Play Ball!

For anyone who’s spent more than 60 seconds with me and knows the logistical paralysis I can suffer at the hands of youth sports, this will surprise you.

I love Little League.  The season’s opening games happened in our town this month, and I couldn’t be happier.  Mind you, I wasn’t actually at any of my children’s opening games (see above paragraph on me and youth sports).

Certainly, I could write volumes on the benefits and evils of programs my children have participated in – from ice hockey and soccer to sailing and swimming and everything in between.  But I love Little League. Everything about it.

For one, baseball is the most storied of sports.  Writers, historians, poets and politicians have held the game up as the American ideal, the American dream, and the American spirit.  Baseball, at its best, is our national character writ large.  And in Little League, it is that character writ small.

My town’s Little League is just one of more than 7,000 around the world, in which 2.5 million boys and girls will participate this spring.  It’s grown every summer since its first in 1938 – with a few neighborhood kids and a vacant lot in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.  Fill out your form, write your check, and the hat, the t-shirt, the socks, the season, and the American dream are yours.

That’s one of its greatest appeals.  There is room for everyone in Little League, and there are no divisions for elite players, or travel teams.  Players are divvied up as equitably as possible, and the game is never a showcase for the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest.

Men such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and George Will have penned paeans to the game of baseball.  They talk about the geometric beauty of the field and its near da Vincian dimensions.  They talk of the poetic perfection and the rhythm of the game’s three strikes, three outs, three bases, nine players, and nine innings.

The big league writers can have the Major League.  I’ll take on the game where boys still need help tying their cleats and girls’ uniforms hang down past their knees.  Because Little League is governed by an additional set of immutable laws, and it is precisely those rules that make me love the game.  (And any dad who chooses to quibble with my analysis, well, you can forget me as your “snack mom” next year.)

Unlike most youth sports, Little League begins with the very basics, and size, rules, dimensions, and complexity are added with each passing spring.  The game evolves as its players mature.  It is not, however, a series of checkpoints or milestones the players must pass or achieve.  It happens silently and magically over the hibernation of winter.  As a parent, this process is gloriously unceremonious.  Spring dawns and a new game awaits.

The game begins with tee ball, which any 8-year-old will tell you, is what babies play.  But it is actually where a 5 or 6-year-old kindergartner begins the baseball journey.  The ball is served up, immobile on a pedestal. The batter gets as many swings as it takes.  Every player bats every inning, and rounds every base.  (Which is why Thing Two liked to take up residence around home plate as a fielder -- so that he could tag every player, every inning, every game.)  Of course, the game is always a tie.  And there are often as many adults on the field as there are off.  Kids and parents alike are learning the rhythms of the game.

In subsequent springs, tee ball gives way to coach pitch on a bigger field with real bases, an actual backstop and even a players’ bench.  But with these luxuries come the responsibility of strikes, and strikeouts, and three outs an inning.  The reality of winning and losing and the highs and lows of taking your part in each begins to settle in.

Driving Thing Three to his first practice this season, he weighed in from the back seat.  “You know there’s strikeouts this year, right mom?” 

Uncertain whether to help him face his fears or boost his confidence, I asked how he would feel about striking out.  He replied, “Oh no mom, I’m not worried about me.  But have you seen David bat on my team?  I’m worried for him.”  So, perhaps the reality hasn’t set in quite yet.

Every child should know what it feels like to strike out.  And to hold in the tears as he walks back to his teammates. And every boy and girl should know what it feels like to be one of those teammates who says, “you’ll get ‘em next time.”

And one of those next times, a batter will send the ball sailing out over centerfield and a lucky kid with an open glove will hold his breath as the ball falls into the leather palm.  And every player should know the thrill of being on both sides of that ball.

Then all of a sudden one spring evening, there is a ten-year-old boy standing on that pitcher’s mound, 46 long feet from home plate.  The dads are now in the dugouts or coaching from the baseline.  The ball and the drama are handed over to boys and girls who have earned that responsibility.  

It is also the year when, for the first time, a player will bobble the ball somewhere on the field and that coach on the baseline will say to his runner, “steal.”  And if you’ve watched a team of rule-following ten-year-olds suffer its very first steal, then you understand what it is to be violated.  Just another lesson from the parable of baseball.

One more lap around the bases and those boys and girls are 11 and 12 and there is a fence around that green field.  And somewhere on that fence is a big sign that says “205.”  Some days that yardage number may taunt the batter, and other days it may whisper, “you can do it.”

And that is one of the rarer and finer sites of spring – when a ball takes flight and time stops until the ball lands on the other side of the fence.  No, the lights don’t get shattered and the leather cover doesn’t fly off the ball.  But for all too brief a moment, a child will believe that he can do anything.  Achingly, it happens about the same time that as a parent, you begin to fear that child may never believe that again.

Bart Giamatti, who having been the President of Yale University and the Commissioner of Baseball, had a perfect blend of cerebral respect and awe for the game.  Many of his baseball writings spoke of the significance to a nation of young immigrants of the goal of home plate.

“Baseball is about going home, and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need.  It tells us how good home is.  Its wisdom says you can go home again but that you cannot stay,” he writes.  He even calls on his Greek to further define baseball, “Nostos, the going home, the game of nostalgia, so apt an image for our hunger that it hurts.”

For Giamatti and other scholars “home” may be the base to return to, but for parents using Little League as one more ally in mentoring our children, “home” is surely the base we are preparing them to leave behind.

And then all of a sudden, one spring, Little League is over.  You turn thirteen and it is someone else’s turn to run the bases and rule that patch of grass.  And every year, there is a gaggle of 13 and 14 year-olds standing around the fence – decidedly not in the game, but not quite ready to take their place as spectators on the bleachers.

If you are lucky enough to watch a small boy or girl with a big dream play Little League on a sunny afternoon this spring, keep in mind my favorite baseball line from Mr. Giamatti, “It breaks your heart, it is designed to break your heart.  The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again...”

What's The Right Age To Take A Child's Cell Phone Away?

I realize for many, the question is usually, “What is the right age to give your child a cell phone?”

Well, in my house, that question had been easy.  With the confidence of an all-knowing parent who’d never had a preteen much less a teen, I adamantly stated my case to the women in my book club a few years ago.

“Kids with cell phones are ridiculous,” I asserted. “Mine will get it when he needs it – the same time he gets his driver’s license.”

Well, imagine my surprise when I found myself in the AT&T store adding that extra phone line, making ours an official family plan as he was turning 12.

He was midway through his sixth grade year and still settling in to the ups and downs of junior high.  He had risen to the challenge of wearing the jacket and tie that sets middle schoolers apart from the “little kids” at his school.  He gladly schlepped hockey pads, squash bags and lacrosse sticks to school everyday – another signal to his immediate world that he had graduated from the elementary years.

But, despite the heavy baggage of those exterior signs of maturity, what he most wanted to symbolize that he was an independent middle schooler weighed a scant 3.4 ounces.  The cell phone.

Like in many homes where adolescence blooms, “the cell phone conversation” was a weekly occurrence.  He would insist that he was the only one without a phone.  When this argument took him nowhere, he reasoned that I could always find him if he had a phone.  I reasoned back that if I didn’t already know where my 11-year-old was, then we had bigger problems than cell phones.

I described our familiar patter to a friend, a father of two other middle school boys, “He’s acting like by not letting him have a cell phone, I’m completely emasculating him.”

“You are,” the friend replied simply.

So, living by the mantra “pick your battles,” I decided that $10 a month was a small price to pay for middle school acceptance.  Obviously, I was not factoring in insurance, texting, taxes and a phone that was more than a tin can with a string.

With that, my son became just one more of the 20 million teens bouncing their cell phone signals off towers and satellites across the American landscape.  He couldn’t have been happier standing with his peers texting after school – likely to the boy standing right next to him.  On days I picked him up, he was apt to call and say, “Oh, I see your car, I’ll walk right over.” 

How had we managed without this technology for so long?

Studies show that more than 70% of teens now own cell phones, up from five years ago when just 40% of kids aged 8-18 owned cell phones.  And even that number is a drastic jump compared with pre- September 11 percentages.

Before 9-11 most schools banned cell phones on campus.  “But after 9-11 and the Columbine shootings, parents wanted to be able to reach their kids all the time,” explained the head of my son’s middle school.  “And now the cell phone is not going away, so we have to learn how we can use it to benefit us.”

For your benefit, here are just a few lessons learned in our year-plus with the gadget:

If your phone is in your sweatshirt on the floor of the locker room, chances are high that a skate blade will find it, thus requiring a replacement.  This is not recommended.

If you give your phone to a group of girls because they want to “program” it for you, it is entirely possible that the speaker will cease to work, thus requiring a replacement.  This is not recommended.

If you are sitting in the kitchen with your mother when her phone rings and it is your cell number that comes up, it is best to fess up that indeed you have no idea where your phone is.

If you are sitting in the car with your mother when her phone rings and it is your cell number that comes up, it is best to fess up that indeed you have no idea where your phone is.

If you decide to prevent further incidents of losing or damaging your phone and begin leaving it safely in your backpack, hockey bag, lacrosse bag, or on the kitchen counter, it becomes increasingly difficult – nearly impossible – to hear or feel your phone when your mother is calling you.  This is not recommended.

If it is your father, who ostensibly pays for your phone, calling when said communication device is stowed safely out of useful range, this is really not recommended.

In just over a year, the cell phone and its tempting trappings of responsibility and independence had become a burden.

Once again, Slim and I found ourselves having “the cell phone conversation.”  And he was the one who captured the situation best, “He can always say had a phone. He lost it and now his parents have taken it away.  That’s a credible narrative.”

Indeed, it was not a week later when the familiar chirp of his phone alerted my son that one of his people had messaged that most expressive mot, “ ‘sup?”  My youngest moaned with envy, “I can’t wait until I can get a cell phone.”

“Trust me, you don’t need a cell phone,” said his big brother. “I don’t even need a cell phone.”  And rather than try to reel his words back in or backtrack on his logic when our eyes met, he accepted and owned the truth of his statement.

He found me later and laid his cell phone on the kitchen counter, just like Charlie Bucket returning the Everlasting Gobstopper to Willy Wonka.  The evils of temptation, Slugworth and sexting had been denied in one fell swoop.

“I just think I’ll be able to relax so much more if I don’t always have to carry it with me and worry about it all the time,” he explained.  “Could you just turn it off for a few months and then we’ll try it again when I really need it?”

I’d love to say that the story ended there, we each learned our lesson and went out for ice cream.  But instead, we learned another lesson called “early termination fee.”  So, we’ll be leaving the phone on, handing our ice cream money over to AT&T and using the gadget as a “special occasion” phone.

Blanket

It was spring vacation and it happened.  One of every mothers worst travel nightmares.  No, there was no lurker in the airport bathroom and we survived a week of skiing with all of our bones intact.  Even all of our bags and skis made it home.

But we are short one small blue and yellow plaid cotton blanket belonging to my youngest child.  Yes, it’s his security blanket, his lovey, his transitional object, his wubby, his everything.

After spending 5 nights in a slopeside condominium, he was readying himself for bed at his grandparents’ house in Denver.  He was crouched in his flannel insect pajamas pulling out the contents of his backpack – a set of colored pencils, a “Beginning Cursive” workbook, wintergreen Lifesavers, iPod headphones, Madlibs vacation edition, neon green swim goggles, and bubblegum.

“Mom, where did you pack Blanket?”

Let’s face it, if it was anyone or anything else, I would have immediately launched into my practiced monologue of, “if you want it, you pack it, you carry it.”  But this was a very young 8-year-old with freckles across the bridge of his nose looking for Blanket, without which he’d never spent a night in his life.

I froze. I had packed the bags and even checked under the beds while the family was on the mountain.  But I did not come across his blanket. It must have been left between the sheets over 100 miles away.

“We’ll find it.  We’ll call the hotel and they’ll mail it to us at home. Don’t worry.”

But I am worried.  It may not be found, and a replacement is impossible. The blanket was hand-woven by my mother-in-law while I was pregnant.  This bears repeating. The blanket was hand-woven by my mother-in-law.

Blanket has traveled with us to 26 states, 11 countries and 3 continents.  I say this not to make a pitch for Blanket as a guest star on Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous, but more as plea for leniency in the peer judgment department. 

I have safeguarded the two foot square piece of cloth (did I mention that my mother-in-law wove it?) on planes, trains, automobiles, and a camel ride through the Sahara Desert.  Yet leave it to one routine trip to my native Colorado to blow my record of perfection into perfect failure.

It is said that over 60% of children develop strong attachments to a blanket, a doll, a stuffed toy or some other object during their first months of infancy. 

Credit for the term “security blanket” goes to Charles Schultz and his Peanuts comic strip character Linus van Pelt, whose ever-present blue blanket debuted in 1954.

However, the phenomena of children and their attachment objects was studied and named by British pediatrician and psychologist Donald Winnicott in the early 1950s.  He asserted that a “transitional object” stands in as mother for a child fending off separation or anxiety – be it falling to sleep, when mother leaves the room, or going on a trip.

To compensate for this loss or fear, a child will imbue a soft object with the attributes of mother, comfort and safety.  As the child “transitions” from an inner world of infancy to a better understanding of self and the external world, the blanket or other object is intimately bound up with the identity of the child.

In our house, this holds true for Thing One and Thing Three. Thing Two, on the other hand, came into this world with a healthy understanding of self, independence, and I’ll call you when I need more money attitude.

I remember taking my oldest to his first movie when he was two years old, The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland.  The film was reviewed as “perfect family entertainment… lots of nice music, jokes and warmth.”

For those of you who may have missed the 1999 release of cinematic mediocrity, the entire plot is Elmo searching for his security blanket which has been sent to faraway Grouchland – a place full of villainous people and creatures.

Hello! That’s like running a loop of child abduction films in the maternity ward.

Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, has studied children and their possessions, particularly their special comfort objects.  One study gave children the option of putting their belongings into a “magic” copying machine that would make exact duplicates.  They would then be allowed to take their original, or the presumably “brand new” copy.

When it came to just any toy, most children selected the duplicate.  But when it came to replicating a special comfort object, some participants would not even let their “lovies” be put into the machines, and almost all of the children chose their originals. 

Bloom surmises that children believe the favored object has “a hidden and invisible property – an ‘essence’ – that distinguishes it from everything else.”

And this should surprise no one.

As the horse in the nursery explained to The Velveteen Rabbit, “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL.”

And Blanket was real.

More than any other possession my boy has or will ever have, Blanket was, if the psych field is to be believed, his facsimile of me.  And as his mother, I can tell you that Blanket was indeed the closest facsimile of him. 

Every parent knows that hiccup of the heart when you hold the threadbare blanket, the shaggy stuffed dog, or the lumpy lop-eared bunny your child has dragged from crawling, to walking, to finally being tossed unceremoniously up the stairs as he heads out to a baseball game.

We may yell at our kids for leaving their shoes or jackets in piles on the floor a thousand times.  But as more complicated toys, heavy backpacks and sports equipment are added to those piles, the loved doll, Puppy, bunny, Blanket or Dog-Dog takes on relic status.

In analyzing possessions and what gives us pleasure, Professor Bloom explains, “Everything is either a social being or has been in contact with a social being, and so even the most mundane things have histories. This is their essence.

The first night back in his own room, I suggested to my youngest that he might want to take a stuffed animal to bed with him.  As a plush toy connoisseur, he specializes in replicas of endangered species – or at least those “on watch” – bald eagle, tiger, snow leopard, emperor penguin, polar bear, manatee, the clouded leopard, and a giant anteater.

He pulled out the panda Tai Shan from last spring break’s trip to Washington D.C. (a trip from which we did return with Blanket).

“I’ll try this tonight,” he said cheerily as he climbed into his fire engine red sheets.  “And maybe tomorrow night I’ll pick out a different one to sleep with.”

Which is how I came to realize that I am now more desperate for him to get his blanket back than he is.  I’m sure any pediatrician would tell me that my child has reached some healthy developmental milestone of self and independence.

But what the doctors have missed is that the “transitional object” goes both ways.  Because of their 8-year history together, Blanket is indeed imbued with my son’s essence.  He has made it REAL.  And I want it back.

So for now, I’m counting on Jalva Jiminez of housekeeping to return it to me.

She tells me they are behind 8,000 pounds of laundry.  And a small piece of the essence of his childhood and my motherhood is in the laundry pile.

Don't I know it.