The All-State All-Star Football Game

The Snow Globe got dumped upside down, and everything fell to the top and stuck there. And no one turned it back over. So there didn't seem to be any sparkles in the air. Here's what happened: my husband Tom is on the city council in the Globe, and if you have ever been involved in small town politics, I probably don't need to say more. If you haven't, you should. Because you will find out really fast how not glamorous it is and you will understand once and for all that changing the world must be a doozy of a job if you can't even pass an ordinance saying Dick's dog shouldn't chase Jane's kid down the street and into the corn field, because if you try Dick will defend his dog with threat of force and his third cousin the lawyer. It gives you a great deal of respect for people who, amazingly enough, do change a little bit of the world every day in all different ways.

So while taking his turn on the council, because somebody has to do it after all or we'll be buried in unmentionable stuff because no one waded their way through fixing the infamous sewer problem, Tom has angered the town's small hornet nest. Mostly they just buzz. Sometimes they sting. This time one winged his way into Larry's Caribou Lounge and started a stinging rumor. Then I got a message; my dear childhood friend said our mutual friend said that his step-dad said that the hornet told everyone in the bar, all four or five of them (blank ugly rumor) about Tom and I. Ouch. Add to that a long, scathing, half-informed opinion piece in the local newspaper (I use the term newspaper with hope in the possibility rather than belief that the current publication deserves that title), saying not-nice things about Mayor Pastor and Tom. Mayor Pastor is a thoughtful, mild-mannered, intelligent man, a former Nazarene pastor new to the position of mayor who has quietly but firmly become a hornet exterminator.

I wanted to forget about the whole situation and go about my little business, but stuff that wasn't sparkly kept coming in the door when other people came to my daycare, and so I was feeling uncharacteristically grumpy about living in the Globe. In fact, I spent some time in the Pretty Little City over the weekend and couldn't stop thinking about how much I liked it there, chatting with strangers in the elevator, being pressed into a cheerful crowd at an outdoor concert, seeing people of many varieties, feeling blissfully anonymous. I'm a loyal and loving fourth generation resident of the Globe; I don't actually want to live anywhere else. It's just that a series of downer small-towner things, combined with my own 40-something issues, led to my admittedly bad attitude. I had begun to gripe. I don't know if y'all gripe in other places, but we've got it down around here, and I'm susceptible; once I start I have trouble stopping.

So I was going with Tom every evening to take the dog on his walk (armed with pepper spray against Dick's damn dog), and alternating between the type of happy conversation married people who like each other and are raising a family together have, and griping. On an evening last week the conversation was about our son Devin and his invitation to play in the All-State All-Star Football Game. The invitation came with a need for him to find a sponsor to pay $400 for his participation in the game. We were wondering about how to make that happen since we also needed to send in the payment for "this," had "that" coming up, and couldn't forget about "the other thing." The walk ended with me thinking we had to solve the sponsor problem right way because the deadline was just over a week away. A couple days later I paused on my way to the same son's district basketball tournament to make a quick Facebook post asking if any of my friends knew of a business that might be willing and able to be his sponsor.

That's when the Globe started to be gently tilted towards the upright position, and a couple of sparkles drifted down. One friend commented on my post, "What about individual sponsors?" and I joked that maybe we should get 80 sponsors at $5 each and say Dev is sponsored by his community. By the time we got to the game, the magic of social media had cast its spell and our fellow basketball fans greeted us with hugs and, well, with cash! The Globe was firmly on its base and sparkles were floating down in a blizzard of good feelings.

Send Devin to the All-State All-Star Football Game took on a life of its own. The treasurer of our community events committee made plans to coordinate the whole effort over coffee with the long-time school secretary/extra mom to years' worth of graduates. From all across the community people were reaching out to help. Like the person at church who handed me $10 and a note saying she had once helped a young man get to Hungary for a wrestling event, which taught her "it takes a village" to get a kid to Hungary…or to the All-State game. There was the science teacher caring for a husband who can no longer care for himself, who says her job teaching in the Snow Globe saves her and that she loves her students, especially my son. There was the former high school football star from the Globe who is clear across the country getting ready to embark on his training as a Green Beret, calling to ask Devin how much he needs, because he understands the importance of that All-Star moment. There was the coach who doesn't work in the Globe anymore, but continues to coach his players long-distance whenever they need him, because small town ties are the kind that stretch but don't break. There's my friend in Seattle who once visited the Globe and became a lifetime fan; she says Devin is now sponsored by the "Greater Northwest Community."

Now, at first I felt embarrassed. In fact, I planned to delete the post but it took off without me and I couldn't catch up. It's not like this is a grave illness, a tragic accident, or the opportunity of a lifetime. People in the Globe have faced all of those things and more, when helping was the only right thing for all of us to do. But as I peeked in at the Facebook conversation thread, folks making arrangements, extending good luck wishes to Devin, joking with one another, telling us how loved we are, the embarrassment settled away. Yes, given a little more time we could have stretched our budget to send our son to the game ourselves. But the spirit of community sparkling in the air we could never have created on our own. It swirls around me, shining soothingly on stinging rumors, clarifying small-town politics, warming up my attitude, and illuminating all the reasons why I am right here where I belong and right-side up again.

The Chicken Connection

March 8, 2012

At preschool this morning we had green eggs and ham.   Its classic Seuss, silliness with a lesson, “You do not like them, so you say.  Try them, try them and you may.  Try them and you may I say!”  I always love doing my Sam-I-am bit, and this year it was even better because the eggs came from chickens who are like family, the ones who live in my very own sister’s back yard.

Now, I never imagined my sister as the farm girl type, but she rescued these nearly homeless chickens from a friend who was moving, and perhaps out of gratitude the little sweeties settled in and started laying eggs, even though their new home is not exactly on a farm.  And because they were so busy laying eggs, there were plenty for our scrambled green eggs extravaganza.  I couldn’t have been more delighted.  Until my sister came in this evening with her sad farm girl face. 

Okay, to be more honest it was more like her highly irritated business manager face, because it’s hard to look like a farm girl when you’re dressed in your professional girl clothes and have just left an office full of responsibilities, and come home to find a notice on your door from City Hall giving you a few days to do something about your chickens.  It seems they had wandered into a neighbor’s yard, prompting a complaint to the City.

I said the chickens’ new home wasn’t exactly a farm, but it’s pretty darn close.  Our “city” has a population of 600ish.  My sister’s lawn is separated from a cornfield by one house and a narrow excuse for a road.  So what I don’t understand about this situation is why, oh why the neighbor couldn’t have knocked on the door and said, “Hi.  I met your chickens.  Could you please make sure they stay out of my yard?”

If the neighbors had done that, they would have found an apologetic new chicken keeper very willing to come up with a better way to keep her feathered family closer to the coop, and as a neighborly bonus they would have gone back home with at least a dozen cute little eggs, yummy in green but probably equally tasty in their natural color.  What they may not have known is just how important those chickens are, but sometimes what you don’t know should make all the difference.

You see, my 12 year old niece has gone through a difficult time over the past year, to the point of being medicated for depression, which sadly runs in our family.  It’s very frightening for a parent to face the brick wall of depression standing between you and your baby.  When you find something that puts a window in the wall, you buy curtains and let it stay.  That’s what the chickens had become for my niece, sunshine through a window.  My sister isn’t a farm girl, but she gave chicken-keeping the old Dr. Seuss try because she’s a mother and she cares so much.  

Caring is the connection I’m getting to here.  It’s interesting to me how seemingly unrelated parts of a day can be so clearly connected, and this whole chickens-green eggs-neighbor thing pointed straight to an article that appeared in my email inbox earlier in the day called The Caring Toolbox.  The article was from the website of former diplomat turned author John Graham, where he shares “practical tips for people who are creating change in their communities and beyond.”  He says caring is:  appreciating others’ feelings and needs, minding all the little interactions, being personal, listening, taking time.  My sister’s neighbor, like so many of us on an ordinary busy crazy day, didn’t take time to ask “Hmm, I wonder why my neighbors have decided to adopt chickens?”  He didn’t even take time to have a “little interaction,” opting instead to call City Hall. 

My own neighbors have chickens.   And they have turkeys and several other species of birds. In fact I woke up one morning to a whole flock of some unidentified feathered guys and gals walking around in my flower bed.  On Saturday mornings I will admit their rooster is a tad irritating.  I have always just considered it part of living in a small rural town, and after today, I will definitely not be calling City Hall about it.  I have no idea why my neighbors have so many birds but I’m pretty sure City Hall doesn’t either, so if I wanted to “create change in my community” I guess I’d have to “take the time” to find out.  I don’t have to allow the birds regular access to my flowerbed, but if I asked their people to keep them home, and I asked politely and with a certain amount of understanding, I have confidence that they would be kept home as well as their family of humans could manage it.    

I believe John Graham has the right idea but maybe his suggestions could be summed up more simply if I just invited the town to green eggs and ham day at preschool.  My sister’s neighbors could sit on the Circle Time carpet next to my beautiful niece and benefit from a bit of Seuss:  “You don’t like to care, so you say.  Try it, try it and you may.  Try it and you may I say.”

http://johngrahamspeaker.org/coachs-corner

5 Things I Learned From Basketball

March 4, 2012

I’ve heard it said that small towns have nothing going for them but school sports.  I’m also fond of the saying “bloom where you are planted.”  And where I’m planted, it’s been raining basketballs.  If that’s what we have going for us, we can learn from it as well as from any other experience.  So here are 5 things I learned from basketball:

1.       Natural talent is nice; Dedication and hard work is better.  If small towns have sports, they also have a limited number of players to play them.  They may not be tall, they may not be fast, they may not show up to practice jumping high and shooting strong.  But if they show up because they want to play, and a good coach believes in them, they will end the season stronger, higher, faster, and if not actually taller, then standing taller just the same.

2.       It takes only one negative person in the bleachers to bring down an entire crowd and dampen the spirits of an entire team, but it takes a whole set of bleachers filled with cheering fans to make an equally positive impact.  However, once the cheering begins the energy is instant and it spills out of the gym and into the classroom, the Post Office and the gas station and, this being 2012, onto facebook.  It gives the old guy across the street, who very likely played for the same team, a reason to appreciate his young neighbor even if he does have a loud truck and rowdy friends. 

3.      Despite the abuse folks yell from the sidelines (things like, “get your glasses checked, Ref,” and “did the other team pay you for that call?”), referees are people too.  My son didn’t like a call against him during the emotion-charged district championship game this season, and he was a little too visual about it on the court, resulting in a technical foul.  He was so ashamed of himself that he asked his coach to get him the email addresses of the referees and sent them apologies.  (No, I’m not making that up, and neither his parents nor his coach asked him to do it.) 
     He got prompt replies from both.  One of them wrote “…making split second decisions about fouls is not always an easy job, and sometimes we just plain make bad calls. In my 12 years of refereeing high school basketball this is the first time I've ever received something like this and I truly appreciate it.”  Not only do referees have a difficult job and take much abuse on a regular basis, they also love the game and care about the kids who play it, care enough to spend time writing to my son to praise the “step towards adulthood” he took when he wrote to them.  That’s a step some grown-ups in the stands have yet to take.

4.      Many foods go well with basketball:  frozen pizza (though you must remember to have on hand an entire pizza per player who will be hanging-out in your kitchen), Subway sandwiches (with extra, extra napkins if the 3 year old will be eating one in the truck in the dark when you’re late for the game), BBQ pork hoagies (if you are feeling generous enough to support the fundraising efforts of the opposing school even though they are loud and obnoxious and beating your team when you deserve to win more), and Carmel Apple Suckers (when you’ve been at a jr. high tournament all-the-live-long-day and thought you’d run out of cash until you found that life-saving 46 cents in your coat pocket)

5.      The definition of the word perspective is “the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one in having meaningful interrelationships."  I looked it up because my son’s coach talked with his team for a long time in the locker room when they lost a game in the State basketball tournament by 1 point in the final seconds.  When my son came out of the locker room, he carried with him that one word, perspective. 
       This lost game, now forever out of their reach, had been the focus of countless hours, in fact for the seniors on the team it had been the focus of four year’s-worth of hours.  This game was the reason each time they stepped onto the court they began in a tight huddle chanting passionately “One Team, One Dream!”  In an exhausted locker room filled with sweat and tears, Coach told them if they live their lives with as much drive and dedication, give it as much effort, as they have given basketball then they will always be champions.  He reminded them they would emerge from the locker room to find parents, girlfriends, classmates, teachers who had stood by them and were proud of them.  He taught them to put basketball into perspective as a part of the “interrelationships” of their lives.

I don’t believe for a minute that school sports is all we have going for us here in our small town, but if indeed they are and we work at playing them well, they just may be all we need.

Cheerleaders and Honor's English 111

February 27, 2012

Yay for cheerleaders!  I was one, once upon a long time ago.  And an even bigger cheer for small towns, because I would never (ever, ever, ever) have been a cheerleader anywhere but in small town USA.  And ironically, considering the perky but brainless stereotype, it was my time as a high school cheerleader that got me through my first day of college.


Why am I thinking about cheerleaders?  Because today’s happy thing happily happened when my daughter, now the Cheer Coach at the same small school where I proudly pumped my poms, came in with this season’s colorful catalogue of cheer couture.  It so happens my sister was here at the same time.  She was a cheerleader too!  And it gets better!  Her daughter was also here and she is now, this very day, a cheerleader, under the direction of my daughter, about to pick a uniform from said catalogue.  Squeal!

So we chattered and debated, bent side-by-side-by-side-by-side over the catalogue, laughing at the page boldly labeled “Vintage Styles,” where there was a picture of the very same 8-pleated skirt I wore, complete with knee socks.  When I packed those socks away in a box and went to college, thank God I didn’t pack away the perky persona, at least not completely.  It never quite fit me, but at a small school everybody gets to take on multiple rolls in order to build the whole experience.  So your yearbook bio might read “National Honor Society, Rodeo Club, Business Professionals of America, Cheerleader.”   That I was able to summon just the tiniest bit of that loud-in-front-of-a-crowd cheerleader attitude is the only thing that saved me.

In the very first class of my very first day of college, I was completely unsure I was in the right room.  I was supposed to be in Honors English 111, but apparently it is not necessary for a professor to introduce herself or tell you if you are in the right place before she begins to call role.  And apparently she is within her rights to demand that you tell perfect strangers something about yourself when she calls your name (assuming you are in the right class and she will indeed find your name).  I couldn’t decide which would be worse, having her call my name which would force me to speak, or having her not call my name, forcing me to get up and leave. 

I had absolutely no choice.  Either way it went, I had to be a cheerleader.  If she didn’t call my name, I would get up in front of everyone, give a charming smile and a perky wave and bounce out of the room.  If she did call my name, I would introduce myself with spirit (“Who are, who are, who are we?  We are, we are, we are thee  pea-eye-rrr-aaa-ttt-eee-sss, pirates are the very best!”). 

Turns out she did call my name, and while inside I was cheering, outside I was able to introduce myself with a minimum of words and a small shaky smile.  My very first essay for that class was about my small hometown, and the professor wrote comments in the margins that stay with me still, and she asked me to enter it in the university President’s Essay Contest.  Yay for small town cheerleaders!