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Life Lessons

Life Lessons from the Ballfield & Beyond

August 18, 2023 by Mike Malone

After my father died last summer, my mother encouraged me to take whatever I wanted of his possessions from their home. She mentioned his suits hanging in the closet, but I don’t wear suits. She suggested his golf clubs, but I have my own set. She pointed to his many, many Seton Hall sweatshirts, but I didn’t go to Seton Hall. I was fine simply retaining memories of my father, not his material things.

We didn’t have a whole lot in common. He liked Fox News, and I like The New York Times. He enjoyed novels involving espionage, and I dig Nick Hornby.

But we always had baseball in common, even when we didn’t see eye to eye. When there wasn’t much to talk about, there were the Mets, good and bad. Mostly bad, but last year was pretty good. My father followed their games on his iPad most days from my folks’ home, and it gave him something to do, something to root for, when his health was failing. I’d heard about the nurse, rushing to my dad’s hospital room after he’d howled, only to find the Mets had gone ahead on a clutch hit.

Going back a few decades, when my father would drive me to a Little League game, he told me to ask myself, when I was in the field, with every new batter, what I would do if the ball came to me. Where are the baserunners? Where should my throw go?

My 40-and-over softball team just started its season, playing at Broadway Field in Hawthorne. Most of the players would qualify for a 50-and-over team. We don’t win much, but every guy is grateful to be taking the field at their advanced age, and just as grateful for a cold beer and some laughs with the Healy’s Travelers boys afterwards.

Many, many years after my father gave me some advice before a Little League game, I still ask myself before most every batter what I should do if it comes to me. My father’s wisdom goes beyond the ballfield. What do I do if and when it comes to me works in the office, as a parent and as a husband. Going through the routine slows things down a bit, and takes a bit of the anxiety out of angsty situations.

A couple years ago, I had a game when my parents were visiting, so they came out–the first time they’d seen me play in about 35 years. After the game, the players retired to the stands behind the dugout, where my parents sat. I introduced my folks. A teammate teased my mother about stealing beers from his cooler. She still brings it up with a smile. 

A couple hours before my games, I’ll throw a tennis ball in the backyard, bouncing it off a wooden board, to loosen the old arm up. I’ll swing a bat a few times to get those muscles loose. It’s actually more of a broomstick or a shovel shaft than a bat, with some tape on the handle to keep the blisters at bay. I didn’t own a baseball bat. New ones are too expensive, and I’ve checked out a few yard sales in hopes of finding an old, cheap wood one, to no avail. Bedraggled stuffed animals, yes. VHS tapes of ‘80s movies, yes. Wooden bats, no.

I was visiting my mother recently, helping her sort things out after my father’s death, and keeping her company. I was poking around in the garage, searching. Not for the beers my teammate said she pilfered, but for a light switch, since my mother had mentioned a light outside the garage that mysteriously turned on, and she didn’t know how to turn it off.

I couldn’t find the switch, but I did find something else–an old wooden bat. It’s a Louisville Slugger, signed by a man named John Morris. It took me a moment, but I remembered John Morris, or at least could identify who he was. Growing up on Long Island, me and the neighborhood kids would play stickball in my front yard most every day in the summer, swinging a makeshift bat not unlike the one I swing in the backyard before softball. By the end of summer, the grass was gone from where the pitcher pitched, and the batter batted. That probably bugged my father, but he never said so.

The fence dividing our yard from the neighbor’s was just about the perfect distance for a 12-year-old boy’s home run, and our neighbors, the Hahns, never seemed to mind us sneaking up their driveway to retrieve a ball we’d hit over.

So unperturbed were they about us trespassing that kindly Mr. Hahn once gave us a bag of old tennis balls, sitting unused in his garage, that we could use for stickball. Within hours, we’d scatter them like Easter eggs, over the fence and across his lawn.

Another time, he delivered a wooden Louisville Slugger bat, and said it was signed by his nephew, John Morris, a minor league star destined for greatness.

I don’t recall if Morris ever made it to the major leagues. I don’t remember ever seeing him on TV. As I look him up on the online compendium of every player in major league history, I do see a John Morris, who’s about the right age, and grew up on Long Island. He lasted for seven seasons but was a part-time player with meager statistics, including eight lifetime home runs and a career .236 average. Maybe I can get him to play for our softball squad.

I didn’t take my father’s suits, golf clubs or Seton Hall sweatshirts back to Mount Pleasant, but I still retain some of his life lessons. Those, and an old wooden baseball bat I swing before my 40-and-over softball games.

Filed Under: Inside Thoughts Tagged With: Ballfield, Father/Son, Life Lessons, Personal Essay

Reclaiming Motherhood

April 8, 2022 by Sabra Staudenmaier

Sabra Staudenmaier  PHOTO By Carolyn Simpson

As a small girl, I had big ideas about being a mom on Mother’s Day.  The day would begin with breakfast served to me in bed by little ones in matching pajamas. We would cuddle together as I opened crafty gifts and read homemade cards. We would spend the day enjoying the beauty of our bond. It would be the best day of the year. A celebration of togetherness.

When I became a mom and Mother’s Day came around, a celebration was the last thing on my mind. What was there to celebrate? The never-ending pile of laundry I faced daily? The ever-present crumbs on the floor of my car? Yes, I loved my kids. But motherhood,  at least my motherhood, not so much. Reality came with a mess in the kitchen from breakfast preparation. There was glitter all over my bed from the home-made cards. Even more work that I didn’t want to be doing. What I wanted on Mother’s Day was a break from it all. I was trying to survive; I didn’t have the energy to celebrate. 

Before becoming a mom, I saw the role as a powerful place to be. I saw the mother as the leader of the home, loved and respected for her guidance. After a decade and a half, I was experiencing the opposite of this. I felt disempowered. How could I be strong doing something that was so draining? A 24- hour, seven days a week job with no vacation. Three kids taking turns having meltdowns and making messes all over the place. I didn’t need to celebrate motherhood, I needed to be rescued from it. 

What was happening? 

I was teetering on the edge of burnout. I had been so focused on my role as a mom that   I stopped taking care of myself. I thought that a good mom was one who sacrifices herself for her family. All I needed was for my kids to be ok and that would somehow make everything else, including me, ok. I was clearly doing something wrong. I could feel my foundation crumbling. 

The problem wasn’t motherhood, it was the way I was doing it. I was looking at it from the top down. It was like I was building a building starting at the penthouse floor when I needed to start at the foundation. I was the foundation.

I knew something had to change. The quality of my life depended on it. I had to start taking better care of myself. Once I understood this, I was able to rebuild my motherhood by strengthening myself.

The first step I took was I started lifting weights three to five times each week.  I became physically strong, and physical strength set me on the right track. My mood improved. From there, my entire motherhood fell into line. I became the manager of my house, delegating housework rather than doing it all. I took control of my finances. I built new skills. I rested and recovered as needed. 

And then what happened? My motherhood experience transformed from one of disempowerment to one of strength. When I felt physically strong, I felt capable. Every aspect of my life began to bloom. I was in a role I didn’t need to escape from, not even for one day.

Motherhood is a big job, and the circumstances continue to change. While old issues remain new ones, like managing technology, social media and Covid, accrue. I have discovered that having an amazing family and home isn’t enough. It all must be managed in a way that isn’t depleting and exhausting.

This Mother’s Day, look at where you are on your journey. Do you want to celebrate motherhood or escape from it? 

If your experience is the one you’ve dreamed of, fantastic. If it isn’t then it’s time to make some changes. I invite you to join me for my podcast Banishing Mom Burnout. This is a podcast dedicated to getting moms out of depletion and into a position of strength and power. There is a way to reclaim motherhood. If I did it, so can you. Now, that’s something to celebrate!

Filed Under: Inside Thoughts Tagged With: Avoiding Burnout, Celebrate, Coach, empowerment, Essay, Getting Strong, journey, Life Lessons, Mothers, Physical Strength, Strength

Our Mom & The Bouquet of Peace

April 8, 2022 by Janine Crowley Haynes

After you lose your mother, Mother’s Day becomes a somber day of reflection. Our mother is gone 21 years now. She died from lung cancer at the age of 56–a year younger than I am today. It was strange for me when I realized I’m older than my mother would ever be. Still, I reflexively reach for my phone to call her whenever something good or bad happens. Then, remind myself, with phone in hand, she’s not on the other end.

Her life was brief, but the life lessons she instilled in her three girls come back to us constantly. Sometimes, her lessons come slowly, subtly, and, other times, they slap us right in the face. I cannot express how much I love when that happens. Belonging to an Irish Catholic family, living in the Bronx, my mother was the eldest of six. Her life was filled with a steady stream of laundry–much of it done by hand. So, when she married, she insisted on squeezing a washer and a dryer into our already cramped kitchen. It would finally free her of the laborious chores of her childhood.

When I was 11, our parents separated. My mom, two sisters, and I would spend many years in our kitchen talking over the vibrational whir of the washer and the thunderous tumbling of the dryer. At dinnertime, she’d stop the machines mid-cycle so we could have some quiet conversation. Even after working twelve hours a day, six days a week, our mom always made time to sit at the kitchen table and ask about our day. The image of her reaching over to pull open the dryer door, without getting out of her chair, is forever etched in my memories. 

Right there, in our groovy 70s kitchen with its loud orange and yellow geometric, metallic wallpaper and knock-off Saarinen white-round table with matching bucket chairs, hung a print of Picasso’s Bouquet of Peace. Since I was, as my mom would say, ‘the artistic one,’ I had trouble with the drawing’s simplicity. I mean, I was 12 and could draw a more lifelike image of a bouquet of flowers. It perplexed me as much as it intrigued me. As a teen, I found myself researching Pablo Picasso and the phases of his work. His earlier work was spot-on realistic. So, clearly, he knew how to draw and paint, but the influences of the time, lead him to break free from realism and delve into cubism, and, eventually, he turned to painting in a childlike manner. I also learned he painted The Bouquet of Peace in response to the peace demonstrations taking place in Stockholm in 1958.

Our kitchen table was the roundtable of our world. Under the watchful eye of The Bouquet of Peace, it’s where our single bra-burning, bellbottom-wearing, liberal-leaning mother created a safe space for her three girls to talk about anything and everything. Nothing was off-limits. It’s where she celebrated our rite of passage into womanhood, and, subsequently, where we complained about our cramps and pimples. It’s where we learned to put on makeup. It’s where we cried over boys. It’s where we talked about our mother’s limited paycheck and how, if we wanted a new pair of Jordache jeans or a new pair of Candies, we had to work for it.

The response to a piece of artwork is typically an emotional one–even if it’s no response at all. Picasso’s flowers were always waiting to greet me in the morning. I’d stare at it while eating my Cheerios. My mother loved the cheerful nature of it and how it represented a sweet gesture of one person giving to another. She shared with me how the giving of something as simple as a bouquet of flowers could bring much joy to the recipient. In those moments, my mother was teaching us the art of the giving, the art of simple beauty, and the art of appreciating art. 

So, when I noticed my sister hung that very painting in her laundry room, it bothered me. Why would she choose to hang a significant piece from our childhood in such an obscure place? Then…BAM!!! It hit me. My sister got it right. It was the perfect place, right next to the whoosh of washer and the melodic tumbling of the dryer. Like I said, I love when that happens.

Filed Under: Inside Thoughts Tagged With: Artwork, Bouquet, Essay, journey, kitchen, Life Lessons, Loss, mom, mothers day, Our Mom, painting, reflection, remembrance

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