About Liz Kingsley

Spring is coming! Spring is coming! Which means baseball is coming! Baseball is coming! I’ve been waiting for this ever since Halloween…most people relish the brisk air and orange leaves as they trick-or-treat, but I see it as the very beginning of a long, gloomy season of cold and grayness (though, I do love the Kit Kats I swipe from the kids’ stash).

With spring now comes travel baseball…”what,” you say? Isn’t travel baseball a summer sport? I can’t even believe travel in this context is in my vocabulary at all. I was one of those moms who swore I’d buck peer pressure and not “subject” my kids to the rigors of serious travel sports and the intense coaches and parents that come with.

But here’s the thing. My younger son Dimples loves to play baseball. And the coaches and parents are pretty nice people. I staved off the travel thing when he was first eligible, the summer after second grade, but last year, after third grade, I caved and let him try out. Who knew he’d have a tryout that would outdo any actual game performance he’d log before or after that?

It was exciting to see him knock ball after ball into outer space (or at least short centerfield), scoop up grounders, field pop flies and to find out that he made the A team. Even better was watching how much he enjoyed going to every game he was forced to play in (because there is no missing a travel game), which entailed getting there an hour and a half before the first pitch and sometimes playing in the rain at 10:00, at night.

He never argued. Never whined. And this boy can whine.

Even better still was discovering what fun I had living in a baseball bubble (admittedly made bearable by its short-lived nature). It was like boot camp or basic training. I hunkered down. I packed ice water and cold towels. I knew that we were on call for high-octane baseball games every single day from late June until the very last moments of July. Pool time was restricted to avoid overheating pitching arms (I’m not kidding). Schedules were changed. Tournaments were added. The same parents brought beer-filled coolers and makeshift tables and cheese and crackers. We were a mini-cult. I barely knew anything about these people, but we bonded over the determination of our nine-year olds to hit and field as many times in a six-week period as humanly possible.

I know I was supposed to hate it. I wanted to hate it. But [Read more...]

One of the things I’ve had get used to in my relationship with G has been spending time with J, her ex-husband. In the beginning, I would only catch glimpses of him in his Toyota Avalon when we’d arrive at our kids’ elementary school at the same time for morning drop-off. When I saw his license plate, which I soon memorized (and looked for anytime I saw an Avalon anywhere), I started to feel flustered and awash with guilt and anxiety. Part of me wanted to say hello, but most of me wanted to lie down in my car so he wouldn’t see me. I don’t really know what J thought of me in the early days when I entered his wife’s (and his) life, but I’m pretty sure, to put it mildly, he wished I was somewhere – anywhere – else.

We saw each other on foot too (I didn’t always have my van to hide inside). I remember finding ourselves standing outside the school during a spring band concert intermission. It was closer than I’d been to him since the few times we’d gotten together as families, the days when things between G and me were still platonic and my heart wasn’t racing a thousand beats per minute in his presence. When we’d see each other on occasions like this, I’d avert my eyes; we never interacted. There’s no question, though, that I was fascinated when I’d see him; I mean, this was the man G married, the father of her children, and someone for whom she continues to have very tender affection. I wanted to know more about him, to be able to walk up to him and shoot the breeze like our other friends could, but I wasn’t just another friend.

When G and I started living together, J would often stop by to see the kids and G and he’d stay…for a meal, to watch a baseball game, to catch G up about work or goings-on with his family. When he came over, I’d make myself scarce. I said it was for his benefit, to make him feel more at ease, but it was for mine too. Being in his space gave me the jitters something fierce and it was just easier to go outside and relax in the sun on the porch swing. In the meantime, he was getting to know my kids more. When we set up my boys’ bedroom in our first house, he bought them a life-sized Mariano Rivera fathead for their wall, and I know this was no small gesture for a die-hard, lifelong Mets fan. I told him as much when I emailed him to acknowledge his generosity; of course, I was trembling when I wrote that email.

Over one school break, G, all our kids and I flew down to Disney for a few days, and J flew down to meet us on the last day so he could take their kids to see his parents at their place in Florida. We all spent some time together in the All Star Sports Hotel restaurant during the transition; here we were, together, a thousand miles away from home – who could have imagined that?

J is a very good person as evidenced by the way G feels about him, the way he supports and cares about G even after she left their marriage, and the kindness he shows my boys and me. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy for us to be around each other (despite managing to break the fathead and Disney barriers). I say it isn’t always easy because sometimes it is. My guts no longer rattle. My heart no longer pounds. J and I have each recently gone through difficulties.

[Read more...]

My Depression-Era mentality is coming out in spades lately with a yearning to return to basic values and priorities on so many fronts (but take heart, there’s no trace of Rick Santorum here). And while that’s true, I’m also reminded how hard it really is to live this way, to throw ourselves back to a long-ago era where desires and demands were few and simple. Ah, sweet interpersonal contradiction and human complexity.
Let me explain. As parents, we’ve probably all heard ourselves tell our kids that what’s most important is not how well they do in school or what college they get into, but that they mature into good people. Nice. Decent. Considerate. Aware of a world beyond their soft or acne-laden epidermides. I realize that as we say this, we might very well be thinking, “Screw that – I want to see an A on that book report that I (I mean, you) worked so hard on, and you need to run for student body president, join the drama club, math club and the debate team, run cross country and candy stripe on the weekends.”
Recent time with my children, who are managing perfectly acceptable though imperfect grades, has convinced me that what I really do want more than anything for them – and from them – is niceness, patience, decency, respect and consideration of everyone around them. Not just when they feel like it, but all the time. I want these things first and I want them to last. In the end, no one – not even I – will remember what Blue got in science for the second marking period, even if it is middle school and science is really serious. On the other hand, everyone with whom they come into contact – their families, friends, friends’ parents, teachers, coaches, the clerk at the frozen yogurt store, the kid taking tickets at the movies and the uber knowledgeable video game guy at Game Stop – wants to be treated not just fairly but kindly…and it doesn’t take all that much to extend yourself for a nanosecond longer than most people to make yourself memorable. We’ve all been imprinted with an extra gesture or smile someone took the time to give us and I bet that person has no idea of the impression they left. [Read more...]

G and I are two moms raising our five kids. We fell in love and are building a life together because of the things that unite us, but differences abound as well, many of which come to light in our daily interactions with the kids. We probably have to go back in time to our distinctive upbringings to understand why we are the way we are – why we’re bothered by different things – and we’re paying good therapists good money to figure all this out. In the meantime, it makes for some difficult, eye-opening and sometimes mind-broadening moments at home.

Take my kids’ shorts. Please, G would say. My boys wear shorts and t-shirts in any kind of weather. I need two jackets and a scarf to step outside in October, but these tweens, in their tweeny tiny little bodies, don’t feel the cold. Plus, as I’ve come to learn, it’s an image thing. Once you become known as a boy who wears shorts, you’re a boy who wears shorts. One day last year, with two feet of snow on the ground, I held my third grader down and forced jeans onto his pearly legs because I thought the authorities would come for me if they saw him trot out of my car with naked knees. We finally agreed that he’d wear jeans in the car, but change into shorts once he got to school; no nor’easter was going to strip him of his street cred (mind you, this is Westfield, NJ we’re talking about). By the time we’d formulated this treaty, I was exhausted. [Read more...]