Susan Senator

I was sitting here in front of Precious thinking I had to start dinner, when up popped this email:

Softball!!
We hope that the rain is going to hold off!! Unless it starts to downpour we are going to attempt to get practice in. Hope to see you all at 6:00

I looked over at Nat who was a parallel boy-version of me, lying on the couch doing nada thing. He seemed calm, his teachers said he’d had a good day, I had an hour or so before I really, really had to make dinner, so I said, “Hey Natty, you feel like trying baseball?”
“Yes!” He shouted and jumped off the couch; always a good sign.

Off we went to the high school, blasting my new Shakira CD which we both love. [I feel a bit embarrassed playing hip-hop from inside a Volvo, taking my kid to baseball practice, but what the the F***, it’s my midlife crisis and I’ll continue to make a fool of myself until I’m done.]

We did not see anyone we knew on the entire field so we just sat on a bench for a little while. I watched the groups who were playing catch, trying to figure out if any of them were Special Olympics groups. Something caught my eye about how one of the groups was having a catch; a grown man with a beer belly and a younger man. The older man seemed to drop every other ball, which struck me as odd. Aha. I walked over, and sure enough, I heard another person say, “I thought there would be more people here,” which is what every SO team says at some point. Still, to be as polite as possible, I figured I would say, “Does anyone know where the Special Olympics team is meeting?” rather than, “Are you the Special Olympics team?” I’m always happy to be part of a SO team, but you never know what stupid issues the general populace might have.

They all had gathered by 6:00, a good dozen grown-ups and one or two teens. These guys could really play. I was the only mom there. Everyone else had come on their own! Total Major League. I had to keep introducing myself as Nat’s Hovering Mother (Has a nice ring to it, anyway.) They started out having a catch, and Nat was really good. I could not get enough of watching my gorgeous smiling boy throw like a guy with those lanky tan teenage arms. I never learned to throw so it’s always such a magical, natural, almost sexy thing watching a guy scoop up a baseball and easily lob it back, really far, totally nonchalantly.

Then they split up and some batted while others caught balls, and Nat completely spaced out. He kept throwing his glove onto the oncoming ball; he just did not get it! It was so bizarre that I could not help laughing. No matter what anyone said, he did not understand what he was supposed to do, but God bless him, he just kept trying, silly-talking his whole way through it. I have to get a good beginners’ baseball book for him; suggestions, anyone? Or, if anyone wants to take a stab at doing a Nat book on playing baseball, please do!

When it came time to bat, it was the same problem. “Raise your arm, Nat!” He would raise the wrong arm, then just lower it. “Put your hands closer,” He put them farther apart. “Stand like this.” He acted as if he had not heard a thing and stood where he was, silly-talking and puppet hand with the bat. Then I tried hand-over-hand and bodily positioning him. That worked okay. He took a swing. He got a hit after the second try! He ran to first base (past it really because he did not know from touching base) with the helmet on and the bat in his hand. “Drop the bat!” I yelled, and he threw it really, really far. Everyone cheered.

The only mistake I made was in yelling, “Go, Sweet Guy!” The coach laughed and said, “There’s no ‘Sweet Guy’ in baseball, Sue.”

I am officially an obnoxious sports mom. At last!

I have much more to say about Sarai’s wonderful wedding than those pictures in the previous post, which were supposed to have been worth a thousand words. Sometimes you need a thousand words to get it all out.

The things flying around in my brain are many, from the ridiculous to the sublime: my sister-in-law Sarai, how Nat was at the wedding, what the officiator said, how Ben was, how Max was, and a dumb thing like how I looked. I’ll start with the dumb thing: the weather was awful, humid and rainy, so my hair looked terrible. I’ve been trying to let it go au naturel lately, which for me only means using a curling iron to augment the natural curl, and a different (non-straightening) product. But all the Kerastase goop in the world was no match for that humidity. That, along with the overly plunging neckline made me look a bit like a floozy, which was not at all my intent! I thought the strategically placed flower would take care of what I consider my blessing and my curse but it flopped unceremoniously downward. I was really annoyed at myself for wearing that black dress and for getting the hair all wrong.

Okay, but then there was Ben, utterly charming. He looked adorable in a navy jacket that was too big for him, and with his hair gooped out of his eyes. He was my little sweetheart the whole time; he kept making me laugh and he even danced with me! He even seemed a little shy when we danced, like maybe he’s in some kind of Oedipal phase or something. So delightfully cute.

Max, taking photos with his Uncle Patrick’s big Nikon (Patrick, a.k.a C.B., is a professional photographer), everyone commenting on how handsome and tall he was. Mingling, making conversation with people, drinking Shirley Temples.

And Nat was smiling the whole time. We did not have to worry about anything for the day because we could tell he was really with us. Still, Ned and I figured out a contingency for the ceremony, in case we had to take him out quickly; last ceremony we attended with Nat was Great Uncle Skip’s memorial service and Nat started screaming when the hymns started. My guess is that we had told him it was going to be “like going to temple,” and so Nat had expected Hebrew, and instead got Onward Christian Soldiers. Anyway, he was just fine during Sarai’s ceremony, smiling and quiet while babies and toddlers screamed all around us. Not only was I bursting out of my dress, I was also bursting with pride!

The ceremony started with the fanfare music from the beginning of a 20th Century Fox movie! We all laughed. Ned and I wondered why no one ever did that at their weddings? It was so original! Then it switched over to Here Comes the Bride and Pacelbel Canon; not original, but sweet.

What I enjoyed the most was what Mark, the officiator, said about marriage. He went way beyond the tired-and-true “in sickness and health, for richer and poorer,” that we all have heard a million times. He said that you were going to fall out of love with each other sometimes and that you had to find your way back to loving each other. That you would discover things about the other person that you really did not know before, and also about yourself, and that you would have to figure out how to accommodate that discovery. He talked all about how you would have to explore things and deepen because of them, not leave. He really made me think about all that I’ve been through this winter and spring, my much-belabored mid-life crisis, and how I should stop beating myself up for it all. How I have to learn to accommodate myself, take care of myself, just as much as Ned has learned how to accommodate me. These words made me come back to our Sweetie Treaty and how the number one item is “Don’t feel bad about feeling bad.” That kind of guilt trip makes difficult phases so much worse.

Ned always tells me that if I want to change something, to change just one small thing first and then you’ll at least be a little better off than you were. And, he’s always been the one who has told me to go ahead and do what I need to do to be happy. When we were first married, he’s the one who said to me, “You want to be a writer? Just write, then!” He has always given me the freedom to be exactly who I am and who I need to be.

I felt so lucky sitting there in that beautiful wedding hall, watching my sister-in-law get married to a really good guy, doing exactly as she pleased, while I was surrounded by four beautiful men who give me so much, too. After all is said and done, Ned says I was beautiful at the wedding, and I really wasn’t; he doesn’t hear me when I point out my flaws. He calls me “The Deluxe Model Woman” and he means it. I thought of that while I sat there listening to Mark’s wise words, and felt so strongly that this is close to as good as it gets. Ned has always wanted for me just to be happy, then and now; I think I should listen to him more often, and not to my demons. [Although next dress-up event, I will use the flatiron and I should have worn the red dress!]

On Saturday, June 24, this piece of mine appeared in my favorite newspaper, the Washington Post. Go Nat! Go Post! If any of you readers subscribe to the paper version, please contact me so I can get a “real” copy.

A little mountain goat
he is nimble and lithe and impossibly brave
stretching slim limbs with hidden muscle
thoughtlessly over toothsome rock.
A man already;
hides his tears when he’s been hurt
doles out kisses, holds tightly to affection
secret fears harbored in a sea of misconceptions
Instead of me he pours his passion into a million pages
his life’s questions play, fight, maim, and die there
some of his demons, and mine
have been defeated
though there are a few left —
just for spice.
Somehow, though,
in the small sweaty palm of his hand
I can now rest.

I have completed a fair draft of my novel, which I’m calling Dirt, A Story of Gardening, Mothering, and a Mid-Life Crisis. I have given out four copies to friends and only one of them has gotten back to me. I expect my sister will have some feedback tomorrow when I see her at my parents’ Cape house (I’m going for the day with Benj and Max; Nat has school).

As always, I am looking for a new project — by the way, the Washington Post has accepted a piece from me which should be out any day, I will post it here when it does — and I stumbled upon something wonderful. I wrote a novel thirteen years ago, when I was in the throes of mothering little Nat and baby Max, and it was based on a lot of what I was going through at the time. This book is about a young mom struggling with nascent OCD, (true), a faintly abusive husband (total fiction) and two small children, the older of whom seems to be a bit off in his development (hmmm). The book also dips into past life stuff and Tarot (I used to have a friend who was heavily invested in past-life beliefs and I went to an aura reader with her a couple of times. All very interesting, but not my cup of decaf. Tarot, however, is a lot of fun, like horoscopes, not in that it tells you the future, but it does tell you what is important to you just by the way you choose to read the cards.)

I realized that this book could be the prequel to my current one! This could very well be my summer project. I may decide to throw out the past life stuff and I’m not at all sure what to do about the husband; he’s different from the newer one. I have the summer to figure it out. Here is the very beginning. It used to be called The Scent of Violets, but I’m thinking now I should try to relate it somehow to Dirt.

Chapter One
It was the third time in two years that Emily’s husband had dislocated her three-year-old son’s shoulder. It happens easier after the first time, the doctor had said laughingly, nervous laughter, as if he needed to reassure himself as much as he did her that this was not child abuse. She sat stoically in the tiny examining room at Mass General, looking beyond the doctor’s shoulder at a tall box that had been placed on the sink counter, ominously labelled “Sharps”: discarded needles, a grim treasure trove.
“You snap it back in place, a little gruesome, a shock of pain for a second, and then it’s done,” the doctor went on. He set the boy in her arms, on her lap. Emily tensed, sat up straighter, ready to do what she had to. But secretly she hated when doctors pulled her into her children’s medical procedures; it seemed so primitive that in the midst of all the high-tech medical protocol, technical jargon and distant doctor attitude there should be this need for her to hold down frightened twitching limbs so that they might be pierced, pricked, Tine-tested. Jack was thankfully taking his cues from his mother and was sitting marvelously quiet, especially considering that his arm was dangling like a broken twig. Only when the doctor touched his shoulder gently did he give a tiny cry, a sucking-in of his breath, and Emily felt tears start in her eyes. She tightened her grip. The baby slept in the backpack, his little mouth wide open and sending forth puffs of milky breath, a sweet comfort during this entire ordeal.

Max graduated from eighth grade tonight. His school is a K-8, as are all eight elementaries in our town, which is a very nice thing because the kids become very loyal to the school and bonded with each other. Of course, it also guarantees they are ready to leave for high school by the time they are through, because they have spent nine years there!

Max received eight awards prior to tonight’s ceremonies, in French, Student Government, Speech Contest, Writing Contest, and other areas, totally bowling us over. Tonight he surprised us again by receiving an award as one of the top eleven academically in the class!

Max also was asked to speak, along with this young woman, and they co-wrote a speech about how the class has grown in terms of learning how to become less cliquish and more inclusive of everyone, as they experienced on their two-night camping trip to Caratunk, Maine. He spoke very well, clearly and loudly.

I was on the edge of my seat.My parents also were here, and they were totally kvelling. Such nachas. (Yiddish for “pride that comes from your children doing well.”) Ned and I could not go to sleep, not only because Ned’s colleagues kept him up talking about some bug or something, but because we felt so happy and proud to have such an accomplished mensch for a kid.