Respite Tip, Number One

Thank you, D. for posting this funny photo on Facebook. For some reason it cheered me up after driving all over the godforsaken city in 98 degree heat with another drive due in twenty minutes and double headers tomorrow in both baseball and lacrosse.

Help me Rhonda.

Scorching the retina

It's been a week of heartache and colds, heavy, with a front of humor.

Here's a poem:

Poem Not for My Son

There are things you can't tell
a child -- they'd sit too heavily
upon him, like the crowns
of young royalty:
Tutankhamen holding up
that twelve-pound crust
of gold and emeralds
on his slender neck.

So I gaze at my boy
only when he's sleeping,
when the torrent
won't sweep him off
the cliff, when the beam
won't scorch his retina.

He works out now,
lifting cold black
barbells, his muscles rising
like good bread.

Think of every great thing:
rush of grain
through the elevator shaft,
the crush of water
fathoms down, glaciers
calving, the surge and weight
of tectonic plates. I shut
the door on my love.
Just a faint glow seeping
under the crack.

Ellen Bass

Bourgeois Bleak House

If it weren't for Marcello Mastroianni, waiting for me on the leopard skin couch in my mind, you might not hear from me, again. On Friday night, Henry's dreams of playing on his high school baseball team were dashed when he didn't make it. You know he's perfect in every way -- my Henry -- don't you? All the cliches of broken hearts and your children as your heart walking around wouldn't do justice to the baseball broken heart. Parenting is not for the faint of heart is not a crock of shit.The man-child lay on my bed and told me that he had wanted to buy me a beach house when he went pro. I might have murmured something, but I watched his words float up to the ceiling, the beach, the house, the pro, a dream, and I turned away so he wouldn't see my heart fly through a broken window and into the arms of the man laying concrete over the dirt on the side of my house. Saturday was a day to get through, and we did. Today was the day that Oliver and his father were to leave for Switzerland, and Oliver's passport didn't come in the mail on Saturday. We hoped that the old passport and the receipt and tracking number would suffice, but at the airport it didn't, and we made the frenzied decision that The Husband would go to Switzerland to see his very aged mother and Oliver would climb back into the car and come home. We ate Pringles in the car and opened the Swedish Fish and ate them, too. We pulled up into the driveway and walked into the house, joined the baseball-disappointed, and the girl sleeping off seizures (two days now with none!), pulled a nice, black bourgeois cover over the roof and down the sides and here we sit, baseball-travestied, disappointed, medical-marijuanaed and matriarch-heavy.

Blur

I think I missed posting yesterday for the first time in years. That's an appropriately blurry picture above of Oliver at a place called Sky High which I drove to yesterday morning in the far reaches of the southland. It's a warehouse with about a thousand places to jump on trampolines and into ball pits, and it smells like disinfectant and would probably otherwise be a nightmarish place of children, germs, athletic people and bad music, but since it was a Monday morning, it was completely empty and Oliver ran around by himself for nearly two hours. Four or five tiny children with beleaguered parents trailing them jumped up and down on the trampolines, and at one point a young couple came in together and exercised which made me feel guilty for one tiny moment that I wasn't doing the same, but I recovered in the next moment and continued reading The Goldfinch in my Shiatsu massage chair. I periodically responded to Oliver's requests to watch him, and periodically wondered about the vast differences in people (namely, how an exercise date at a gigantic trampoline place is appealing to anyone), and continued to bury my head in the book, grateful that I don't have to attract anyone based on my love of exercise or be subject to a person who would suggest it as a fun thing to do.

Anyhoo.

I didn't post yesterday because I had no original thoughts, drove approximately 524 miles back and forth into the valley and beyond with the trip to Sky High and then Henry's school and then back to Henry's school for his baseball tryouts, with a trip to the mall and some unbloggable events that left me breathing deeply in my head, a cheerful smile on my face as I bantered with The Brothers and made them dinner, a Golden Globish performance, best actor for comedy and drama. Smoking hot, and not from exercise of any kind whatsoever.

Threads

Mirtha cutting Sophie's hair this weekend

I woke this morning at 5:15, anticipating the drive to Henry's school where he "conditions" three times a week for baseball tryouts in January. I lay on my back in the cold darkness, enumerating worries. Anxious about money. Anxious about Sophie and our ability to pay for, even continue to get, the medical marijuana that is, after nineteen years, the first treatment to help her. I glanced at my phone, at a thread on the pediatric cannabis therapy group on Facebook, a thread hijacked by a woman who insists on conspiracy. Something about seeds and growing it yourself and letting the seeds out. More about mold and pesticides, rumors that it will be another year before Charlotte's Web is spun in California. I felt the thread of worry. These people are all nuts, I thought, even as I get it. Get the nuts, that is. I've climbed into bed with people who believe that 9/11 is a conspiracy, who post about Obamacare in apocalyptic terms, who don't bat an eye at yellow journalism. But I get it. People thrown together, tied by threads, spinning. We do what we have to for our children. Who am I to judge? I will only accept another drug if Jesus himself offers it to me. I lie down, fully clothed, next to men who call Obama The Anointed One -- as an epithet. Mary Magdalene would do no less.

I forgot, though, of gratitude, that groping impulse toward it.

Gratitude is so close to the bone of life, pure and true,
that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its planning
and plotting.  -- Regina Sara Ryan

The Mystery of Boys

The Dyslexic Entrepreneur has been sitting outside in the baking hot sun, selling lemonade and chocolate chip cookies since 10:00 this morning.  He decided against selling cotton candy today, as there were still things to work out. The last time I ventured to the corner to check on things, he had made upwards of $100. I'm not kidding you. While part of the proceeds will go to the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Los Angeles, Oliver is also intent on saving enough money for an off-road go-kart.

O.K.

Henry, on the other hand, slept until noon, woke and ate pancakes, made a few forays to get himself a couple of lemonades, did some homework, and I just walked into his bedroom where he was swinging a bat, practicing. When I expressed alarm at how close he was swinging to the window behind him, he condescendingly told me that when you swing a bat, Mom, it's not BEHIND you. 

These boys mystify me.

Looking through windows

I brought my birthday zodiacal month (Virgo) to a close last night with a terrific dinner at a local wine bar. My friends L and C treated me to wine tasting, mussels, shrimp, small plates of olives, crunchy chickpeas and smoked salmon and a few spectacular desserts. The fact that we sat right next to a woman with the Loudest Voice and Most Obnoxious Laugh in the Universe did not stop our own wonderful conversation, and I am once again filled with gratitude at the blessings of friendship.

I'm off to the first baseball game of the season. It's Fall Ball for Oliver. I'm sure that the haircut, color and blow-out I had yesterday will stand me well for another season of sitting in the bleachers at baseball fields in the Valley. If only sitting in the bleachers of baseball fields was slenderizing and brought peace to the soul.

What's going on with you today?

A certain mad rectitude

Here's Sophie, playing on the iPad with Saint Mirtha. It's Saturday and it's hot here in the southland. Oliver and I got up early this morning and drove into the valley where it's even hotter so that Oliver could try out for fall baseball. We decided to try a different league this year as the one we've been a part of for so long is sort of, kind of, getting on our nerves. There are too many politics, too many people who take themselves far too seriously, and while I expect that's true of most baseball leagues, at least we won't know anyone in this one and I can be oblivious because that's what I'm seeking these days if you haven't noticed. I picked Henry and his friends up from their first high school dance last night, and the car was electric with laughter and youth and, frankly, normalcy. I'm grateful that Sophie has an iPad this morning and that she can use it, however inconsistently. I'm grateful that I have Saint Mirtha here on Saturdays so that I can take my boy to try out for the sport that he loves. And I'm grateful that Henry is happy in his new high school, going to dances, raucous with his friends, a life ahead of him.

Here's a poem:

Say It Straight

What we would
and what we can say
stray as in a dream;
a certain mad rectitude
creeps in, by which something simple as an apple
can never be determined
wholly edible.
The crisp act is deferred,
the object blurred by scruples.
The more we cherish clarity
in principle, the more it is
impossible. Will enamel
ever strike the fruit?
Will Eve grow wild and forgivable?
For it's unlovable
to talk too long with snakes,
whose reasons fork
the more the more
she hesitates.

Kay Ryan, from Flamingo Watching, 1994

Reader, I know you think I'm not the gratitude kind of blogger, but let's relent and you tell me what you're grateful for today.

Parenting and Summer Reading

So, I've got two kids in high school and one to go. Oliver will be entering the seventh grade after Labor Day, and he's the one who despises school, mainly because he has some learning disabilities and up until very recently, we didn't really have a handle on those. Conversations this summer around summer reading requirements have generally been the type where if you suggested that someone should perhaps start reading their required book and if you happened to be lighting a candle at the same time to mask the smell of another child's diaper, the whole house would have gone up in flames.

Anywho.

Last night I made a gentle suggestion that perhaps it was time for someone to start reading their required book (and to be fair, the first was actually finally finished three weeks ago!). The suggestion hung there in the dry and combustible air. Mom, I really hate basketball, and it's a book about basketball, he said fairly rationally from his perch on a stool in the kitchen. I confidently spooned beans into a bowl  for Sophie's dinner. I love basketball, actually, (because I went to the world's greatest basketball university which is another topic altogether) which is saying a lot given that I am utterly not into sports, completely nonathletic and verge on the irrational in my hatred of football. Well, it's not really about the sport, I said, it's about a boy who plays basketball, but it's really more about him. Someone frowned and squirmed on his chair. I scattered chicken on top of the beans and sprinkled cheese on top of that. Hey, I've got an idea, I said, as I put the bean concoction in the microwave. If you finish this book without grumping around and resisting it, I'll buy us two tickets to a Lakers or Clippers game. Someone stopped squirming and looked interested. How about the Dodgers instead? he asked.

Reader, if you're a young parent, don't let anyone tell you that bribes shouldn't be used in parenting. Consider yourself skilled if you get your obstreperous, extremely volatile offspring to agree to read about basketball (your favorite sport) in return for you having to sit through baseball (a sport that bores you to tears). Consider yourself a good enough mother.

Plus, your house doesn't go up in flames.

What he said to me before the Championship Game** with a game update

Peace out, home sizzle

**I know ya'll are dying to know how the game turns out, so I'll be back later today. It starts at 1:00 PM, Pacific Time, so cross your fingers, do the Sign of the Cross and kiss the sky, ask the Good Lord, Buddha, Yahweh, Mohammed or The Universe to let The Big O have a good game, including a couple of hits and some decent plays as second baseman.

UPDATE:
Dang. The little team that lost nearly every game this season and then turned it around to play in the finals, lost today 6-4 in the last inning. They played a heck of a game. The Big O dove to catch a ball in the outfield and missed it, but his fall was spectacular, and the drama only increased when he lay on the ground for a couple of minutes, his fellow players and coaches crouched beside him. Henry walked toward me and very nonchalantly said, I wonder if he broke his neck? Reader, he did not.

The Baseball Season That Never Ends

So, The Big O played on the Yankees this spring, and the team literally lost every single game -- and there were approximately 1,236,795 of them that I personally attended -- until about two weeks ago, when they beat the best team. Then this past Monday, they played in the quarter-finals of the championship (everyone plays in the championship tournament at least once) and won that game which led them to the semi-finals, last evening, where they (the last seeded team) played the top seed (is seed the right word? I don't know what I'm talking about) and won it again. So, the Yankees are headed to one more game, the Final Championship game, this Saturday.

While I did my fair share of screaming last night, it wasn't really Oliver's night. He let a couple of balls go by as second baseman and had a couple of strike-outs and one ball hit, but played out at first base -- oh my god, do you hear me talking? This language that I'm using? 

The man in the photo above, my other son, Henry, finished his baseball season some weeks ago but has conveniently made the freshman team at his new high school and will be starting practice this Saturday as well, which basically gives me the opportunity to forego any down time and just keep right on screaming and making pithy remarks about line drives, ground-outs and balks. Before you know it, I'll be replaying that video of the Dodgers' brawl that happened a couple of nights ago right here on the blog, the fight that Henry kept sticking under my nose on his iPhone, insisting that it was incredibly wild and so cool.

Like I said, I don't know what I'm talking about, but I do believe Oliver's Yankees are going to come back and perhaps win the Championship in Game Number 1,236,796 on Saturday. You know I'll be there, sitting in my plum-colored nylon chair with the black net cup-holder, booing the ump when he makes bad calls and otherwise acting like the baseball fiend that has evidently been at my core all these years, hiding behind glasses and a copy of War and Peace.

Purple Haze Lenin

So, this was a fairly relaxed weekend. Other than baking cakes and going to one baseball game, I didn't do much. On the way home from Oliver's game, he screamed out Look, Mom! Lenin got a cotton Schwab! That enormous sculpture is right around the corner from our house -- it's a sort of art installation at a gallery that used to be a car dealership and now hosts raucous parties instead of art, except for the great leader. It appeared overnight last fall and is entitled "Lenin with Madame Mao." That's evidently her on the top. My mother takes great offense to this installation as she imagines it's another sign of the great Liberal Conspiracy That Has Enveloped Her Daughter. I try to allay her fears by only wearing my Communist pajamas at night. This weekend, another installation appeared, a dirty cotton swab. My quip was that it apparently signified the reason why Lenin didn't actually listen to the people. He had wax in his ears.

I also made a second cake, this one milk chocolate. I think chocolate is my specialty, to tell you the truth. I'm hoping that I get lots of orders for cakes and cupcakes over the next few months -- enough to buy a new pair of communist pajamas.

This afternoon, a large iguana was sighted strolling through our neighborhood. Here it is on the pathway leading to the Crazy Cat Lady. That thing gave me the creeps, but actually far less so than the Crazy Cat Lady and her infernal cats.

And here is Sophie and me in the late afternoon, as the sun goes down and makes a sort of purple haze in her bedroom. She had a fairly decent weekend. I took her for walks. She stayed in her swing outside while I watered the flowers. She had some seizures and lay beside me while I read a TC Boyle short story in the April 15th issue of The New Yorker. The story satisfied me and had one of the best ending lines I've read in a long time. Sophie loves words on a page and stares intently as I read. I like to imagine that she, too, can read and has a wealth of stories in her head, things to turn over and over and never feels the need to talk about them.

More Birthday Baseball for the Baseball Blog

Oliver stood like that for most of the game, hoping to catch a home run. In the whatever inning it happened (remember, I am not paying attention), one of the Dodgers named Gonzalez hit a home run that flew right across the field, over the fence and into our section. Oliver nearly caught it but was pushed out of the way by a really obnoxious kid. This morning, I got an email from the site where I bought the tickets, thanking me for spending the $250,000 for seats in the outfield with the all you can eat Dodger Dog food bar. They also included video highlights of the game (that ended in a humiliating loss to the Marlins who suck, according to The Brothers) and in one of those videos, you can see Oliver leaping up into the air when the ball comes flying toward us. He's wearing khaki shorts, the lovely Dodgers polyester jersey, and of course, the wig. It's around the 10th second (after the interminable Domino's pizza ad), so if you want to see my son on the MLB website, along with his gang of kooky friends, this is it:

Click for video here.

Birthdays, Baseball and Hamlet

Oliver and Matt Kemp, his favorite player

The boys and Uncle Tony, getting ready for the game

One of the kooky boys, dancing

Oliver and Uncle Tony

The Brothers, eating copious amounts of hot dogs, peanuts, popcorn and nachos with thick cheese. Oh, and soda.

Henry and I

Friday night fireworks at Dodger Stadium

Running around the field after the game

A girl reading a few rows behind me. Awesome.

Despite eating a hot dog, some peanuts, popcorn and nasty nachos, along with a regular Coke, I had a grand time. I only wish I'd brought along War and Peace.

Would Ya'll Be Upset if I Turned This Into a Baseball Blog?

Oliver, catcher and second baseman

Henry, catcher

Would it freak you out if I started blogging my boys' baseball stats? What about if I hosted a giveaway here on a moon, worn as if it had been a shell, and the winner was the person who guessed which brother had the most base hits? I could have The Brothers sign a baseball and send it to the winner. What if I told you that at some point in the first of three games this morning, I actually uttered the sentence, He's fast and he's good-looking! I rarely use an exclamation point, but I uttered that sentence with at least one, and I uttered it to a large man, the grandfather of one of the other players whose own sons both played in the minor leagues. I uttered that exclamation in response to The Big Experienced Baseball Man's own exclamation that Henry hustled. Would it freak you out if I told you that I regularly shouted the words hustle!! let's go!!! and come on, guys!! Look alive!!! 

Clearly, eight hours, 21 innings and three games later, I've lost my mind.

Three Baseball Games

No words needed.

A Saturday Morning List

1. The ladder outside my bedroom window and the boot right there at the top, where A Man is busy trimming the hedge between my house and The Neighbor's, prompted me to wish that it were Daniel Day Lewis' boot, the Daniel Day Lewis who played the main character in the movie version of Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I believe his name was Tomas pronounced Tomash and he was washing a window on an apartment building, and he caught sight of the woman inside, and before you knew it he had climbed inside and then he had seduced the woman.
2. Anyhoo.
3. On the advice of a friend (one of my many drug mules who help me to ferry Sophie's meds from Canada), I have finally bought a copy of War and Peace and have decided to complete it by my fiftieth birthday in late August. So far, so good. I'm on page 14. 1021 pages to go. This is in lieu of losing fifty pounds by my fiftieth.
4. Anyhoo.
5. The Husband has a miraculous Saturday off, so we've already divvied up the baseball game duties. I'm signed up for the noon game with Oliver.
6. Sophie is on her third or fourth day of a liquid strike. We don't know what's wrong with her, and it's difficult to shake water and juice into her resisting mouth. We took her to the doctor and nothing, apparently, is wrong. She has no infection in her ears, throat or mouth, that the doctor could see. She has no fever. She has, evidently, a $220 virus. I've gone through the stifled panic that I usually go through when Sophie isn't feeling well or acting "normal," where I imagine that it's the beginning of the end for her. I woke up this morning, though, feeling not so great myself, so I'm excited that perhaps it is indeed a virus and not that some new neurological complication has begun and the next thing you know we'll be having to have a permanent IV line or feeding tube and the seizures won't stop, etc. And you thought I was so calm, so amazing, right?
7. Anywho.
8. I spent four out of five weekdays off-kilter due to potentially stressful activities -- the removal of my stitches, the SSI meeting, a job interview and the conservatorship meeting -- and each one went as well as it could go. I believe that calls for an open thanks to the universe and all those who made it happen. I am grateful.
9. Now, if only Daniel Day Lewis would climb through my window, everything would be perfect.

Beyond Disability Porn ( with a correction from Red Sox to Cincinnati Reds)

I was happy to read Bill Peace's blog post today titled Hard to Believe, Sports Illustrated, Teddy Kremer and Feel Good Stories. As a passionate disability advocate, Bill has opened my eyes on many occasions, and  in this post he addresses the trouble the media has -- and the propensity of our culture -- with depicting those with disability in a seeming attempt to highlight or inspire but rather demeans them. We call it disability porn, and I know that we're all guilty of it, at some point or another, even those of us who fight the stereotypes daily.

What's so unusual about the referenced story in Sports Illustrated is that it not only tells the inspiring story of a  Cincinnati Reds bat-boy who also has Down Syndrome, but it actually calls for more progress. In fact, the article by Paul Daugherty is titled Reds Bat boy with Down Syndrome a Great Story, But it Shouldn't End. 

I urge you to read both Bill's post and the Sports Illustrated article. Educate yourself and then pass along what you've learned.

National Sibling's Day Couldn't Come Quickly Enough

So, let's just say that today wasn't the greatest over here in the land of a moon, worn as if it had been a shell. Let's just say having minor skin surgery on one's back, done by an impossibly young and good-looking Italian dermatologist, was not fun. Let's just say that one lay there, humiliated that the surgeon had no idea, no idea at all, that the back he was digging into had once been quite beautiful and not fat at all. Let's say, too, that these vain thoughts, literally while under the knife, made one feel incredibly small and were entirely ridiculous. Let's also say that finally emptying one's bank account and paying one's property taxes wasn't all that inspirational either. Nor was parking Sophie's stroller and forgetting to put the brake on it, turning one's back and then turning around to see it roll and bump down the two steps and then fall on its side with Sophie in it right into the dirt that never grows grass under the tree. Trying to pull the stroller and Sophie up while wondering whether her arm was broken and whether one's stitches from the minor skin surgery had burst -- no lifting or pulling for three weeks and otherwise taking it easy, the nurse had said -- was, if not par for the course and fuel for fodder, further evidence of the chaotic nature of an unexpected life. The squabbling between The Brothers on the way to baseball practice prompted The Mother to state firmly with no edge of hysteria to her voice that today is not the day to fight in front of me. If you do, I might leave, and then who would take you to baseball practice? The drive to baseball practice was quiet except for the scuffed-up Girl's hums and reaching for beads that hang on the back of The Mother's head-rest. Let's just say that the rather large seizure in the grass in front of the baseball diamond that necessitated a full lie-down and concern on the part of passers-by -- no worries! The Mother reassured those who asked, We're used to it! -- prompted a sort of surrender by The Mother into the shittiness of it all.  There was dinner from a drive-through and then a drive home. Let's just say that The Mother realized it was National Sibling's Day at about 7:30 that evening and took the above photo, deciding that things really aren't so bad after all, are they?

Kicking off from center field and tulips

 At 7:30 am, I was doing this:

I was watching him:

At 10:00 am, I bought these as a sort of reward and incentive to get through the rest of the day:

At noon, I was doing this:

(disclosure: the photo is taken from another game earlier in the season, but you get the gist)

Some of you might remember when I described my Italian grandmother, in her very old age, walking around the house in her black dress muttering Pray that I die, Pray that I die. Well, I'm going to confess that the prospect of another basketball game contingent upon that one, provoked a similar response in me. Pray that they lose. Pray that they lose. If anyone is reading this who happens to be on our team, please forgive me. My prayer was answered, and they lost. Basketball season is officially over.

At 2:20 pm, I was watching him:

Henry broke a long batting slump, so bad that he had been plunged into the depths of despondency and failure just two days ago. He hit a DOUBLE and a TRIPLE. I screamed myself hoarse.

At 4:00 pm I'm watching this:



I just remarked on Facebook that the trouble with Facebook is that superlatives have become cliche, and there's just no way to properly describe Van Morrison in this video without using one.