Tale of Two Football Moms

S'cuse the language, y'all, but sh** got real a few weeks back. 

For the very first time, my first-born, precious, smart, sweet, kind-hearted, sensitive son suited up.

Not for church. Or a wedding.

But for football.

Yes, tackle football.

Helmet, pads, mouth guard, back plate, cleats.  All of it.

Ever since, it's been the Tale of Two Moms playing out on the gridiron inside my own brain.

"YES, yes, YESSSSSSSSS, that's my son!" screams Mom #1, as he rushes the ball 40+ yards down the field.

"NO, no, NOOOOOOO, don't touch my boy!  Get off him.  YOU'RE GONNA HURT HIM!" from Mom #2.

One part of me rationalizes this decision to let him play.  They get hurt in basketball and soccer too.
But then again, they're not deliberately shoving each other down in those sports either.

Then, his coach tells me how he proves himself a strong player every day at practice, bringing his "A" game and setting a good example.  And the mama bear in me is so proud.  But then, I watch as two fellow players suffer a broken arm and a broken leg, respectively, at this week's junior varsity and varsity games. 

I watch as their "team" takes shape, all suffering when one players is in trouble; celebrating triumph upon a win.  I hear their nicknames, "J-Boogie," for my young son, "Sunny D," for one of his very best friends. Mom #1 beams, amazed at the power of their combined effort and their pride. 

Then, Mom #2 screams, what are you doing here????   Have you not read the studies????  I mean, his brain is rapidly developing.  He turns 12 in a couple months.  It seems pretty basic that he shouldn't be banging heads with other kids the same age, right?  Concussions, CTE, vulnerability to brain conditions, Google goes on and on and on.

How do I reconcile these two voices?  The one that knows the risk, with the one who lets him play anyway, even cheering from the sidelines when he's on the field?

I will share a few personal notes.

First, his father and I did NOT let him play until now.  We looked into flag football, but we quickly saw the boys tackling anyway, and we screamed a resounding, "no."  But over time, our son asked repeatedly for a chance to play.  He wanted to try it.  We also noticed his love for the sport, as he watched college and professional athletes, ad nauseum, often researching plays and players, spouting off facts that few people could ever remember.    
 
Second, my father played as a rookie for the Oakland Raiders in the early 1970s. I know he took hits and back then, pads and helmets weren't what they are today.  He struggled later in his life.  Whether or not football was a factor, we will never know (a topic I may or may not blog about here one day soon, if you'd like to hear more).  Also, one of my uncles played college football, and another uncle was an NFL draft pick, but instead chose medical school. A family of football players AND brains, adding more to this very intimate struggle.

Ultimately, it's my son's path to navigate.   And you don't need me to tell you, life is risk.  A coin toss.  As parents we simply do everything we can.  But we can't control everything.  At this stage, I know he is learning proper technique, is engaging on a level of greater intensity and higher physicality.  Equipment technology is improving at an incredible pace.  Tackle football tightens the bond between teammates. 

For these reasons right now, I'm ok with the decision to let him play.  But if something happens, I reserve the right to change my mind.  Because isn't that what we, as parents, do?  The best we can for our children, until we know better?

In the meantime, Mom #1 will be in the stands Saturday morning, screaming BIG, for her beloved #25 to play his heart out.

Gold

The smell immediately takes me back.

The smell, the sounds, the sunsets...

Leathery saddles and intricate, tattered bridles, oiled with the sweat and scent of horses.  Hay and freshly cut grass, the dusty barn.  The subtle bray when they see us coming to ride or feed them.  The cows pounding the dirt, quickly running from us.  Ponds with water lilies atop and catfish below.   The wild fright that consumes me at night, backed up to a stunning national forest, listening to the coyotes howl, knowing snakes, bears, wildlife surround.  The orange-pink sky when the sun goes down behind the mountain.

 

Every. Summer. Of.  My.  Childhood.

 

It's money.  Not the kind you can spend, but gold for the soul.

 

But the golden sun is setting for the last time on something that's been a part of my life since I was 6 years old.

It's been looming, it was absolutely expected, and it is an incredibly natural part of life.

But I guess I’ve been ignoring all that, because I was in no way prepared. In fact, it was a slap in the face when mom called a few months ago.

 

All she said was, “the ranch sold.”

...the ranch sold...

Prickly pins began sticking the backs of my eyes.  So. Hard.

...but you knew it was coming...

Lump in throat.

...it’s been for sale for years, ever since Pops died...

"How much longer do we have it?" I asked.

"Until The first part of August, so this’ll be our last summer," she replied.

 

I hung up and felt sick to my stomach, like someone had died.  That same heartache, loss.  The flood of memories.

 

I know, I know, it's land, for God's sake.  But it's land where I was raised, land my grandparents made home until their deaths.  Land that's served as the axis of my being throughout my entire life.  Gold for my soul.  The place I'd go to forget heartache.  The place I knew I would always find unconditional, unwavering, adoring love.  Where a joke greeted me every time and laughter took over the minute I walked through the door.  Where tears were safely shed and wiped away, where shenanigans and tomfoolery took over almost immediately.  Where the biggest stressor was figuring out who would be the next victim of a prank

 

I'm not sure how you say goodbye to 40 years of that.  But I'm doing it as I type here.  I've been doing it all summer.   

Recalling all the rides with my grandfather on my horse Rebel's back...

 

 The time I "ran away" because I was mad at all the adults...

Remembering every Christmas when Santa Claus showed up without fail...



Thinking of when we caught the "big one" at the far pond...

 

Of photos my grandmother took whenever she bought me new clothes...

 All the times I helped rake and make hay every summer...

Recalling my very first dance with my Papa Gene, while my Grandma Joyce played her organ...

 

He always told me to go out into the world and "do good work."  And I did.

I ended up back in Arkansas, with that old "Ranch," an hour and fifty minutes west of Little Rock in the heart of the Ouachita National Forest, still there.  Except this time, it was my children walking on that land. 

My Papa Gene cradling my baby boy and baby girl in his kitchen and his favorite rocking chair.

 

My babies growing up feeding the horses, fishing the ponds, climbing fences.

 We've celebrated birthdays on the land.

We've hiked the forest.

 

And just last week, we said a final farewell to the old GJ Ranch.  The children don't really understand.  Since my grandparents died, it belongs to my mom's generation (she has 6 siblings, most of whom live out-of-state).  Maintenance of the large acreage is massive, and since no one lives there, upkeep would cost money.

"Why does there have to even be money, mom?" my son asked.  "Why can't everyone just have everything they want and need without it?"

Good question.

I have no great answer.  But I did explain to him that this land gave us gifts that money can't buy.  Gold for the soul. 

The cycle of life.  Endings, new beginnings.  Seeing -and being grateful for- the fact that everything that comes, goes.  All which rises, falls. 

And now, for me, a chance to give my children what was given to me.  A safe and precious place, where the love is unconditional, where the laughter is loud.  A place where it's safe to shed tears that are quickly wiped, where jokes are played.  A place that serves as the axis of their lives. 

As I took these last photos, I soaked in -for the last time- the musty smell of the barn, of horse sweat and leather saddles, the overgrown, grassy fields, the coyotes talking, that very last sunset.  And I couldn't help but think of one word:  gold

     

 

 

Father’s Day

I am soooo loving all these Father’s Day photos I’m seeing today on social media! So many of them are from way back when. It makes me think that for a lot of us this day brings back a lot of memories and makes us quite nostalgic. 

In my case, I don’t have a lot of memories. (Dear LAWD this isn’t meant to be a sad post! Just an attempt to share a story of mine that we all may know we aren’t alone). My father died suddenly when I was 23.  But even before that, I didn’t know him well.  Friends, this has typically been a part of my life I rarely discuss. Mainly because I didn’t know what to say or think, it made me uncomfortable, I feared others’ judgement about it all, and I just generally felt it was no one’s business. 

But maturity, along with countless great stories told to me about him, changed my perspective entirely.  Not just that, but old pictures I saw, and then, as I began to meet others, specifically, foster parents and children up for adoption, plus other friends in similar shoes, I felt like there might just be value in transparency. 

My father’s name was Daniel, the third child of five. His parents survived the Great Depression and lived in the midwest. They were both steadfast and traditional in the way they raised their children, five little ones who all grew up to be stunningly beautiful and talented each in their own ways. In my father’s case, his talent was football. He played in college at a small private school, and was picked up in the early 1970s by the Oakland Raiders. 

He and my mom met when they were in their early 20s and had me right away. His mother told me once that she had never seen him as happy as when he held me as a baby. 

Trying to piece together his time in northern California is sketchy at best. He was with the Raiders for a season or two, then was cut. Mind you, the early 70s in that part of the nation was hippie and psychedelic, in every way. Mom claims he came home”different” and suspected drugs, but no one could ever confirm. He just seemed off in some way, and she believed he was using heavy drugs. Clearly, that doesn’t do much for a young, struggling couple with a small child, and they divorced. From then on, throughout my childhood, he sent letters to Arkansas (where we moved) from Iowa, and he came to visit a few times, but beyond that, there wasn’t a lot more contact. As a child, it always felt awkward around him, but I could never get explain why. 

I remained close with his mothers d his three sisters. She sewed clothes for me, constantly wrote me letters, and called often. My mom’s father watched what was happening from afar, and without ever being asked, stepped into my life at every single turn.  My Papa Gene was there for me in ways I have a hard time putting into words. You know, it’s a feeling really. Like a deep knowing that someone has your back, someone cares, someone is watching so that if you happen to fall, you know they’ll be there to get you back up and get you on your way.  Of course, at the time, a child doesn’t think about these things. They just know who’s there. And who’s not. 

When I was a teenager, my father’s parents came to Arkansas to tell us that they believed my father had significant mental issues and was being treated, and thus, we wouldn’t be hearing from him for awhile. Well, I hadn’t heard a lot from him anyway. We got in the car and mom said, “I hope the doctors know what kind of drugs he’s on. I’m not convinced it’s not still drugs.” It felt like too much for me to process.

At that point, I learned to just stuff it. Shove it under the rug. Everyone else had a dad around to take them to the lake, escort them at Homecoming, take pictures at prom. For me, it was ALWAYS my Pops, my Papa Gene. 

When I graduated high school and then college, Pops was there. When I got my first TV job, he came to help me get settled. Strangely, the only TV offer I got came from a station in Sioux City, Iowa. The very place my father STILL lived with his mom. 

My grandmother and I saw each other often. She desperately wanted my father and I to have a relationship, so she would cook dinner and have me over. The awkwardness never went away, though. And it was there, in Iowa, I got the phone call at my desk in the newsroom. My father had passed, and I needed to get to my grandmother’s right away. 

He ended up having a massive heart attack. We laid him to rest, and I recall it all being  dreamlike and surreal now that I look back.  That God placed me there, in that city, during that time, at that exact moment, to see the end of his life here on earth. A curse? Or a blessing? 

This Father’s Day, I believe it was a blessing. A holy, spiritual moment, that his time was up, and I was there. I type through tears, because what I would give right now, this moment, for a candid, real conversation with him.  To ask everything I never got to. For him to meet his grandchildren. For it all to be “normal.” But what is “normal” anyway?

I harbor no resentment anymore, no feelings of “abandonment” that I understand so well through my work with foster children. I know that deep down, he adored and loved me, but something about this earthly life shut him down and left him unable to show me and others. I know the hurts and the heartbreak that life WILL yield to all of us. I just wish I knew what hurt him so deeply. 

I love him. And I am so thankful to him for getting me here to earth so that I can flourish and thrive and live and love! I know he’s watching every day. And so is my Pops. He died in 2009. He used to always encourage me to find solutions instead of complain about problems, and he said to me constantly, “to thine own self be true, my dear. That way you will never be false to another.” 

Great advice.  

This blog post is dedicated to every father out there fathering, every grandfather doing the same, mothers who are both mom and dad, men who step in to father whenever needed, and to the fatherless, who might feel little hope.  Know that angels are watching over you. 

xoxo

Do Ticks Have Wings?

It's been awhile, y'all. Thanks for all your love, support, and for repeatedly telling me to just "get on here and write from your heart!"  I apologize you had to wait more than a year for this. 

CONFESSION:  I've sat here so many times, typed out paragraphs, then deleted it all and just said, "forget it." It's that self-critical voice deep in my head, lying to me and saying, "no one really cares what you have to say," Or, "oh they'll just judge you if you write honestly about that." Or, "why bother? Everyone struggles, I'm no different; nothing special here."

And y'all, when that last thought came up, about how everyone struggles, I realized that's the exact reason I need to get on here and type.  Words and stories unite us, make us feel like we're not alone.  Make us see that both good and bad happen to all of us.  Grief and loss, love and light, goodness and peace, hurts and mistakes, along with forgiveness and faith are universal emotions and experiences.  None of us is immune.  None of us gets a free pass from even one of these occasions.

Soooooooooooooooooooo...  Off my pontificating for a moment.  On to last night's "girls night."

Not to worry.  It wasn't a cray-cray, 40-something momma's night out with friends (when does that ever happen?!).  My baby girl and I were afforded the rare chance for dinner and dessert, just the two of us.  My boy is at camp, so she is reveling in my full attention this week!

We were taking some selfies and started looking through pictures on my iPhone, when she ran across one of her daddy and I when we were in our 20s (her father and I have been divorced for years, as catalogued here in a previous post).  A funny look came across her face, and I asked why.  She said, "I just can't see you two together!"  Not in a bad way.  In fact, she kind of chuckled.  Then, she set the phone down and said, "but I'm glad you're good friends now!"  It's true.  Her daddy and I are dear friends, indeed.  The way we both ended up seeing it was, you can't spend two decades around another human being, share children, and then just erase history. 

I could tell that my baby girl was in "listening mode."  You know, those moments where you can just see that your child is ripe and ready to hear exactly what you have to say?  I took full advantage, and I said, "you know, honey, people come together in life for all different reasons.  To love.  To learn. To grow."

She was really listening.

I went on.  "Your dad and I believe wholeheartedly that we were brought together so that God could put you and your brother here on earth." (And I do believe this myself).

She looked at me, and I fully thought she was going to ask a profound question or make a big-time comment about what I'd just said. 

Instead, she said, "Mom.  Do ticks have wings?" 😂

I burst into laughter.  Then she started laughing.  We both ended up laughing so hard that our tummies hurt!  

She wanted to know because a bug landed on her earlier in the day that looked like a tick, but then it flew away. 

I realized at that moment to enjoy and savor every second she will give me right now.  To worry less about "staunch" discipline, what the parenting books say, and simply teach love and to recognize the true gift of being present with your children.  Because if I know anything in life, it's that the only constant is change.  And very soon, she will be way more into her friends than a night out with her momma. 

Everyone has an opinion about how you should raise your children.  Most of the time, they aren't afraid to tell you about it.   I don't really care anymore what "they" think.  I hope you don't either.  I know that a whole lotta love, a whole lotta listening, a whole lotta "being there," and a whole lot of talking and understanding are working in our favor right now. 

I know that each of you is having your own life experience right now.  Back to where I started:  we are all struggling with something, and this little blog post is my way of saying you are NOT alone.  I hope you know I'm sending prayers and love to each of you on your precious way! 

Promise it won't be another year before I post... 

xoxo

My and my girl on our night out!

"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth..." ~ Kahlil Gibran