More than words

Victories, large and small

I have licked my wounds since Wednesday, packed up my Dodger window flag and antenna ball, and I’m doing my best to ignore the rumors that some of our younger players might be traded away - I’ve already assumed that we were going to lose two of our biggest pitchers, but I’m hoping somehow we can hang onto Manny and our young core.  But I cheered on the Rays tonight, because who can’t root for a first time World Series contender?  (I know, Red Sox and Phillies fans, but too bad! :)  I’ll be rooting for them all next week.

But, even closer to home, we had our own triumphs this weekend, and they were every bit as emotional for me as that Dodger clinch of the NLDS.  Kieran’s swim meet was this Saturday.  Since I couldn’t be there for the last meet in September, for her first meet, all of this was new to me.  The last meet, she did okay - not great, but nothing stellar.  She wasn’t upset about losing though, she was upset that I wasn’t there, and that was hard for me to reconcile, but such is the balancing act of living two very different lives here and in Denver.  We do have the option of supplementing her team practice with private lessons from one of the coaches, so I asked Kieran if she wanted to work on her starts and freestyle with a private coach, and she said yes.  These practices are tough - the coach is really popular, so the only options are immediately after school gets out.  She literally has to be the first one out of school and we race straight to the pool, but we make it work. The starts came first - she hadn’t had any real diving instruction before, so all of her dives were belly flops.  The first few were pretty painful to watch (and I’m sure even more painful to do), but her instructor was very patient, and after three tries, she got it.  Next was getting her up on the blocks, which is very intimidating.  It may only be another 2-3 feet off the ground, but with the blocks tilting towards the water, it can be pretty scary.  As she worked on this, our most experienced swimmer, one who competed in the Olympic Trials and just accepted a full ride scholarship to USC, was practicing in the lane next to her.  Her first jump, another belly flop, completed soaked the coach of our Olympic girl.  Kieran’s instructor just turned to him and shrugged, “You gotta start somewhere.  She jumped, that’s half the battle!”  And the next time, she did it, it was beautiful.  She caught on like that.

I’ll stop here and say I have to walk a very fine line of supporting Kieran without taking over.  My mom had this way of taking something I was interested in or good at and pushing me to the point where I absolutely hated it.  Singing - I got excited about one talent show, and suddenly I was practicing “The Rose,” a song I find not quite appropriate for a 9-year-old, over and over every day until I would cry from exhaustion.  Every talent show, she made me enter.  We lived in a small town, and years later, when I would be in the middle of a test, I’d hear a boy two seats behind me sing a refrain from, “The Rose,” and the whole class would snicker.  The spelling bee.  I won the County Spelling Bee in 6th Grade, and would be the youngest contender for the State title.  The spelling drills began immediately, and for the last several weeks before the competition, my mom would keep me up into the wee hours, drilling me with words.  By the time the Bee actually arrived, I was so nervous I threw up.  I placed 4th in the state.  I misspelled irascible, which is actually pretty funny if you know my personality (or especially my mother’s).  I got a trophy and a Dictionary set, and yet, what I remember most was my mom’s look of disdain and disappointment; and, yes, I remember that my father wasn’t there at all.  So, the competitive side of me is a wicked double-edged sword, and not something I ever want to use to scar the girls.  I can’t say I don’t misstep, so here is my confession.  The next practice after Kieran had her diving lesson, her coach had the kids line up and jump in the pool.  The first time she was up, she didn’t even try to dive, she just jumped in.  The second time, she completely belly flopped.  Now usually I will bring everything I can to keep myself occupied while she is practicing.  I bring magazines, I bring my notebook to write my book (which is getting fuller by the day, I’m happy to say), and some days, if the chlorine is really bad, I sit outside and soak up the air.  But this day, we had been in a rush and I forgot to bring anything.  Something inside of me snapped a little bit, and by the time she came running over to her towel, my mother was alive and well and ready to bite her head off for her diving performance.  I said some choice words to her, words I’m not proud of, but the gist of it was that if she wanted to do this, she needed to do it 100%, not halfway.  I was so angry with myself and angry at her at the same time.  Unfortunately (or maybe it was all for the best), I had to go to a meeting that night, so I dropped her off with Brad and then yelled at myself internally for the rest of the night.  When I got home, she was sleeping, so I woke her up and apologized.  I told her I was sorry, and that swimming was her thing, not mine, and it wasn’t fair of me to get upset with her.  She just hugged me and smiled.  “It’s okay, momma, you were right.  I need to work harder at my starts.”  She curled up and went back to sleep - she was okay, but of course, the guilt hung over me like a cloud. 

The next private lesson she had was on freestyle.  Her strokes are beautiful, but she has struggled with the breathing part.  Somehow when the instructor explained it to her, even though her coach has been trying for months, it was like the language suddenly made sense to her, and off she went.  By the time she finished that lesson, she was literally jumping up and down.  She kept saying over and over, “I got it!  I didn’t think I’d ever get it, but I got it!”  I felt so happy for her - truly, for her.  Just having the joy of a lightbulb moment is worth everything.  That was Thursday.  Friday was her last practice session before her meet on Saturday, and she was like a different swimmer.  She said she knew that she wanted to swim before, but now that she knew how fun it was, she didn’t ever want to get out of the pool.  We ordered her parka that day - knowing full well it would be the majority of her Christmas present, she was still so excited to get it.

Friday night was our school’s benefit dinner for our foundation.  Sandy, Terri and I went together - I still don’t quite understand what the point of dinner and dancing when hardly anyone dances.  I love dancing, and if I love a song, I don’t care if I have a partner, or if it’s three of us girls up there, I will get up there and dance.  My knees and ankle were killing me, and I knew I’d be paying for it the next day, but still, it was fun to just enjoy things for a little while. 

Then, Saturday morning was her swim meet.  It arrived way too early after we got home so late from the dinner, but still, we got there with time to pick our spot and get set up.  She swam in three events, the first being the backstroke.  I promised myself I would be supportive no matter what happened.  The signal sounded, and off they went.  There she was, ahead of the pack!  One girl started creeping up on her, and instinctively, Kieran just turned it on.  It was over so quickly, and once she touched the wall, she looked up and around with this look of disbelief on her face. 

She said later that she was looking around to see where she placed, and then realized that she was actually the first one there!  Since this was the pumpkin meet, each heat winner got a small pumpkin and had their picture taken in front of the scarecrow. 

When she touched that wall, I got goose bumps and cried, just as much as I would have had Manny hit the walk-off home run.  Her second heat was the breast stroke, and though she had pumpkin hunger in her eyes, she placed third in that heat.  That was a tough one for me, because I had to volunteer for a time slot recording times, and I was timing that race in a different lane.  I couldn’t cheer for her, but she told me she can’t hear me anyway :)  Still, that must have been a fast heat, though, because out of 15 girls her age competing in breast, she still placed third overall.  Her last event was freestyle, her previous nemesis, and she did awesome.  She placed second in her heat.  Overall, she shaved five seconds off of all her times.  I told her I was so glad I could be there to see her win her first one.  She wanted to know when she could compete again :)  She’ll have to wait until next month!

To celebrate, we went to Wing Stop, her choice, where she chowed down on Teriyaki wings.  We had to bring her pumpkin in - it's her trophy, she says, and I'm not about to mess with that!

On the way home, she and Brad stopped at the firehouse across the street from us while I went back home - my knees and ankle really were killing me from the night before!  The station was having a fire preparation day, appropriate since we were barely spared last week from the wildfire on the other side of the hill from us.  It was quite a busy day for Miss K!

Amidst all that, there were good and bad bits of information from Denver.  Brenna was restrained twice in one day last week, and when I finally got to talk to her, she said she just felt like she couldn’t ever come home, didn’t ever want to come home, and there was no hope for her.  I didn’t know what to say to that.  She was restrained again the next day, but when I talked to her last night, she said she’d had a much better day that day.  Ailish told me that they’d had a health talk where someone said that stress was a leading killer of women, so now Ailish worries every day that she’s going to die from stress.  I tried to explain they were talking about older women, but I could tell there was no use arguing - she had found a new obsession.

So this week, we are going to try to look at the good - look at the little victories, and the big ones too.  We have a school sock hop Tuesday night, and hopefully we can fit in a trip to the pumpkin patch, and yes, lots of swimming in there too :)  For her sake, not for mine.

Dashed Hopes

I know, I know without a doubt, that to those of who you don’t follow sports, this is going to sound *so* stupid, but bear with me, because it does have a point that relates to life as a whole.  I’m sitting here in the quiet - no TV, no game on, even though there is a game going on right this second, but I know this is the end, and I can’t bear to be a witness to the end of the season again.  I still remember writing here in October ’06, the game where Brenna and I went to the park and watched the Mets sweep us.  There was barely a trace of hope for us then - we were the wild card, and down 0-2 when they got here, but we had hope, and those hopes grew dimmer and dimmer throughout the night.  Brenna couldn’t understand why I was crying at the end of the game, but I knew that my diversion was gone - the thing that I could get lost in was gone for another six months, and I was going to have to face my life again - a life that would soon involve taking Ailish, and then Brenna 8 weeks later, to Texas.  

This year, it was a year of bipolar proportions, and I mean that without irony.  We started the year with really high hopes, had a string of injuries and disappointments that left us so far out of the running that I stopped watching games for a week (and *that* is saying something), and then, just when we’d nearly given up, we were given lifelines in the form of two players - Casey Blake, who deserves just as much praise as this other guy, Manny (whom I adore, but I hate that Blake is invisible).  All of a sudden, baseball was fun again, not just because we were winning but because the guys actually looked like they were having fun too, and it was really uplifting.  Did we really have a chance at a miracle run?  Our first opponent, the Cubs, with the best record in the entire National League, that seemed pretty formidable.  But incredibly, beyond belief, we swept them.  We swept them.  And I was there to see it.  It was a moment I will never forget.  Being the first team to finish the Division Series, we got to sit back and wait for our opponent.  We didn’t care, Phils or Brewers, we’d take them on.  At the very least, we split the games with them during the regular season, and we had a bit of an edge on the Brewers.  When it came down to the Phils, we thought okay, we’d swept them here, they swept us there, we just had to play a little harder.  And yes, I know the collective we sounds pretty stupid considering I’m as able to play baseball as I am to beat Michael Phelps’ Gold Medal tally.  But that’s what it felt like.  When we went to the rally, it felt like it was all of us, all the fans keeping them going, helping them feel like we were there to support them and that it mattered.  So we got down 0-2 in Philly, but I wasn’t really worried.  I figured we’d get them here.  I went to the game on Sunday.  Actually, I had a dream Saturday night that I went to the game and instead of our regular players, it was all of our long-retired players in their street clothes on the field.  It was a little scary.  So, Sunday, there I was, awesome seat, although I was smushed in between two big guys, but I got to see us just pummel the Phillies, and that was awesome.  I was feeling pretty good at that point - we’d sweep them here and take it back to Philly.  We had our two ace pitchers coming up for us, and it was going to be good.  And then things just ground to a halt.  We had the game won last night, had it so many times, and then just handed it away.  Tonight, our “ace” pitcher got yanked after 2 innings and 3 runs, and we’re up against their best pitcher.  Not even Manny can get anything going.  So the writing is on the wall, I know this is it.  The Phillies will be celebrating in our clubhouse, which is a little nauseating.  I will root for the Rays, not just because I’m now a certified Phillie-hater (yes, I’m still a Met-hater, I haven’t forgiven them for ’06), and sure, there is always next year, though our team composition for next year is up in the air on so many fronts.

So why do I get so emotional about this?  I think it’s such a metaphor for my life, the girls, and the dashed hopes, the ups and downs that we’ve gone through this year.  The high of bringing Ailish home, the horrible low of not just having to take her back to placement, but now having to nurse Kieran through the psychological wounds of being attacked in her room, her safe place.  The highs of seeing Brenna achieve a higher level and spend so much quality time with her on her visits, and now the lows of having her restrained on an almost daily basis recently, and then in therapy accuse me of dragging her from store to store rather than spend any time with her, when that couldn’t have been further from the truth.  As for Ailish, I don’t even know what to say at this point.  She blames everything on us - mostly on Brad, which isn’t fair.  He might not be the most involved dad, but he tried, we *all* tried, to reach out to her when she came home, to make her feel welcome and loved, and she shunned us.  We gave her space, and she accused us of treating her like a “psycho” who had to be left alone.  We couldn’t have won, no matter what we did, but now we’re dredging it up in therapy all over again and honestly, I just don’t know if I can stomach it.  She says we did these things, I counter that we didn’t, and then I’m told I’m being defensive, that I’m trying to explain things away, when I really need to empathize with her and validate her feelings.  I’m not validating those feelings, none of the things she’s talking about happened!  We didn’t favor Kieran over her, Brad didn’t purposely come up with a way to miss her birthday, and I certainly didn’t go out of my way to make her feel like she was a “psycho” or unloved.  I want to support her, but I won’t throw myself or anyone else who tried to love her under the bus just to make her feel better.  Her view of reality is so skewed, I don’t think it does her any good to agree with her just for the sake of it.  I find myself at odds with the treatment staff I really respect right now, but I have sacrificed enough of myself for the girls, I’m not going to agree to a distorted version of the facts.

So we come back around to the Dodgers, who had our hopes raised, and just when we got to the critical point, they completely fell apart.  Everything we’d been doing just stopped, ground to a halt.  It happens all the time in baseball, streaky teams just have to be streaky in the right way at the right time, that’s one of the things I love about it.  *Anything* can happen.  But I think I needed them right now to be the magical team they’d been for 6 weeks, to just triumph in the face of the facts telling them that there was no way they were going to go all the way to the World Series, much less win it.  I needed them to be that impossible team from ’88, I think because in some ways I have stopped believing that my girls will overcome their impossibly long odds at a productive life.

So there it is - if the Dodgers manage to pull it together and overcome their current 5-0 deficit, I’d be happy, but I know we still couldn’t put together three wins to take the series.  I want to be the candidate now, understanding that the votes just aren’t going to come together even if the night is young.  I’m ready to make my concession speech.

As for the girls, of course I won’t concede yet.  I am their mother, and I will fight for them, but honestly, sometimes, the odds seem as insurmountable as Everest.

The memory of a lifetime, and of course, a new medical adventure!

The picture says it all, doesn't it?

First, I have to say, just wow.  Wow.  Even if you aren’t a sports fan, to feel the power of 56,000 people all rooting for the same thing (except for the 10 brave Cubs fans who turned out), and then to have it happen and to be a part of a 55,990-person celebration, it was the experience of a lifetime.  I cried when we won, which was fitting because I cried when we got swept by the Mets in 2006.  As it turned out, Kieran’s friend needed a babysitter Sat. night, so we just had her come over here and had Alysha watch both girls, so Brad and I went to the game together.  I was *so* nervous - I woke up at 6:30 on Saturday morning.  Honestly, it was like I was one of the players!  I was just so worried that we’d lose our momentum if we gave up even one game.  It was a rainy day that day, rare for us in L.A., and I was worried we'd get rained out too.  We got there right as the gates opened, so we had lots of time to eat and take in the atmosphere before the game started.  The clouds were still dark and forboding, but they seemed to be mixed with sunshine.  I couldn't be sure whether it was a good thing or a bad omen.  Although we didn’t have the best seats ever, we were right next to the bullpen, so we got to watch all the pitchers warm up, and we had the closest view ever to Manny, which was *awesome*.  When we screamed for him, he tipped his hat to us, as did Russell Martin when he ran by to warm up.  It was amazing.  It was a close game all the way, and we stood up for almost everything.  Then, when they won and several members of the team came out to celebrate with us, the whole stadium was still full, and we were all beyond excitement.  On the way home, everyone was honking their horns and screaming for the Dodgers - it was just one of those nights I will always remember.  I still remember in ’90 when the Runnin’ Rebels won the NCAA Championship, and we all rode around Las Vegas honking and screaming “Rebels!” but this Dodger thing was on a whole different level!

Somewhere around the 2nd inning, I brushed my right thigh and felt a welt.  I managed to lift up my pant leg enough to see that I had a deep bruise forming.  It was about the size of a quarter.  But by the time I got home from the game, the bruise had grown to the size of a pancake and had a deep red center and blue edges.  I drew a marker around it and went to bed.  When I woke up, it was the same size, but after making breakfast for Kieran and Anna, I checked it, and the whole perimeter had grown by a half inch.  So I decided to head to Urgent Care and get it checked out.  The dr. wasn’t quite sure what to make of it - she was convinced I had bumped my leg, and I know for sure I didn’t.  She told me it was a hematoma, and prescribed antibiotics (for what, I’m not sure), and told me to get in bed.  She said I needed to see my doctor as soon as possible, and if it didn’t recede over the next few days, I’d have to have it aspirated - yuck!  So into bed I went, as soon as I got home.  I called my dr. today, but he can’t see me until tomorrow morning, and my coumadin nurse didn’t sound all that promising about the whole thing.  I’ve been taking it easy today - I just drove Kieran to school, picked her up, and took her to swim, and that was it.  The thing is still growing, not like it did in the beginning, but definitely past where it was yesterday.  Always something new with me, something to make sure life stays exciting!

So for now, I’m just waiting to see what happens at the appointment tomorrow, and looking forward to Sunday, when I get to see the Dodgers take on the Phillies at home. I was going to say something here, but the superstitious part of me is just going to let things play out and not jinx myself!

I know that there is more to life than Dodgers, but not right this second :)

Gosh, this week has just blown by me so quickly!  I got home Saturday night in time to tell Kieran good night and get to see all of her swim meet pictures.  She had a great time, which is the most important part, and she got her base times, which is a really good part, because now she has areas to improve upon.  Brad didn’t enjoy the early morning part of it, but he was a champ about it, and I definitely appreciate that.  He said the hardest part for her was that I wasn’t there, which makes me feel awful, but I still haven’t found that trusty cloning machine.  Still, I was kind of glad I wasn’t there - it took the pressure off, and when I go next time, she’ll know what to expect and she can walk me through it.

Sunday started with pancakes, yum :)  And then a major dilemma.  I had a Team meeting Sunday night, a big part of the reason why I made my travel plans to come back on Saturday instead of Sunday.  I was all ready to go until the Dodgers went and clinched the Division, and then announced they were going to have a free rally to welcome the team home from San Francisco.  Brad told me I had to go - I said I had Team, I couldn’t back out of my responsibilities.  He went so far as to call me a non-fan if I didn’t go - the nerve!  So I called my Co-SUM and asked if she could run the meeting and she said of course - everyone knows my love affair with the boys in blue.  So Kieran and I went to the rally.  It was an experience I’ll never forget - I know Kieran wasn’t that enthralled, she spent most of the night (once she finished her two Dodger dogs :) playing Peggle on my phone, but for me, to be there in the vibrating stands, everyone cheering the team on as they got off the bus, it was absolutely perfect.  Having Tommy Lasorda and Maury Wills and other Dodger greats tell us stories beforehand was absolute icing. 

The only glitch came when the rally was over, and all 11,000 of us had to leave through one exit.  I only have one phobia, only one thing that makes me hyperventilate, and of course, it’s crowds.  I hate trying to get off of planes, Disneyland during the high season, you name it, if I have to navigate a sea of people, my blood pressure rises.  This was not a crowd, it was a mass, a slow, undulating mass, and I realized for one brief panicky moment that this is how people get trampled.  I held tight to Kieran and she did amazingly well given the fact that she could see even less than I could, and then finally, finally, we were out of the stadium and into the fresh air of the night.  So yes, it was absolutely crazy, and I am absolutely so happy that we did it.  I tried to explain to Kieran that even though she was bored, I hoped that she would look back on this memory someday with fondness.  It’s funny because she does know the game, and she’s very proud of herself for knowing all the names and positions of the teams, but it’s just a tad bit too long for her yet.  I’m still trying to decide who will go to the game with me on Saturday.  I only have two tickets (it was all I could get), and I had originally planned to take Kieran, for memory’s sake, but now that we’re 2-0 (2-0!  Amazing!) I think Brad is more and more interested in being there.  I mean, if we happen to clinch on Saturday, that stadium is just going to be insane.  I can’t even believe we’re here right now.  It’s like a dream come true.

So onto other non-baseball news, Brenna has had a rough week since I left.  She was restrained again a few days ago after throwing a rock at staff during a showdown.  She’s playing the good cop/bad cop thing, except that I’m the good cop now, when I spent so many years being the bad cop.  It’s very hard to imagine her coming home and how that will affect our relationship.  Visiting her right now is so pleasant, she’s so funny and smart and goofy, we have a great time, but I know her, and now I have the experience of Ailish, and I just know it won’t last once she comes home.  It’s not a hopeful situation, by any means.

So on to the next bit of drama - a few days ago, I went to get the laundry out of the dryer, and after an hour in there, it still wasn’t dry.  I checked the gauge, and it was on high, so I just decided to let it go a little longer.  An hour later, still damp.  Hmmm.  So I pulled out my trusty sweater dryer and hung everything up.  Brad accused me of being a hillbilly, but I made the argument that this was an ecological decision, at least for the moment.  I called an appliance repair guy, and he came out the next morning to tell me that my gas coil was bad, and it was a dangerous situation because the gas was building up when I tried to run it.  It was going to be $300 to fix it, so we just decided to go ahead with a new one.  So Wednesday, Brad and I set off to find the right dryer.  I didn’t want to spend a ton on a new one, but a slight upgrade wouldn’t be so bad.  So we got an energy-efficient moisture-detecting dryer, which was delivered yesterday.  I was a little surprised that my Kenmore died after only 7 years, but it is *me* after all, and we know what I can do to technology :)

Last night during the leader meeting, it was torture not to be watching the game, so I had the updates on the cell phone - thank goodness it wasn’t a close game!  Once the meeting was over, I got to come home and watch the last inning, and then watch my recording of the game for all the highlights.  The dogs were begging me for a walk, so I got up to take them out, tripped on a cord and then somehow stubbed my toe on the corner of a mattress.  I jammed my big toenail into the plastic part, ripping back the nail.  Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.  And of course, with my blood thinners going on, it took about an hour to get the bleeding to stop.  I’m still trying to decide what to do with the hanging part of the nail - with that being my bad circulation leg, I don’t want it to get infected, so I’m just leaving it for the moment.  Seriously, am I 80?  I feel like I have all the ailments of the elderly!

Today, Brownies, after that, swim for Kieran, and then tomorrow, DODGERS!  I can’t even put into words how excited I am.  I recognize that this could have historical importance, and I consider it such a privilege to be there and record it.