Of Walks and Walks-Through

Posted on by row20blog

This time of year, more than any other, brings a certain sameness.

My husband works in politics, and as each election cycle reaches its frenetic conclusion, I brace myself for what’s coming. Every year, there is a very predictable pattern. In the months leading up to the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, he is going full-throttle. It’s hard to describe political life to those who don’t live it, but I think the most relatable comparison I’ve come up with is that it’s akin to tax season for an accountant, but with a lot more swear words. The week after the election is consumed with wrap-up work. That is followed by an all-too-brief period in which he sort of crashes.

Then, one day, he wakes up and looks around, suddenly realizing he has an abundance of free time on his hands. Organizing is like oxygen to him. He can’t breathe without it. So he starts looking around the house to see what needs to be done. Light bulbs get changed. Little repairs get made. All of this sounds great, right? No. It’s awful. It’s awful because I know what’s next…large-scale organization of the house and its occupants. He sends me emails and texts about doing what he calls a “walk-through” of the house. It is exactly what it sounds like. We walk through the house from top to bottom (damn you, finished basement and loft space), and review “what needs done.” Never does my husband’s total lack of acquaintance with the infinitive “to be” aggravate me more than in the month of November.

I am a stacker. A piler of papers. I make little hills of stuff I need to put away…eventually. This habit of mine drives my husband bat-shit crazy. During the height of the election cycle, I’m exhausted from working full-time and essentially flying solo with the human child and the unruly fur-children, but at least no one is asking me “What’s the deal with this stuff on top of the dresser?” Or on the table, on The Thing, in the entry, etc. By mid-November, he’s not only asking me what the deal is, but he expects me to actually do something about it and he’s really kind of a nag about the whole thing. In my head – and sometimes not so much in my head as out of my mouth – I’m like, “Oh, my God, leave me the hell alone!” I will do almost anything to avoid a walk-through. I put him off with various excuses, but resistance is futile. He is nothing if not tenacious.

This period of time coincides with open enrollment at my work. I will confess to lingering on the “Legal Services” option, wondering if this is the year the walk-through finally drives me to seek legal counsel in the form of a divorce attorney.

But just when I think I can’t take any more, the phase passes. And when it’s over, I survey the house. I will admit this to you, but never, ever to him: it really does look better. We’ve identified repairs and projects that need to be done in the coming year. I hate it while it’s happening, but shit gets done.

He then moves on to the next phase, which is comprised entirely of movies. He spends pretty much the whole month of December at the movie theater. After we had our son and formed some fledgling friendships with other parents we met through daycare, I received a few carefully-worded messages from people concerned that perhaps something had happened with my husband’s job, because they noticed on Facebook he was checking into the local movie theater during the daytime with considerable frequency. I always breathe a tiny sigh of relief when the movie phase starts, because it means the end of the walk-through phase is near.

The other thing that happens this time of year is our wedding anniversary. At first, it seemed really stupid that we scheduled our wedding for three weeks after Election Day. Now, I kind of like it. By the time our anniversary rolls around, the dust has settled enough for me to take stock of the situation, and feel good that we made it through another cycle and another year.

Our first trip to Europe was an anniversary trip. London, Paris, Barcelona, Andorra. I had visions of us strolling hand-in-hand through historic avenues, gazing upward and taking in the wonder of the architecture of the Old World. I was genuinely bewildered when that wasn’t at all what happened.

Things came to a head on our first day in Barcelona. We set out on foot on the cobblestone streets. I was giddy. He was confused.

Husband: “What are we doing?”
Me: “We’re walking.”
Husband: “Right, but what are we doing?”
Me: “We’re walking.”
Husband: “But why?”
Me: “What do you mean, why?”
Husband: “Where are we going? What is our destination?”
Me: “I don’t have a specific destination.”
Husband: “What is the point of walking without a destination?”
Me. “…”

In this moment, the fundamental difference between the two of us hit me like a ton of bricks. It seems I’d completely forgotten who my traveling companion actually was: “It’s not a meeting without an agenda.” “Some is not a number, soon is not a time.” This man does not meander. We may have been in a different setting, but we were still the same people.

We’d bickered our way through two of the world’s great cities already. Neither of us wanted to bicker our way through Barcelona as well. So we took it as an opportunity to learn an important lesson in managing expectations. The next day, we agreed he would stay at the hotel and do whatever he felt like doing while I went out and wandered to my heart’s content. Fortunately, I am happy in my own company and have no qualms about going out on my own. I had a lovely little excursion. In the afternoon, at the agreed-upon time, we met at a museum we both wanted to visit.  On that trip, the lesson learned was the importance of accepting differences as just that – differences, not faults or flaws – and to find common ground.

I’ve applied that lesson many, many times in the years since that trip, in a multitude of situations, in almost all of my close relationships.

We have to know when to recognize and honor our differences – as in the case of Barcelona – and when to challenge them – as in the case of the walk-through. I hate the walk-through, but that side of my husband’s personality challenges my tendency toward complacency. It’s uncomfortable and I chafe every damn time, but it’s good for me, just as it’s good for each of us to walk our own path a bit before coming back together.

Note: There was much discussion and back-and-forthing about pluralizing “walk-through.” “Walk-throughs” sounds better in my head than “walks-through” but I finally had to concede that the “mothers-in-law” and “attorneys general” rule applied here. Stupid grammar.

Every Mistake, We Must Surely Be Learning

Posted on by row20blog

So many things happen when you have a baby. At the top of the list is finding a place to put the baby. In our case, this meant converting our tiny upstairs guest room into a tiny nursery, and my “craft room” into a play area. I am like a goldfish. I will take up as much space as is allotted me. Since most of our guests used the basement guest room, I’d gotten used to having both of those rooms to myself. I also have a difficult time parting with things. When it came time to clean out those rooms in order to have habitable space for a baby, it did not go well. It was very dramatic. There were tears. It’s possible some things were tossed out the second-story craft room window.

I was beyond excited about the prospect of motherhood. It was something I had hoped for madly but wasn’t sure would ever happen. It wasn’t that. But I was pissed that I was the one who was making all the room for the baby, both internally and externally. The baby was taking over my body and my space. My husband gave up one shelf for a few of my books.

In the aftermath, we had purged enough junk – seriously, it looked like a Michael’s craft store vomited in our alley – that the two rooms were empty and what was left of my stuff was crammed into a quirky piece of antique furniture known since my childhood as “The Thing” because no one has a clue as to its intended purpose.

For three years, I shoved my papers, office and craft supplies, books, etc. into The Thing. It was my own real-life Tetris game, trying to creatively stack and arrange bits and pieces to keep them contained, and I was losing.

One day, my husband had the audacity and, frankly, poor judgment to criticize the overflow. I…lost…my…shit. Lost it. I started ranting about how he and our son had entire rooms to themselves, and I had been relegated to one piece of furniture in one corner of one room. He shrugged and replied, “Okay, well, why don’t we convert the storage loft to a space for you?”

Fuck you and your calm logic, guy. But also, thank you. Yes, please, I would love to go to the Container Store and IKEA this weekend. I set about making a refuge for myself in the loft above our bedroom. One would think I learned from this incident that it’s a good thing to give people a heads-up if you have needs that are going unmet. I did not. I tend to learn lessons the hard way, and this was no exception.

Fast forward a few months, and I had a similar meltdown – this one via email – because I was feeling hugely resentful about not having any time or activities of my own. I was righteous in my indignation. Most email responses from my husband are literally one word. Some day I will write a post dedicated to all the ways I’ve used his tendency to simply reply “Ok” to my advantage. I don’t know what happened on this particular day, though, but my normally laconic husband let loose. He said if I wasn’t happy or pursuing personal enrichment, it was on me for not speaking up and I had no one to blame but myself.

That was not an entirely accurate statement. My husband is a true co-parent, but he has a demanding job and an insane travel schedule. Like most moms, my free time tends to be limited to that tiny little sliver between my son’s bedtime and my own. But my husband had thrown down the gauntlet (in writing, no less), so I was determined to take advantage of it.

I signed up for a beginning yoga class. Yoga and I were not a good match. I know that’s a blasphemous statement in today’s society. Most people find yoga calming and centering. My experience was the opposite. In fact, I had a harrowing vision in shavasana that scared the hell out of me. I recounted it to someone who works in the mental health field, and she said, “You know, maybe you’re someone who should not be left too much alone in your own head with your own thoughts.” Yep. That.

The other thing I wanted to do was learn to play the guitar. I’d thought about it for years. My dad played, and some of my best memories are of him and his guitar. I never hear “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” without remembering how it felt to sit next to him on our forest green living room sofa while he played classic rock on his acoustic guitar.

The challenge was working out the logistics of lessons. I knew I needed formal lessons – I’m not someone who can just get on YouTube and pick stuff up that way. I found a company that offered in-home instruction, so even if my husband was traveling, I wouldn’t have to skip lessons. I asked if it would be a problem that I needed a teacher who could come late in the evening after my son was asleep. The owner laughed and said, “These are musicians. Most of them don’t even wake up before two in the afternoon.” Perfect. Sign me up.

So I started learning the guitar. It was hard. And not just for the obvious reasons. It dredged up all kinds of memories and feelings from my school days. I’d always heard playing a musical instrument helps with math and some types of science because it uses the same part of the brain. That makes total sense to me now. Starting guitar lessons took me back to algebra, geometry, chemistry and the spiral of frustration and inadequacy.

One of the things I hated most about being identified as “gifted” was that all the other kids and teachers knew. “If you’re supposed to be so smart, why can’t you do this?” The worst was when I was the one asking that question.

Guitar did not come naturally to me. I started to feel that familiar, overwhelming pressure to “get it.” Guitar, which was supposed to be an outlet and a source of enjoyment, was causing me all kinds of angst.

About a month into lessons, I had a really rough week and didn’t practice at all. I dreaded the lesson. I thought about canceling, but decided to just own up to not practicing and face the inevitable disappointment from my teacher. He let me finish my profuse apologies, and then he said the most incredible thing: “There’s no reason for you to apologize. These are your lessons. I get paid whether you practice or not.”

Holy shit. He was right. This was my process. There were no tests. I wasn’t going to derail the syllabus if I took my time and learned at my own pace. If life got in the way and I couldn’t practice, there would be no punishment. I was driving the train.

It was a revelation.

For the first time in my life, I have the freedom to learn for the sake of learning. I get to tackle something that doesn’t come easily to me, just because I want to. There is zero pressure. I think it’s the most liberating thing that’s ever happened to me.

My teacher told me most people quit about 3-6 months into lessons because they realize how difficult it is. It takes a long time to be able to play anything that sounds remotely like music. I just passed the six-month mark and, let me tell you, I suck at playing the guitar. I am so bad. But someday, I’ll be good. I can’t tell you when that will happen. Guess what? I don’t have to. And that feels amazing.

Note: The title is from The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” written by George Harrison and mastered by my dad. I finally have some appreciation for his accomplishment. Rock on, Dad. Miss you.

On Baseball

Posted on by row20blog

“More than any other American sport, baseball creates the magnetic, addictive illusion that it can almost be understood.”

– Thomas Boswell

Baseball has inspired more than one hundred years of eloquence from a legion of truly great writers. I am not one of them. But the Kansas City Royals just won the World Series, and I have some things to say.

My love affair with baseball did not begin in my childhood, as it does with most fans of the game. I do remember my first baseball game. I was about seven, and my dad took me and my brother to see the Astros play the Cincinnati Reds at the old Astrodome in Houston. Nolan Ryan was pitching, and Pete Rose was “Charlie Hustle,” not the disgraced, bow-tied .gif we saw all over social media during the postseason.

We moved to Kansas City in February, 1986, when I was nine years old. The Royals had just won the World Series and were revered. George Brett and Bret Saberhagen were gods to the kids I grew up with. But I came just a few months too late and missed all that. From the time I arrived in KC until a little more than a year ago, the Royals were…sad. The farm system produced some fantastic players who promptly bailed the second they could cash in. Who could blame them?

So, mired in all that disappointment, how did I turn into a die-hard baseball fan? First and foremost, I married a guy who was eight years old when the Royals won the pennant. That is an age at which allegiances are cemented for life. My husband loves baseball with his heart and soul. As a kid, he tagged along with his grandma’s senior citizens group to baseball games. It was a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride each way, longer if you counted the stop at Furr’s Cafeteria in Olathe on the way home. To this day, if he has to choose a number for any reason, it will always be George Brett’s number 5. Always.

We’d been married about a year when I went to work at the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City’s historic 18th & Vine district. AJM shares a building with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and Kauffman Stadium is a short, straight shot up I-70 from the museum complex. Working there, I learned about the history of the game from the Negro Leagues perspective. Buck O’Neil stopped by almost daily. I didn’t know much about baseball back then, but I knew I was in the presence of greatness when I had the privilege of seeing Buck.

My husband and I started going to Royals games together. He would drive to KC from his job in Topeka, pick me up at the museum, and we’d go to the game. Afterward, he would take me back to my car at the museum and we’d drive home separately. We were broke newlyweds and sat in the cheap seats, but it was fun. Tony Pena was the team’s manager, and the slogan that year was “We Believe.” I think I still have the t-shirt I caught between innings.

And so my baseball education began. Baseball has a steep learning curve. One of the best quotes in Bull Durham – a movie full of great quotes – is this gem: “This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”

That’s true, at the most basic level. You cheer when your team catches the ball. You cheer when your team hits the ball. You cheer louder when one of your team’s players crosses home plate. If you stick with the game, though, you start to pick up on all the nuances and strategy. And that’s when baseball really gets fun. People who think baseball is boring and slow just don’t know what they’re watching. Baseball is not a game for stupid people. It requires an encyclopedic knowledge of rules. Anticipation becomes a big part of the experience. The teams are anticipating each others’ moves. As a fan, it’s exciting to try and anticipate how the players, the manager and even the base coaches are going to respond.

Baseball is not a game you can learn quickly. I still feel like a novice most of the time. It isn’t until I explain the game to others that I realize how much I’ve learned. For example, last night during Game 5 of the World Series, a friend messaged to ask why the commentators were saying Wade Davis would only be available for one inning. She wanted to know why he couldn’t pitch more innings. Another friend wanted to know why we cheered at a sacrifice fly. “The batter didn’t get on base. He got out. Why are you cheering?” Because he did his job. He got out, but he advanced the runner. He did what was best for the team, at his own expense.

Which brings me to another thing I love about baseball. Even the best player can’t carry an entire team. Just ask Bryce Harper and the 2015 Nationals. There are no Bryce Harpers on the 2015 Royals. The World Series MVP was Royals catcher Salvador Perez, because he is the heart of that team. He is a cheerful workhorse who took blow after blow and just kept getting up. The Royals won because they were a unified force with extraordinary command of the fundamentals of baseball. The mantra became “Keep the Line Moving.” They played as one.

We have what I jokingly call “dual fanship.” We cheer for the Kansas City Royals and the Washington Nationals. We say it’s okay because we have an American League team and a National League team. It’s only a problem every three years when they play each other in inter-league games, and it would be an issue if they ever met in the World Series. The Royals are nostalgic. The Royals are my childhood. Even though I wasn’t a baseball fan as a kid, the Royals are woven into the fabric of my upbringing. The two are inextricable.

If Kansas City is my hometown, Washington DC is my home. We love it here. The Nationals are a huge part of that. We have season tickets. I’ve stopped going during the week because keeping my son out until 10:30 or later when he needs to be up for school the next morning would be poor parenting. I miss it, though. I love Nats Park, and the wonderful people who work there and have become mainstays in our lives.

My love of baseball is my love of my little family. My husband and I are opposites in many ways, but even if it feels like we have no common ground at a given moment, we always have baseball. Every year before the beginning of the season, he watches Ken Burns’s documentary “Baseball.” It used to be nine innings/hours long; it is now ten. It spans the entire history of the game and is fascinating. After many, many viewings (or at least hearing it playing in the other room), I can practically recite it by heart. My favorite part, by the way, is Buck O’Neil singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” which you can (and should) watch here.

My son was born in February, and I was on maternity leave during spring training and the first month of the season. I remember being in that exhausted twilight of new motherhood, watching spring training games on TV. We took our son to his first game at Nationals Park when he was seven weeks old; he went to his first Royals game at Kauffman Stadium when he was ten weeks old. Some people may find that questionable and possibly even irresponsible. Here’s the God’s honest truth: We would have taken him sooner if the season had started any earlier.

Baseball is what we do. It’s who we are. There is order in baseball. Baseball is simple, and it is complicated. Baseball is steeped in tradition and history, for better or worse. Baseball doesn’t try to pretend it’s something it isn’t or ignore its past. Baseball tries to learn from its mistakes, from segregation to steroids. And now our 2015 Royals, with their late-inning magic, are part of that history.

So what now?

In the words of Rogers Hornsby:
“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

Dream Medium?

Posted on by row20blog

As a general rule, the months following the birth of a first baby are not a great time for decision-making. It’s a foggy, hazy time, in which the focus is solely on survival – the baby’s and yours, in that order.

One of the more questionable decisions I made during that time was an ill-advised purchase of a wall decal from Zulily. It was a giant, intricately-designed rocket, with the words “DREAM BIG.” If you’ve ever hung one of those wall decals, you know how deceptively complicated that shit is. It requires a surprising amount of coordination and the use of both fine and gross motor skills. It took two parents and many curse words to get the thing hung.

It didn’t take long for me to get tired of looking at it, and eventually I painstakingly peeled it off, wearing down a thumbnail in the process. My husband, bless his heart, said very little when I took it down, considering what a pain in the ass it had been to put it up.

The biggest reason I grew to dislike it, aside from my mom’s suggestion that its diagrammatic design looked like something out of a Cold War-era brainwashing experiment, was the words “DREAM BIG.” It seemed like such a big request of such a little guy. Of course my son could not read it, but I could, and I decided that wasn’t really a message I wanted to send as a parent.

Scrolling through design websites and flipping through parenting magazines, we see examples of this everywhere. “The sky’s the limit.” “Aim high.” “Reach for the stars.” (By now it should be evident that we went with an “air and space” theme for our son’s room.) They are intended to be inspirational. We want to instill in our children a sense that they can be anything they want, if they “dream big.” By hanging these signs, posters and decals in their rooms, we are encouraging them to be their best selves. Aren’t we?

I’m not so sure now. Are we inadvertently asking too much? Setting up unreasonable expectations? Sending a message that “big” is the only acceptable way to dream? Is it okay to dream medium?

Where is the line between empowering our children to believe in themselves, and setting them up to be dissatisfied? What does success look like? Who defines greatness? How big is big enough? How do we strike a balance in the messages we send our children – and ourselves – about achievement?

After my first blog post, I received a stunning number of messages from people saying “Me, too!” I am not the only one who feels like I fall short of the mark, whatever the mark is. It was really something to discover I am not alone.

Much has been written about women and the idea of “having it all.” I’m not talking about that. If you want to read about that, Ann Marie Slaughter says it better than I ever could. I’m talking a different, but tangentially related, phenomenon. So many of us grew up believing we were supposed to do great things with our lives. I don’t know why we seem to feel that way. I do know it’s not just limited to women. I’ve heard from men, too.

I don’t have the answer to this. I’m working on it. In the meantime, there is only one sign in my son’s room now. It is a quote attributed to Babe Ruth:

“Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”

And that’s where I am now.

Batter up.

Gifted Underachiever

Posted on by row20blog

A recurring theme in my life is “Allison is not realizing her full potential.” It’s been a constant refrain for as long as I can remember. From teachers to bosses, I’ve heard it over and over and over.

When I was in the sixth grade, “they” put me in a pilot program for “Gifted Underachievers.” A well-intentioned specialist would come to my school once a week, and earnestly act as a go-between for me, my teachers who resented me for being high-maintenance, and my parents. She was a very nice lady and she tried hard, but I was no less an underachiever when she finished with me than when she started.

I have been told I’m smart. Empirically, it’s true. It has to be. I was tested in three separate states and they all came to the same conclusion. Gifted. They can’t all be wrong, can they?

But here I am, pushing 40, looking around at my life and asking the same question I’ve been asking since sometime around the second grade – “Gifted at what, exactly?”

My friends and family have been subjected to my endless speculations and ramblings about what I’m supposed to be when I grow up. And I have come to the hard truth that I am really good at two things: talking and making party favors for kids’ birthdays. Those are the things I love to do more than anything else. One of my friends says I’m good at helping people, which is true to an extent. I like helping people and I like feeling useful. I have empathy in abundance. Unfortunately, I lack patience with people. Also, I’m pretty much worthless when it comes to paperwork and documentation. So that effectively eliminates the fields of counseling, social work and teaching. I’m terrible at science, so coupled with the lack of patience thing…no to anything in the health care field.

Back to talking and the kids party favors. I’ve never considered either as a serious career possibility. I’ve always thought the former necessitated a certain amount of narcissism, which I find distasteful. The latter is just not a realistic way to make a living. People who are like me and truly enjoy making party favors can get on Pinterest just the same as I can. I suppose I could do favor bags for weddings and corporations, but the only thing I’d enjoy less than a corporation is a bride. Brides are awful. I know – I’ve been one.

Speaking of being a bride, I don’t know how many times my mother said to me over the years “The thing that is most appealing about someone in the beginning turns out the be the biggest challenge in the long run.” As is typically the case, she was right. In college, I met a boy. He was driven and had absolute confidence in his own abilities. Nearly twenty years later, we’ve been married almost fifteen years. He is every bit as driven as he ever was, and still absolutely confident in his abilities. He found his life’s work very early, and is successful. He has an uncanny ability to see how things are supposed to work. This is extremely difficult for someone like me, because – to mix metaphors – he’s already seeing the end game and I can’t see the forest for the trees. Nothing will make you feel more like an underachiever than living with an overachiever.

I was driving home recently, reflecting on my lack of professional success, compared to my “potential.” I’ve always thought my husband was just more driven, or had more passion. To a certain extent, that’s true. But the crucial difference isn’t what he has that I don’t – it’s what I have that he doesn’t. Fear. That guy is fucking fearless. He is relentless, and he puts himself out there. He has never been afraid that people won’t like him – and many don’t – but by any measure, he is a success. He has a thriving business, a family that is crazy about him, and friends who are fiercely loyal. I, on the other hand, have always been governed by anxiety and worry. I often self-censor because I worry about what other people think. He has elephant hide, and my skin is paper-thin.

So, as I approach my 40th year, I resolve to be brave. To say what I think. To tell my stories. Maybe that’s my purpose…to share my fuck-ups (they are many) and my victories (they are also many), so you can feel less alone or, at the very least, regard me as a cautionary tale and learn from my mistakes.