Days of Whine and Roses

I am not an athlete. Never was. There was a time, once upon a time, that I may have entertained aspirations (read: delusions) about my skill on a softball field. Alas, my dreams of being a power hitter were derailed by little things like my lack of speed, athletic talent and hand-eye coordination.

But I loved to play.

I am a very competitive person. My obsessive need to win has been softened over the years thanks to things like reality, but I remain someone who likes to come in first. Unfortunately, I am also pretty lazy. When the zombie apocalypse comes, you can all thank me, since I will not be able to outrun the undead, thus giving them an easy target and you a chance to get away.

When I was a kid, weekends weren’t weekends without sports on TV. From the Super Bowl to the Professional Bowlers’ Tour to endlessly long golf tournaments, we watched sports. Now, I watch sports with my own kids and I revel in teaching them about strike zones and nickel defenses and icing. And I anxiously await Sunday afternoons to call my Dad and talk about the same with him.

There has been a lot of criticism of professional sports over the last several weeks. I want to be clear. Domestic violence, child abuse, drug use, drunk driving, “insert latest athletic hero’s fall from grace here” are abhorrent and have no place. Not just no place in professional sport, but no place in a civilized society.

Even so, I live for weekend sports watching. I spend fall Saturdays nearly vibrating with excitement waiting for Sunday football. I pore over standings and schedules and try to calculate my team’s chances at the beginning of the season. I cry when they lose (better luck next year, Red Sox), I get defensive when they are criticized (Tom Brady getting replaced with a first year backup – puhlease!), I rejoice when they stand alone at the end of the season, trophy hoisted above their heads.

I owe my teams a lot. The Red Sox taught me it was OK for a grown man to cry, that losing doesn’t make you a loser, and that loyalty isn’t always easy. As fall of 2004 opened, I was deeply mired in grief. I had lost quintuplets and spent my days lost in a haze of depression and hopelessness. All I could think about were the babies. I vacillated between insomnia and not being able to get out of bed. I couldn’t see any way out of the dark haze of sadness I was in.

I watched the ALCS that year, hoping that this would be the year that the Red Sox finally knocked off the Yankees. But then the Yankees were up three games to none and it looked like they were going to lose. Again. Heartbreakingly.

Then Dave Roberts stole 2^nd. And suddenly, my team had life. And suddenly, after six weeks of thinking of nothing but my loss and pain, I had something to look forward to. And when the Red Sox won the World Series. I felt joy. It was the first time since I had lost the babies that I felt anything other than despair. I had missed joy. And I am grateful to the Red Sox for giving it to me.

This year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer on January 27. It’s harder to wallow in despair and depression when you have three kids constantly in need of your time, attention and, let’s be honest, cash, but once they were in bed at night, the dark feelings came out to play. What if I died? What if I wasn’t strong enough to make it through treatment? What if, what if, what if? For weeks, if I wasn’t thinking about my kids, I was thinking about cancer.

Until the Super Bowl. And my most hated team, the Denver Broncos, got crushed by the Seahawks. And I felt joy watching a team standing alone at the end of the season. For those moments, I wasn’t someone standing at the beginning of a breast cancer journey, afraid and vulnerable, but instead I was a sports fan, happy to see one team achieve the dream.

I am not a good mother in a lot of ways. I yell far too much, I don’t keep a pristine house and I am almost always the parent who turns in the school forms a day late. But one thing that I am proud of is that I encourage my children to love sport. To engage in competition. To revel in rivalries. To try their hardest even when it looks like they’re going to get creamed.

My oldest son started playing tackle football this year. I know that he is only 8 years old, but I also know that he is a good athlete. He has excellent body awareness, he is very fast and he has excellent stamina (for most everything except homework). I entertain a lot of visions of him as a high school football player or a college basketball star or the star shortstop for the Red Sox in 2026.

My athletic dreams for him probably won’t come true. But what he has learned in his first season of football are things that I couldn’t teach him nearly as well. He has learned to lose gracefully, particularly important since they are currently 1-6. He has learned that even if he tries his hardest, he might not be one of the star players on the team and in fact might be one of the kids who has to work even harder to get playing time. He has learned what teamwork is and that playing a sport is not always about winning but playing with your friends as hard as you can is always satisfying.

And that is what sports is all about.

It’s that time of year again. The most glorious time of the year again. It’s back to school season again. But, even through my utter joy, I can see the work piling up for me. Every day my kids are coming home from school with sheaves of paper for me to fill out and sign.

Fluoride rinse permission slip? Check.

Auto-debit lunch money account? Check

Pickup authorization form? Check.

There is one form that usually gives me pause, entitled something like, “Tell Me About Your Child.” The form asks simple questions about your kid, in the hopes of giving the teacher some insight into their personalities and learning styles. I’m all about sharing information with the teachers, edited of course, so as not to have said teachers contacting the school psychologist, asking them to “Please keep an eye on that V family kid.”

Some examples of my editing process:

What are your expectations of your child this year? (3rd grade son)

What I told the teacher: I expect that my child will continue to grow in his love for math and hope that he will find joy in reading. I expect that he will strengthen his problem-solving skills and his relationships with his peers.

What I really meant: I expect that this kid is not going to do his homework unless I am standing over him with a mallet and the threat that he will never again see the light of day if he doesn’t finish before MY bedtime. I expect that he will lose a number of privileges, up to and including football, playdates and possibly breathing, because he hasn’t done his freakin’ homework. I expect that he will do everything in his power to avoid reading, including forging my signature in his assignment book. (I expect this to happen because he did it last year. Despite his valiant attempt at forgery, his teacher still identified it as a fake. Probably because I don’t typically sign my name as “Mom.”)

What do you expect of your child’s teacher? (3rd grade daughter)

What I told the teacher: I expect that you will encourage her independence and love of learning. I expect that you will show her patience when she is frustrated with a new challenge. I expect that you will foster a safe environment where the kids are free to discuss their ideas and feelings without fear.

What I really meant: I expect you to drink. A lot. I expect that the sound of my kid’s voice is eventually going to be like nails on a blasted chalk board. I expect that you will be forced to count to 10 multiple times a day. I expect that there will be moments when you cannot wait to get out of the classroom and vent to your friends and family about how these kids are driving you mad. Did I mention that I expect you to drink?

What do you expect your child to learn this year? (1st grade son)

What I told the teacher: I expect him to learn to read more fluently. I expect him to continue to learn appropriate responses when dealing with other children. I expect him to continue to mature and grow as a student.

What I really meant: I expect to get at least one phone call during the school year telling me that he has a problem keeping his hands to himself. I expect tears, definitely from him, possibly from you, the first time he is caught doing the wrong thing in class. I expect him to stand 3 feet from his sneakers each morning, crying because he’s looked everywhere and can’t find them and his mom is really, really mean. I expect that he will tell you at least one borderline inappropriate story about his father and me that I could try to explain, but really, isn’t it just funnier to listen to the 6 year old’s version of marital discussions?

The teachers ask what I expect of them. In addition to my expectation that they will probably all drink or find some other appropriate outlet for what is most assuredly one of the most stressful jobs in the world, I do have certain expectation of our parent-teacher relationship.

I expect that you will take care of my babies, who drive me batshit crazy but who have made me whole.

I expect that you will tell me when they are acting like little brats and that you will discipline them appropriately.

I expect that you see me as someone who wants to help you do your job, and not as one of “those” parents who make an already impossible job that much more difficult.

I expect that in June we will look at each other and sincerely say, “Thanks for a great year.”

Happy Back-to-School, everyone!

I lost my boob. And it was awful.

I know what you’re thinking. “Hasn’t she complained about her mastectomy enough?” But I’m not talking about losing my breast. I came to terms with that months ago. And reconstruction remains on my horizon, but is not in my immediate future.

With reconstruction still several months away, I purchased a fake boob shortly after my surgery. Being someone with an overabundance of breasts, I needed something quite large. Imagine my giggling when I realized that most of the products in my size were not exclusively marketed to mastectomy patients, but rather to transgender folks and cross-dressers.

So I have a fake boob. I’ve worn it for months now, but over the weekend, I lost it and couldn’t find it for about a day and a half.

I was lopsided. I was unbalanced. And, more importantly, I was mortified.

I have, quite obviously, no problem talking about my cancer. I’ll happily talk mastectomy scars, radiation tattoos and chemo side effects with almost no filter to anyone who’ll stand still long enough to listen to me. I love to talk and what better subject? I can vent my frustrations, educate others and maybe get a laugh, all at the same time.

But I’m apparently feeling that the physical evidence of my experience is something to be hidden or disguised. I never go out in public without my boob. It’s like the old American Express commercial. “Don’t leave home without it.”

Because while everyone knows, not everyone needs to see.

I’ve seen the eyes dart towards my chest when someone looks at me. Whenever I encounter a stranger, I see first the recognition that something must be wrong because, lovely though my headscarves and baseball hats are, clearly I’ve lost my hair. Then their eyes sink lower to try to figure out what kind of cancer I must be fighting. When I’m wearing my boob, it is not readily apparent what my battle is. When I’m not, everyone knows, leaving me looking funny and feeling exposed.

The problem is, I hate wearing that damn thing. In the winter and spring it wasn’t so bad. It would get a little damp on warm days, and I had to be careful what “foundation garments” I was wearing; the stupid bugger likes to poke its head out above my neckline occasionally and see what’s going on in the world. But other than that, it wasn’t so bad.

Now that it’s summer, it’s like having a soggy sponge stuck in my bra. If you’ve ever thought that underboob sweat was gross, simply magnify that feeling by, oh, infinity, and you’ll get an idea of just how gross it is. It soaks up sweat and makes me sweat and, perhaps most disgusting of all, reeks of sweat by the end of each day.

Say it with me. Ewwwwwwww.

On Sunday, we came home from church with our Dunkin’ Donuts and I whipped it out and threw it on the couch. When it came time to leave the house again, I couldn’t find it. I didn’t know if the kids hid it from each other, the cat hid it because he’s a pain in my ass, or my husband hid it to be funny. I couldn’t find it. And I had to leave the house.

I put on my blousiest blouse, sucked it up and went out. I don’t know whether anyone noticed or not. I was certainly a great deal more comfortable physically than I normally am when I wear it. But I found myself holding my arm at a certain angle to try and hide my deformity. My daughter was with me and she was worried whether I would feel sad without my boob. I was worried that she would be embarrassed.

At the end of the day, she wasn’t embarrassed and I wasn’t sad. I’m not trying to draw a philosophical conclusion or make an empowering statement about going out in public with only one boob. I just eventually stopped thinking about the fact that I didn’t have it. Just like I’ve usually don’t think about the fact that I don’t have my real breast anymore. No one pays much attention to their normal.

I did find my boob. It was under a pile of laundry. And I’ve been wearing it. But it was really, really hot yesterday and after wearing it all day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I made the command decision to not wear it. I sat at my kids’ football and cheerleading practices sans fake boob, without holding my arm at a funny angle and fighting off the little voice in my head telling me I should be mortified without it. By midway through practice, I wasn’t even thinking about it anymore.