You Have to Wonder

You have to wonder where along the great long timeline of evolution the truth of women's lives became something to be quiet about.  How long after Lucy started it all did her female offspring decide it was better to be quiet than to be free of the large and small terrors that are perpetrated upon them by the other half of the human population?  To be sure, not all women have suffered what some of us have and definitely not all men are perpetrators, but there have been enough of us victims on the female side that you'd expect a howl of anguish to rupture forth every now and then over the eons. (And, yes, I know that it can happen in the reverse; another story, another time).

Every single woman in my world has experienced an episode of some sort - physical or mental (or both) - that is seared in her memory.  My episode, the one that had a domino effect that stayed with me for years, began on the first day of sixth grade when Mr. McCarthy, a man who degraded the teaching profession every single day he stood in front of a classroom, commanded all of his 11 year-old female students to stand up next to their desks and do a slow turn with arms outspread.  I was mystified why he would want us to do that but....I did it because he was the teacher and he asked.  And so did all of the other girls in the class.  And it turns out that he had us do this so that he could look us over and choose two of us as his secretaries for the year.  I was one of them.  Having been chosen I was then forced to sit at one of the two small student desks flanking his desk and facing my fellow students.  Every day was a misery and to this day I am not sure how or why I accepted the situation.  I knew I didn't like it but...I didn't say anything.  I think I didn't say anything because, you know, mystified.  At home, and at school up until then, girls were just people, not different. Girls ran like the wind at recess, climbed trees, read adventure books, sang, laughed.  Just like the boys.  Girls were people and I was fine, mystified but fine.

Until school photo packets were handed back to us to bring home to our parents and mine (and his other "secretary's") contained his photo too.  That was more mystifying and wrong enough that I had to tell my parents.  I'm pretty sure my mom and dad were out of the house before I was the next morning and things changed big time at school.  My desk was moved, big drama from my "teacher", retribution from his best friend (my math teacher).  It was all pretty ugly but it was over.

I hadn't thought about it for years until recently, for obvious reasons.  Trump has done that much for us, at any rate.  The sheer deluge of tweets, posts, essays, op-ed pieces is staggering, until it isn't.  Until you realize that it's practically all of us.  Then it isn't just staggering, it's mind-bending.

And I think that's why more women don't speak up more often.  It's our life.  So many women, with so many horrible stories.   Stockholm syndrome for 50 percent of the population.

Is this the howl that will change things?  You have to wonder.

A happy talent....

Man! Long time between posts but really, this was a summer for doing stuff not writing about it. Finally bought a new bike - a sweet little Specialized - and put in mega-miles (well, for me). Rode long, rode short. Rode through pine barrens and cornfields. Rode along hilly western MA resort roads and flat Cape Cod beach roads. Rode alone, rode with my sweetie, rode with my best friend, and rode with my new triathlete friend.

This summer and this bike helped me remember something forgotten in a long gone childhood: that sweet and breezy feeling we all experience when we first learn how to ride a bike and then, with that new independence, just go, go, go, squeezing every second out of shimmery, bright, hot summer...wherever we want (kind of), whenever we want (sort of). Anyway, this past fabulous summer there was a whole lot of "Hey, you wanna ride today?" answered with "Yup. Let's go!" Housework, weeding? Who cares?

So...I turned 50 this summer and recaptured what it feels like to be 7 (kind of, sort of).

And How We Play It Is Everything: A Tribute to A Friend

Just like on the playing field (one hopes), playing the game of life successfully requires a deep knowledge of the rules: how to apply them, when to apply them, which bend of the rules is allowed by honor, which is required by grace.

The finest players also know that you play the hand you are dealt, that the only thing that always pays off is hard work (talent can get you only so far), that unexpected obstacles in the course of play are best handled squarely, without panic, but that you can only do that if you have prepared well.

To whit: one of my dearest friends (she of the longest standing friendship in my life) has been dealt a blow in the last month - a diagnosis of cancer. In another time, if I had been asked to speculate about how she would approach something like this, I would have guessed that she, as one of the great practitioners of life, would have handled it with grace, grit, determination, spirit, and a deep faith in self that comes from an inner strength built over years of hard work.

Alas, I do not have to guess.

But I would have been right because that's exactly how she's tackling this one.

Did it!

It took me four days but I made it to the bleachers and ran the circuit four times. Felt way better than I thought it would after six weeks off. Got to thinking about - not for the first time - the four different types of people out there: those who think they can, those who know they can, those who don't know but will try anyway, and those who quit. Luckily, I was running with a woman who came under category three. She ended up doing more than she thought she could. I opted for sanity and finished when I knew I had completed a good workout but would pay (in a bad bursitis-y kind of way) if I pushed it farther. Perhaps I am becoming a thinking athlete finally?

Inertia: the tendency of a body at rest to become a blob

Thus ends the sixth week in a row in which I haven't worked out - as in "with an eye towards fitness" worked out. I had lots of good reasons to stop for a bit - very bad back issues, house renovations, etc. - but suddenly no reason to start again seems good enough. I don't think I've gone this long without working out since I was 15.

Be it resolved: starting Monday, that good-looking new set of bleachers on campus is my new jungle gym.

Two people, two cats, one household

Life has taken its latest happy twist: my sweetie and I decided to meld households, so he and his cat - the formerly feral and fearlessly orange Mademoiselle Zoey - have moved in with me and the graceful grey but no-longer genial Oliver. I think it's going to be pretty smooth sailing once all the boxes are gone and the cats have decided their hierarchy. Although, right now, I would lay odds we will find a place in this small house for all 265 of S's coats before the fur stops flying. I know that animals have ways of figuring these things out, I just don't know if an 18 year-old deaf cat who's had the run of this house and a 1 year-old high energy cat who has only lived indoors for seven months are playing by the same set of rules.

But this I do know (and it's something I never doubted): having S here is a really good thing. It has to be said: I am a handy woman to have around. In the four years since buying this house I have taught myself to change electrical switches and outlets, installed a sink and a toilet, learned to love nail guns and miter saws, dug up and moved nearly a ton of sand (seriously!) one wheelbarrow at a time, designed and built a walk-in closet, and painted nearly every room in the house. Still, he moves in and within a week - bada bing!

The lawn is mowed (something that has always waited until everything else was done).

The garage is cleaned and organized for the first time since I moved in.

The garden bed near the garage that I have been fighting with for four years is cleaned out of all the miserable rose roots and daylily roots I couldn't conquer.

Even better: I get to see the face I love the most in the world every day (and cute as it is, I'm not talking about the one above!).

It Was All Worth It

There are some things - laws of nature, if you will - we know to be true even if we can't prove them. Little ones like: if you carry an umbrella with you, it won't rain. Or: a watched pot won't boil. And big ones like: the only wasted love is the love that we keep to ourselves. Certainly I don't apply that last law willy-nilly but to me, giving from the heart just never feels wrong, whether it takes the form of a somehow-still-new love for my sweetie, the tried-and-true love of being an involved sister, friend and daughter, or the necessarily constrained love proferred while coaching. The corollary I accept going in is that love is to be given without guarantee that it will be reciprocated the way I want or any way at all. Nearly always I'm paid back a thousandfold, sometimes not, but it rarely seems a bad investment anyway.

The very hardest thing about coaching at the college where I work was that most of the students who populate the program are either undisciplined athletes or non-athletes. Great kids, to be sure, but by and large not athletes. I worked so hard not only at teaching them how to row but also at imparting the joy that can be found in training our bodies, how to think about sport, and the thrill of competing to win. And while I know I taught them how to row, I've never believed I got much farther than that.

After I resigned as their coach, I emailed my athletes hoping they would respect my decision and not hold against me the fact that I quit in the middle of the year, but not much more than that. What happened was so unexpected and so gratifying, it took my breath away: more than one of my rowers (and one former rower) has emailed me to tell me I taught them "what it means to be an athlete"(emphasis mine).

Learning this from them has absolutely blown me away. I can think of no higher compliment nor any greater return on the love that flowed from me to them all these years.

Monogamy is overrated

An old love has come back into my life and, frankly, it's got me re-thinking my whole approach. It's volleyball. It's bad volleyball and I have to run the games while I play the one night we get together at my local Y (which means I kind of have to hold back that killer instinct), but it's still volleyball - the great sport love of my life that came along after my great love for tennis but before my great love for rowing. Basically, I'm a serial monogamist.

Okay, I've lectured and been lectured to about the value of adding other activities to the mix but have I listened? Um...sort of. I always lift weights no matter what sport I'm playing, so that is technically cross-training but in spirit only, because I can go years - years! - alternating between weightlifting and the one sport I am in love with at the time. And this last year, because life intruded, I've been limited pretty much to fitness classes. Actually the same class, three times a week, the same three days of the week. It's too repetitive and I think my body has finally rebelled (as in I now have bursitis and a couple other chronic aches and pains).

I've wanted to add another activity for the last couple of years but yoga (the only other thing I can find regularly) just doesn't hold my attention for long. And I did, in fact, dabble with cycling briefly and then had a technical glitch (about which see my entry on 9/27), but other opportunities have been limited in my area until now. Anyway - and to the point of the title above - doing something else with my body in addition to the same old-same old feels good. It seems to have the lasting effect of actually make me feel, well, bouncier. So here's my new plan: committed polygamy (aka cross training!).

Sometimes you've got to change the rules

Well, I have completely changed the rules by which I will be playing at life...for now anyway: I've quit my coaching job at school. It really was time. Regardless of whether or not I had given it my best effort (and I did), the fact, is my heart was no longer in it. And, for me at least, if you cannot coach (or compete) with heart, you shouldn't be doing it. Come to think of it, that probably applies to pretty much everything in life. I'm not ruling out doing some freelance coaching here and there, so the coach moniker stays in my profile, but the regular gig is done. Free at last, free at last...!

At any rate, the plan is to use the gobs of time that have now opened up in my year to get back in racing shape (and race!), blog more and garden my heart out.

Me

Okay, well obviously not me, but what she looks like is how I am feeling after closing in on five straight days of actually managing to get to the gym and work out hard. And this after having a pretty damn good week last week too (workout-wise, that is). What's coolest? I feel good. I mean, normally after two weeks like this, my back hurts, my hip hurts and my neck hurts. But not this time. I cannot figure out what I am doing right or how to keep it going but I am not backing off until I have to.

Play: Builds Strong Bones...and Brains.

Life is not all play. As adults we know and accept this, even while we recognize its importance in balancing out our stressful lives. I'm having a good time (when I'm not flat out exhausted from working, coaching, trying to stay fit and trying to be a good sister and friend) reading the book "Play" by Stuart Brown and will comment on it at some point. But, in the meantime, I'm intrigued that yet another article appeared in the New York Times regarding play and its important role in child development. Find the article here.

After 27 good years together, it's time to move on

It's happened. It's over and I'll just have to deal with it. My awesome, at-the-time-crazy-expensive, 27 year-old-bike saw it's last day, last week.

I loved that bike. Sure, being as old as it was, it was heavy, but that just meant it took the downhills super fast. And sure, I had to tighten the gear lever every time I wanted to shift gears, but that just made me shift less and build up my legs more. The biggest bummer is that I was just starting to explore and understand the value of cycling as a serious training tool for rowing (legs and lungs, baby). And now, this.

I'll have to put myself out there in a market I don't know and haven't seen in 27 years...searching again for "the one". It's both exciting and daunting, but can it ever be the same with a new stream-lined model? Should I buy a bike for the athlete I am now and anticipate another long-term, hard-driving relationship? Or should I plan on changing bikes once or twice between now and the time I am in my mid-seventies? Can one bike adapt to both Kelleys?

For the answer to these questions and more, stay tuned!

Mid-season blues

Well, it's been a heck of a couple of weeks since I last blogged but, the crew season is well underway and with it comes a serious lack of extra time and energy...which plays out as laundry piling up, cereal for dinner, and not much time for blogging.

But any way its Friday and I am nearly half way through the season and things are going well. I have two great assistant coaches and we have a bunch of really great kids and so - can't complain. Except....

We've hit that inevitable point in the season when somebody decides to push the teammate envelope. As in "I can show up whenever I like and still be a teammate". As in "I can dog half the workouts and still be a teammate". As in "I can be rude to the underclassmen and still be a teammate". Errrrr.

I hate having the conversation that has to come, but I hate worse what this kid is doing to the team.

"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." (Muriel Rukeyser)

This has been bugging me for two weeks solid. On August 17th the New York Times ran a series of articles called"Saving the World's Women." I read them online - all of them - and it was sobering stuff. To the left of the articles was a repeating series of six facts, the same six next to every article. Some of the stats were upbeat, most were desolate, none of them were attributed. I don't know if they accompanied the hard copy, so here's a link to one of the online articles so you can see what I mean (scroll down a little way and look to the left): http://http//www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?scp=1&sq=saving%20the%20world%27s%20women&st=cse

Here's what stuck with me. One of the screens read: "1 percent of the world's landowners are women." If that's right, then only 67,000,000 women around the world own land.

There are 1,163,000,000 people in Europe and North America alone. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that women are a nice clean half of that total (maybe there are more, maybe there are less, but work with me) and that half of them are children (likely inaccurate, but again, work with me). That leaves, in far less than half of the world, just under 300,000,000 women old enough to own land. And if only, oh, one quarter of them can afford to own real estate, that's 73,000,000 women. What am I missing? How can only 67 million around the world be landowners?

Far worse: "130 million women around the world have been subjected to genital cutting." Which means that around the world almost twice as many women are tortured - by this method alone - than own land.

No getting around it, life is a contact sport and people are getting hurt.

Impara l'arte e mettila da parte

I was reading about flow again the other day in preparation for the upcoming crew season and thought about the Italian phrase above. It translates roughly to: learn the art then put it aside.

Having had relatively few (in other words two) quantifiable flow moments in sport myself - after a lifetime as an athlete - I find this a fascinating subject. Because those two moments stand out still as the most fun I've had while competing, I start out every season hoping that the athletes I coach will find themselves living a few seconds where everything comes together and they lose themselves in what they are doing. Or maybe fully experience what they are doing is a better way of putting it. The problem is that to be in that "zone", you really must be doing and not thinking (or at least not thinking about exactly how to do what you are doing). And, of course how you get to that point is the hard part because it takes a LOT of practice to have learned your art well enough to set it aside.

I do think I've figured out my biggest problem though. Once I get to the point where the skill or sport is ingrained enough for me to be reasonably successful and possibly approach a flow moment my mind wanders. As in: What shall I cook for dinner? Should I wallpaper or paint the hallway? Why on earth would anybody buy those platform shoes I saw in Allure? You get my drift....

Promote world peace: play more!

I am no expert on play, by which I mean I don't study it for a living. But...I took some courses on play as a freshman studying physical education and read some of the scholarly works of one of the great researchers in play, Johan Huizinga (deadly stuff which turned me off of the idea of becoming an academic in the field of human movement). And I have been coaching all of my adult life, which means I do think about sport and play a bit. So, you know, almost an expert.

Anyway, what I most remember about play from school is this: animals have to play...humans included. And it's not just about "all work and no play...." Play, at every stage of life, teaches animals all kinds of important things they need to know about being wolves or elephants or humans; it is a key element of appropriate physical and mental developmental. One of the most important aspects of play is that it teaches young wolves, elephants AND humans how to be successful members of their respective societies. Some researchers have found, in fact, that many people who commit murder apparently had no experience with constructive play as children. It's likely they missed some important lesson about hierarchy, submission and the consequences of acting on violent urges.

So, it makes me wonder: Are we spending enough time playing? Would the world be a better place if we played more often? Or better yet, set aside our differences and played with groups we don't normally interact with like these two did: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHj82otCi7U&NR=1 ?

Competitiveness: nature or nurture?

I’ll admit it: I spend a LOT of time watching the NCAA basketball tournaments (mostly the men). I can’t get over the quality of the play, the high level of skill, the speed of the game. Do you watch this tournament? How can you not love it? I mean come on people, these are kids playing high pressure ball (and, just for the sake of fun, let’s not get into the money-making machine that is Div. I basketball…the players didn’t make it this way). Can you imagine what it takes to become part of a team like that? The dedication? The hours on the court and in the weight room? And then, to win it all, go on a seven game winning streak with millions of people watching?

But here’s my question (and trust me as a Div. III coach from a very small school, I spend a lot of time thinking about it): are competitors born or made?

Coming from a family of competitors, I’m tempted to say they are born. And I’ve pretty much surrounded myself with friends who are competitive, although not always in the sports realm. So although I’ve read about people, hitherto non-competitive individuals, who get turned onto a sport and find a killer instinct, I think they are a rare and special breed and I don’t know any.

How does a coach (me) turn non-competitors (the majority of the athletes I've coached so far) into competitors? Or am I attempting the impossible? Where do all of the fabulous athletes in this tournament - and the great athletes who never get this kind of exposure - get their competitiveness from?