…it’s a long one, but c’mon… she deserves it

I haven’t been overly vocal about the pandemic and how it’s affecting my family because, the truth of the matter is… everybody’s got a story and quite honestly, most are worse than mine.

I’ve mostly been on a self-imposed quarantine since selling my business last June, anyway.  My kids get themselves up every day by 8:30 and do their schoolwork with little to no input from me.  My husband is an essential worker so our income hasn’t changed. And we’re a tight-knit family so being together is not different for us.

Sure… I could complain about being stuck at home (and I do… to my husband and some close friends… because oddly… staying at home on command is not as easy as it sounds).  I could complain about the repetition of my days, the constant dishes, how taxing it is to come up with shittier ways to respond to “I’m bored” and the exhaustion of making it appear as if I shower every day… but nobody wants to hear it.

Mostly, I think about a friend who had to make horrific, unfathomable decisions regarding her teenaged son only to lose him days later to H1N1.  And of a close friend who is currently making gut-wrenching decisions regarding the care of her COVID-positive, elderly father – from afar – because she’s not allowed to be anywhere near him. Trust me… the fact that I last put gas in my car over 3 weeks ago is insignificant.

And, while I’m fully aware of all of this…

I still can’t stop crying for Alex.

She, along with seniors all over the world, is being cheated out of her senior year and all the memories that go along with it. Yeah… she wakes up every day and laughs and lives and talks – incessantly… I get it.  She’s lucky.

But… she doesn’t get to walk the halls with her friends, laughing the carefree laugh of a girl who knows she’s in the home stretch of her greatest-to-date accomplishment. She doesn’t get to bask in the applause of her final band concert under the proud gaze of her favorite teacher. She doesn’t get to lead her softball team onto the field. 

Make no mistake… I’m the only one crying.  Alex, the girl who is in my phone as ‘Drama Queen 1’, is handling it like a champ.  She’s sad and feeling sorry for herself but for the most part, she’s just… dealing with it.

Just another way for her to surprise and amaze me. Typical of her.

But I make no apologies for my fragile emotional state.  Well… actually… I did make an apology, to her, last night, via text.  See… earlier in the evening I acted unfazed by the news of the school year being canceled.  I listened to her talk about it, nodded when appropriate and grunted some ‘yeah it sucks’ when it seemed right but I didn’t engage her in the conversation.

To be honest, I couldn’t engage her.  Not yet.  I just don’t have the emotional stability.  So, I sent her a text explaining and apologizing for my faux-disinterest. She wrote back, ‘it’s ok momma, I didn’t even notice.”

And therein lies the benefit of setting the parenting bar low.

Ok, ok… I love to self-deprecate… the truth is, a) I’m a good mom and b) she noticed… she just didn’t want me to feel bad.  She’s that kind of person.

Beyond that exchange, I stand by my refusal to make apologies for my sadness. I know people are dying, I know some seniors missed their prom because they were going to war… I know all of it, and my heart breaks for all of those people, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be upset with my lot in life (or my daughter’s, as it were).   We need to stop quantifying feelings and emotions by trivializing another person’s feelings. Compassion needs to be the participation trophy of emotions…

So, while I’m devastated for Alex and all that she’s missing, some of my melancholy is centered a little closer to home… I feel sorry for myself.  I am missing out on 3 months of bragging about my kid.  She’s a top-of-her-class, state-level-bari-saxophonist, superstar-softball player kind of kid… that’s a helluva lotta bragging I’m missing out on.

And I’m pissed.

Simple as that.

I was most excited to watch her senior year of softball.  Hell… I went so far as to sell my business to be able to see her senior year of softball – that irony has also not been lost on me.  Sure, the business was struggling financially, but I can’t say with 100% certainty that I would’ve sold if I knew how this year was gonna play out. So, yeah… I had a lot invested in watching her play the game she loves…

I just know my girl was gonna go ham… she had a very real shot at 100 hits (she currently has 75) and she was finally going to get the district-wide recognition she so rightfully deserves. All of this is conjecture, mind you… but it has strong roots in reality.

I was so excited in fact, that I planned a start-of-the-season ceremony.  Her favorite dinner, no dessert (’cause she’s one of those irritating healthy-eaters), and some sentimental gifts.

First I’d give her these (I’ve had them hidden in my drawer for 5 months):

Her first softball jersey… oh how painful those games were.  Nobody could catch or throw or hit… they all just ran amuck, and I cherish every single memory.  At some point, Alex asked her coach, our friend Andy, if she could try catching.  He gave her the green light.  And with that, he singlehandedly changed her…

He claims he didn’t “see anything in her” to push his decision, “she asked, I said ‘ok’.” But we’ve credited him with her success ever since.  And not just her success on the field – but in life.  She was an easily-frustrated quitter before donning that gear… the gear made her a hyper-motivated pain in the ass, which, in the hierarchy of personality traits, is much more appealing.

I remember storming off during a game of catch when she was 7, I think.  I told Dan (privately) I wasn’t playing catch with her anymore until she could actually catch.the.ball.  Sounds shitty, probably was shitty… but in my defense – Dan partnered up with Cal every time – Cal could catch – I just wanted equal time.  Anyway, these days I like to stand behind her when she’s catching and think back to that day… oh my, can my girl catch now.

The ribbons in the picture are from her kindergarten track and field day.  I wanted to ditch everything but blues… but – and I’m not joking here – the strings are knotted pretty good and I don’t have the patience to unwork them.

I remember sending her off that day, “what’s our motto Puss?”

“Have fun!” She said with such innocence and verve.  Damn she was cute as hell… but that gets a kid nowhere on track and field day…

“Uhm, no – our motto here is ‘we only have fun when we win’…  ride a different bus if you have anything but blue ribbons.”

Luckily, she’d had 5 or so years with me under her belt… she rode the usual bus home with her non-blue ribbons tucked happily inside her book bag. And we celebrated them all (ok… some more than the others….).

Incidentally, the 1st-place ribbons are for bean bag toss (distance) and bean bag toss (accuracy)… my girl has always had a cannon.

The last gift for the celebration, was a collaboration.  Scott Stover (rsstover.net) had taken an incredible picture of Alex during the previous season and I wanted to make a canvas out of it.  The wording on the canvas is my version of a conversation between she and I, she said, “I might not be the best player on any field, but there will never be a player on the field who loves it more than I do.”

As an aside: I’m her mom, I always think she’s the best player on every field.

But, I took her words and (with Stover’s help) created this:

We found out Thursday, that there won’t be a season, and subsequently the need for a start-of-the-season ceremony.  So, when she got home from babysitting, I unceremoniously handed her the canvas, then turned away from her so that I could focus all my energy on the lump in my throat.

The bright spot in all of this is: she’ll play college softball and she’ll play close by… the latter part of that statement was not a given until very recently.

Alex’s college search was… ehem… a touch draining for all of us.

First, she made a list of her search parameters (I mean… she is MINE after all).

Deaf/Hard of Hearing education major, DII softball program and out-of-state (don’t get me started… it was a romantic notion of “going away” to school)

Then she listed the schools that fit those parameters.  Then – because she is also half Dan – she made lists of the lists and lists of the lists of the lists and poured over each of them… for 6 damn months.

Until I’d had enough.

With her senior year mere weeks away I finally insisted she tour her first choice – in Alabama.  Long story short, she’s not going to the school in Alabama. We left that school and never looked back… but not before the coach destroyed any confidence Alex had ever gained.

This coach said, “I have a full roster, I can make a spot for you but you’d have to earn your playing time.  You are looking at DII schools… that’s probably above your talent level.  You’re good, I mean you’ve already beat out one of the catchers on my team…”

Say what now?

She’s not good enough for this level but in a 90-minute, rain-soaked practice she’s already better than a girl who is on the team… uhhh huh.

Anyway, Alex hung on to the you’re-not-talented-enough part not the you-are-better-than-a-catcher-who-is-talented-enough-to-make-my-team part and her quest for a DII school, came to a screeching halt.

Enter MacMurray College in Illinois.  Great program, beautiful campus, awesome softball coaches..

But…

DIII

11 hours away

Listen… if she was DIII talent, I’d be happy.  I mean, let’s forget for a second that 5 years ago she came to me and said, “I want to pay for my education with a softball scholarship” (ya see… DIII doesn’t give away athletic money, per se) and we responded by dumping a shit-ton of time and money into her softball career to further that goal.  And let’s also ignore the fact that she doesn’t exactly LOVE the size of her SMALL high school yet was choosing a college with 550 students (yes… five hundred and fifty). And let’s, for just a minute, ignore the fact she is ridiculously tight with her brother and sister and would be missing out on the majority of their lives.

Let’s forget all of that and focus on the fact – it’s expensive as hell to go to school out of state. It’s true, she was getting top dollar for her grades but it was still more expensive than in-state.

So… I forced her to look at Bloomsburg University… has her program, DII softball, the student body won’t fit in a high school auditorium and…

it’s less than 3 hours away.

Win/win for everybody.

She went, she saw, she fell in love…

The coach can’t promise her a spot on the team, she’ll have to tryout for a walk-on spot but we’ve gotten some very positive feedback from the coach and I’m confident she’ll be a member of the Bloomsburg Husky Softball Team.

A lot of people believed her heart was set on MacMurray… a lot of people thought she’d settle for Bloomsburg just to appease me.. but none of those people carried her around in their uterus for 9 months (actually 9 months and 1 week… everything is on her damn terms). Her romantic notion of “going away to school” was just that – a romantic notion.  It was quickly wiped away by the thought of vast scholastic and social opportunities and an enthusiastic coach, who by the way, with no prompting whatsoever, looked Alex right in the eye and said, “You belong at this level. You are extremely talented.”

I think Alex would’ve signed on the dotted line the day we visited but she had such a rapport with the MacMurray coaches that she worried about letting them down.  So, in a nod to her paternal DNA, she mulled it over for the next couple of months.

And then… as usually happens… fate stepped in.

On March 27th MacMurray College, founded in 1846, decided to close the doors for good.

And, with that ladies and gentlemen… we have ourselves a Bloomsburg Husky.

Not gonna lie… the most surprising part was her frank admission that she was gonna pick Bloom anyway.  I mean… I’m not in anybody’s phone as ‘Drama Queen 1’ and I think I might’ve tried to milk it a little bit.  But not Alex… no sir… my girl just took it in stride and said, “It just made my life easier… now I don’t have to worry about how to tell the MacMurray coaches.”

We Isemingers have done some damage in our time – planned a Pigeon Forge vacation right before the wildfires started, flew into Atlanta on one of the coldest days in their history and left for Universal Studios 1 hour before all flights on the east coast were canceled… but this one might take the cake.

We shut down an almost 200-year old college.

So, while the last third of her senior year has given her reason to grieve what was lost… Alex has decided to let the curveball go on by (she’s always been a fastball hitter, anyway). She’s set her sights on college and there’s no doubt she’ll knock it out of the park.

She’s amazing.

She’s a winner.

And I get to call her mine.