Above and Beyond

So I'm three hours from Charlotte where I just deposited my teenager into his three day football camp, got him all moved into his appointed dorm room at Queen's University and headed north to spend the weekend with my writer friend. 

Erin and I are just saying our hellos when I get the phone call - "Hey mom, one of my cleats broke. Can you come buy me a new pair." Yeah right. Like I'm gonna drive three hours back to Charlotte, buy him a pair of shoes then drive three hours back to Erin's. Nope, you're just going to have to play in sneakers.

And he's okay with that, really he is. It's his mom who's not. Heck, we paid a small fortune for this camp! Why short change it now by making him run in sneakers. But what to do? what do to? what to do? Rummaging through my purse I come up with the receipt from a sporting goods store about a mile from the campus. We had stopped there the night before to pick up a new jersey. Turns out the one Ronnie brought from home didn't fit over his shoulder pads. Anyway, the phone is answered by a gentleman who identifies himself as Chip.

"Hi Chip. My name's Linda and I have a small delima," and I explain my shoe problem. "If I can get my son over to the store tomorrow, can you call me and charge a new pair of cleats on my card?"

Chip says it's not their standard way of doing business but in view of my situation, he'll do it for me. So I text this to my son: "can you see if one of the coaches can run you over to the store tomorrow to pick out a new pair of cleats. Call me when you get there and we'll put the shoes on my card." Less than an hour later my phone's ringing again. "We're not allowed to be one-on-one, alone with the coaches here.. camp rules. And we're not really s'pose to leave campus either."

Rats, I think. I guess he'll be running in sneakers after all. But I'm struck with a tiny epiphany and I make another call. "Hey Chip, it's Linda again . . . . I wonder  . . .  how would you feel about . . . . um . . . delivering a pair of cleats?" I spit the last part out real fast.

Chip pauses for a couple of beats and then says, "Sure, I could do that." And then he goes on to explain how he's an alum of Queens and he'll not only deliver the shoes but he can find out exactly where my cleatless kid is and take them to him! He asks me what position my son plays and I tell him wide receiver so he suggests the kind of shoe that he has for that position.

Just as I'm sealing the transaction something else occurs to me. "Hey Chip," I say, "what if my son has a problem with these shoes - not being able to try them on and all."

"Well," he says, "let me put my phone number inside the box. If he has a problem with them, have him give me a call and I'll bring another pair."

"SHUT UP!" I say. I'm more than a tad bit flabbergasted by this random act of unexpected kindness. Where I'm from, folks would have just told me I was out of luck. But Chip . . . well, he's not only offering to deliver the goods but he's gonna follow up on them afterward!

So now the deal's done, the credit card's been charged and the shoes are delivered. My three days with my friend are over and it's time to collect my football player. I've stopped at a bakery on the way and picked up a nice box of assorted cookies along with a great big thank you card for Chip. I was hoping to meet him, to thank him in person. But he's not working today so I'm explaining what he did to one of his co-workers. Half way through the telling I start wondering if I'm gonna get Chip into trouble, what with him going against policy and all. But it's too late to stop the story so I finish the whole thing. Right up to the box of cookies that I don't know what to do with now.

"Yeah," the new guy says, "Chip's just a big ol' teddy bear. Tell ya what, I know where he lives. I'll take these to him tonight on the way home."

And I'm shaking my head, thinking how much I really like the people here in Charlotte.

Oh, and the cleats are pretty slick looking too.

Time to tame the monkey

Days get much shorter when you cram them full. They used to lollygag, they used to meander through me like they had nothing to do. And indeed, many of them didn’t! Each one looked exactly like the last, each moment dragged along by the one before it. There was a monotone sound to them all, flat and unobtrusive. Sometimes even dull, maybe a bit on the boring side. 

But the tune is different now. The pitch has shifted, bouncing off chords that are strung way too tight. It’s a higher, shriller pitch with very few lazy seconds in between each note. There’s a crazed look in the eyes of my days as they teeter on the brink of chaos.

Things suffer while each minute slams up against the next. Important things that used to help me sort out life; writing, meditation, focus on details. Now the days are just a blur. And now the nights are being pulled into the mix as I wake to a cluttered, messy mind.

It sounds like it's time to tame the monkey. 

Everybody's Grand

I was walking today, listening to a talk I'd downloaded onto my MP3 player. The discussion was about the ego and how full of it we are. There was a comment made, comparing us to our parents and/or grandparents, suggesting that we take a moment to ponder the differences between their lives and the lives of us narcissistic baby boomers. While I didn't do much pondering over that, the comment did make me realize something that I'd never considered before - how I'd never had a "normal" set of grandparents.

First there was my dad's mom who, as near as I could tell, never had a husband. Over the years there were hints made of one but the impression I got was that he was a useless, shiftless excuse for a man whom grandma either divorced or killed. I never really knew which but some part of me could imagine the later, especially given Grandma's wild, Irish tempter that would flair and curse and throw things. Of course, none of that was ever directed toward us grandkids. But the mere mention of dad's dad and sparks would fly from Grandma's eyeballs and all us grandkids would scramble for cover. I never did find out what happened to him, but, as I grew older, I found myself wondering how the man ever got close enough for Grandma to have born him three children.

Then there was my mom's mom who stirred that same question in me. But Chub (which is what everyone called her - don't ask me why), unlike Grandma, did not limit her wrath to just her ex husband (grandpa Pop who I'll get to in a minute). Nope, Chub believed that all men were created equal and none of them were good for anything. There's not much else I remember about Chub, other than the fact that I managed to become her favorite grandkid. Maybe it was my own devil-may-care, hell-bent-for-trouble attitude that she could identify with. Whatever reason, she would always have a gift waiting for me whenever I'd go for a visit - odd things like a lace shawl that was so out of style all I could do was love if for its beauty and then hang it in my closet with other things I never wore. Or a set of silverware with three pronged forks that reminded me of mini pitchforks. If QVC were a thing back then, I'm sure Grandma Chub would have been all over it.

I felt bad for her when health forced her into my parents' home. She took my old bedroom, which obviously meant I'd moved out by then. And she stayed tucked away in it as much as possible, far from my father - the man. Chub died right there in my room, in the chair in the corner by the window.

Grandpa Pop, her ex, might have been the reason for her deep seeded hatred of men. He went on to marry five more times after their divorce. This in spite of the fact that he was paralyzed from the waist down and was "useless as a eunuch" as my uncle used to say. But Pop never let a small thing like paraplegia stop him. He'd had his accident at 34 when a motor boat he'd been fixing up slid off its braces and toppled onto him, crushing his pelvic area. He lived out the rest of his 29 years in a wheelchair that me and the rest of the grandkids thought was wonderful. We'd wait 'till he was out of it and then push each other up and down the ramps that peppered his customized house.

His car was a cool thing too. He'd heft himself up into it and then lean out far enough to fold up his chair. Then he'd muscle it into the car behind him and off he'd go. Of course without the use of his legs, he'd had to have the car modified so that, instead of a brake peddle, there was a hand brake up by the steering wheel. Pop drove himself everywhere he needed to go.

His favorite thing to do was to travel. And collect wives. I remember once, when I was about eight, he went to Mexico on a fishing trip. Came home with a boatload of different kinds of fish that my mom cooked up and we ate on for weeks. He also came home with a wife named Maria who was younger than my mom. Maria's two kids were younger than I was too and for a while there, my older sister had an uncle and an aunt who she got to babysit. Then there was Junga and Shumbay from Korea. Don't ask me how Pop ended up married to a Korean woman. All I remember are their names. And the time Shumbay tricked me into sticking my finger in a light socket, the mean little jerk.

I can't remember the rest of Pop's miscellaneous wives but it sure seemed like there were enough of them. Even so, between my five step-grams and four biological ones, I never once had a normal sense of grandparentcy. Don't get me wrong, I loved them all (the biological ones at least). And I have to admit, they had a collective spice to them that kept life interesting.

I wonder now whether that's the kind of pondering the guy on my MP3 player was thinking of. But I kind of don't think so.