The Intersection

December 28, 2019

Yesterday several roads converged, as they are like to do. This intersection consisted of Brandy Harris, “Little Women,” and Don Imus. 

Let me explain.

In my glorious days at Parkview, I had the great fortune to meet, know, love, and also coach alongside Brandy Enver Harris. This young lady was a force of nature: she was brilliant, wise beyond her years, a performer beyond all measure of excellence, and dominated Humorous Interpretation. That means this gal could take a script and—in one body—become a host of hysterical, pee-in-your-pants characters. And here’s the thing: Brandy wasn’t even my student. She belonged to one of my best friends, who coached across town. But, man, did I love her. Later in her collegiate career I had one incredible year in which she assisted me and we coached together. Then she took over the program in which she had competed at Hillcrest and we duked it out, if that is what you call two dear friends leading the troops at competing schools with limited resources and hearts for kids. We had the best time. 

Brandy has since become a champion for kids in our community. She is a BIG DEAL. She texted me last Sunday when I was having a particularly bad day. We keep up with one another via the miracle of social media, but we hadn’t seen each other’s smiling faces in a couple years. She didn’t know how her text would pull me from the mire, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t. And we met yesterday for a marathon lunch during which my faith in humanity was restored and my admiration for all things this giant in the land of taking care of the kids who need it most was elevated to new heights.

Following this glistening lunch, I had a date planned with another unique beauty: my daughter and I went to see “Little Women.” I read this novel in 8th grade and reported on it at length for Mrs. Kretschmar at Pershing in 1988. I loved the Winona Ryder version 25+ years ago. And I found this new offering elegant and soul-churning. Of course, it takes little more than female empowerment and care and a dead sister and strong mother to send me into self-searching, warm-tears-down-the-cheek-deluge. It was beautiful. Gracie agreed.

But at the closing credits, I switched my phone alive to discover that Don Imus was dead. Let me explain: politics and controversy aside, this man could interview like no other. Until his 2018 retirement, I would wade through the irritants that might swirl about him to find insight and interest in the news of the day. When my babies were babies and I had to drag a little transistor radio along in the bleak darkness of morning, I would run to the sound of Imus. He was crusty and brilliant and incredibly benevolent, even when he screwed up. He made me think. A lot. His guests made me think. And he died yesterday, at 79. I found myself taken aback at my grief.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. This I know. Yesterday was particularly vacuum-free. But I basked in the glow of moments that converged to make it a day worth remembering. So, to my Brandy and to friends in your life who remind you what matters and that time and space are not factors in the true closeness of the friendship; to all the Little Women whose wonder may or may not become the stuff of the cinema; and even to legends we may never meet but who play a daily role for decades in our understanding the universe: thank you. 

I don’t love the holidays. But this day, smack in the middle of holiday time, turned my head and my heart. We all need days like that. 

I certainly did.

The Encore

October 26, 2019

When I was in second grade, I had a special part playing the xylophone in a musical performance for the whole school.

When I was in second grade, I was in a new school, a new house, with a new stepmom and a host of concerns in my little bowl-cut adorned head.

I told my very busy father (also in a new job as leader of the SMS athletic department) the wrong time for the assembly at which I would play the xylophone. He was planning to bring my Nanny and Auntie Grace to watch me. (He did stuff like that: showing up on the playground to say goodbye before leaving for a trip; always being the one to take me to see Dr. Palcheff, the magical pediatrician; attending a parent-teacher conference in the same year when I wrote him a note in my disheveled desk saying “I know it’s a mess, Dad, but life is hard” to assuage his judgment of my housekeeping faults, which haunt me still.)

This time, though, I really blew it.

When my little class returned cross-legged to our spot on the cafeteria/gym floor after our big performance and the third and fourth graders had taken the stage, I looked over to see my Pops guiding my beloved grandmother (in her grey leather coat that I can still smell) and her sister in their matching wigs down the stairs into the cafeteria/gym. They had missed it. It was my fault. I buried my bowl cut in my hands.

I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t think I cried. Maybe I did. I do know that I just wanted to vanish and that we returned to Mrs. White’s classroom, and we hadn't been seated for long when we were ushered back to our places in the cafeteria/gym and reprised our performance for an audience of three.

That little 8-year-old with the unibrow and the bad hair is still in the mix, as is the memory of the day that was saved. Sometimes, you just need one more shot with the xylophone; and someone who sees the need for the encore.

Pendulum Swinger

July 7, 2019

I never cease to be amazed at the dizzying whir of timing: for every win there is a loss? Eh, perhaps. Sometimes there is a season of winning followed by a drought, or visa versa. Regardless, the great impossibility of and need for balance is the theme of my little life. I was reminded of it when watching Bohemian Rhapsody again today. Freddie Mercury is faced with his immense talent and success and his internal personal turmoil (paradox, anyone?). When the lady who loves him asks, “what do you want from me?” He answers, “almost everything.”

And there it is. Everything. Almost.

When I was coaching debate, we were riding home one year from the state tournament with a couple state championships, two or three state runners-up, and more successes that now I can’t recount. It was an embarrassment of riches (Candice Bergen's words describing her jillionth Emmy. I was just a teensy debate coach, but I’ll borrow from one of my famous muse’s musings, thank you). As we soldiered home from MU, I remember thinking “what have I done to deserve this? I am so blessed!” Days later, I discovered that some of my favorites had engaged in some tomfoolery on that trip—on my watch—that got us all into trouble. I asked myself then, “what have I done to deserve this? I can’t win!” My heart was broken by the pendulum’s swing from pride to destruction. 

And that’s life. That is its blessing and brutality.

The risk is never allowing yourself to enjoy the wonders for fear of the axe’s inevitable strike. As I venture forward these days, I’m finding there is little point in throwing up preemptive defenses against the blows. Rather, if I maximize the joy, the lows are easier to bear. I didn’t latch onto that in my youth, or my 20s or 30s. But times, they are a changin’.

Last night I hosted a birthday bash for my bestie. I had the house cleaned up and presentable after a week of good but busy stuff. The party was a hoot, and in the midst of it, friends helped me discover a water leak that I would have been even slower to understand without their help. The leak has subsequently destroyed my kitchen. As the horror of its demise unfolded all day today in the hands of professionals, John Mulaney’s words describing his rectal exam when he feigned a prostate problem just to get some Xanax for a flight, rang in my ears: “this might as well happen.”

So today, whether I rejoice with the US women’s soccer victory or cry at horrors at the borders; whether I mourn a loss or rejoice in the whir of fans that dry my baseboards, I hear life asking, “what do you want from me?”

Almost everything. 

And that will have to do.

14

April 20, 2019

There is a man in my kitchen.

I’m taking my morning swig of ice cold Diet Coke, bleary eyed, opening the blinds, when a man’s voice startles me from the doorway. I jump. Drew just laughs.

All he said was good morning.

But last night he sounded like a boy, didn’t he? Wasn’t he a foot shorter then? Now he sounds like he should have a Marlboro hanging out of his mouth and a cup of coffee in his hand as he looks DOWN at me from this new, overnight height.

He shares his sister’s intelligence and has a capacity for math that must come from reading box scores and ESPN crawlers since infancy.

Like his Papa, he bleeds maroon, and has spoken the language of athletics since his speaking began.  He was four years old and not yet literate when he was recounting scores on television to a family friend.  “You know, I can’t read,” he said nonchalantly, his blue eyes sparkling. He wasn’t much older when attending a press conference after a Bears game and then MSU coach Cuonzo Martin asked if there were any more questions.  Unflinching, the young, budding sports reporter raised his hand.  All heads turned as Drew, who may or may not have even been in grade school yet, asked his question. It was legit. Around that same time, a little pal of his was beside him at the kitchen counter when Drew was flipping through the channels.  SpongeBob appeared on the screen, and Drew’s friend quickly informed him he wasn’t allowed to watch SpongeBob (incidentally, one of Drew’s first words was “SpongePants,” which speaks to my stellar parenting skills).  Without missing a beat, Drew soldiered on through the channels, asking, “Can you watch the St. Louis Cardinals?”

But it’s his heart that makes mine swell most: it is an expanse of sensitivity and compassion that is and always has been uniquely Drew. Even when his room looks like a crime scene, or when he is meeting every obligation of school and intense competitive baseball, or he binge watches Netflix in his few spare moments, he is an absolute champ.

He will get bigger—physically, emotionally, intellectually. And hurrah for that! But today, on his 14^th birthday, with his deep voice, looming stature, and big grin, he’s still my boy.  

Happy Birthday, Drew!  

At School

At School

2.20.19

I was in second grade when I asked my dad the big question.  He had just come home from work and was taking off his tie when little bowl-cut-sporting, brown-eyed me asked, “is F*ck a bad word?” Dad’s eyes bulged out of his head a little.  Not because he hadn’t heard it before, but because he didn’t expect to hear it coming from his little bowl-cut-sporting, brown-eyed me, standing in the burnt-orange living room on Rosebrier at the end of his workday.

“Yes it is.  Where did you hear that?”

“At school,” I replied.

Granted, it wasn’t Mrs. White who said it (although she did point to the chalkboard with her middle finger, but it was an innocent gesture. She wasn’t flipping us off, or the alphabet.) I was calmly encouraged not to say it again or throw it around like diamonds. That was the end of it.

I was in 2^nd or 3^rd grade, walking down the sidewalk in front of the school, when I saw what I thought was a balloon on the sidewalk.  My class’s equivalent of Dennis the Menace or that red-haired bully in “A Christmas Story” encouraged me to pick it up. I did.  When the nearby bus erupted with laughter I immediately threw it down and ran like hell.  I didn’t say I was smart or worldly.  Nope!  But I did touch a condom for the first time on that fateful day while my classmates howled.

It was probably in 3^rd grade when I barricaded myself in the school bathroom stall to learn all about menstrual cycles from Judy Blume’s Are You There God, it’s Me Margaret.

And I was an adult hauling a charter bus full of high school debaters home from St. Louis when the bus broke down on I-44 around 1am and we had to unload the entire contents of said bus on the side of the interstate and wait for another bus to come fetch us.  During that time, one girl in the back of the bus flashed her boobies and another boy mooned the lot of those awake or not freezing with me on the side of the road.

Stuff happens at school.  My dad didn’t storm the school demanding justice for his little angel; and I may have scrubbed my hands furiously after my brush with the “balloon.” They didn’t strip the bathroom of stall doors because the female reproductive system and I made a literary match of understanding therein. And charter busses weren’t banned because of some stupid T & A on I-44. (The culprits were punished Monday morning after my interrogations by bus headlights in the wee hours, by the way, and thank you very much.)

Dangers abound. Knowledge is out there. I don’t mean to trivialize the daunting task of protecting little Johnny and Trixie on the school grounds—from sidewalks, to hallways, to bathrooms, to busses, to ChromeBooks.  There are ways to address issues, and I don’t have all the answers. 

But I do know this:  I learned a lot at school.  I learned that some people have more than I do and some have less.  I learned that some are mean (myself included) and some are unfailingly kind. I learned how to think, write, debate, deal with people, consider opposing views, play B team second string, make a Best Choice wedding cake with Tammy, sing with Tiff, trade crappy lunch food for Leslie’s Star Crunch and do just well enough in Algebra to get a Jolly Rancher from Mrs. Wherry.  I learned that a big gold barrette and corduroy walking shorts with matching tights won’t get you a date but hard work and some pluck will get you a life.

I learned a lot at school. Schools of Springtown? Thanks.  I will support you forever.

Truth and the Doc

Truth and the Doc

February 16, 2019

I was asked recently if everything is all right, because I’ve been absent from blog land.  I doubt anyone has been marking the days since my last offering on their Big Ships of the Navy calendar, but the mood has struck.  And yes, everything is more than all right, thank you very much.

In the late night and early morning I watched two documentaries.  I am an addict of true stories delivered by Amazon, Netflix, Hulu and the like. Lately I’ve been on a steady diet of crime shows, but the kids are gone this weekend and I get spooked hoping I don’t wind up on “Forensic Files” with posthumous testimonials from friends who embellish the truth about me to tell the tale. You know, “she was the kind of girl who just lit up the room!” Yeah, right. And I will admit that I did watch “The Ted Bundy Tapes” in the car in the dark in a sketchier we-could-be-filming-“The-First-48”-part-of-town while waiting for Drew to get out of indoor baseball practice a week or two ago, but I digress.

The first doc was the story of two columnists.  The second was the story of a neighbor.  The tales couldn’t be more different, the men more different.  But in the wee light on this icy morning, under a pile of covers, I found myself confronted with impactful lives divergent but true.

Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hammill were voices of New York and beyond in a time when writing was in print, newsmen worked the streets, and columns cut a swath undiluted.  The 24-hour news cycle had not yet emerged to drown quality with quantity, and the art of the written word was ingested with regularity in subways and on city streets.  The styles of Breslin and Hammill were different, but they saw things. Through their lens readers saw them, as well. Agree or don’t agree with what shone through the glass. So be it.

Fred Rogers was a staple of my brief time as a child, before Dallas and Days of our Lives and all other manner of distractions swooped in when they perhaps should have waited a bit or never swooped at all.  This was a kind man who saw children as valid. He spoke to them with dignity.  It is a big world, he observed.  He was a guide. He believed that one of the greatest mistakes we make when we grow up is that we expect children to be grown up; and we forget what it is like to be small in this big world. 

Believe it or not, a common thread runs through the lives of these three fellas, and don’t think for a second it was a fluke that I viewed these documentaries in close succession.  It may be in 2019 in the middle of the night, it may have been in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s while riding the subway or by watching the trolley scoot through the neighborhood, but they had truths to tell.

Of course, so does forensic evidence, I suppose.  Hmmm…where is the remote?