#boxhousedoesbaseball

Baseball season wrapped up for us last week, and I have about one week of down time before we start preconditioning for football. I'm more than a little nervous about this step. I love baseball. It's about the only sport I thoroughly understand. There are no weird rules about yard lines and penalties or half courts and full courts. It's so straightforward. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You run. And baseball is a sun-lover's sport. How I reveled in the blue skies and birds calling, the chatter of the teams and the smell of hot dogs. The red dirt, the grass, the chain link fence. They are all parts of my childhood, and now parts of my kids' childhood as well. 

Some of my strongest memories of when I was a kid are centered around baseball. Sitting in the back of our old blue and wood paneled station wagon; the back in the back, we called it- the rear facing seats- while my dad drove home from church on Wednesday nights, listening to the Yankees play on the staticky AM radio. He would fuss when we passed under a tree or the cloud cover was too strong. I remember staring out of the window on summer nights, watching the moon watch me, and wondering how he knew to follow me home. Hearing Bob Sheppard's baritone slide through the static: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen", loving when it ended with, "THE Yankees win! THE Yankees win! THA-AH-AH Yankees winnnn!" Not to mention the years I spent watching my dad play church softball, from the time when I was young enough to sit in the dirt and build an imaginary world with plastic zoo animals, to the days when I finally started to pay attention to the game, outside of stealing the Big League Chew out of his bat bag and counting down the minutes until it was over and we could go get a Slurpee. 

Baseball looms large in my childhood, and now in my motherhood. This year, when Ashton decided he wanted to try football, "at least once", it kind of left me at loose ends. Who will I shout, "Good eye!" to? Or "Bring it down some! She likes her pitches low!", "Wait for your ball!" "Two out rally, two out rally!" "Look alive, infield!" I don't know any football chatter. I don't even know all the rules. Football has never seeped into my bones the way baseball has. 

One thing baseball has taught me about is resilience. The resilience of Little League-ers, especially, never ceases to astound me. They can go out there, game after game, take a beating, and keep coming back. Sure, it sucks. It sucks for parents to watch their kids lose, and it sucks for kids to lose. But they keep coming back. These are just children. They aren't pro athletes who have had a lifetime of discipline to overcome their emotion, or millions of dollars to assuage their hurt feelings. Most of them are out there- in my child's case, at least- strictly for love of the game. They get out there and they get mad, and they cry, and they scuffle. They lose, and they sulk all the way home. But at the next game, they get back out there, and they're as full of hope as if the losing game never happened. And they get loud, and they get passionate, and they get joyful. 

And someday, they'll get something else: Baseball is more than just a game. It's a metaphor for life itself. You go out there. You take your hits. Sometimes you lose. You get mad. You cry. You scuffle. But you wake up again, and you start like the previous loss never happened. You get loud. You get passionate. You get joyful. And eventually, you win. And everyone around you gets to win, watching you win. 

I've won every game Ashton has ever played, whether his team has won it or not. I've won, watching him support a teammate. I've won, seeing his respect for a coach. I've won, looking on as he took risks, always stealing home (Always. Enough times to give me an ulcer) even when home was impossible to steal. I've won watching him question an umpire's bad call, even as I shook my head in frustration over his stubbornness, knowing he was one shoulder shrug away from getting thrown out the game; because, although I can't admire his attitude, I can admire his passion. I can admire his drive. And I can watch him win at life, even when he loses at baseball.

-M

{{Here are some of my favorite photos from our season this year. You can check out more on my Instagram feed under the hash tag #boxhousedoesbaseball. And for our other sports (impending football included), you can look up #boxhouseballgames.}}

Open Gates

Summer is creeping up on us at The Box House. I say "creeping up" to be kind. It's actually pretty much body slammed us when our heads were turned looking for that last little spring breeze. The sky is the color of cement, the humidity making my forehead and the backs of my knees prickle with sweat, stuffing everyone's sinuses with cotton and turning our daydreams toward beaches and swimming pools and sprinklers. The kids have one more week of school, and then it's a free for all. 

And more than that, this week marks a milestone I never thought would be coming. This is my last week to spend with just Atleigh. Starting next week, I'll have all three kids for three months, and then no kids all day. Maybe I should be excited. Maybe I should be planning amazing activities for the final leg of this phase of our lives. 

But the truth is, I'm frozen like a deer in the headlights. I cannot even fathom what my life will be like in three months, let alone plan for it. 

Some people have let me know, overtly and covertly, that they think I play favorites with Atleigh. These are people who aren't inside our family circle, who have no idea of the emotional upheaval I went through when I found out I was pregnant with her, and the struggle I waged within myself every single day of that pregnancy. And these are people who don't take into account family dynamics, whose children are still all at home with them everyday. With Ashton, I had barely over two years one on one time with him. With Chloe, none at all. There was always someone after them, diapers, feedings, sleepless nights. Their preschool years were lost in a haze of infant rearing. And when Atleigh reached all those toddler milestones, there was no one behind her to take the focus off of her. When Ashton started school, Chloe and Atleigh were still waiting for me at home, needing juice boxes and crayons and sandwiches. Then, when Chloe went to school, there it was. Just Atleigh and I, every morning, every lunch time. We took naps together. We folded laundry and ran errands and did the Christmas shopping. God saved this baby for last for me, for a reason. Some days I wonder what that reason was. Some days I am consumed by guilt for having so much time with her, even though it's out of my control. 

And to tell the truth, I'm terrified of what this shift is going to mean for me. I sense an identity crisis impending, a shouted question of, "And who the hell am I now??" It's been building in me for 10 years. I went from being someone's daughter and sister, to someone's wife, to someone's mother, in less than a year. And for 10 years, I have juggled all those identities within myself, struggling to tie them all together and make some sense of them. 

The questions I've asked myself while coming to grips with this change are trivial. "Am I going to have to buy more or less bread?" "What will the dogs do all day without anyone to play with?" "How on earth am I going to manage three homework assignments?" "Who will I take pictures of everyday?" But more than anything the question that bounces off my brain is, "What about me, what about me, what about me?" Who will I be when they're not here? My stomach clenches with anxiety just trying to imagine it. Yes, I can go to work, although I'm not qualified for anything other than retail and that's about as torturous as getting my teeth yanked out with tweezers. I have spent so many years building my identity around these three small pieces of me. And now that the last one is about to head out the door, brand new shoes on her feet, oversized backpack clinging to her shoulders, I can only see myself wandering disconsolately around the house, wailing and ringing my hands, like the maternal version of Mrs. Havisham. 

When Jeremy and I went horseback riding, the trail was broken into stages. I could always tell when a certain stage was over, because our guide would hop down off his horse, open a gate for us, and wait for us all to pass through before he closed the gate again, remount his horse, and lead us until the next one. This is what my life has felt like. One stage at a time. Opening and closing gates. This summer, my kids are going to walk through a gate that is going to change our family life forever. This is a whole new world, a whole new horizon that we'll be walking into. The baby days are gone. Gone. I never thought I'd get here. When I cried from exhaustion and changed thousands of diapers and watched hours of Nick Jr.... I never realized how swiftly it would all be over. Never realized that I would stand in front of that gate, hands shaking, taking deep breaths trying to come to grips with this new form of terror. The terror of who they'll be, and who I'll be, in this new life. 

But I'll open the gate. I'll do it. And I won't look back longingly. I won't let regret be a hallmark of our open gates. I'll teach them to always move forward, to always watch the horizon. To be brave in the face of change. To realize their identity lies in themselves and not who they surround themselves with, what they do, what they fear. I'll open the gate, swing it wide, and close it firmly behind us.

{{Weekly Photo Dump: The ever present #boxhousedoesbaseball, a trip to North Carolina with Amber to see Mamma Mia! and some colorful summer shots.}}