Lynn Rankin-Esquer's Blog, page 7

How To Waste Money

I’m not an expert on a lot. Well, that’s not true exactly. I have three degrees so I must be expert in something but I can’t remember what it is so I’m just going to focus on the thing I seem to be doing really well at these days.

Wasting money. I’m willing to share the details of this skill!

Buy lots of fruits and vegetables. Put them in the refrigerator until you have plastic bags filled with unidentifiable mush. Throw them in the garbage.

Make sure you have shitty wireless so your kids continually turn it off on their phones and use lots of data. And don’t bother with the unlimited data plan, that is too much of a money saver.

Notice your daughter’s room is messy. Go to the Container Store and buy storage containers. Stack them in the garage until you get around to working in her room, which will never happen.  Eventually she will go to college at which point no one has the interest or stamina to organize her room. Added benefit of annoying husband every time he tries to clean up garage and you insist you are going to use them.

Send husband to Costco so he can return with gallons of pork rinds, pot stickers, and chopped salad. Eat the first eighth of each. Toss the rest out six months later.

Give birth to picky eaters, thus guaranteeing no one will ever finish leftovers or opened bags of chips.

Stop punishing for milk left out all night, buying more will definitely waste money.  In fact, food waste of any kind = money waste.

Don’t put name tags in any clothes, particularly not sweatshirts. Those things practically walk out of the house themselves.

Delay paying bills so that you can accrue finance charges. Credit cards are particularly helpful for this!  Get a couple! With some dedicated searching you can find cards with extra high interest rates.

Gift cards!  These are the best. Buy gift cards, stick them in a drawer and make sure to never take them with you when visiting the establishments they represent. To waste even more money, buy a cute box or accordion fold envelope to keep them in.

Take picky child to eat at a one price fancy brunch buffet.  $49 for two slices of bacon and a cup of OJ will send you to the top of the money wasters!

Always pay the extra money to board the plane three minutes earlier than the rest of the cattle in coach.  This will drain money quickly and efficiently.

Never turn down a fund raiser. You could argue these are not money wasters but I’m still waiting on that six pack of wrapping paper an elementary school student sold me ten years ago.  The check cleared, the paper never showed up.

Buy the high school’s ‘Value Card’ for local businesses but never actually get the free drink with the six inch sub.

Do your family and friends a favor and never even send out the fundraising emails their football team asked them to send. Instead, donate the required amount yourself. This way, you increase your money wasting AND manage to keep friends and family close.

Buy concert tickets for your busiest time of year (Christmas works well, as does finals week for your kids), then miss the concert.

When visiting prospective colleges, buy a bunch of gear with the name of the school ‘just in case.’ Get something for each person in the family.  Thus, when the one college is selected you have effectively wasted hundreds of dollars on gear that your student now would not be caught dead in.  Say you are going to donate the gear to someone going to that school but never get around to it.  Or if you get around to it, make sure to pick someone who lives far away. Pack it up and send it overnight.

Oh the delights of overnight mail.  This is a very efficient way to waste money.  Need that women’s soccer jersey in time for the next national team game? Pay $39 for a $15 jersey to be shipped over night.

Send Christmas presents to the east coast!  Make sure to buy very big presents as those boxes cost more to send.  Don’t even consider the gifts that are small, like jewelry (or gift cards, don’t even think of regifting those, they belong in a drawer).  Extra points for items that are large AND oddly shaped.

Plants – ah the many ways to waste money on plants.  Cut flowers are a good start, they begin by being dead so will be gone very quickly.  You can make your own dead plants at home too – buy houseplants (orchids are a good choice, they tend to be expensive). ‘Forget’ to water them (alternatively, put them in a place with poor sunlight). Notice them a few weeks later, feel bad, throw them out, buy some more.  This also works with outdoor plants.  The options outside are even better:  buy some big beautiful expensive planters.  Very decorative. Buy potting soil, enough to fill them. Buy plants in the proper landscaping tradition (thrill, spill, fill:  plants big and thrilling, plus some that spill over the sides of the planter, plus some to fill in any remaining space).  As with inside plants, fail to water. Bingo! More money wasted.

Buy a car that only uses premium gas.  That shit adds up.

Door Dash A LOT.  Make sure you know all the restaurants in your area that participate. Let members of the family order individually thus increasing the number of Dashers headed to your house in one night. Individual Dashers also has the added benefit of wasting gas in three separate cars.

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it – leave lights on all over the house. Make sure every electronic is always plugged in (and on!).  This is the work horse of money wasting. Run the dryer for one t-shirt. Tell the family towels are one use only (actually, if you have teenagers, they already participate in this program).

Remain disorganized so that you end up re-buying the things you already have but can’t put your finger on. There’s no shame in owning eight pairs of shin guards.

I could go on and on but it’s time for my weekly Costco run. Plenty of food waiting to be bought and wasted! Although given that a self-imposed (or state imposed) quarantine may be coming we might just end up eating all that food anyway.

Visit me at my FB author page:  Lynn Rankin-Esquer Author

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website: https://lynnrankin-esquer.com/

Remembering Mazi (originally posted 3-21-16)

 

 

“ Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”

– Lao Tzu

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Sometimes breaking the law is the right thing to do.

Growing up, in my east coast town, angry teenagers looking for a way to express themselves would climb the water tower and paint something on it.  This weekend a band of suburban moms did the California version of a water tower, triumphing over barbed wire and steep hills to paint the big rock that looms over our town.

Six broken hearted angry middle aged women climbed a hill (several hills actually, it was like the Sound of Music out there.  If the Sound of Music was set in Northern California, at night, eerily lit by a bunch of PGE lights that surround our community sinkhole.)  We slogged through a mini river, prayed that the cows were off in another pasture, sopping the bottom of our yoga pants, climbing ferociously up STEEP grade hills, sliding uncontrollably down the back side of the hills, backpacks filled with spray paint and light beer.  We became goat-like despite wearing Nike Free runs that were a poor choice of tool for the task.  With head lamps borrowed from our boy scout sons we levered ourselves like lithe mountain climbers (which we are not but our mission made us into) to paint the town rock.  A rock that is normally commandeered by high school students and the occasional crazed swim dad pod (you know who you are, M).

Do you know why this set of suburban moms met at 10:15 pm (yes, I said pm, as in at night) to commit this mayhem?  A group of women who for the most part would have already been asleep, if not raging at their teens/tweens to be asleep?  A group of moms who, at least half of them would never consider breaking a rule (the other half long out of practice at breaking rules)?  They, we, were out there out of the desperate love for a man who changed all of our lives before leaving this earth too **** (insert your own swear word here) early.  MAZI.  Mazi Maghsoodnia.  The Man.  The Man who could get a bunch of law abiding moms (not a few of whom have anxiety issues) off their butts and out of their houses to climb what felt like a mountain to spray paint his name on a rock.  In the dark.

We scrambled around the bottom and sides and top of the rock, one of us even hung off the top of the rock, with two people desperately grasping the back of her sweatshirt, to write the name MAZI on this rock.

And to add a soccer ball and a heart because, well, Mazi.

We were so desperate to make this work we took advice from teenagers.

Yes, we asked our teenage children what they knew about making the rock message stand out and, yes, hold on here, we listened.

And we were told how to access the hills and trail to the rock.  And we were told to ‘make the letters BIG’ and we did.

After reconvening on the side street where we had parked our cars we drove into the gas station at the bottom of the hill to yell confirmations to each other like we were the Seals team that just took out Bin Laden. We yelled and gave each other thumbs up as we looked up at the dim hillside with a big rock on top that clearly, even in the dark night, said “MAZI.”  The man we all loved and admired and appreciated and missed.

Mazi. You are perhaps the only person who could get this group of women out past 8:00, and not only out of their houses but climbing steep wet hills, with paint!  At 12:30 we were all still texting each other in excitement, sharing pictures, imagining what you might have made of this.

You are gone but the powerful passion for life that you brought to everyone around you lives on in all the lives you touched.  It fueled us all that crazy hill-climbing night, made us greedy to live large in your name.   Thank you for inspiring that kind of fiery joy.

I know God has already blessed you, I know God has blessed us with knowing you, I only hope that God blesses those left behind with some ways to get along until they are with you again.  With you again to play your beloved soccer, watch you dance with your beloved family, to once again stand in the light that was so uniquely yours.  God bless and hold you for us all.

Kill, Hit, Sing

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Being married to a college coach I have had the chance to see some amazing athletes. I’ve had a front row seat to transcendent moments where talent, passion and effort intersect in a goosebump kind of performance.  It is fun to watch but beyond that it is inspiring because it reveals what is possible as a human being. It makes me believe we all have the ability to do something that well, make that kind of contribution to the world, if we only identify our talent and then work it relentlessly for years.  And if we are lucky, it will come together in a moment that makes all the hard work worth it. If we are lucky, it comes together in a moment of stunning perfection. A third national championship, a four home run night.

Finally settled in from our move from the east bay to Palo Alto, I look around and realize there are a lot of good sporting events happening within a mile of my house. I jump on the volleyball bandwagon and start watching the Stanford women’s team.  It doesn’t take an expert to recognize that this team is playing at a high level, like cruising-altitude-in-a-jet high level. They are so fun to watch, and the most fun of all is Kathryn Plummer. At 6’ 6” with a flowing long blond braid she would be hard to miss but it is the grace and power of her play that is most compelling. I’d hate to be on the other side of the net when Hentz gets another perfect set and Kathryn comes out of the backcourt, rising in the air, arm swinging into one of her lethal kill shots. I could watch that over and over. It is like the Khaleesi on her dragon – undefendable. She has a fearful grace that is power and elegance and fierce competitiveness poured into movement. Her fearful grace led the team to its third national championship in four years and anyone watching that final match knew they were witnessing a physicality as close to perfection as humans can get.

I watch a lot of baseball. I love it. I’ve seen so many exciting games, thrilling moments, crazy calls and comebacks. But until this past year I had never seen one player hit a home run every time he was at bat in a game. Andrew Daschbach is a big, strong, friendly guy, like a golden retriever in Paul Bunyan’s body. And like Paul Bunyan might have done had he played baseball, Andrew eviscerated pitchers in a game against Cal Poly on May 14, 2019. Not only did he hit four home runs in one game, he hit those home runs off four different pitchers. By the fourth time he was up to bat every single person in the stands was holding their breath. Would he do it? Would he manage it one last time? I snuck a look around to find his parents, over in a different section. If my heart was beating fast theirs must have been pounding out of their chests. He made contact but unlike his first three, it wasn’t immediately obvious if it would go out. We all watched, silent, hoping, willing that ball out of the park. After time seemed to stand still the ball cleared the right field fence and the crowd went wild. His teammates went wild. I’m sure his parents went wild, all the parents went wild. I’ve been around athletes for a long time now and I am aware of the years of practice that went into that night. The years of working out, conditioning, eating healthy, hours in batting cages and weight rooms. Of overcoming slumps and injuries and exhaustion and bad calls. Nothing is guaranteed, but on a night like that, all those years of work must feel worth it. We all can feel a sense of potential but how often does it become fully realized? A night like that is a rare chance to feel like the potential has been fully realized, it has been completely fulfilled. The ball soared off into the night, again and again and again, there was no way to improve on that. It was the best that could be done, by anyone, anywhere.

I watch Kathryn and Andrew and feel a hum of possibility in myself. What is it I have to offer the world? What interest and skill do I have to offer, what passion is worth years of my time? What moments might I rise to that level of performance?

Many of us might reach a moment that big, might have a transcendent moment, but in all likelihood, it will not be public. It will not be cheered by masses of people. It will not be broadcast on SportsCenter and Twitter. It doesn’t have to be any less meaningful for that.

Craig and Karen Coane have hosted a Christmas caroling party for 12 years. They have the perfect house for entertaining, open floor plan, cool back deck and back yard, a stunning kitchen. Everyone brings food, mostly crockpots of chili, every variation you can imagine. It is festive and fun and everyone is chatting and enjoying each other and then Craig tunes up his guitar and starts the caroling practice. People are slow to stop talking to each other but eventually we are all pulled in to the music. And then it is time to head out into the neighborhood.  I’ve noticed that over the years, more and more people forego the caroling part of the caroling party, lagging behind inside, enjoying the warmth and the food and the good conversation.  This year, it had rained on and off all day and it was dark and foggy outside. Their beautiful house felt even more cozy. Fewer people than usual headed out to sing.

Then Karen sent a messenger inside to remind people that this was a caroling party, after all. Someone grabbed the microphone and shamed everyone into heading out to sing. We love Craig so much that we all went. The first house or two had people welcoming us. Then we hit a run of houses with babies sleeping, the parents at the door wide eyed in their pleas for silence. And then some houses where no one answered the door. And then a couple more welcoming folks. We sang, chatted on the way to the next house, sang again. The fog gave an eerie look to the world, everything fuzzy, all sharp edges gone.

Then we got to a house we go to every year, one towards the end of the route. There is an old couple who live there, they are slow to open the door but the festive wreath and the porch lights signal they are home and we should wait. Eventually the door opens to reveal them in their robes, beaming and happy to see us.  This year when the door finally opened it was only the man. He told us that his wife had passed away in June. And then tears started to slide down his face.

The group went silent. The laughing and chatting that had accompanied the whole trip stopped. While the rest of us stood tongue-tied, Craig seamlessly shifted from gregarious to compassionate. In a soft voice he told the man he was so sorry to hear that. The man talked about how much they looked forward to the caroling. How much his wife had looked forward to it. And Craig offered more kind words, shifting the whole group into a supportive mood. And then we sang Silent Night. Everyone cried. Even the man as he sang along, his face crumpled in grief, tears streaming. Even the pack of sixteen-year-old boys who, surprisingly, were still along, still singing, seemingly forgetting for this one night that singing carols is uncool.

For the length of that song we were with that man in his grief. I’d like to think it offered him some company in his sadness, a lessening, for a second, of his profound loneliness. I loved every person in that group in that moment. It was a reminder of what life is really about, being truly present with each other in all the parts of life. I will never sing Silent Night again without thinking of that man and that night. I’m not sure I’ll ever sing it again without tears.

Craig has been a musician his whole life. He brings the music wherever he goes. He has a relentless cheery outlook. Without being the least pushy, he inspires people to enjoy life, to sing even if they have no great voice, to dance even with poor moves. Even people who don’t know him are pulled into his charisma, as evidenced by the bartender at the Field of Dreams in Manteca who said ‘you do you Boo!’ to him, as evidenced by the ski resort employee who sold him lift tickets and said, ‘here you go, Craig-a-licious.’

Although he is an accomplished musician, it wasn’t Craig’s skill with music that made this moment – it was his skill with people.  He inspired us to get out and sing which brought us to the very place we were most needed. And he responded with compassion and tenderness to a heartbroken man. He turned an awkward situation into a holy one.

Kathryn Plummer gave all of herself and got her moment. Andrew Daschbach gave all of himself and got his moment.  And Craig Coane did the same and gave us all a moment, singing with the grieving old man. On that damp and foggy night, my voice joining other voices felt as powerful as a Plummer kill, as soaring as a Daschbach home run.

For a beautiful moment, humanity’s potential fulfilled.

 

 

Visit me at my FB author page:  Lynn Rankin-Esquer Author

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An Object Lesson from José Altuve

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Having spent a significant amount of thoroughly enjoyable time watching college baseball this spring (my husband Dave coaches the Stanford team) you would think I might be taking a little time off from the sport this summer. Instead, I got home from the NCAA Super Regional at Mississippi State (Lessons From Starkville), did some laundry, and headed out on the 15U travel ball circuit with my son and his GamePrep 2022 team.  We’ve been to Phoenix, Stockton, San Francisco (that one was easy, living as we do in Palo Alto) and finally, Houston. And by Houston I mean that wide swath of Texas that in other parts of the country might qualify as a state all on its own. (I looked it up, it is the 8th most ‘expansive city’ in the US, it is over 1,000 square miles. The city itself.)

I cheerfully, naively, offered to be the parent traveling along with our son this summer, thinking I would have lots of time alone in hotel rooms to write, but somehow the time got all chopped up by getting to the field or getting the boys food or getting together with other parents, something I wanted to do because we are new to the team and I wanted to get to know them.  So I said ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ again until finally on day five I said ‘wait,’ which gave me the time to get to say ‘no.’ I told them I would drive myself to the game, and that I might be a little late. Claiming this block of time, widening it, took effort, like holding elevator doors open when they are trying to close.

So, there I was, sitting in a hotel room in Houston, my son packed off in someone else’s car to get to warmups. There I was, after watching everybody else in their arenas, finally standing on the edge of my arena.  It was quiet. It was a bit too cold but once the AC cycled off I knew it would feel just right. I had a glass of tea because tea helps almost anything.  Housekeeping had been in so it was relatively cleaned up, by which I mean the beds were made and we had clean towels but I was not about to touch the mound of teenage boy clothes strewn on his side of the room and neither was any sane housekeeper. I was staring out the window at cars streaming by on Route 10, another stream of cars parallel below them on the Frontage road that was practically a highway itself (very odd, this highway along a freeway concept they have in Houston, but I think it works). Beside the freeway there was a billboard that said ‘Get Buck Naked In Katy’ but I couldn’t see the fine print so I had no idea what that referred to. I made a mental note to check it out the next time I was on the freeway. I wasn’t about to get buck naked in Katy but I was curious about who was. It was a place to start, though, looking at freeways.

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I always imagined driving in Texas would be a matter of wide highways through dusty brown expanses, pickup trucks mixing with eighteen wheelers, plenty of space in between, wickedly hot sun blazing down on it all. Like Thelma and Louise minus Brad Pitt and the leap off the Grand Canyon. Peaceful-like. Instead, at least around Houston, it is like kayaking through six rivers, converging and splitting and merging back together again.  Every day the trip to the field (thirty miles away, in Houston everything seems to be thirty miles away) took us along several highways, four lane and seven lane freeways with exits all over the place, left side, middle, right side, split into EZTrac lanes and Exact Coins lanes and Cash Not Exact Coin lanes. Rush hour traffic filled with cars, pickups, eighteen wheelers and three separate times, two oversized trailers traveling caravan style with both sides of a double wide house lumbering along while the rest of traffic streamed around them.  Living in the San Francisco Bay area I’m no stranger to traffic but was still surprised that going out to dinner it took us an hour to go twenty miles, and the last four miles were half of that.

The freeway exchanges looked like a group of octopuses playing twister (and yes, I checked, the plural of octopus is octopuses).  ‘Exit right then stay to the left’ my GPS helpfully instructs me and the exit ramp went high in the air before it split dramatically left or right and I felt like my car was about to be launched into space if I didn’t brake properly, but not too fast because there were lots of cars right behind me.

[image error]This is a baby octopus – I was too busy navigating the more complicated ones to get a picture. Imagine this with three more exchanges on top and you get the idea.

So everyone there at Cy-Fair Sports complex in Cypress at the New Balance Future Stars tournament made their own pilgrimage.  We took planes and rental cars and arranged hotel rooms and trekked our 30 miles through octopus exchanges and put on our sunscreen and filled up our water bottles and made sure our sons had their 33 inch Victus and Marucci bat, worked-in glove, and the blue jersey with gray pants today.  And we sweated in the heat and checked Gamechanger for accurate scores.  Most parents at this tournament probably think their son is good enough to play in college, if not beyond.  The reality is that some players at this tournament will get college offers, and of those, some might actually be starters in college, and of those, some might actually get drafted, and of those, some might actually make it to the major leagues. It won’t be all of these boys. It might be one or two of them. It might be none.

This is unpopular news for the parents.

What makes all this effort worth it?

Is it the wins?

Is it the chance to get better?

Is it the pride of a great performance?

Is it the chance, no matter how small, to move on to the next level?

I kept thinking about this, wondering about the sanity of all of us parents out there in the dusty heat, inflated dreams of professional baseball, money hemorrhaging from our bank accounts. What is the point?

And then we went to an Astros game and I got my answer.

Minute Maid Park was very cool (literally and metaphorically) and walking in from the searing heat for a 1:00 Wednesday game I could fully appreciate the brilliance of putting a dome over a stadium in Texas. That place was packed and jumping with energy and it made me wonder if anyone in Houston has jobs or if they were playing hooky or if Astros fans are just so devoted they said what the heck, I’m going.

The Astros were playing the A’s and a couple of my husband Dave’s former players from his time at Cal, Marcus Semien and Mark Canha, play for the A’s. Watching someone you actually have met, someone you know stories about, makes the MLB seem more real.  And we know their stories. For example, Dave thought so highly of Mark Canha in college that he named an award after him, calling him a “program changer” for how intensely he played to win, worked hard, and willed his teammates into following his example.  And Marcus wasn’t just the shortstop who got them to the College World Series in Omaha but also a graceful, classy player who was beloved by his teammates. Dave always marveled at how close Marcus was to his family, especially his grandmother. It is hard not to like someone who so openly loves his grandmother. It was a thrill for my son to see guys he grew up watching as college players, people he knows as actual people, stepping onto a major league field. In person, not on TV, which makes more of a difference than you might think, the in-person-ness of it. It is a visceral experience, like when you are at a concert and you feel the music in vibrating in your chest.

Aside from rooting for individual success for Marcus and Mark we were cheering for the Astros for lots of reasons, not the least of which was manager AJ Hinch.  Dave was an assistant at Stanford when AJ was an All American catcher and a two time Pac-10 player of the year there and they have remained quite close over the years. We have followed AJ through his playing days in the major leagues to his managing days with the Diamondbacks, his GM days with the Padres, and now as a manager with the Astros where he not only rallied support for Houston in the days after the flood, but oh yeah, won a World Series.  AJ set us up with premier seats so we were up close to all the action (there are definitely some perks in being married to a baseball coach).

Watching baseball on TV is sometimes . . . not super exciting.  And maybe sometimes even watching baseball in person is not super exciting. It can be slow. And there are a lot of innings. And there are so many games in a season players aren’t always at peak energy for every single game. But at a major league game when the crowd is large and energized and the players are having fun and you are sitting close enough that the players aren’t a little speck, well, that can be a lot of fun.

And in this way, the Astros did not disappoint. The crowd was loud and animated, and the game was exciting with good offense, good defense, and a couple of lead changes. Not only did we get to see Justin Verlander pitch (and I got a kick out of watching the boys with us look around surreptitiously for Kate Upton, with no luck), we got to see the homerun train do its trip around the top of the stadium several times.

One of those train trips was on a José Altuve homerun and sitting that close we were able to feel the impact of Altuve’s joyous energy as he rounded third and hit home plate. I’ll tell you something, José Altuve is a guy who is bursting with the fun of the game. It pours out of him. It is contagious, infectious, thrilling.  It was like we were in the splash zone at Seaworld and got completely, happily, doused with his excitement. A ten year old hitting his first home run couldn’t look happier, and this was a midweek, afternoon game.

This is where I found my answer to why we put so much time and effort into baseball.

The joy.

[image error]Check out our seats! Any closer and we would have been part of the grounds crew.

Watching teams play, 15U or major league, it is clear not all of the players have that same level of joy, or have it all the time even if they have it sometimes. But when it is there, it is a privilege to be in its presence. It is so fun it becomes a shared joy. I felt lifted by Altuve’s joy, a little like I had hit the homerun.

This is my wish for my son, that he can get even close to the level of joy that Altuve plays with. That in a routine, midweek game, the game still brings such unrestrained fun. In a dusty small nowhere town or in a packed stadium it is still just about the joy of playing.

I’ve always loved Howard Thurman’s quote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Altuve has found what brings him alive, it was abundantly clear. That is what I wish for my son. For my daughter. For me. For all of us. And if baseball stops making my son come alive, I hope he has the courage to quit and go find the thing that does.

But before he quits I also hope he tests himself. I hope he learns something about what sustained effort (aka the grind) can bring you. Most of all I hope he learns to find joy in the effort.  Not just the wins, not just the homeruns, but in the journey. Anyone who made it to the major leagues has lived the grind, and Altuve looks like he found a way to do that with the joy intact.  What a pure pleasure to watch someone who has figured that out. I hope my son learns that over time, when you don’t quit just because it is hard, you learn something about yourself. You learn you can trust yourself and there aren’t many better feelings than that. Which is to say, when you find yourself in the octopus, and you aren’t sure you are headed anywhere close to the right direction, you know something about yourself, you know you’ll adjust and keep driving until you get there.

Joy intact.

Lessons from Starkville

I grew up north of Pittsburgh, so, naturally, I’m a Steeler fan to the core. I may have been swaddled in a Terrible Towel in the hospital.  I went to graduate school in Chapel Hill so I’m a Tarheel basketball fan – no matter how many years it’s been since I lived there, the sky is still Carolina Blue to me.  I’ve watched teams win playoff games and Super Bowls and national championships. I was downtown Chapel Hill in the driving rain in 1993 celebrating their win.  I’ve been married to a college baseball coach for over twenty years so I’ve seen too many baseball games to count. And in all these years, I’ve never experienced anything quite like a Mississippi State baseball game.

I had the chance to go to Starkville, Mississippi in June of this year for the college baseball Super Regional between Stanford (my husband’s team) and Mississippi State.  Having lived in the south for seven years I had a few ideas about what to expect (good BBQ, friendly people, a summer humidity that makes every day a bad hair day).  And I found those things but so much more. And I learned a couple of things.

1. HailState fans really want to win.

2. HailState fans are friendly.

3. The combination of #1 and #2  is likely to produce a cognitive dissonance that your brain will never fully resolve the whole time you are there. They will blow out your ear drums cheering for their team while handing you a bowl of jumbalaya and a beer. They will genuinely hug you, praise your players, and thank you for your coaches while crushing your CWS dreams into a powder finer than the perfectly manicured baselines. They will shake your hands and walk you to the parking lot after you lose and you will hug them back and thank them and get in the car and be hit with the brutally sudden end of the season and wonder how you could have possibly been smiling just a minute ago.

Their fans embraced our players.  They made friends with the outfielders, giving them food, getting hats and selfies in return.

[image error]Kyle Stowers with some outfield fans

They reposted pictures of our team, promised to follow Stanford if we ended up winning the series.  HailState fans on Twitter vowed to come out to Palo Alto for games, a friendliness that was a marked contrast to some other teams.  Like in the Stanford Regional when an opponent on purpose bought tickets on the Stanford side and then, seemingly drunk (I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt) let loose a stream of off-color taunts and heckling at such a volume that he was mercifully moved back with his tribe.  Before he was relocated (by the ever present, ever respectful but effective red coats) I heard him say he bought his tickets while drunk and thought it would be funny. He was big and loud and obscene and while it was entertaining for a while, it seemed inevitable that he’d either fight someone or be removed.  13,000 fans in Dudy Noble field and rivers of alcohol out in the Left Field Lounge and I didn’t hear one of those kind of guys (then again, once the game started it was hard to hear anything. Every pitch a cheer, every play applause, music and chants the whole game. )

4. There is a new concept for baseball fields and it involves tailgating terraces and LOFTS. It’s flagship is Dudy Noble Field, aka The Dude.

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I didn’t even know it was possible to have a stadium with lofts and tailgating terraces in the outfield.  Now that I have seen it, lived it, I wouldn’t mind bringing it home with me. Sunken Diamond is beautiful and elegant and I do so love watching home runs sail off into the trees but I wouldn’t mind seeing the home runs sail off into a haze of grill smoke either.

[image error]The Left Field Lounge – grills, smokers, furniture, coolers – it’s all here.
[image error]The sole purpose of these lofts is to watch baseball!

 

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I’ve never walked through security into a baseball game behind someone carrying a bag of charcoal.  Into the stadium.

I kinda think that if there is ever to actually be a Rapture, a spontaneous rising of thousands of people into the sky, it will happen at The Dude.  The energy of 13,000 people who love their team, love every one of their boys fiercely, is hard to imagine unless you are there. The chanting, the music, the wave, the cloud of smoke across the entire outfield, it is unrelenting.  It is never quiet there. It is a roar of joy and fun.  I felt like I was at a megachurch and Jake Mangum was the preacher.

5. Your visit is incomplete if you don’t get time with ‘Big E.’

Mississippi State was best exemplified for me not by Jake Mangum (a deserved hero, a kid who sounds so amazing we’d all like to have him as a son-in-law) but by Everett Kennard, aka ‘Big E.’  He drove our bus from the Memphis airport to Starkville and by the end of the drive we felt like we’d known him forever. It turns out he’s a Starkville native, drove for Mississippi State sports teams for years before starting his own bus company, and knows everything you’ll ever need to know about visiting Mississippi State.

Before we even made it to the hotel Big E had arranged for the team to go to The Little Dooey for dinner, an outstanding introduction to Starkville.

[image error]There’s a good chance you are about to eat excellent BBQ when you roll up on this out front of the restaurant.
[image error]The Little Dooey did not disappoint.

Big E is tall, strong looking, and chatty, like if Jack Reacher drove a bus and was friendly.  He was a tour guide, concierge, a historian (directed us to the Ulysses Grant Presidential Library, which was time well spent). Big E was ours for the duration, stayed at the hotel, ready to take the team anywhere at any time.  He shuttled a couple of us to the local airport to pick up rental cars, keeping the big bus and an SUV on site depending on the needs.

Big E seems to know and like everybody, and everybody knows and likes him. On the drive from Memphis he and Dave realized they have a common friend, former University of Arizona head coach Andy Lopez.  Big E texted Andy and within a minute Dave’s phone rang. Andy, excited for Dave to have a chance to hang with Big E.

Big E was more than the driver getting a team from one place to another. Big E embodied the hospitality, the warmth, the friendliness of Starkville. He made everyone comfortable and brought every bit of himself to the world through that job. What I learned from Big E is that the job doesn’t define you, you define the job.  He took a job and made it a calling and this made me realize we can take any task in front of us and bring our full self to it and give something to the world. As someone who spends more time in the stands than in the arena these days, someone who also drives everyone around to their arenas, I found this heartening.

You could do worse than to follow Big E on twitter @Dogbusdriver

[image error]Big E on a road trip to the Cape, visiting all his boys – here with Stanford’s Tim Tawa

 

6. There’s no place like home.

When it was all over, when the last out was recorded and the smoke started to clear from the outfield, the final handshakes and hugs exchanged, when the last hope of going to Omaha was gone, home started to look like the best place to be. When the bus pulled into the parking lot outside of the Sunken Diamond, sunny and unseasonably warm, it carried this particular group of players together for the last time (eight players graduated, a different combination of eight were drafted). The end of your college career is emotional enough, but this group seems especially close. Sunken Diamond has been their home, has been the place where they forged a brotherhood, and for all the fun in playing somewhere like Dudy Noble Field, in the end it is those relationships that will be the lasting legacy of their time on the Stanford baseball team. A team, like the military, like a family, has the chance to form deep connections from going through intense experiences together. You might not even like some of those people but you are forever bonded with them in your shared experiences. Only those other people can truly understand your experience because they had it too. My husband’s best friends are still the ones he won and lost with at the Sunken Diamond.  It is the thing he tries most to develop for his team, that brotherhood. Of course he wants to win too, but the brotherhood is both a means and an end in that process.

So we are home, and I feel grateful.  For the season I just witnessed, for all of the seasons to come.  For the players, the fans, the cool evenings, the extraordinary beauty of the Stanford campus and the stunning Sunken Diamond (not a lot of better places to play baseball, it is a jewel). Stanford is a special place and I, for one, am looking forward to showing it off and welcoming fans with the same level of hospitality as the Mississippi State fans. Palo Alto has a lot to offer, it is filled with great restaurants and beautiful hiking trails and lots of amazing people. Stanford is filled with smart people, kind people, charming people, and fans that love their team just as much as anyone in Starkville. People here have done incredible things. Come out and maybe I’ll tell you the full story about the time I was at my mentor’s house, chatting with his elderly neighbor only to discover he invented the laser.  Everyone out here has a “Stanford Story” and you’ll be well entertained if you ask them for it.

Thank you HailState fans, we’re here at Sunken Diamond, ready to return the hospitality.  Come find your own Stanford story.

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Visit me at my FB author page:  Lynn Rankin-Esquer Author

Follow me on Twitter at  @LRankinEsquer

 

 

The Joy We Bring

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One of my best memories growing up was my mom’s yearly ritual of making raspberry jam.  The sweet, steamy smell in a kitchen scattered with stacks and stacks of flats of fresh raspberries, many huge pots bubbling at once.  The buckets of sugar that went into those pots! All the rows of canning jars with their two part lids, the screw around part and the round center.  Why did it have to be in two parts?

That jam had the most amazing taste, I could imagine I was Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm eating that jam. Like the raspberries grew right outside my window in a sunny patch of heaven. We would spread it on toast, with melted butter underneath and the butter and the jam would merge together in the tastiest salty-sweet combination.  Long before chefs started adding sea salt to caramel, the salty butter-raspberry jam combo hit all those taste buds in the most delectable way. It was like eating a sunny summer day and she froze a lot of the jam so we could have that feeling all winter long.

She’d be sweaty and harried by the end of the day (my memory is that it took all day, and it must have) but at the end there would be this whole regiment of neatly lined up jars of jam.  Loads of people got those as gifts and every one of them treasured the jam. In a time before eating sugar caused guilt it was a simply delicious experience, that jam.

Writing this makes me wonder what kind of memories I’ve given my kids.  I wonder what they will reach back and think of when someone asks what was great about their childhood?  What will they remember of me as a mom of young kids?

It won’t be raspberry jam or any of the other amazing things my mom baked (her peach pies were right up there with the jam).  I like to cook but I’m not much of a baker, which is surprising given the amount I like sweets.

Will it be the afternoons we sat on the little couch on the side of the kitchen and had “Bookies and Cookies” time? I wonder if they even remember that.

I’d like to think they will remember all the nights I sat reading to them, first in a rocking chair and then on their beds.  For years, every single night, even after they were skilled readers themselves.  Even the times I fell asleep while reading out loud. (How do you do that?  Fall asleep while words are still coming out of your mouth?)

Or the silly ‘Where’s My Spoon?’ game I made up, hiding a spoon in my sleeve or down the back of my pants only to make it magically appear.  They were in awe of me then.

Or how often I let a pack of wild kids destroy the house in an epic battle of Nerf guns, Nerf bullets everywhere (we just moved and Nerf bullets came out from under almost every piece of furniture all these years later).

Or will they remember the places I took them, like skiing, something their dad doesn’t do?  Or the beach, because I love the beach so much. I turn into relaxed mom at the beach.  Permissive mom. Go-ahead-and-be-dangerous mom.

Like the time we got into a huge pillow fight in the hotel in Half Moon Bay – and how I stood laughing and defiant on the bed, face flushed, arms swinging wildly, while they stared at me in amazed delight (and a little bit of fear, I think).

That was the same trip I let them play on the beach in the pouring rain, let them jump over and over off of dangerously high sand dunes, while they continuously glanced at me to be sure I was really permitting this.  Shrieking in excitement with each jump. And then sopping wet and cold we went for ice cream.  Ice cream. Instead of “let’s get dried off before you get pneumonia.”

It makes me sad to think their first thoughts of me as a mom won’t be the fun mom.  Probably not even their second or third thoughts. So maybe the Half Moon Bay experience will really stand out.

But it’s more likely they’ll remember the times I got absurdly angry.  Like when I found my son, maybe 3 and daughter, 4, crouched in the raised sand box peeing.  Both of them.  I dragged them inside and sat them each in a dining room chair, one in the dining room and one in the family room (somehow it seemed important to separate them) and shaking with rage I slammed down the open windows so no one would hear me yelling and call social services.  Then I stood between the two rooms and screamed back and forth, heart racing, voice vibrating in outrage.  I asked the four year old, why did you do that? YOU know better and she pointed towards the other room and said “because he did” and I turned and yelled at him and then her, back and forth, voice cracking in anger.  “Are you MONKEYS!? Do you think we live in a ZOO?  Why would you pee in the sandbox!???”

And they couldn’t stop laughing and I couldn’t calm myself down but even in that moment I knew they would laugh at this until the end of time.

It is an unpredictable thing, memory.

As parents we can exhaust ourselves doing everything we think they need and want, trying to give them morals and skills and good memories but we can’t really control what they will remember.  It seems unlikely it will be what we want them to remember.  And probably not what we spent the most money on.

My parents spent a lot of money on us, comparatively.  We went on nice trips, we had all the clothes we needed/wanted.  We had the newest Encyclopedia Britannicas, nice cars, piles of Christmas presents.

What do I best remember?

The raspberry jam.  The excitement of family arriving on Thanksgiving Day with the smell of the turkey in the oven from early in the morning.  Staying up late to watch HBO movies with my dad (Serial, with Martin Mull, we laughed so hard).  I remember my mom having a burping competition with my brother in the parking lot of a Cape May restaurant while my dad went in to see if they had a reservation for us.  My dad balancing me on a raft in the surf in Ocean City, over and over helping me catch and ride wives. Hosting parties to watch the Steelers while we all waved Terrible towels with amazing food in every single room (everyone wanted an invitation to our parties, in large part due to my mom’s extraordinary food).  Sitting around the dinner table in debate, my dad seeming willing to take any opposite side just to get us to think critically. Challenging us to open our minds and support our arguments with well-crafted questions.

It strikes me that the good memories that surface are the things my parents themselves cared about most.  The things that brought them joy.  My mom was (and is) a passionate cook and baker.  Her excitement and love for good food made these memories for me.  My dad was a skilled debater and loved a good movie (still does both).

In these days when it feels like we are checklist parents, when we are so continuously connected online so we see what every other parent is doing, it is only too easy to feel compelled to keep adding experiences for our kids.  I worry that we haven’t traveled enough with our kids, I worry that I haven’t taken them camping (actually I don’t worry about that, I hate camping), I wonder if we should have taken snorkel lessons together or done a train trip.

But then I think of my good memories growing up and how it was the stuff that my mom and dad each loved that made so many of my happy memories.

This is a huge relief to me, because I have my own passions, as does my husband.  Maybe what my kids will remember will have something to do with reading or writing or running, or Costco trips, or the joy of having a TV in every room, or mentoring, or maybe a little something about baseball (I’ll leave it a mystery who brought each of these passions, me or their dad, or maybe not such a mystery at that).

So maybe it isn’t about a checklist at all, maybe it is the joy we bring (which cannot be faked, or bought) that will leave the good memories.

And of course they will always have the shared memory of the joy of peeing in the sandbox.

 

 

Imagining Christine Blasey Ford

I’m imagining I’m Christine Blasey Ford.  It isn’t hard. I’m around the same age.  I have the same hair style in old photos. I went to college with hard partying boys.  I’m an east coaster who now lives in Palo Alto as a psychologist.  I have my own #metoo moments. I could be her, life blown apart, regretful.

Because I’m not her, I can imagine something else. I want to tell her this.  Your honesty, at such severe price to you, was NOT in vain.  It didn’t serve the purpose you thought it would, but I have a feeling it will live on in history serving a purpose all its own.  A clear, honest, forthright, completely believable, story of abuse that was told at great price to you in a way that served no advancement for any part of your life.  It stands as the truth even though it did not have the effect you hoped it would have.  It serves to tell abused people everywhere (men and women) that to stand and tell the truth, even in vain, is a more worthwhile endeavor than all the distraction and sleight of hand manipulations that those insular beltway types have talked themselves into believing is okay. You did the right thing and nothing and no misguided misanthrope career politician can take that away from you.  You calmly and collectedly told your truth and you have no idea how many of us believed you, identified with you, hoped your words would make the difference.

They didn’t in this situation, but in the end, maybe that is not the point (you, and we, SO hoped it would be the point. But it wasn’t).  History will show that your terrified willingness to stand up and tell the world what happened to you, and to tell it in such a credible, educated and informed way, is the thing that mattered to the women of the world.  Not your fault that those privilege addicted white men were blind to your truth. Not your fault that allegiance to their tribe twisted their brains into outrageously ridiculous rationalizations for supporting such a subpar nominee (if anyone wants to look into the research on tribe, it might help, ever so slightly, to explain this inexplicable behavior).

It was truth.

It IS truth.

Nothing can take that away from you.

Or us.

As you face a completely unraveled life, as you start to figure out how to recreate everything (we just moved and it almost undid our family – you are facing way more of a re-creation) please hold on to this fact.  You are now an unwilling, unlikely, reluctant heroine for so many of us.  You will never know the count.  Maybe when you wake in the night with your heart racing and your brain fighting against itself to come back to calm (we psychologists have it the worst – we feel like we know how we should do it but life sometimes hands us such a challenge that we can’t, so then we lie there adding even more fuel to the fire, castigating ourselves for not using all our knowledge to help ourselves) you can remember that there are so many of us out here grateful for your courage.  We are grateful that you stood there, in the spotlight, knowing the likely futility and backlash, but still willing to take the chance that it could make a difference. We are grateful that someone in that zoo that has become Washington, told a calm, clear truth, voice shaking but sure.

Sometimes the ones who really need to hear this kind of truth aren’t just the judges, the arbiters of the outside world, the voters-in of supreme court justices, but the uncertain, victimized, internal brains.  The voice inside our heads that say maybe we were wrong, maybe we were complicit, maybe we shouldn’t have gone to that party, drunk that beer, worn that shirt.  Maybe it turns out that we, all of us women who have been in your shoes or close to them, are really the ones who will benefit from your testimony.

Maybe your courage will help us come close to speaking the truth too, in our lives. With way less publicity and drama and consequence but, still, hard to do.

Your testimony was not in vain.  Your careful expression of truth was a model of dignified courage and will resonate in many, many lives for years to come.

The outcome is not the proof of truth. The speaking of the truth is the thing.  Those who could not hear it were, in my opinion, the victims. The people who could not bring themselves to face the clear and obvious truth you described are narrow and misguided and living in fear, which is its own victimhood. You, Dr. Ford, have risen above victimhood, because you told your truth and owned your life and everyone who has hid in shame for something someone else did wrong got it.

Thank you.

 

 

 

34 Ways I Have Succeeded as a Mother

Having posted 34 Ways I Have Failed as a Mother it only feels fair (to my kids and me) to recognize that there are many ways I’ve succeeded as a mother. This is perhaps even more important than acknowledging my failures because in the typhoon season called adolescence it is easy to forget all the years of things we have done well as parents, and things they have done well as kids.

For instance, both of my children have been successfully potty trained for a number of years now (I know! I’m impressive).  They have acquired language (lots of it! Some of it colorful), and know how to safely cross the street. They can put themselves to bed! (No long drawn out bedtime ritual, no popping back out of their rooms.) They know their own address, can find their way back home from all sorts of places, know how to unlock the front door (assuming they haven’t lost the keys, but even if they did they know how to access the lock box with the extra keys).  It may seem that I am padding my list with these items but they are important, imagine if they couldn’t do them!  Imagine still wiping their bottoms. The cost alone of buying star stickers for the potty reward chart all these years could be a tuition payment.

They can both roast a chicken Thomas Keller-style, make spaghetti sauce from scratch, grill a steak and stuff a turkey.  My daughter can make beef stroganoff, my son veal picatta.  They can clean a bathroom, clean their clothes, clean out the dishwasher, steam clean the carpet (I didn’t say they do these things willingly, or cheerfully but they know how).

My daughter can drive a car!  Sure, she had four lessons with a professional but most of the rest of the time it was me in that car with her teaching her when to slow down versus speed up at a yellow light (me and God, I prayed almost continuously but we got that job done).

My son can change a tire (I’m taking credit for this because I encouraged him to take Auto at school).  Years ago he and I assembled a Green Machine from a hundred parts so he knows how to follow directions and use tools.  He knows how to tolerate frustration because we spent an hour struggling to figure out why we couldn’t get the wheel on only to figure out we were doing it backwards (that also might have been when he picked up some of that colorful language, so I get to take credit even for that).

They know how to ask for help in a store, and from a teacher.  They each have done the family grocery shopping by themselves.  They can use debit cards and have savings accounts.  They know to save at least 10% of every bit of money that comes in and they know about compounding interest. They know another percentage is for sharing. They know I give money to homeless people because I’d rather be scammed once in a while than walk by someone in need.

They know to always stop at a kids’ lemonade stand, and always buy the Girl Scout cookies.  They know how to be kind to many people (not each other, the Arabs and the Israelis could learn how to prolong a conflict from these two).

Then there is an entire list of ways in which my kids are each succeeding as people independent of anything I (or their dad) have done.  My part in that success is just noticing what they are doing on their own and not screwing it up by trying to get my grubby hands on the controls.  My daughter has a wittiness that catches me by surprise so often, it is sophisticated and hysterical and can make me even laugh at myself. My son asks to go on walks with me and explains deep philosophical theories that just astound me.  They both are so creative and curious and every age has made them more fascinating to me.

Although there are many things my kids have each learned on their own, the list of things I taught them is long. Every single thing on my list took time and effort from me (and of course, my husband has his own list, I’m not a single parent, except for baseball season, then I’m most definitely a single parent).  If, like the scouts, I had a badge for everything I have taught them over the years my sash would be too heavy to wear. Thinking about this is helpful on the days where my failures are so robustly and continuously pointed out.  On the very worst day, when my meal is criticized and my movie selection derided and my need for glasses to read anything on my phone is met with contempt, I can watch one of them come out of the bathroom, the sound of a toilet flushing behind them, and congratulate myself on not being needed in that endeavor at all.

34 Ways I Have Failed as a Mother

Let’s be honest, there are more than 34 but the full summary would require several volumes. However, I can offer a snapshot of my failures, which fall into three categories:  Things I Forgot, Things I Did Wrong, and my favorite, My Basic Personal Flaws.  Lucky for me I have not one, but two kids who are very committed to helping me correct all these flaws.

Apparently, I forget… a lot.  I forget to keep their favorite clothes clean at all times, I forget to sign permission slips that I’ve never even seen, I forget to remind them to take PE clothes even though I will never master Even vs Odd days (oh how I love you, block schedule).  I forget that I’m not supposed to sing along to music in front of people. It’s been pointed out that I forget to season the meat, I forget I should learn how to cook ethnic food, I forget to buy good snacks.  In fact, I forget to have anything good to eat around here at all.

The trouble my forgetfulness causes is equaled only by the things I actually do wrong.  I have incensed my family by falling asleep during movies, failing to telepathically discover I am to buy 36 solo cups for today’s football dinner, by mistakenly purchasing the wrong student card for school events.  My lunches are apparently not tasty, no matter that it is challenging to make a lunch for two people who don’t eat sandwiches and prefer a hot lunch, but not the hot lunch provided by the school, those are disgusting.  It turns out that I talk too loudly into my car blue tooth speaker (I’ve been told you can hear it outside the car!).  I buy the wrong cereal and the wrong root beer.  My salmon selection is all wrong too, I have a knack for buying only the salmon that tastes fishy. I showed up too early for the JV football game. I spoke to my son in public. I pointed out a cute boy to my daughter.  Some of these border on the unforgiveable but I’m blessed to have children who have hearts big enough to still eat my boring meals and begrudgingly find a different shirt to wear when the favorite is dirty.  They’re the best.

And then there are the personal flaws.  I’m so grateful to have these pointed out so I can work on them!  Apparently I’m too restrictive, I worry too much, I have way too many rules (more than any other parent!), I am uptight.  I’ve been accused of being no fun, of not caring about my children, of not even knowing who they are.  It also turns out I care too much about hygiene, I have this weird obsession with chores, and I’m too preoccupied with being on time.  My eyesight is a continual annoyance (“you should just get Lasik surgery!  Stop always looking for a pair of glasses.”). Until I had children I didn’t even know that I don’t throw a ball well or that I run appallingly slow. All those years of dance class did not pay off, resulting as they did in embarrassing dance moves. Luckily my texting skills are such a source of entertainment.

I know I am a work in progress and I appreciate their moments of patience with me.  But I am proud of one thing, I did not fail at producing expressive kids.  Future spouses and bosses, you are welcome!

 

Hello Inconvenience

We are in a period of history in which the meaning of ‘truth’ is being cheapened, but really, the concept of truth has been a source of conflict since people could talk to each other. The world has been telling people who to be forever.  Tribes (family, schools, culture) tell you what to do to belong, what you should think and do and be.  What they tell you doesn’t always fit with what you know and it can be a lifelong struggle to let that truth out.

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