Our baseball season is getting under way, as the high school season approaches its end, and we're having a rocky start. I've talked here before about My Baseball Team, an 18U recreational baseball team that I, for lack of a better description, GM (as in, General Manage). Thursday night, our first practice was rained out in rather dramatic fashion. Against type, I called (cancelled) the 8:00 practice at 6:30, after watching the weather all day, based on the belief that all hell was going to break lose at about 8:30. I was quite pleased with myself as the lightning and thunder, rain and winds hit at just the moment I had predicted and was glad that I had taken the time to call the team. The next morning I got a call on my cell from an unhappy father, a man I've never met, whose son is one of the five assigned to me by the league, after I came in with eight on my roster. Apparently, despite the fact that I left a message on their home phone ninety mintues before the practice was to start, and despite the fact that there was noticable thunder and lightening for probably forty-five minutes before the practice (and the rain) were to start, he was angry. It was all I could do to disguise my displeasure when explaining to him that when inclement weather approaches, he needs to check his messages. Once we're organized, I won't even call. He'll have to check his email. As is my way, I have made a short story long, but the bottom line is that I have a bad parent, damnit. The really bad news is that it rained again all night Friday, which forced the cancellation of our Saturday practice and, according to The Weather Channel, it's going to rain again on Tuesday, when our next one is scheduled. It's possible that I'll be handing out uniforms before the first game, Thursday, which is fine with me, but scares the heck out of this particular dad (for some bizarre reason). He called me Saturday while I was grocery shopping wanting me to call a practice for Sunday afternoon. I explained to him that this is rec (recreational) baseball, that we have no championship of the regular season, that everyone makes the play-offs, that it was the 8th time I had fielded a team in this (the 15-18) league, that my experience has taught me that playing the regular season developmentally rather than to win (essentially looking at each game as practice) leads to success in the playoffs, that everything was going to be okay, all without saying what I really wanted to say, which was, "CALM THE FLIP DOWN, YOU MAD MAN!"
We have a lot going on right now. The oldest's college graduation is approaching and I am still trying to figure out the logistics of the trip, including, but not limited to, getting his brother from New Orleans to the North Carolina coast, figuring out where everyone is staying (including determining what would be appropriate and economical accommodations for me and The Husband...), and convincing Gramma that she doesn't really want to go. It's hard for me to imagine dealing with her in the crowds and the heat and I don't want his graduation to become all about her (rather, I would much prefer that it is all about our graduate), so I'm hoping to convince her that maybe she and I can go up to visit him later, in the summer, when it wouldn't be so pressure-filled or hectic, when it wouldn't be graduation, although, honestly, that sounds like substantial agony as well. I do not travel well with her.
We will also be going to court in May for The Matter About Which I Cannot Speak. Before graduation we'll have a pre-trial hearing. After graduation, there will be a court-ordered mediation. Unless they suprise us with a fair offer of settlement, there will then be a jury trial. It's hard to believe it's finally happening. It has taken years, a great deal of work (mostly on the part of The Husband...), too many depositions to count, and thousands of pages of discovery. I think both sons who live away should come home for it, if we go to trial.
I've written here before about the fact that this is my first real experience living in an apartment complex (not counting the few months between the time my mother left my father and the time she married my step-father and we moved to West Virginia when I was in the sixth grade or that college summer at Hilton Head). The reasons I am enjoying it seem odd, and surprise me. It's a nice complex in a nice part of town, and medium old (not old enough for the KnockingShitDown Company to be hovering), so not as dense as the newer ones. It's also nicely landscaped and our particular unit is in a corner, facing lovely woods. Still, that's not the reason why. It's the privacy, the anonymity. I had lived in a very prominent house for twenty years. Now, I don't mean prominent in that it was fancy or fine, but that it stuck out, was highly noticible, an adorable cottage (or so everyone said) in a lovely neighborhood. Artists knocked on the door and asked to paint it, and it was hired out for a commercial. Add to that my outgoing personality, and I was sort of locally famous, almost. At least people had, for a long time, been coming up to me in public saying, "I know you! You live in that blankety blank house!" I would given them credit for being right and they would tell me how cute my boys were playing in the yard. Or people would say, "I know you! You're that baseball lady!" I would smile, proudly. Even now, six years out of Little League, young men I don't recognize 'cause I haven't seen them since they were twelve, will stop me and say, "Ms. Sophmom, you don't remember me, but I'm Baseball Player and I played at Great Little League." It never ceases to move me. I guess this is all to say that being that well-known isn't so wonderful when things tank and it feels very comfortable to have retreated into this anonymous, largely transient community where I am just another tenant going to work every day and walking the dog.
So it is spring and and The Matter is approching resolution, and the Royalty Fairy (TM Paula Reed) was vastly improved this month (hoping that's a trend), AND there will be a college graduation in our family, the first of this generation. I am proud, and the view from the porch is bright new green. Tomorrow, after I come home from work, produce a hurried dinner and feed and walk the old blind dog, we will go to our first baseball practice, if it doesn't rain. Peace. Out.
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