Any of you that know my husband James might note in the first points of any description of him that he loves sports, I mean really loves sports. He would rather be watching an NBA basketball game than doing pretty much anything else in the world. And all other sports rank only slightly lower on his list of priorities. Give him a remote, he can find a sporting event. Leave him at home with the boys and our cable-less TV, he will stream the most interesting game available online. Give him a ball he will kick it. And give him an unknown person, he will find their unique sports passion so that he can talk to them about it- seriously.
And since the NBA playoffs are upon us (really the height of the height of his favorite thing), all conversations lead to some excited description of an elaborate play at the end of the game or a player's comments to some obscure journalist or a backwoods obsessive blogger's theory about the weaknesses of the triangle offense or the LA Times' most recent editorial about Kobe or...you get the idea. He is single minded.
For those of you who do not know my husband James particularly well, he is an excellent conversationalist. He finds not only your sports loyalties but your other passions as well. He can talk about urban development, tonka trucks or literary analysis of the modern American novel with equal candor and knowledge. He will find the subject that uniquely provides an overlap of interest.
Not so during the NBA playoffs. Or maybe its just me. Maybe he just feels the need to be polite to other people and talk about other things than the most important thing of all time, the Lakers playoff run. And so he comes home and just must talk to me about the burning questions of matchups and defensive strategy. Maybe he spends all of the alloted time and energy he has for other subjects at work. But around here, we are like a one man NBA TV-all basketball, all the time. And here is where my grievance with ESPN and really all sports media comes in. There are a number of bloggers and sports writers and pundits and hosts who love sports as much as James. They live sports. They know all the stats and subtleties of players and plays, they call coaches by their first names and refer to the playoffs of '88 or the obscure off season scrimmage between D-league rookies. They make podcasts with their other fanatic fan friends to talk about all sporting subjects. And in their broadcasted sports obsession, it validates James' personal sports obsession-he has camaraderie in this shared knowledge and passion. There are others who care as much as he does.
But there is a difference between James and them, a key, important difference. They get paid to know everything there is to know about sports. James does not. And when James knows as much as the people whose whole full time job is to know these things, well, it makes me wonder. Maybe James loves sports more than they do because he doesn't have to. Maybe these sports professionals with their intern researchers and their whole weekday schedule make it tough on us middle-american housewives whose husbands must read and know all that is offered. Maybe someone would pay James to spend his whole day loving sports. Maybe it's just May and the Lakers are in the playoffs.
Yes you read that right. I always thought that growing older and bringing children into the world might make me instantaneously more dependable, as if the hormones involved with childbirth might also bring about a sort of supernatural sense of parental weight-that I am now responsible for other human beings and so should be able to remember commitments and shot records and keep fruit cups in ready supply. Not so-in all of those examples actually.
I think I have come to terms with my youngest child-I'm pretty fun to be around-but don't count on me to make the reservations or arrive on time-kind of irresponsibility. And in most cases, I have surrounded myself with people (husband, friends, sisters, coworkers) who are generally more capable and so make up for my lack. But there are moments-and this week has been full of them-where I really cringe at my own space-cadet-ism. For instance:
At various points this week, both Henry and Finn have been down to two or less diapers and because the realization of this shortage came at inconvenient times (ie other child down for nap, in the middle of the night, generally feeling lazy, etc) instead of immediately running out to the store, I improvised other means. Not like swaddling them in a towel for days or anything but Henry has certainly worn finn's diapers once or twice in his life, cinched around his armpits for optimal fit and for Finn, we have dipped into the size six diapers that Bing accidentally bought, which I believe are large enough to fit most adults. Must work on keeping track of number of diapers left in package.
We are leaving on vacation this coming week and in an attempt to be responsible, I have been carefully avoiding perishable food that can sit in our refrigerator and rot while we are gone. However, it seems that this weaning process has taken its course a bit sooner than I expected and now, three whole days before we leave, we have bare cupboards and a fridge consisting of two containers of yogurt that stains Finn's lips a sort of frightening bright blue, a dribble of milk, a jug of iced coffee (not practical for children's consumption) and various kinds of cheese. Needless to say, yesterday in total exasperation at our food situation, we walked to Fred Meyer, bought corn dogs from the deli and ate them ravenously on the way to the playground across the street.
And the real clincher to my general reflective cringing came this past Monday when after napping the full amount of time that Finn would allow, I checked my e-mail and had a message from two dear friends with whom I was supposed to meet for lunch that said something like, "um well, we've been sitting at the agreed upon cafe for almost an hour and you aren't here. so I hope all is well and you just forgot..." The more awful thing is that these friends live far away, they have a 3 1/2 year-old son who I have not met-it has been so long since I have seen them. And I really care what they think of me. They are intelligent, caring people who I owe quite a bit of academic and spiritual clarity to. And I stood them up because I forgot and I took a nap.
This all, in combination, has made me feel quite bad about myself this week. I keep picturing Finn's friends' mothers in kindergarten issuing bans on my involvement in the PTA or carpools because I have been known to leave children waiting on the sidewalk at school for a number of hours or harriedly dumping chips ahoy on a plate for the bake sale. But the one consolation I can find is that I do manage to keep my children alive-pretty successfully actually. They mostly eat well and healthily with an occasional corndog, they are usually clean unless they have recently rolled around in mulch at the playground or eaten strawberries. And they seem happy. Really. I mean you should see them. If you didn't know me, you might think I am doing quite swimmingly. And while I am actively working on being more dependable (I see an elaborate internet calendar in my future that sends reminders through every technological method available), I think this sort of spaciness comes with the package. You might not like me quite so much if my datebook and I were better friends. I might give you a dirty look when you showed up late for our coffee date. As it is, you will always beat me there, always have well portioned snacks in your bag for your antsy children, and you will probably have to spot me a ten once in a while when I realize I left my debit card in the back pocket of my other jeans. I'm working on it; I'm not there yet.
I really meant well when I said that I would post on a regular basis, chronicling the moments in my stay-at-home-mom-ing life that are worth remembering, for my sake as much as for the people that read this blog. But for as many moments in a day that are worth telling, there are usually more harried, forgettable moments that keep me from meditating on those lovely worthy ones. So the last couple of weeks has been full of both types and I have written little. Here's my attempt to make up for it.
We flew to Arizona last weekend for an extended visit with Rohl family and friends who mostly mass-emigrated from California for the affordable real estate in the Phoenix area. Because this group of people have known James since junior high or longer and because we make it to Arizona so infrequently, everyone wanted to see us. So every meal, basketball game and shopping outing involved about 30 people and what seemed like 9,000 children. Compared to my relatively solitary life in Portland with the boys where the weekly trip to the grocery store constitutes the majority of our social interaction, all these people were a bit overwhelming. Once I realized that all talents of extroversion and adaptability were going to be required for this vacation, I really had a great time. I also got to see James and the boys in a different context than I am used to. For instance:
Finn is a natural born leader and seems to be perfectly content on 5 or 6 snatched hours of sleep in car-seats, various pack and plays and leaning on Bing's chest on the airplane. He dashed around Kyle and Melissa's house with Hayley yelling "dah dah dah dah" for a number of hours, zigzagged around Mark and Kendra's back yard with their dachshund Tyson, like two ships passing in the night-in fast motion, never actually acknowledging each other but following the same figure eight pattern worn in the grass, played with trucks at church nursery, sat in the dirt with the Jackson kids at the farm on Sunday afternoon, rubbing much dirt onto his sunscreened face to make warpaint looking pattern and generally made friends with everyone he met: "pop pop chuck, Yenny, mahhk, kenna, mahl, owen" and his favorite-baby hayley.
James is the best version of himself in this group of friends both because he has known them so long making him more comfortable and because James is enough different from the other boys in the group that he sets himself apart. He did dishes after huge meals, he picked up kid explosion of toys wherever we stayed and he held and cared for both of our boys as well as any other child who seemed to have a need. While these are normal parts of James' and my life, this kind of participation in the domestic and child-rearing scene is not expected of many of the other men we visited. It made me feel so progressive with our non genderized roles and reminded me that I am lucky to have him. He also told stories and teased his brother and generally shined bright the whole weekend.
And Henry, well he is just the nicest, best, smiliest, good natured baby ever-even with my bias taken into account. He got put in and taken out of the carseat and the stroller a zillion times, slept on a chair, in a king sized bed, on a couch, the floor and wherever else he could manage to drop to sleep amidst high volume, much action and a number of interested dogs. And never cried or noticeably fussed even when it had been an unforgivable amount of time since he ate and he had been passed to the thirtieth set of arms to be cooed at. He smiled at each oggling relative with fresh delight and even sat through an entire basketball game in the arms of his 7 year old cousin lyric, to her enormous joy.
