Thanksgiving

I don't owe anyone any explanations, and most everyone reading here already knows this, but it's been a long time and here's where I've been: Shawn's mom passed away. It was sudden, very unexpected. So we've been to Savannah and back again, had Thanksgiving at home, and are going back to Savannah this weekend for the funeral (one thing I appreciate about the pandemic is that it made postponing those kinds of things acceptable). 

It is, of course, still hard to believe she's gone. She was only 76 and we thought in fairly good health. She was certainly still active enough. Last night when I was dishing up bowls of turkey gumbo for our dinner, I had the feeling she should be calling. She always called at dinnertime. We're reminded once again that life is so short, and we never know when our time will come. 

We had a quiet Thanksgiving at home. Alex was here from Tuesday - Friday (he had to go back to play with the marching band on Saturday) and I was proud of myself for getting the meal all ready on time. My tribute to Susan was that I made her dinner rolls ("yeast rolls" on my yellowed recipe card). It was my first time doing that by myself; I had helped her once or twice by rolling them out and buttering/folding over, but I'd never made the dough. I think I need to work on it for the future, but they were edible. I also borrowed -- well, I guess I don't have to give it back -- her Bundt pan and made this pumpkin spice cake, which was delicious and, in my opinion, cake is more enjoyable than pumpkin pie. 

For myself, I'm feeling some grief-like ...uncertainty is the word, I guess. Just like everything is hovering slightly above ground; like gravity doesn't fully work right now. Like I don't really have a handle on our calendar or the day-to-day things, even though I probably do. I wonder when it will all settle? An out-of-town coworker made me teary on Zoom today when she offered to mention Susan in her rosary prayer group tomorrow. What a gift to have people praying for you and your loved ones, and their souls. What a gift it was to know my mother in law. I'm thankful.

Sports Lessons

It's about to be club volleyball season again, so last night Kate and I went to her club's gym for Day 2 of tryouts. It was not one bit fun. 

(Well, I was happy to see mom-friends from last season, but the mood of the room was pretty fraught.)

Our club, for whatever reason, conducts tryouts "from the top down." I don't know if all the volleyball clubs do it this way. On Day 1, this means they begin forming their #1 team, a team at the "national" level that will travel to multiple tournaments outside our immediate geographic area. Kate and I prefer a "regional" team, which plays most of its tournaments in the Atlanta metro, but does travel out of town for one tournament (driving distance). And you can indicate, up front, which types of teams you are trying out for (there's also a "local" level which is exclusively in-town tournaments). 

Of course the very most ambitious girls usually want to be on a national team. Kate wants to, too, but for budget and time reasons, that's out of reach for us. I can't justify spending for plane tickets or gasoline, and hotels, 8 or 9 weekends of the spring, plus a final trip to Orlando in the summer. And I can't just take off work whenever I want to on a Friday to go to these tournaments. So we chose "regional" on the sign-up form. It's still stupid expensive at that level, but at least manageably so.

Naturally then, she didn't get picked for the #1 or #2 teams which are national. On Day 2 they started building the #3 regional team. All the girls rotate around the courts and gyms, playing non-stop while the various coaches stand on the sidelines with clipboards and iPads, making notes. One by one, girls get called over by coaches, and there they receive their offer to be part of a team. 

It's brutal. For many reasons. Number one, and my mind has been trying to formulate this thought all weekend, is that we PAY to tryout -- so we pay for the privilege of hoping that we'll get offered the chance to... pay them more money as a member of a team. Highway robbery, no? 

More important than that, though, is that as your daughter is playing her heart out, trying to show off her very best skills, she's seeing her friends and teammates get called over, while she maybe doesn't. If she's not called early in the day, then she knows she isn't being chosen for the higher level teams, which is discouraging. The later it gets, the worse she feels. And yet she has to keep playing her best. 

Anyway, Kate was the very last of her friends to be pulled last night, with about 20 minutes left of the tryout. She was offered a spot on the #5 team, which to her, means she isn't very talented at all. (I argue this point -- the #3, #4, #5, and #6 teams are all "regional," and so I see them as all the SAME level, but Kate does not.) She isn't on the same team as many of her friends from last year (most of whom got offers for the #4 team). So to her, it was a failure. AND YET, as I keep trying to gently point out to her -- some girls in that gym played until the very end and got NO offer. 

Is this the most heartless of systems, or is it just my momma heart that can't take it? 

I hope that in a few weeks the pain of the tryout will blow over and she will be making new friends on her new team, and they will play well together. Sports, man. They're not for the weak.