t go to sleep!  When will he ever sleep?!  Something is wrong!
  7. He’s asleep…he’s been asleep too long!  Something is wrong!
  8. The baby’s laundry is now mid-calf deep.
  9. When can I take a shower?  Oh my word.  I can tell you that my proudest moment in Thor’s earliest days was when I managed to take a shower AND wash my hair in one go.
  10. Everything on you is leaking, and they don’t make pads for all of it. 
  11. Everything on the baby is leaking, and they don’t make pads for all of it.
  12. The baby’s laundry is now knee deep–you did laundry two hours ago.
  13. When do I eat?  When do I sleep?  Oh sure, they tell you to nap when the baby naps, but do you know how that works?  You get the baby to sleep and you see this:  The breast pump you haven’t had a moment to rinse yet, which you are going to need in half an hour.  The bottles that need to be washed and sterilized.  The diaper pail that needs changing.  The mess in the living room.  The mess in the kitchen (because you still have to feed the other members of your family, too.  Don’t forget that.)  The detritus from the baby’s bath.  Your own post-baby garbage that needs to be taken out (so incredibly gross).  Your own milk/poop/urine/barf/drool/food stained wardrobe (when Thor was 3, I lost my freaking mind over fingerprints on my Easter dress because I hadn’t had a stitch of clean, just clean clothing in three years.  I will never forget the look on B’s face as he steered the confused child away from the crazy lady.)  There are phone calls to return, emails to check, knocks at the door to answer.  If you can fall asleep after running through this mental list, good on you.  Because the baby will wake up just as soon as your breathing regulates.
  14. Laundry.  Oh my god, the laundry.
  15. I was consumed with worry about going back to work.  Forget about the pressure to be thin, I was dealing with the judgment of literal strangers, who felt perfectly justified in telling me that I was dooming my child to a life of delinquency and crime by shuffling him off to daycare so I could fulfill my selfish desires to keep a decent roof over his head.

I could keep going.  I could go all day.  And, while it is true that I was excited to drop enough baby weight to fit back into my pre-baby clothes, I didn’t give a stinky diaper what anyone else thought about it.  And I wore my maternity pants anyway.

If you are having a baby, or have recently had a baby, listen to me:  The only people who are worried about your size are the people who stand to benefit from it monetarily.  You spend your time loving that baby.  You spend your time taking care of yourself mentally because babies, whether you birth them, adopt them, have one dropped off on your doorstep by a stork, or are just watching them for an hour while their mothers try to get showers, are the most mentally and emotionally taxing challenges you will ever face, and you need to be good to you so that you have the wherewithal to be good to them.

Take all the (viable) help that is offered to you.  You need it.  Anyone who has ever stared at a newborn all night long, trying to suss out why it won’t stop crying KNOWS that you need the help.  Accept it gracious, gratefully, and go take that elusive nap.  Do not let anyone try to convince you that you need to spend your free time doing crunches (unless that is what you truly want to do.)  Anyone who does, slap them upside the head with that diaper pail bag.  Twice.

*I have no idea how I lost my baby weight.  It just happened.  I gained a total of 34lbs, and when I came out of the hospital, I’d lost half of that.  The other 15…I don’t know.  It just came off over the two months after Thor was born.  I cannot offer you a lick of help when it comes to weight loss. 

All I can offer you is this:  Even if I had never lost the weight, I had Thor, and that child…people.  That child is the light of my life.  I would weigh a thousand pounds, happily, if it meant his health and happiness.