humbled

chris and i made it just in time to see the UNC-clemson game begin at the dean dome this past saturday. and i mean, just in time. if we'd been two seconds later we would have had to stop in the middle of scaling the steps and turn around to sing the national anthem, but those two seconds were what it took for us to find our seats, breathlessly, before immediately launching into "oh say can you see." i pride myself on arriving to places in the nick of time.  there's no point in being early. we were an hour early to the UNC-duke game the week prior and we all know how THAT turned out.

so in our mad dash to our row, i didn't have the chance to look at the person sitting next to me.  she was on my left, and the court was sort of to my right, so she was never in my line of vision.  but wow, could i hear her.  as soon as clemson scored their first basket, she began to scream, and i suddenly noticed out of the corner of my eye the bright orange hat atop her head.  with every additional point or steal or rebound made by clemson, her scream became louder.  i began to lean into chris with my hand discreetly covering my left ear, she was that loud.  people in front of us began to turn around to find out what sort of person would dare invade our home turf, sticking out like a sore thumb among a sea of tarheel blue.

it wasn't until halftime, when i returned to my seat from going to the restroom, that i actually got to see her.  and it was then i realized that her bright orange hat was covering a bald head.  a young head.  a head ravaged, obviously, by chemo.

the woman behind me took this opportunity to lean forward and tap her on the shoulder.  "i just wanted you to know that i was diagnosed with breast cancer when i was 37," she offered, speaking with a sense of familiarity and intimacy that i suppose only strangers who are fellow cancer patients can share.  "how is everything going?"

i sat there, literally four inches away from the conversation, hearing every word.  this orange-clad clemson fan was 34 years old.  she was beginning a new round of radiation this upcoming week, with a mastectomy looming in the near future.  she was very matter-of-fact with the summary of her "pretty crappy year" (her words), even bemoaning the game score at one point.  "i was hoping something would actually go right for me today," she said, glancing at the scoreboard that showed UNC with a comfortable lead, "but i can't seem to catch a break."

there was a lull and i thought the conversation was over, until the woman behind me asked her one last question.  "i remember my biggest fear was that i wouldn't see my kids grow up," she confided.  "do you have any children?"

and it was then that her voice broke.  "yes," she said, quietly.  "i have a five year-old son."  she paused.  "i just hope he doesn't remember me like this."

i sat there, in the middle of a sea of 21,000 people cheering wildly as the teams returned to the court, and wept.  i wept for this young mother next to me, in the midst of one of the most horrifying experiences a person can go through.  i wept for the woman behind me, whose fears from two decades ago were still in the forefront of her mind.   i wept for the fact that these two women have had to suffer through the same ordeal, a generation apart, when by now it shouldn't even exist.  i wept because of the shame i felt, having judged this person sitting next to me without knowing her at all.  and i wept because she deserved a win that day and she wasn't going to get it.  she deserved to scream as loudly as she wanted while she watched her team end a 55-game losing streak in chapel hill.

that victory was not to be.  but there's a much more important victory that i've been praying for, ever since sitting next to her.  a victory i hope she wins, just like the one the woman behind us won twenty years ago.

i never learned her name.  but i learned a small piece of her story in section 225, row Q, at a basketball game on a saturday in february.  and i will never forget it.

a hint of things to come

even though it was never in our plan to have children one grade apart, that's what God decided to give us and we've grown to love their age spread.   i know i've said it many times before, but liam and susanna actually consider themselves best friends.  they fight from time to time, but for the most part, they're close enough in age that they share so many similar interests and get along amazingly well.  i can't imagine it any other way.

BUT i know this age spread will pose its own sort of problems down the road.  i got a glimpse of it this weekend, as susanna hosted her first-ever sleepover.  liam was at a hockey game with a friend and got home hours after the girls had gone to bed -- thank goodness.  because that left only this morning that we had to deal with the three of them together.

but oh what a morning.

we first heard them at 6:04 a.m.  susanna and her friend had decided they couldn't enjoy the early dawn hours without liam, so they ventured across the hall to wake him up.  (note: liam is usually up by 6:04 a.m. and has already at that point let the dog out, fed her, gotten the newspaper from the end of the driveway, and is halfway through the sports section.  but after going to bed at 10:30 last night, he was a little off schedule.)

so chris and i awoke to little girl giggles and squeals as the older brother was apparently strutting around like a proud peacock, showing off.  susanna's friend was smitten, at the ripe old age of six, with this older boy.  (ironically, she has a younger brother who is as close in age to her as liam and susanna are.  but the dynamic of older sister-younger brother is a totally different ball game.)  "leeeeeee-ummmmm," she'd croon, beckoning him into their room to play.  everything he did was high-larious to her.  liam, apparently, was a rock star.  as she put on her shoes to leave, she told susanna that she as soon as she got home, she was going to write liam a letter and mail it to him.

so i know what path we're headed down.  a path where their social circles will inevitably mix, where liam and his friends will likely be very interested in susanna and her friends -- and vice-versa, to be sure.  a path that will take us to sleepovers where we might have to string up that yellow police tape with "do not cross" printed on it.

but it better be a path where we can count on liam to continue to be his protective self, looking out for his little sister and keeping a very close eye on anyone who might dare date her.  it's the only way we might survive the teenage years.

slice of life

i'm afraid i've spent far too much time over the years on this blog describing how much liam and susanna are growing and changing and learning, to the detriment of talking about myself.  for i, too, continue to learn valuable life lessons on a very regular basis -- lessons that broaden my horizons and improve my world perspective and make me a better person.  i experienced one such lesson this very weekend that i'd love to share with you now.

any time you have dinner guests, you know they're true friends if they offer to bring something to contribute to the meal.  i have never once turned down such an offer.  this weekend we had two couples over for dinner, and one brought a delicious salad and the other brought bread.  i stuck the bread in the oven to warm, and took it out while all six of us were standing around the island swapping stories.  after trying rather valiantly to hold the piping hot loaf with my left hand so i could cut it, i gave up and grabbed my oven mitt.

as i was slicing with my brand-new super-duper bread knife that my parents gave me for christmas, i was also participating in the conversation and not paying terribly close attention to the task at hand.  i picked up a few slices to place into the basket and noticed a strange red piece of plastic stuck inside the loaf .  weird, i thought.  i had obviously not cut myself, but i couldn't figure out what it could be, and decided i wouldn't mention it and discreetly threw it away.  i should find out where they bought it, i decided, because i'll make sure to buy my bread elsewhere.

and then, a minute later, it happened again.  there it was, stuck in the soft loaf -- another similar red plasticky something-or-other.  this time, i really scrutinized it, worried that i might unintentionally be setting out to harm my dinner guests.  it was firm but pliable and reminded me of the waxy substance that's often on top of wine corks.  what if it's something dangerous?  i wondered.  something that might get lodged in their throats, or cause cancer, or flavor the entire meal and turn everything inedible?  (to be honest, i was most worried about the last possibility, since i'd spent most of the day in the kitchen.)  two of our dinner guests happened to be attorneys.  i figured it would behoove me to figure it out.

i took off my oven mitt ... and it was only then that i realized what i had done.  i looked up, sheepishly, hoping that no one had noticed.  luckily i found four people still in the midst of their conversation, none the wiser.  but the fifth person -- my loving husband of almost 13 years -- stood there smiling at me, shaking his head as if to say i-can't-believe-you're-this-clueless-but-i-love-you-anyway.  (at least, that's the text i mentally ascribed to him in my closed captioning version of the scene.  more likely it was something like i-really-did-marry-the-epitome-of-a-dumb-blonde, but i refuse to go there.)

so what are the lessons here, you ask?  there are many.  you should, for example, know the sharpness of your knife and what it's capable of.  you should also have a sense of the actual size of your oven mitt.  and perhaps it's wisest to just wait until the bread has cooled enough to hold it in place with your bare hands.

but the most important lesson i learned is one i plan to pass on to my children: choose your spouse wisely.  make sure you marry a person who a) is interested enough in you that even after 16 years of being together, he still watches you closely enough to be aware of your mistakes; b) has the sense of humor to find such mistakes funny (and not embarrassing); and c) is so kind that just with a smile from across the room, you know that such a mistake is one that will remain just between the two of you. 

(that is, until you decide to share it with the whole world on a blog.  at that point, you might be on your own.) 

a small fumble

in addition to teaching my local delinquents who have been suspended from school, i took on a new job this past fall partnering with special education teachers throughout the state.  together, we team-teach small classes of learning disabled students in a "blended" format that pairs online learning with face-to-face instruction.  this semester, i'm teaching a brand-new curriculum called Introductory Math that focuses on very basic concepts, ranging from number lines to reading clocks and counting money.  many are important life skills that should assist these students in functioning in the real world after they graduate from high school. 

one of the most important aspects of my role is to create an announcement on their Blackboard page that greets them each day.  i use a variety of web 2.0 tools, from cartoon strips to videos to vokis (funny-looking characters who speak with my voice) to animated images -- basically anything that will capture their attention and get them excited about what they're going to learn that day.  on friday, i decided to tie in our current topic, integers, with the superbowl.  i felt sure that somehow, negative numbers were involved with football, but i didn't know how.  so i consulted the resident expert.

"chris, isn't there something in football that actually results in like a negative movement or something?" i asked.

he groaned.  "i have explained this to you a million times," he replied, barely looking up.  "yes.  if the quarterback gets sacked, it's negative yardage."

"what if another player gets sacked?" i asked.

"sara!  no other player can get sacked!  it's only the person who's throwing the ball!  you've been to football games with me before.  how can you not know this?"

yes, i've been to football games.  but when i attend these events, i prefer to talk to people and maybe watch the cheerleaders and comment on their skimpy outfits.  i do not actually watch the field.  in fact, i made it through four years of college attending just about every pre-game tailgate and only managed to enter the stadium one time, and that was to watch my sorority sister get crowned homecoming queen.  and even then, i departed right after the ceremony.

"but what if, say, i'm the quarterback and i throw it to you, and then you run a little bit, and you throw it to someone else, and then they get like picked up and moved backwards?"

i won't go on.  suffice it to say that there was much more groaning and frustration by the time we were finished.  but the whole time he ranted and raved, i was busy composing a poem in my head, having latched onto the phrase "negative yardage".  is there a word that rhymes with "yardage"?  i wondered, amidst some string of nonsense coming out of his mouth about lines and scrimmages and other things.  i finally wandered off and hoped he had finished.  after a few rough drafts, this was what i loaded into my classes' announcements:

the next day i began to hear from my co-teachers, all of whom said that our students were excited to read the poem and see the connection between math and everyday life.  i counted that as a success, and having received that feedback, was inspired to show the poem to liam.  

he scanned the screen and said, "i know what goes in the blank -- the word 'negative.'  BUT," he turned to me, "i'm afraid you kind of left out some stuff.  like, it's only a sack if he's behind the line of scrimmage."  and he proceeded to explain to me (very calmly and patiently) the ins and outs of this game that i do not understand.  he didn't groan or complain or say, "how can you not know this?" in a condescendingly incredulous tone.  he just simply, in his seven-year old refreshing way, explained it.  i learned, for example, this "line of scrimmage" is not one of the painted white lines on the field.  who knew?  and i actually began to understand.  a little, anyway.

chris got home that evening and i related the story to him, concluding with the informative lesson liam had given me.  he stared at me with a sort of stunned look on his face before groaning once again.  "I TOLD YOU THE SAME THING!" he said to me, exasperated.  "i swear sometimes you just don't listen."*

i'm thinking from now on, if i ever have a sports-related question, i'm going straight to the expert -- the kind and patient expert, that is.  liam.

* note: for the record, i'd like to admit that chris has every right to be exasperated with me.  that doesn't make it any better, but i totally get it.