For every season

Basketball season is upon us. 

I was positively giddy as I stood on the sideline as sixty two kids (some of whom were wearing orange pinneys that were almost indistinguishable from the red pinneys, while others were decked out in a purple that blended right in with the blue) vied for one of sixty-two-thousand basketballs drumming against the floors. 

In this case, I could see why green is the color of envy. The parents of the green-color-pinney players could easily find their kids in this crowd. 

But just as I had celebrated the advent of this thrice-weekly recreational activity, which is sure to chip away at my son's daily recreational inactivity, reality reared its sobering head.

Literally. Since most kids his age are a full head and shoulders taller. 

There is that sick feeling again, the one in the pit of my stomach: caused in part by the angst of being the parent of a kid who isn't the best at sports, who won't likely see much game time, and who is nearly certain to hear his name yelled in anger as he misses a pass or turns over the ball. 

And we’re just going through evaluations. We have an entire season to deep-breath our way through. 

It was all coming back to me.

I mean, we hadn't been there more than five minutes when a coach ambled over to ask why my kid was crying.

I didn't know. But I could guess. 

He's always been emotional and easily overwhelmed, especially in crowded, raucous rooms. He might have taken someone's comments more sharply than they were meant. Maybe he was jabbed intentionally. It could have been anything, really: a perceived fault. A missed basket. A dribble that was more of a drool. So many possibilities when you're beating yourself up in your mind. 

From my distance, I couldn't see the tears, but I could tell from the angle of his head and set of his jaw that they were there.

There was nothing I could do in the moment but wait. Eventually he will recover.

This isn't easy. 

Even though popular science and conventional wisdom would tells us boys should be allowed to have and show vulnerability, the reality of tears is more complicated. And I think if we're being honest with ourselves, girls don't get off the hook for wearing their emotions in public either. 

I think it's simply that few people are comfortable with someone else’s misery. It's hard to watch any kid struggle, especially our own.

And as I hold myself back from intervening, all kinds of worries ricochet around in my head, not the least of which is wondering who will judge and find this boy wanting? Who will decide upon witnessing that particular moment that he’s not worth their trouble? 

None of which is within my control.

The thing is, crying is not really the problem. The problem is coping. 

And I’m not talking about him. He’s already wiped his face and rejoined the fracas.

I’m talking about me.

I can’t stop the tears or the anger the moment they happen and neither can he. Neither of us can stop feelings from overwhelming us. We can only find better ways to wait them out and get back in the game. 

Special delivery

The package arrived just in time.

I imagined she'd squeal at the sight of the small, puffy white pillow that sat on the dining table fresh from the mailbox and waiting for her to get home and rip into it.

But I worried all hell would break loose once she finally tried it on, twirled around, and discovered it was all wrong in the way buying things from an invisible store, touch untouched, is likely to be.

Then what?

Homecoming would happen with or without the wine-colored dress I presumed to be inside the rush-rate parcel. Homecoming would happen with or without her, too.

She'd agonized for weeks over the style; popping items into to her virtual shopping cart, and dragging them out again. Refusing to commit to a purchase.

It drove me crazy. 

"They all look good to me," I offered unhelpfully. "Just pick one."

 But beside the same burgundy color, the dresses weren't similar at all. She swept through the downsides of each as if narrating designers on a catwalk until I understood the dilemma of each one.

She's not a huge fan of asymmetrical hemlines. A backless dress would require the purchase of all new foundation garments. Long sleeves would be too hot in a crowded gymnasium. And the one with the lace was undoubtedly pretty, but it looked like it might be a titch itchy.  Each one posed a risk that would require careful calculation. 

"Wouldn't it make more sense to just go to a mall?" I asked sheepishly, not really wanting to spend an entire day scouring stores, but feeling some sense of duty as a mother to offer. 

Her pensive "No, thank you," is bittersweet. 

She's reached an age when malls are places one goes with one's friends. And that age has coincided with that stage in which teens feel they have no friends; certainly none willing to try on clothes, or thumb through the record stores, or split an Orange Julius as they wait for a mom to finished shopping in Sears.

"No one drinks Orange Julius, mom. We eat cookie dough and try on makeup at Sephora."

I wish I could trade places with her.

But I'm not sure that would solve anything.

The feeling of being an adolescent alone isn't foreign to me. However, there is a vast difference between us. Instead of picking out a dress and going to the dance alone, I would have stayed home.

Of course, I didn't have Instagram and its steady stream of people I admired posting pictures of themselves in groups, clowning for the camera and showing all the fun they were having without me.

Which is what the days leading up to the big night had been. Games and spectacles in the center while she hung back on the periphery.

She didn’t want to go, but she went.

She doesn’t want to talk about it, so we don’t. She just wants to get through one last, awkward night where all she has to do is dance in a gymnasium wearing fawn colored heels and a burgundy dress, which she collects and takes off to her room.

She lets me take a picture when she returns, dressed and ready to go. She’s more than OK with being fashionably late.

On the front lawn, in the waning light, I squint through my lens and finally see the dress and realize it is almost as stunning as she is. And that makes it perfect. 

The point of no return

Some gifts really are a bother.

The gift of silence, for instance. It could be the absence of sound, or it could be the imposition of solitude depending on how you think about it and how much you want to share that thought aloud. 

However we feel about earbuds, my daughter had left hers on the dining room table where the cat had found them, and toyed with them until they were dead.

Another mother may have scolded her daughter and told her to be more careful with her things. Made her dig into her piggy bank to fund the replacement.

I had, on the other hand, just picked up another pair on impulse at the checkout.
Gift horse, meet mouth.

Which, a few days later twists into a bow as she unplugs one ear and holds one of two tethered earbuds inches from my face.

"Listen to this," she says with a hiss.

I don't know what to expect as I take the offering tentatively. Not sure how close I should position the device next to my ear, how loud the volume will be, or what flavor of music my daughter will introduce.

She listens to all kinds. Just like her brother ...

And their father ...

And, let's face it, myself.

Truth be told, I rarely find fault with the music she loves, though I'm not exactly keeping up with the times. My overall impression has been that the anthems of her youth are exponentially more upbeat than the anthems of mine. Though I can't quite say that the bulk of her songs are sugar sweet. Especially when they try to harmonize with the songs that seep out from the dark, musky-smelling sweat-sock lair that is my son’s bedroom.

Of course, I don't know for sure because I have enforced an ear-buds rule for dueling sound systems. The cacophony can be crazy making.

Which is what I'm gearing up for as I take a listen.

But what comes out of the earbud isn't music at all. It's the sound of metal scratching stone or static interrupting more static.

"Did the cat get them again!?"

"No ... that is just the sound one half of a $7 set of earphones makes three days after you buy them."

In case you were wondering ... she didn't say this with malice. She said it with the same exasperation I would have used had she bought them for herself. Knowing full and well that a $20 set may have fared no better. 

Of course, I know that the part of her that is appreciative of the act of replacement would NEVER complain about the amount spent on said replacement. Nevertheless, that part of her statement connected to the part in me that tells me I am guilty of always trying to save a buck by throwing away six.

Because ... let's face it, the likelihood of me returning the cheap and faulty earbuds diminishes by thirds with each passing moment, until the moment when I realize I've already disposed of the packaging, and then the likelihood of return evaporates altogether.

It's not as if marketers don't know the optimal price points for the point of no return.
It's kind of why we should all be looking gift horses in the mouths.

Cold, hard facts

Long before popular science nudged coffee onto the “good for you” list, I had adopted it as a health food.

Back then, the pots full of drip Folgers I drank every day took the place of smoking a full pack of Camels. 

Decades later, it’s entirely possible that the fluid coursing around inside my veins is a blackish brown in color and almost altogether caffeinated. 

Since I don’t add cream or sugar, I’ve assumed my beverage of choice would factor into at least 10 of the eight doctor-recommended glasses of water per day.

I’m knocking on a wood-based product as I tell you I can have a bedtime double espresso and still fall asleep at night. 

Now, I would wear this addiction proudly on my sleeve was it not for two tiny problems: the fact that I am spending the kids’ college education on single serve’s $45-per-pound equivalent; and the K-Cup mountain of trash for which I must also account.

Only two of the cups’ three component parts are recyclable: the foil lid and the paper filter. The cup itself is neither recyclable nor compostable. 

Oh sure, I have a set of green refillable pods taking up space in some kitchen drawer. I may have even used them once or twice before the mess of filling and cleaning and refilling convinced me the taste of the brew just wasn’t the same.

I tried to offset my callus return to disposables by reusing the pods as receptacles for seedlings. However, it soon became apparent we don’t have the acreage to support the farm my coffee habit would produce.

Of course, it isn’t just the pods that pile up in the trash. The machines themselves also seem to be disposable; as not a single device has lasted in our house for more than two years.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Vermont, my aunt is percolating a pot of coffee in the same hollow silver urn that my parents gave her as a wedding present a more than a half-century ago.

Which is what I imagine as I try unsuccessfully to descale our sixth single-serve monster in nine years.

I give up the ghost when the contraption groans like the undead.  My decaffeinated mind has already begun to fray. I even contemplated taking my mug to the next door neighbor and pressing my nose against their kitchen window until they let me inside.

My husband —  with two-cup limit — says nothing as he rummages through a cabinet and unearths an old aluminum octagonal stovetop espresso maker, dusts it off and fills it’s lower chamber with water. 

In the time it takes to boil water he’s magically turned three tablespoons of coffee into two mugs of nothing short of delicious.

Just a few taps of the filter, the swish of a bottle brush and a swirl of warm

water (no soap) and all that’s left is a bit of compost and a clean Moka. 

“I’ve also been thinking about getting a cold brew filter. You store a jar of it in the fridge and heat it up whenever you want. I understand the coffee tastes smoother, too.”

His voice seems far away as I hold my cup up to my chin, gripping it with two hands and inhaling deeply. 

I stare at this work of art in the dish drainer. I can almost picture myself divorced from the convenience of single serve and reintroduced to elegant ingenuity. My life’s blood thinner, maybe, but just as robust.

Maybe even get out from under this plastic mountain of guilt.

“They say cold is the new hot.”