A Homemade Mess

It’s been quite a stretch. The Christmas and New Year holidays were followed quickly by the punishing onslaught of snow and freezing temperatures. Then, just as March revealed a possible light at the end of the wintry tunnel, our household fell into illness mode, from the sinus infections that struck us all to the mysterious ailment that slammed my wife, landing her in bed for 10 days. As we turned the corner into April, everyone finally started feeling a bit better. Now, as our Spring Break begins, there’s the task of catching up on all the work that needs to be completed, from grading papers to drafting lesson plans to completing free-lance writing assignments.

            All of which leaves very little time to address the house in which I live. So as I work at home this weekend with my wife and girls away for the weekend with family, I push the laptop away for a second and glance around me. And I must admit, what I see is not pretty. It’s something we’ve all witnessed at one time or another. It’s just, well, it’s what you’d call a mess. A mess that, in its own way, chronicles the four punishing months that have ensued since we were singing Christmas carols and decking those halls back in December.

            I begin in our sunroom, which seems to be inviting all seasons as it sits between our kitchen and backyard. I see the softball-sized, red-and-green Christmas balls that were used on our front lawn (for what, I’m still not sure), and the extension cord that lit our evergreen in the backyard for the holidays. It took two months for the snow to uncover that cord before we could retrieve it in March, and it might take another two before the cord goes back in the basement tool closet. Next to that cord, I see leftover lawn and leaf bags, unused bottles of liquid bubbles, metal marshmallow roasters, a pair of winter gloves, and softball equipment. On the table out there is an Easter egg-dyeing kit, and beneath that table is a gingerbread village kit, and beside the gingerbread village is something called a “Flower Pot Cupcake Baking Kit.”

            Things have to get better in the other rooms; it can’t be that bad all around. And it’s true, the rest of our house is more liveable. But wow, how things accumulate. In the kitchen, our daughters’ January birthday napkins sit beside our younger daughter’s first-communion certificate from March. In the living room, a stack of birthday cards (also from January) lie beneath the winter-themed travel tissue packets, which themselves lie beneath the never-to-be-used-Target-impulse-purchase Easter lights.

In our study, which doubles as the girls’ playroom, a three-month-old “Super Size Crystals” experiment sits on yet another hutch, while a magnetic bulletin board holds pieces of paper that read “St. Patrick’s Day” and “Sale! Come Now,” followed by a reminder to those playing a long-forgotten game of make-believe store that “Whoever is the first to spend 6 dollars or more will get the mystery item!”

            I think we’ve all won that promotion, girls, as this house is nothing if not a harbor for mystery items. A jar full of mushy green goo (more “Super Size Crystals,” perhaps?) A new doorknob, to replace the one I had to break down when my older daughter accidentally locked herself in her bedroom a few months ago. A pair of ice skates beside a pair of shorts beside a hand-cranked flashlight beside a magnifying glass beside a CD copy of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

It is just too much. At the landing beneath the stairs to my daughters’ upstairs bedrooms, a pink pig Pillow Pet sits beside a board game titled “Pop the Pig.” It’s a fitting pair for this time of year, when families like mine feel like we’ve been living in pigsties for just too long.

I guess that’s why they call it “Spring Cleaning.” I’ll get to it one of these days.

Full of Beep

She speaks Beep. I do not know the language. But I am trying.

My 5-year-old daughter, Chelsea, has always been a bit on the shy side. Her primary objective in life is to be cozy, and to spend time with her mom and grandparents. She goes to school and tolerates it well enough, but school can’t hold a candle to sitting quietly on the couch, sniffing her blankie while watching TV. Or sitting at the kitchen table with her mom, doing a jigsaw puzzle while sipping apple cider.

After both of our school days are done and we’re home together in the house, I ask Chelsea how her day was. She glances up at me from behind her blankie, keeps walking, and says just one word: “Beep.” I tell her that I’d really like to know how she’s doing. Again: “Beep.” For my third try, I get a bit more specific and direct: “Chelsea, can you please tell me what you did today in school?”

You guessed it. Beep.

I don’t understand where it comes from, or why the girl has turned into a blonde-haired version of Road Runner. But whatever the reason is for this girl’s affection for Beepness, it has happened. And it seems to offer her the same comforts that the soft blankie does: A place in which the demands and stresses of the big, wide world need not be considered. It’s a world where you don’t hear about homework or new math problems or Monday-morning wakeups. You just spend your time counting beep.

I work a lot with language, as a teacher and writer. And I know that we can communicate in a lot of different ways. In literature, popular writers such as Junot Diaz and Khaled Hosseini often bring multiple languages into their prose. In politics, campaigns resort to metaphor-loaded jargon that often obscures any real talk about issues. In our daily lives, many of us communicate via e-mail, status postings and text messages in a short-hand, symbolic language that might have confused even a lover of invented words such as Shakespeare. And in baseball, there are entire books devoted to explaining the language of this sport, so that the casual viewer might have some idea how to tell the difference between a “Baltimore chop,” a “little dribbler” and a “screaming liner.”

So if we’re playing so much with language already, why not toss a little kindergarten Beep into the mix? There’s room under the tent for that as well. Yet while playing around with language is completely fine, the use of said language to avoid ordinary conversations can be a bit more troubling.

So I am working on cracking the Beep code. My initial approach has been to join in the game. So in recent days, when I’ve seen my little girl, I’ve asked her this: “Chelsea, how was beep today?”

“Beep,” she responds.

“Sure,” I say, “but did you read beep in class? Or did you draw beep instead?”

She cracks a smile, and we play at this game for a while. I still don’t get much specific information about the school day, but I do feel like she’s letting me into her world somewhat.

Last Friday, as my wife and older daughter were at Brownies, I got a couple of hours together with Chelsea. I picked her up from school, we did the Beep dance for a while in the car, then we headed out to Target together. We walked through the aisles, looked at some stuff, then I bought some things from the pharmacy and food sections.

As we arrived home, Chelsea hugged her mom and told her about our trip to the store. And while her recap began in a happier tone, Chelsea soon shot her mom a more serious look and lowered her voice to a register of disappointment.

“And at the store,” Chelsea said, “Daddy didn’t buy me one single thing.”

Some ideas need no secret language to convey. I shook my head at these words, then looked at my wife with a smile. As for Chelsea’s material desires, I’ve been there, done that. But on this afternoon, I was under the impression that our time together was all that mattered.

Seems like Daddy was full of beep.

Back to School (One Sixty-Two: Day 118)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Eighteen: Neftali Feliz, Texas Rangers

Staples has spiral notebooks for a penny apiece. Target will give you a pack of Crayola crayons for a quarter. Office Depot has boxes of ballpoint pens for a buck apiece.

You can try and look the other way, especially if your kid doesn’t start for another few weeks, but facts are facts: It’s back-to-school time. In some parts of the country, Semester One is already in session. It’s always a shock to the system for students, teachers and administrators, but the start of a new school year does carry with it all kinds of promise for individual learning, personal growth and fellowship. There’s really nothing like it.

It’s a marathon of education, and you have to prepare yourself for the long road ahead. Once it starts, you’ll find yourself learning more than you thought possible, and it comes at you in all kinds of ways – from book learning to literary journeys to lessons in social skills. It doesn’t always feel like fun, but school takes hold of our minds and maturity levels in a way that is both exhilarating and exhausting. By the time June rolls around, we feel like different people.

Neftali Feliz is 22 years old, an age at which many young Americans are graduating from college. But Feliz is a little different from most of us in that he can throw a baseball 100 miles an hour. Therefore, he is not following the traditional path of education. At age 18, Feliz was pitching in the minor leagues rather than for a college team. By age 21, he was a Texas Ranger. In 2010, Feliz’s first full year in the majors, he has saved 29 games for the Rangers and earned his first All-Star Game appearance.

The Rangers are soaring toward their first postseason appearance in more than a decade. And in the playoffs, you don’t win a lot of games by 10 runs. You often find yourself holding on by a thread, and you turn to your closer to bail you out in the end. So if the Rangers are leading the mighty New York Yankees 4-3 in a first-round playoff game, will Feliz be able to hold the lead amid the pressure? Last week, in two close games against New York in Texas, he experienced two different outcomes: In the first game, he pitched two dominant innings to pick up the win in extra innings, while in the second game he blew a ninth-inning lead to take the loss.

It’s been a very good year so far for Neftali Feliz. But school is about to begin for real as the pennant race heats up. There are still some things that this gifted young man has to learn. The question, of course, is how quickly he’ll learn, adjust, and grow. There’s no sale at Staples to cover that; it comes from within.

Crunch Time

The rush is on, for sure. Cars lined up by the dozens to enter the Watchung Square Mall, the Woodbridge Mall, the Menlo Park Mall. Here in Jersey, you don’t get anywhere without having to turn via the jughandle. And when you’ve got a jughandle jam, you’ve got traffic. This is the price you pay for holding out on the shopping ‘til the final days before Christmas in the most shopping-frenzied state in America.

I’d like to say I’m all done, but there’s always this nagging feeling I have when it comes to holiday shopping for my wife, Amy. This is a woman who, in one of our first Christmases together, produced a giant, 4-foot-tall box filled with presents, all of them for me. I have tried to keep up throughout the years, and have given her some thoughtful gifts. But she’s always been a step ahead. And, well, I do have some of those stereotypical guy shopping habits. I am not creative enough (“Wow, such a nice cookie sheet!”), I don’t keep the gifts secretive enough (“Honey, what size pajama top are you again?”), and, shame of shames, I dare to think about the cost of what I’m buying sometimes (“Such a nice book – and look, it’s still got the Borders $3.99 bargain price sticker still on it!”).

Oh, I’ve gotten better over the years, and I think I’ve got some fine presents picked out for her this year. But do I have enough? That simple question puts a lump in my throat and leads me back to the drawing board. Hmm, maybe just one more little thing for her. Can I find that perfect last stocking stuffer?

Let’s start with the Target circular. To use a baseball analogy, Target is the Mark DeRosa of retail. DeRosa, a free agent who’s played in recent years for the Cubs, Cardinals and Indians, can play all three outfield positions and all four infield spots. Target, like DeRosa, can fill all your needs, and he never feels like a cheap fill-in. Where else can I pick up an iPod, a new bicycle, some slippers, a gallon of milk and my prescription from the doctor, all while staring at a bright red bull’s eye? OK, I’m in the CD aisle at Target and I see a stocking stuffer – a Taylor Swift holiday CD for $6.99. But I flip over to the back side of the CD, and I see that it’s only got six songs. I guess that’s why it’s $6.99. And one of those songs is a re-make of a Wham! holiday tune. As a child of the ‘80s, there is one thing I know very well: You cannot improve on Wham!. On to something else.

Kohl’s has a touch-free soap dispenser for $24.99. That’s kind of strange: Wouldn’t a touch-free dispenser make our bathroom feel more like a public restroom? And what happens when the thing doesn’t work? Maybe she’d prefer the $9.99 dual foot massager. But how many people actually use the mechanical massagers they receive for Christmas? And wouldn’t they all prefer the real thing?

Now I’m checking out JCPenney, and my eyes are drawn to the tabletop air hockey game. We both would play that, and we’d really enjoy beating each other. (Nothing more therapeutic for a marriage than destroying your partner in a tabletop sports game.) But where in the world are we going to fit the thing, in between the kids’ American Girl dolls and Webkinz and play-kitchens and art supplies? Ugh … on to something else.

Macy’s: Ice traction slip-ons for $9.99. Very practical, true: But if I’m going to get her something this practical, I’d might as well buy her AA batteries. CVS has “Holiday Pup” from Hallmark, who, for $5.99, will wiggle his ears while “Jingle Bells” plays. Definitely not practical. And definitely not therapeutic. More like maddening.

There are popcorn makers galore, and they’re cute. But don’t the microwaveable bags work just fine? Wii games abound, and many are on sale. But how many do we really have time for in this house? There’s a cute Yankees throw blanket at Modell’s, but it says “27 Time World Series Champions” all over it, and that of course will be outdated by next fall.

And so the search continues. I may find something, or I may not. Either way, I think Amy will be cool with the gifts she finds under the tree. And I, no doubt, will slap my knee at some point in the morning and say, “That was what I should have bought her!” It will hit me.

Just a bit too late.