Concussed

So, here’s an SMS you never want to get from your husband who you know has taken your son to the ER after a really hard (illegal, unnecessary, infuriating) hit in a hockey game: “SB’s pupils are normally the same size aren’t they?”

“As far as I know. Never noticed otherwise.” you message back. “Why? Are they not the same size now????”

“Nope.” comes the reply “one is larger – the left one – but could just be the light.”

At which point the only thing you can manage to type back is “What the FUCK?”

* * *

One of the small blessings of living right next door to R’s parents is that when this series of messages flew two weekends ago, my mother-in-law was able to walk across the driveway to take over putting The Boychen to bed and I packed a bag with some stuff for R and some stuff for SB – who was clearly going to be held overnight for observation – and drove to the hospital.

* * *

I’ll cut to the chase and say now that SB is okay. It was “just” a concussion; in spite of the most thorough opthalmological exam I’ve ever witnessed and a head MRI, no reason was ever found for SB’s unequal pupils. Here’s another thing you don’t really want, by the way: to watch over the technician’s shoulders as picture after picture of your son’s brain comes up on the screen. Pictures that you can’t read, and so you watch the tech’s body language instead, waiting for the widened eye, the sudden tilt of the head. It doesn’t come, but that doesn’t really make you feel any better until your kid is pulled out of the machine.

* * *

I’ve tried to write this a few times, it’s always a mess, brief paragraphs are the best I can do. Not even seven, a concussion, and though I know hockey players who have played for years and never gotten concussions, I find myself thinking “his first concussion” as if I expect more.

* * *

These recent articles in The New York Times about Derek Boogaard have not made me feel any better.

* * *

Trying to enforce a Sport-Verbot on a nearly seven year old physical boy used to playing hockey three times a week is not easy my friends. Not easy at all. SB has hated missing practice, hated being kept out of gym class at school, hates that I won’t let him play hockey in the driveway. The idea of being calm, and quiet and restful – it sort of makes him break out in hives I think and as a result his behavior at home has been … challenging.

This past Sunday was the Christmas party for SB’s team: a kids v. parents hockey tournament and then an early dinner. It was two weeks after the concussion, the earliest the doctors said he could start back with sports, and we thought it would be a good time to see how he feels – the tournament would be friendly and I would be right there on the ice to keep an eye on him. He played all three games and said he felt okay, but at bedtime he had a headache. He’s back on Injured Reserve and skipping training this week.

I played on the moms’ team and had the best time. I’ve been skating these past couple of years, but not playing hockey and this was hockey, with the full equipment, and even though it was a friendly match against the kids don’t be fooled: seven and eight year old boys play for keeps. They ran us hard. I still skate well, and I’ve got some game sense, but no puck handling skills at all; but I had so much fun that if I could somehow manufacture an additional twelve hours a week (stop laughing) I would run right out and join an adults’ recreational league because I had that much fun.

* * *

This is my new favoritest picture ever of me and the Small Boy. Look at that smile, do you think he was happy to be on the ice again? For all that hockey is a hard, physical, capricious and sometimes violent sport, anything that makes my boy smile like that has a place in this family. At least for now.

Wow. And happy. And wow.

So one day, you feel like giving up. You wonder why the hell you keep writing. Then you read something like this, and you feel a little better, and you remember to be kind to yourself and to just keep going. You start to have days when you think something is going right, you’re not sure what but the words are …better, somehow. You think, yes. Yes, I think I can do this. I need time, and teachers, but I can do this.

Then you open your email and discover you’ve been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

And you know you still have a long way to go, you still need time, you still need teachers, you’re quite sure you’re not going to make the final cut and actually get a Pushcart Prize, but it’s a thing you’ve needed, another push along the road, something to take out of your pocket and look at when the rejection letters get you down.

You think, yes. Yes, I think I can do this.

The One With The Turkey

For the past several years, I’ve almost let Thanksgiving go by without a celebration. For the past several years, I’ve almost given up on Thanksgiving and then, in a last moment fit of determination, I make last minute invitations to Expat Thanksgiving. I recognize, in that moment of decision, that if I let it go this year I will let it go forever and the boys will grow up without Thanksgiving. That most American of holidays. As expats, so much falls aside, so many cultural touchstones pass our kids by no matter how conscientiously we try to pass them on. Thanksgiving, it seems, is my line in the sand. I think I can let it go, but when the moment is upon me I know that I can’t, that I musn’t.

So I threw out last minute invitations, made the last minute scramble for a turkey. R’s family has a long, long-standing relationship with the butcher in the small village we lived in when I first moved to Switzerland – a relationship that spans two generations of butchers and two generations of customers – so we turned to Small Village Butcher for our turkey order and he got us a turkey. Oh boy, did he get us a turkey. An eleven kilo turkey. That’s an American-sized turkey and I’m here to tell you: American-sized turkeys do not fit in European-sized ovens. No, no they do not. The turkey did not fit in our oven. We’ve had some close calls before, but in ten years of varied and sundry families hosting Expat Thanksgiving this is the first time we couldn’t fit the bird in the oven. I suppose it was bound to happen one of these years.

The butcher roasted the turkey for us on Sunday (that sound you just heard was the collective gasp of my Swiss and German readership, followed by exclamations of: he roasted the turkey for them on a Sunday? Mein Gott!) and R went to pick it up in a catering hot-box and when he arrived home with it and brought it inside everybody stood around in the kitchen exclaiming and taking pictures and exclaiming. An eleven kilo turkey is … impressive. Daunting, even. We did our best, pressed second servings on everybody and sent people home with leftovers and still have three containers of turkey in the refrigerator. Eleven kilos of turkey is a lot of turkey.

My mother always made a turkey tetrazzini with Thanksgiving leftovers, and I’m going to have to root around and see if I have her recipe somewhere, because I’ve got a lot of leftovers. And because my mother’s turkey tetrazzini was outstanding. As was her apple pie, which I made again this year. As it was baking, when the house smelled like pie and I had the warm anticipation of expecting guests for Thanksgiving, I saw a rainbow out my kitchen window.

It’s a good thing to hold on to traditions. A little better even, I think, when you have to fight for them a bit.

The things we let get away from us

I’ve been spending a lot of time in and around ice rinks lately: on the ice twice a week as a trainer, on the ice on weekends skating around with the boys, in the stands twice a week (or more) as a hockey-mom, and in the stands as a fan when the Big Boys play, and I’ve been thinking about the things we allow to get away from us. When we “grow up.” When we get busy. When we put other people’s needs – often our kids’ – first.

I grew up around hockey, we were a hockey family. My brother and I played (though I quit after a season and a half – back in the day being the only girl my age in the entire suburban league wasn’t so fun – my brother played on until he left for college); my dad was a coach and the president of the local hockey association; my mother was secretary or treasurer and sometimes both. When I was old enough, I worked as a time-keeper and kept statistics on goals for and against, minutes played, penalty minutes served. I grew up skating. Winter afternoons were spent at the local rink skating laps and giggling with my girlfriends under the lights. Hot chocolate in the warming house, watching the boys play pick-up hockey, skate-a-thons to raise money for the hockey club and threading a season pass through the laces of my skates. Always a season pass – growing up in the Chicago suburbs in the 70s, if you didn’t skate in the winters you didn’t see much of your friends, because for sure they all skated.

Slowly, in high school I guess, I started leaving it all behind. My brother went to college, so I didn’t tag along to his games anymore and I was busy trying to find my thing in high school – it couldn’t be hockey, high-school girls didn’t play hockey back then and anyway although I still skated I had given up on hockey. I went to college and found cycling and after I graduated – I don’t know, I just sort of forgot about hockey and skating. I forgot about it for a long time, until a few years ago when we put SB in the hockey school and slowly, slowly, I started skating again.

But it’s been this year, between SB practicing or playing matches three times a week and my getting on the ice as a trainer in the hockey school, that’s put me right back in the middle of Hockey World – I’m at rinks three or four times a week and I’m having a blast. Oh, I’ll grumble about the logistics of it all because really it’s quite something some weeks – I’ve already decided that we need to be one of those families with the family calendar with a column for each family member – and my carbon footprint is GINORMOUS, but I’m having a blast. I’m having a blast on the ice and I find I’m happier off it – I’ve got a Thing. A hobby (though technically it’s also a job), a place to be. A whole other life. It’s chaos sometimes, and I’m not a big fan of chaos and time-pressure, but I’m having a great time.

And I’m wondering why I let skating slip away from me for so many years, wondering why we allow ourselves to drop our little hobbies and interests along the way. All the years I was in Switzerland before the boys were born, I never went skating – why did it take the boys getting into hockey for me to get back on the ice? Every winter of my childhood was spent in and around ice-rinks and then, somehow, I stopped. Now I find myself in them again and I’m realizing how much I missed it.

Is there something you loved to do when you were younger that’s fallen by the wayside? I challenge you to remember it, and try it out again.

There’s something happening here

Something is happening with my writing, something I’m afraid to look at too closely lest I scare it off. It’s as though I’ve changed gears – I spend less time circling around and around the subject, warming up with an hour of rambling before the poem finally takes off. It’s – smoother. I won’t say easier, because it’s not, but the work comes more readily. It’s like the half-wild cat my mother-in-law has courted these past two years to the point where it’s not afraid of her anymore. It’s still skittish and half-wild, but it doesn’t hide anymore. My poems – they are skittish and half-wild, but they don’t run off and hide anymore.

More than that I’m almost afraid to say. Things like this shouldn’t be examined too closely.

A day in the life

Apparently, it doesn’t take much for me to go from being busy to feeling over-extended. Apparently, it takes about 4 hours a week. I very carefully chose the phrase “feeling over-extended” because I know I am not, in fact, over-extended; I am, however, a person who stumbles over transitions (please, do not try to talk to me about anything requiring a decision for the first ten minutes after I have walked in the door and for the love of god do not catch me in the driveway as I am stepping out of the car and try to talk to me about anything) and who needs a five-minute cushion – getting someplace in the nick of time stresses me out more than actually being late.

So the fall schedule of Small Boy’s Bambini hockey, the Boychen’s hockey school hockey, and my training at the hockey school has knocked me sideways far more than I ever would have guessed a four-hour a week job would. It’s not the four hours, so much as the craziness of those exact four hours.

Here, for example, is how Thursdays afternoons run around here: at 3:45 Small Boy and I need to leave for his Bambini hockey practice. It’s almost always possible for Boychen to stay with his grandparents, which is a relief because Small Boy and I drive to Hockey Rink 1 where he takes the ice at 4:45 for practice that runs to 6:10. At 5:00 I leave Small Boy at Hockey Rink 1 and drive to Hockey Rink 2, where I teach with the hockey school from 6:00 to 7:00. (Boychen doesn’t attend the Thursday session because it’s too late at night for him.) At some point between 6:00 and 6:30 I get a message from R confirming that he made it to Hockey Rink 1 and is taking Small Boy home. So far, R has always made it on time but we’ve worked out a Plan B for Small Boy to follow (basically go to the restaurant, order a plate of french fries and wait for Dada to show up) in the eventuality that he doesn’t get there on time. Which is totally going to happen one of these days.

About every other Saturday, Small Boy has a hockey game at Hockey Rink 3 or, heaven forbid in a whole other town, while Boychen and I have hockey school at Hockey Rink 1. Boychen and I go to hockey school, Small Boy and R go to the match, and when hockey school is over Boychen and I cut across town to catch the end of the match.

It’s kind of chaos; and now I understand why Fellow Hockey Family worked so hard to get their younger son into Bambinis with his older brother. Have any of you seen that Suburu commercial with the hockey mom to triplets? I laugh at the hockey mom of triplets, because her kids are all on the same team. Honey, I could do that in my sleep. The real challenge is having kids 3 years apart who will never end up on the same team and you have to be in two different places at the exact same time.

Once I’m there, though, and take a few deep breaths, and put on my skates and my trainer’s suit – yes, I have an Outfit – and get on the ice with the kids, it’s pretty good. In two weeks, Boy Who Can’t Even Stand On The Ice has been transformed into Boy Who Can Make It From One Side of the Rink to the Other. Last night, Boy Who Cried became Boy Who Played Pickup Hockey With Me. It’s good. I’m friendly with my fellow trainers and last night I had a drink with them after training. (Iced tea, because of all the driving.) Parents will wave me over and ask a question and I’ll tell you what: watching a kid let go of the supports and take four steps towards me, because I told him I knew he could do it, and because he believed me, is pretty awesome.

So life looks kind of like this right about now:

When’s March?

What I do on baby-sitter days

Draft a poem.
Read a dozen.
Eat chips straight from the bag.
Look at my watch.
Hurry, hurry.
Gobble down lunch.
Look at my watch.
Hurry, hurry.
Work, work, work.

Just what I needed to hear

After last week’s pity party, I read this today. (Go read it; I’ll wait. It’s short.) So I’m hanging in there. Because yeah, I’ve got killer taste and hell yeah I’ve got potential. So I’m hanging in there. You hang in there too.

Most of the time

Most of the time, I feel like giving up. Most of the time, the rejection email makes me want to stop submitting. Most of the time, the latest blindingly good book of poetry I’ve been reading makes me want to stop writing. Most of the time, I feel like it’s too late, that I missed my chance, made all the wrong decisions in my 20s, will never write the kind of poetry I want to write. Most of the time, I can’t see the way forward. I recognize good poetry when I see it, but I don’t know how to get there from here. I don’t know if I can get there from here, or if I’ve already reached the far limit of my modest ability. Most of the time, I am consumed by ifs: if I had followed through in college, when more than one teacher thought I had talent; if I had taken chances when I had them; if I hadn’t opted for the practical path; if I had been braver. Most of the time, I think about the classes I could take if we lived in the US. Most of the time, I know I need teachers if I’m to have a hope of getting any better and most of the time I think I could get better. Most of the time, it kills me that this is not really possible. Most of the time, I do not have enough time to work. Most of the time, I do not work well enough, the work is not good enough nor is there enough of it in terms of sheer output. Most of the time I am wracking my brains trying to figure out how to claw more minutes out of the day. Most of the time, I read some new poet’s first book and despair. Most of the time, I wonder why I bother. Most of the time, I feel like giving up.

Back

Well that was lovely. We went on an extremely uncharacteristic beach resort family vacation and a wonderful time was had by all. Technically, we were in Jerba, Tunisia, but because we were in an all-inclusive resort we could have been nearly anywhere with palm trees and bougainvillea; had we wanted to, we could have gone the entire week without a dinar passing through our hands. Five years ago I would not have imagined myself taking this sort of a trip, let alone enjoying it so very much and contemplating returning next autumn, but at this stage of family life it was just right. The boys went to the kids’ club two hours each morning while R and I lounged at the poolside and then we collected the boys for lunch and spent every afternoon together on the beach.

The boys, particularly the Boychen, loved the beach – it was their first time on a shore of any kind – and spent happy hours building sandcastles and jumping over waves. R and I lounged on beach chairs, helped with sandcastles, took the boys into the water and made sure they didn’t drown. It was pretty perfect.

We did leave the resort bubble one day for a trip to Houmet Souk; even so it’s hardly honest to say I’ve been to Tunisia.

Now we’re back and it’s 10 degrees celcius and raining and Small Boy has hockey training “Intensive Week” – on- and off-ice training every day this week – and the hockey school opens on Saturday. Summer is well and truly over.