Most of the time I'm a pretty competent person. I manage a house and a job and three kids and a dog and two cats on my own. I've walked with countless clients through times of crisis, I've logged more hours on the phone with insurance companies than I care to count without killing anyone, and my kitchen, right now, is more or less clean. The InstantPot is on the counter slow-cooking stock from the chicken I roasted last night while Beatrice and a friend slumber in the family room in a pile of blankets and pillows upstairs. I mean, seriously. Sometimes I'm a fucking ace.
I do drop balls. All the time. Like the birthday party for a friend of Beatrice's that I clean forgot yesterday afternoon. I'm getting more used to it but honestly, I really hate when I screw things up like that, especially for the kids - things like missing an event because I didn't rearrange my work schedule in time, or the broken retainer the dog ate a week ago that I still haven't called the orthodontist about while Beatrice's teeth slowly shift back into mess. I definitely fret about them missing out because they only have one stretched-thin parent, about having to feel different because they're the kid whose mom didn't show.
In those moments of faltering competence when the balls are bouncing around my feet and rolling into the corners, I usually keep it together. Remember to breathe. Make a self-deprecating joke. Apologize. Act, more or less, like an adult.
But the people in my life who know me best know that I also have a not-adult-at-all part of me who sometimes takes over in moments of exposed imperfection. She's pretty crazy. She cannot be reasoned with. She behaves like an overwhelmed toddler and I cannot remember life without her unwelcome visitations, so I imagine she is very, very young.
I once described her appearances to my therapist like this: if I were waiting on a subway platform, most of my feelings would approach like the local train. Ah, here comes some grief. I do believe joy is approaching. I can be there to receive them. But when my freaky panicker bursts into my life, it's on the express. I can feel the wind and rush of her, the unstoppable nature of her insistence. For most of my life, when this happens, I feel helpless. All I can do is cry.
The environment that triggers her crazy more than any other is the sporting event.
I experienced no early trauma in a baseball stadium. I was never yelled at by a shaming coach. Yet growing up, my lack of athleticism and paltry experience with sports always led me to panic when invited to play in a kickball game at a picnic, or when a gym teacher directed me to stand in front of a volleyball net. Didn't those people know I simply couldn't do any of this? That I would embarrass myself, let my teammates down, get very confused about which way to run? When someone throws a ball in my direction, my instinct has always been to duck.
Somehow I made it through my eighties childhood, when one (especially a girl in underfunded public schools) wasn't always expected to be an athlete, without too much social stigma attached to me. And the older I got, the better I could keep my pathological fear of sports a secret. But the panic I felt when asked to play a friendly game of frisbee (no joke, panic) never really abated.
As a parent, the lurking freak out beneath the surface has most often rippled into awareness at my children's sporting events. Even though I've been going to games and meets for years now, I still feel uncertain of myself in that role. Should I be yelling something from the sidelines like the other parents? Why don't I ever remember to bring a chair in my trunk? Was there a memo about the right kind of snacks to bring?
The last time it broke the surface was nearly a year ago, at the end of last summer, when I had to bring Gabriel for a sports physical at the high school in order for him to participate in cross country. I lost track of him in the crowd. Eventually, after long minutes searching, I found him sitting outside patiently, in the most obvious place that I hadn't looked simply because I didn't want to walk out there and be exposed as incompetent before all those other sporty-looking parents whom I didn't know (and some that I did) chatting happily with each other. The moment I saw him the express train barreled through me and I bit back tears, unable to even look at Gabriel as we walked to the car. He would know too. I was no good.
Because that's what that tiny toddler part of me believes: I'm not good enough. It is blatantly discernible when I screw up. Everyone I love will leave me; I cannot trick them any longer. They know.
It sounds dramatic. It is. She's so little, she just doesn't understand. And so the feeling is huge. But I'm trying to learn to take care of her, rather than be mad at her.
I hadn't heard from her since the sports physicals. But last Thursday, I arranged for Beatrice to be picked up by a friend from Girls on the Run and made sure Frances didn't need the car. I blocked the last half hour of the work day and rushed out so I could finally see Gabriel run in a track meet. I had missed every other meet, or arrived after his event, because it's been so busy at work and I can't seem to leave early enough. But this time I could, and I was determined.
I arrived at a sprawling complex of schools and athletic fields that was unfamiliar to me. All the parking lots seemed to be full, so I chose one, got out, and started walking in the direction other people were headed. I passed a lacrosse game, a baseball game, and began to feel confused. Was I at the right place? Where were all the runners? I called a mom friend whose kid is on the team, and then another, asking if they were here and could direct me. They are both amazingly competent and kind people so between their directions, I realized I was as far away as could be, on the opposite end of the complex from the big multi-team track meet.
I checked the time. I was getting mad - local train mad - imagining I would miss him run again, despite my efforts. So I myself, in my work clothes and yellow platform sandals, broke into a run.
And you know how when you run out of fear the fear gets bigger? Like that time in fifth grade when my best friend and I got convinced there was an evil ax murderer in my house when we were home alone, and started running in the dark streets back to her house, becoming more hysterical with every step?
Yep, that was me. I passed two fit moms out on a run and one called to me that she liked my running shoes. Surely this lighthearted comment was made in kindness. Ha ha! Yet I took it as if my yellow sandals were my own personal scarlet letter, and she a nasty puritan drawing attention to them. For shame! A mother who cannot find her son's track meet!!
When I finally made it, red-faced and sweating, I could feel my scared toddler inside beginning to rouse from her long nap. There were hundreds of parents and coaches and siblings and friends milling about, and multiple schools competing, so packs of teenagers in various team colors traveled the field and areas around it. I didn't see Gabriel at his school tent, nor on the field. Had I really missed it?
A kind, freckle-faced mom at the chain link fence surrounding the track saw me standing there, scanning all around, and offered to show me the schedule. He hadn't run yet. Exhale. I confessed I had just run across the entire complex because I had no idea where I was going. She smiled. I did that too, she said.
Oh.
I found a spot at the fence wedged between other spectators and took some deep breaths. I told the threatening-to-freak-out toddler in me it was okay. She curled back up in my heart, still watchful, in case things started to unravel again, but quiet.
I watched the girls' relay and saw Gabriel and his teammates get ready for their relay. I waved, he waved back. I kept breathing. And then something happened that took me from fragile to healed.
Something grazed my hip. It was a little girl who was maybe three years old, standing close beside me. As I looked down, she threw her head back to look up at me. Our eyes met long enough for her to know that I wasn't her mother, and yet with our brown eyes locked like that, she smiled. I smiled back. And then she reached up - for a moment I thought she was asking to be picked up, but no - she stretched out her arms and placed her palms on my ribcage at the highest point she could reach. Along my thin blue sweater she slid her hands, down the length of my body, smiling even bigger without losing my gaze, delighted with her own audacity as she bent in half at the waist, pushing into her father's legs as he cheered on his older daughter.
Someone called her, she turned and ran, yet I could still feel the pressure of her touch. It was a blessing.
I was good enough again. I knew it. I think my own inner little brown-eyed girl, seen and delighted, knew it too.
After Gabriel and I got back from the meet I made lots more mistakes. When I went to pick up Beatrice, our friends who were hosting her handed me a glass of wine and invited me to sit on the porch in the twilight, where we watched her and her friends and other kids in their neighborhood play with a parachute in the street. The kids performed odd rituals they invented, lifting the parachute high and then sitting inside the crumpling dome of it, chanting strange sounds and laughing. Sitting on the porch, I forgot to pick up Gabriel's sandwich. I forgot Frances needed the car and she came looking for me, angry. I didn't mind. It was all repairable.
I sat on a wicker chair beside a new friend, and my heart grew and grew in the peace of the night.
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