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Spectator Sports
I’m sitting in my empty house, watching the BCS Championship Game. The fans are crazed–I have never heard a crowd with that energy level. It’s a paradox, watching sports alone. I get to concentrate on the game, but with no one to banter with, it’s hard to concentrate on the game. I learned to love watching football as a family when I was young, when my new dad moved my family to the DC suburbs and into Redskins country.
Football is all about the bond, to me. Dad taught me the plays, the penalties, the positions, and the formations. I showed him how interested I was by asking questions…”Was that a sack?” “What is the quarterback doing?” “Why did they call that penalty?” I may have been the only little girl in the metro area with a poster showing the ref signals for each penalty. I still know them all.
And more than one young man has been wooed by my ability to hang with the boys as a fan. (Not Joshua, though. I actually said to him one night: “Can you believe how lucky you are to come home to a girlfriend who is watching the World Series in lingerie?” He laughed, but was not appropriately appreciative, I assure you.)
As years go by, my family always comes back to the same formation, and we had a classic gathering last week for the end of the regular season. Sunday afternoon, huddled around the hearth and the television. Beers, chips, and lots of shouting. Sometimes cursing. We are great Sunday afternoon arm chair coaches. Mom and David, my brother, are the most avid, spending summers reading up on fantasy football picks and keeping up with four games at once on Red Zone. Unless it’s a Skins home game: then whoever is in town is huddled around the tow-able gas grill in the Gold Zone parking lot. OK, so it’s not high culture. But it’s warm, it’s engaging, and it’s a bond that always holds.
When Brett and I designed our “custody agreement,” I made the case for the bond, and somehow it held there, too. So from the Season Opener to the Superbowl, I get to have my kids for Sunday night football. That privledge has moprhed into having them all day Sunday, so Brett can meet his “significant work obligations.” (So many English professors work on Sundays, really.) Despite the fact that he needs it, Brett meets the “football clause” with disdain–Sundays are when I expose my kids to “artificially-induced football fandom,” “orgies of junk food and television,” and the like.
But Ben is ready to play. I started looking for a youth league near me, and was faced with a list of semi-pro, size-huge 9 year old boys. Until I found the JCC’s flag football league. Perfect! No tackling, and all Jew-boys. He should be safe for now, and I’m ready to be his chief spectator (and nail-biter).
I got a taste of chief spectator last week, when my kids and I went to the northern NYC suburbs to meet Joshua’s family. It is a slippery slope, I know, but we made the most of it, especially Ben. When we arrived, I went to lie down in Joshua’s sister’s lovely guestroom. I saw figures moving outside, so I curled up on the wide, white windowsill and watched my boy on his first sled ride. And his second, third, and fourth. Then he became the hero of Joshua’s six nephews by riding down the hill STANDING UP on the skimboard-style sled. Snowballs flew, and his smile was whiter and wider than the snow. Maybe he can play with the big boys after all. And I, like always, love watching.
Things Brett Ruined for Me
Every day, I think thoughts or like things that annoy myself, because they are all about Brett’s influence. I almost attacked Joshua the other night for reading an old New Yorker magazine he found laying around. “I can’t believe I missed one!” I sneered as I snatched it out of his hand and into the recycling. Here’s a short list of things he ruined for me, to go with the Tiffani list from the summer.
- The New Yorker magazine
- The New York Times Book Review
- Punk Rock and Ska
- Yo La Tango
- Shakespeare (especially the Sonnets and the Histories)
- Indian food
- Coffee shops
- Professors
- Motorscooters
- Christmas
- Tillie’s hair (he keeps cutting it like the Little Dutch Boy, or, as Tillie says, like Maria in The Sound of Music)
- Ben’s knee (see Skinned Knee post. The scar is ENORMOUS)
- The Canterbury Tales
- The Lord of the Rings
- Roseville Pottery
- Arts and Crafts design
- Antique shopping
- My self image
- My relationships with my neighbors
- My memories of childbirth
- My belief in forever
- My freedom
- Superbowl Sunday (DAMN IT!)
- Tiffani
Some of these things are worth taking back. He can keep Tiffani. And the New Yorker subscription.
Forgiveness and Vaccinations
Melanie thought I should post the rest of the email exchange, since she thought I posted the tamest part. So, if you wish, here it is.
From: Sokolov, Becca
To: Brett Lewis
Sent: Tue Oct 20 23:12:42 2009
Subject: Re: Flu vaccine/unmindfulness
Brett,
I do not deserve to be treated with disdain and loathing. Your attitude toward me is beyond hostile, and I will no longer respond to or tolerate it.
If you wanted to have a reasonable discussion about the pros and cons of vaccinating, you could have raised that in a civil manner when I first brought it up. You were more interested in berating me than discussing our children’s welfare
I may not be a medical doctor, but I consulted with several, and had access to those news reports and more. Better than a google search undertaken to bludgeon me with your hate one more time.
And the kids have shown no ill effects, not that you asked.
From: Brett Lewis
To: Sokolov, Becca
Sent: Tue Oct 20 23:15:52 2009
Subject: Re: Flu vaccine/unmindfulness
Becca,
There’s a history here, a context that you seem to forget when it is convenient for you. I will never forgive you for using all your might and family money to try to take the kids from me, and then for perpetuating the misery by using the agreement–built on your rage and insecurity instead of thoughtful parenting–to keep your hand in my life. Your surprise at my resistance to your catalogue of bad acts and poor judgment is outrageous given the context. It was bad living with you when you were totally checked out on me and the kids, and it is no better dealing with your vengeful, overcompensating, unselfconscious behavior now that you are free to be yourself without constraint. I just wanted out of a bad marriage, and somehow that validated all your awful behavior; you built the context, so you can live with it too.
From: Sokolov, Becca
To: Brett Lewis
Sent: Tue Oct 20 23:31:08 2009
Subject: Re: Flu vaccine/unmindfulness
So your plan is to act this way forever? When did I ever try to take the kids from you? I wish I could have, now more than ever, but I knew I could not and I didn’t try. You didn’t want to hear that, even when I said it outright, because demonizing me seems to fulfill some need of yours. It sure doesn’t have anything to do with being a parent.
This may be the way you want to live your life, but I will not.
And if you want to put bad acts against bad acts, I’m pretty sure you were above and beyond anything you even imagined I did.
I want to be able to ask questions and share information about Ben and Tillie without being berated and accused. And your idea of what my home is like is absolutely wacked.
First Days of My Life
I wrote a note for Ben’s lunch today…the first day of school. I know; it’s early August. You might ask what my kids are doing in school. All I can say is that there seems to be a preference for starting school waaaaay before testing season here in one of the lowest scoring state education systems in the country. And what’s the difference, really? Summer won’t end here until October, when it finally breaks like a long fever. By then, the whole country is in school.
Ben has a sudden temper, a low frustration threshold, and not much tolerance for rulebreakers (except himself). This is not a good combination with school. He got suspended in Kindergarten (who knew that was possible?), and again in 3rd grade. He had started to feel marked, and I’m not sure he was wrong. But 4th grade is in a different school, and when I spoke to the Dean of Students, he told me he knew Ben’s story, but this is his new day. So I’m taking him up on it.
The note:
Ben,
Today is the first day of a great year for you. I just know it. I am so proud of you. I wish I could tell you how much I love you, but there are no big enough words.
-Mama
We took Tillie in to her first day of Pre-K, with her big girl backpack, her fancy frilly skirt, and her new light up shoes. Ben took a picture of her with his new cell phone and sent it to their dad. On the way to school, Ben put on Wonderful by Everclear, singing along. Back in the car alone, with Ben safely in his classroom, the song started up and I sobbed all the way to Joshua’s house instead of to my office. It is so so lonely not sharing your children.
This first day came on the heels of the anniversaries of several first days of my life.
On July 30, 1995, Brett and I got married on the hottest day of the summer. It was in Washington, with a view of the Potomac, the Watergate Hotel and the Exorcist stairs. Makes you think, huh? But at the time, it was all joy, smashed wine glasses, and drunken hora dancing. It was the first day of our lives together, officially. This year, on July 30th, my wedding anniversary flitted through my mind at odd times, but mostly, it was just the second to last day of July.
July 30, 2008 was the first day of my life as I know it now. I had just lived through 12 hours of divorce mediation. Shuttle diplomacy in my lawyer’s fancy office: there was a mediator, running back and forth between me and my lawyer and Brett and his team of lawyers. I started the day trying to convince her of how wronged I’d been, moved into desperate anger at Brett’s insistence that he be able to let Tiffani play mommy to the kids as much as he pleased, and ultimately to resignation that I could only try not to lose more, as if that was possible. With spurts of activity, constant texts from my parents, and long waits where I read the first two pages of my Janet Evanovich novel over and over again, we slowly divided our kids and our lives. We mapped out who would get the kids for which Thanksgivings (I get odd years, he gets evens), how much time we could spend with the kids on their birthdays (3 hours for the parent without them that day), who we could have in our homes when the kids were present (no unrelated opposite sex adults between 11 pm and 8 am for 12 months), and on and on.
When the clock had come full circle, Brett left to get the kids and I hammered out the final details with both lawyers. I was exhausted, defeated, punchy.
“Do I scare you?” I asked listlessly of his lawyer.
“Excuse me?”
“Did you tell him to call the cops on me?” I didn’t look up.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you about that. But no, no I didn’t.” I didn’t believe him, but at least he knew enough to be ashamed.
“Well, he did. And those letters about me trying to ‘rend the fabric of the family,’ threatening to charge me with domestic violence? A bit over the top, considering what he was doing, wouldn’t you say?” I don’t know why I was talking to this guy, but it was sliding out of me like sighing or sweating. My lawyer raised an eyebrow, but didn’t stop me.
“I’m glad I didn’t have to stand up with him in court,” he said, and looked at his $300 shoes. And I thought of standing up with Brett, 13 years earlier, to proudly promise him all the days of my life. That was the beginning, and this was the end.
My tearful drive to Joshua’s is part of a beginning, too, I think. Not in the same way—not in a mark the date, invite your friends, break the glass or the covenant kind of way. I wasn’t wearing new shoes or a bright, shiny backpack, or something borrowed and blue. Just these old wounds, freshly licked. But something feels new. When I look back, I wonder what will seem like the First Day of My Life, for real.
Twister
A tornado spun right past me one March night while I was drinking a rum and Coke. I knew I smelled rain, and when it began the wind took out the power in the bar. I knew there was a storm. But I wasn’t ready for the twister.
My friend Tiffani was telling me about troubles in her marriage; apparently after 12 years of a rocky ride together, they were having their first problems in bed. I really never had friends who talked to me this way, and I sort of took her cue and talked a bit about my sex life. “I think I may never sleep with Brett again,” I said, and I didn’t mean it as a threat, but a declaration of a possibly unchangeable future. I turned out to be right.
She asked me about a flirtatious friend in Washington. She asked me if Brett had ever told me who he wanted to spend time with in the future. She told me the same old tired story about the joke she made about her husband in bed (it wasn’t that funny) that sent their sex life into a tailspin. She told me about a flirtation (affair) she had with one of her professors. She told me again and again how people just “feel how they feel.” I begged her to stop telling Brett that, that he was using her words to mean there was no reason to try.
Did I think he was in love with someone else, she asked. If he’s having an affair, it’s with you, I joked. I had checked all the phone records and credit cards and there was nothing there that wasn’t related to her.
The sky went green. Tiffani told me she could tell a tornado was coming. She could feel the pressure change like it used to when she was a girl in Indiana. Everyone in the bar moved to the back of the room, and she clutched me as her heart raced and we ducked under the bar rail. I thought she was overreacting—I didn’t know what a tornado felt like, and I couldn’t sense the changes she could.
When we left the bar, the cars and houses and bushes and trees and lawns were covered with white confetti. At first, I thought it was flower petals. Spring in Atlanta is a burst of flowering trees with petals in white, delicate pink, and vibrant purple. We got into Tiffani’s car and tried to leave Cabbagetown, a neighborhood cut off from the rest of Atlanta by train tracks and industrial space. At every turn, we were stuck. Trees were down, powerlines lay in the street, and eventually we gave up. We parked and walked through the creepy Krog Street tunnel and met Tiffani’s husband on the other side.
Those of you who have read any of my posts (or lived through this with me) certainly will recognize the twist long before I did. When I asked Brett Tiffani’s question about who he wanted to spend his time with in the future, he dove into some strange, rambling description of how I had kept him from going to Bike Week in Daytona with his friends (HUH?). It didn’t make any sense then, but it does now. Tiffani wanted me to push him to the point where he told me the truth: that he wanted to be with her, and that was why he had spent the last two months trying to convince me that I was a terrible wife and should let him leave with what he wanted.
The day after the tornado, I watched the news and learned just how destructive it had been. I felt the need to drive downtown and see the mess. Windows were blown out of the tall hotels. The walkway at the CNN Center was down. The roof had blown off of part of the Phillips Arena, right in the middle of the NCAA basketball tournament. And the lofts right next to the bar had collapsed, sending insulation all over Cabbagetown. Not flower petals.
And that is exactly what I got from Tiffani. While she pretended to be my friend and confidant, she was really playing demolition crew. And I think I’m so smart.
