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Play Ball. 

 I have learned that the proper and timely use of a sport’s idiom is an important professional skill.  I entered the business world with a liberal arts education and no real experience.  English Literature is what I studied in college.  I did complement this with an MBA after working for a few years as an editor,  but the real learning, as you know, is usually on-the-job.  With diplomas in hand, I went to work at a fancy bank and set out to become a commercial lender.  Basically, to this very day, I structure corporate financing for all kinds of things: equipment, buildings, vehicle fleets…whatever they need.   While a deep understanding of accounting has been critical, my years pondering great works of literature were not a waste of time.  In fact, early on in my career, I used my knowledge of simile and metaphor, figures of speech and word-pictures to simplify and improve my ability to communicate with my new associations.  Once employed, I soon realized that “people ” in my line of work, overwhelmingly meant “guys”.  I learned that the easiest way to understand most things and to be understood by colleagues and customers and leaders alike, was to focus particularly on the vernacular of sports when I wanted to emphasize a point.  This is, I believe, a foundational principle of success in business.  If I wanted to “go to the mat” as a serious contender for opportunity, I had to learn to speak this way.  Thankfully it really wasn’t that hard. I basically just listened to my dad or my x – husband or any number of TV personalities or men at the office and I “cinched” it pretty quickly.  

In fact, I used a good sports idiom in a meeting just last week.  I was presenting an opportunity to the credit and risk team at the Bank where I work.  Before I can issue a proposal to any prospect, I have to have their review and approval to do so.  There is a company I have called on for years and they recently asked me to look at their entire banking relationship, again.  It’s not an easy deal, there are no easy deals really, but it is a company we want to do business with for a variety of reasons.  I have made proposals to this company 2 times in the past 7 years, and lost twice.  In my work, getting an “at bat” (did you hear that?) is infrequent.  It takes a lot of work and a bit of luck to even get a chance in other words; and one thing about credit and risk folks is that they are, by nature, very conservative.  They never want to “bet the farm” so to speak (there I am again).  Anyway, these guys really do want me to bring in this account.  So after a good deal of “wrestling” (cough) over credit policy and collateral and a hundred other things, the chief risk guy said: “what do we need to do to win?” And I said (drum roll please…) “we need to swing for the fence”.  Ha!  Baseball season is upon us and I used a perfectly placed sports phrase to get what I want, and what they want too, a winning proposal.  They naturally knew, probably because they are “guys”, what I meant.  Specifically, I meant terms and conditions for the loans that are most meaningful to these particular people based on their current set of circumstances.  Terms and conditions we usually do not offer, without going into detail.  While the baseball phrase isn’t why they agreed to the deal points I suggested, it is what got their attention.  And I went on to say we cannot “swing and miss” again, and I appreciate the “singles and doubles” I typically get approved, but this time we have to “crush the ball”  if we want this business (I shit you not, I am relentless). Shame on me.  But this is what I said to get through to them in a way that resonated with every man in the room, and as usual, it was a room full of men.  And, incidentally, I won the deal.  So, pay attention sports fans, this is how I “play ball” when necessary. 

* This story was actually meant to be told out loud. I am working up the courage to be an actual story teller. I’m not there yet..

It’s almost a miracle when I do anything that is truly important to me, like reading and writing and learning, or being available to satisfying friendships.  I don’t know why I get so distracted by ridiculously shallow endeavors, and people.  I would say that scanning the internet for horrible articles about failed restaurants or murderous investigations is a form of relaxation, but it’s not.  In fact, it makes me anxious and usually discouraged.  I do eventually pull my head out of cyberspace, coming up for air so to speak, once I notice again, that I am throwing time away.  

A bigger problem than my aimless online perusing, is my attention to poor-choice friendships.  I can’t decide if I simply find super-weirdo’s (and I say that lovingly) magnificently interesting; or, if it’s as my Dad repeatedly said: “water seeks its own level”.  God, I hated that phrase. Why couldn’t he just say that he didn’t like one friend or another, and cite an actual reason?  Instead, I had to ponder what I had in common with so-and-so, and like water reaching for itself, why I sought to be with them.  Unfortunately, I never changed my behavior toward the un-loveable’ s in my life, so I don’t think his clever approach to discouraging bad company did a bit of good.  

In spite of this self-knowledge and the probability of my low- “level” character, I do find it problematic to waste time as I do.  I choose to get sucked in with some regularity, and sometimes I really regret it.  I think it’s like turning the TV volume way up so that I can’t hear myself think.  My inner-life goes silent because I have some other person distracting me, wanting a ride, or an ear, or otherwise some form of attention from me.  And I willingly oblige, answer the phone, jump in the car, off to the rescue.  While my experiences with, let’s call them kin, can be entertaining or funny or perhaps even meaningful, I am depleted and more often than not, left feeling abandoned and stung, manipulated and silenced.  I do realize that I do this to myself.

About three years ago I started reading books again, one after another after another.  I listen to them too, in the car.  I think constantly about the stories and the storytellers.  I also took a class already this year and I signed up for another one.  I am writing more too.  These activities are a distinctly different use of my time and I feel enriched and rewarded by them.  It’s an immersion into my own head and heart, and an amplification of my own ideas and preferences, which I have struggled to hear for too long.  Being distracted now presents a real conflict for me.  I am beginning to untangle though, gradually, maybe like lake water after a storm, when the mud settles back to the bottom and the clean water reassembles near the sunshine.  I sure hope so.    

My first ever date with a boy was the strangest thing that ever happened to me.  I was in 9th grade and 14 years old, it was 1977.  My girlfriends and I would go to an old warehouse-converted-to-a-disco on Pittsburgh’s North Side for under-21 night on some Sundays.  It was called ‘The 2001 Club” or something.  On one such night, I met a guy with a big curly afro who was a senior at Taylor Alderdice High School. After a sweaty dance he asked me for my phone number, which I gave him excitedly.  I figured he would not call but I watched the phone (which hung on the wall in my kitchen) expectantly for a few days.  Nothing.  Just as I gave up hoping, my mother answered a call and it was him.  I honestly do not remember his name.  It sucked that my mother knew it was a guy and would now be lingering around the kitchen to hear what I was saying.  He asked me if I wanted to bring my friend from the club and meet up with him and his friend that weekend…  This was a big relief because I did not know what I would do or say in that situation without a girlfriend.  Awkward was my middle name at 14, I looked older and probably told him I was 15.  I was too young to go on a date I guess, but I didn’t think so then.  My girlfriend would have to agree but I knew she would.  And I knew this would make everything A-OK with my mom.  Both parents loved this friend…she could do no wrong.  In fact, my mom let her drive our car to go meet the boys a few days later.  She was in fact 16 with a driver’s license.  Thankfully the boys didn’t have to come to my house to get us…I would just die if that were the case.  Not that I didn’t like my house, I just didn’t like anybody knowing my business; and my siblings would tease me to death if they knew I was on a “date”.  So, off we went to Etna to meet them.  Etna is a neighborhood along the Allegheny River a few miles from our neighborhood, Millvale.  It was kind of in the middle from where the “dates” lived, which was on the other side of the river, in a different neighborhood altogether.  Without a concern in the world, we met them and got into my-guy’s car, a beat up-ish silver Impala.   There was rarely a destination back then, we just drove around listening to music: Boston, the Doors, whatever.  Those were common-ground bands everyone could agree on in the late 1970s.  They took us over to Squirrell Hill to a record store called Heads Together.  It was a “head shop” and a record store.  We didn’t buy anything but the guys bought some “paraphernalia”, a pipe or something.  They then determined we should find a place to park somewhere and smoke….ah, ok.  If I was a weirdo without pot, I was a complete freak with pot.  But what could go wrong?  They drove to the river just near the Highland Park Bridge.  It was more or less a rail yard with railroad tracks going every which way.  There were lots of places like that in Pittsburgh back then.  Both boys were sitting in the front seat and my girlfriend and I were in the back.  They lit up some hashish which was perhaps exotic..…it was a step down the road from pot which was simply everywhere then, but ok, I did it….  The music was blaring and the windows were all foggy from our breathing and singing.  We were laughing at everything.  Then one of the boys suddenly jumped out of the car and grabbed some pillows from the trunk.  What?  He then jumped in the back seat and told me to get in the front seat.  I remember my friend saying “What are the pillows for?”  The boys were clearly annoyed by our laughing, and carrying on with each other, and our lack of interest in whatever they had planned.  It was loud in that car, and a little steamy…the music..J Geiles by now (?) was drowned out by our singing “G-L-O-R-I-A”; when a sudden blasting pound on the window got our attention.  It shocked us all, a very intentional THUD THUD!  My date rolled down the window (nothing automatic in those cars) to see what or who it was.  Outside was a very old man with long greasy hair and a flannel shirt, screaming at us to get off the tracks, a train was coming!  OH SHIT!  Boyfriend struggled to start the car, it took forever for the engine to turn over, but finally it worked and we skidded off the tracks in time to avoid an untimely death.  We then peeled out of there, speechless.  The boys determined to cross the bridge and take us back to Etna “where we belonged” I think they said.   We were all pretty startled and eager to end our time together.  I do remember having the presence of mind to grab some of the hash (or maybe all of it?) as we scooted out of the car.  It was sitting in an open cigar box and with all the commotion, nobody noticed my thievery.  My morale compass had yet to develop. I’m not proud of it now, but I did it.  Once they pulled away and I revealed our new “stash”, my friend and I laughed so hard that we needed to sit down, right on the sidewalk.  Some date.  For a number of obvious reasons, I owe if not my life, certainly my virginity, to this old guy. He must be an old angel or something, sitting in the night by the railroad tracks there.  I have no idea where he came from.  My friend and I still talk about this sometimes.  I think this is the strangest thing that ever happened to me, although so much has been strange.  Honestly.

I read this verse in psalm 131 and it gave me something to think about for a good while now:

But I have stilled and quieted my soul
like a weaned child with its mother
like a weaned child is my soul within me                               

I haven’t thought about it in its context because its next to a bunch of verses and other psalms about hoping in the Lord and whatnot.  I don’t really contemplate much about that, hoping in the Lord.  I know David did and I know the whole point of his writing here is likely that we should also.  I am just not a terribly big fan of hoping in or for things. It’s not that I don’t have faith, I just don’t have much patience and I think hope implies having patience, which I don’t have.  Also, hope often begets disappointment for me, and I really can’t stand disappointment, although it happens fairly regularly.  Perhaps I don’t understand the concept of hope in the way they talk about it in the bible, or anywhere else.

In any event, this post isn’t about hope or what’s in the bible.  It’s about the perfect peace David suggests with the image he puts forward. I have been trying to imagine what it feels like to be a weaned child next to its mother. I think it’s perfect peace.  It’s a beautiful image to me.  This child is full, content, safe and loved, free to imagine, etc… all the things a child experiences in her presence, hopefully (ironic word choice, I know).  I have tried to imagine myself by my own mother as a small child and the feeling I might have there.  I don’t think it is much different than what David intended.  It is a good place mentally, physically and emotionally for anyone.

I tried to hang onto the idea and the feeling described by the image of that child with its mother in the psalm. I realize that this is something familiar to me although my own mother passed away several years ago and I am turning 56 in a few weeks.  I still experience it though, oddly, and I bet it is because I was loved so very much as a child.  I tried putting it into a few clumsy verses below. 

I have stilled and quieted my soul
like a child beside her mother
Like a child beside her mother
is my soul within me

When the day is done and the doing has become, futile
I climb, in my mind, close to her memory
The sheets on my bed are starched and cool
pulled tight, tucked squarely on the corners
my feet lead the way for my body to lay, quiet
enclosed in perfect order

I am old and heavy but supported here, finally
the space is dark and fresh
I turn toward rest and I recall her breath
its steady rhythm replaces my thoughts
of piled up worry and the constant
pressure to hurry, nowhere

My face peeks above the blanket line
just far enough to find the quiet night air
that meets and calms my breathing
as it becomes deep and slow and long,
what I’ve wanted all along
nearness to love and forgiveness

I drift without particular direction
comforted by a simple connection
to my bed, my room, the earth the sky
to God and life and a family line
where I am much-loved forever and
sleep itself is my reward, or my advantage

I have stilled and quieted my soul
Like a child beside her mother
Like a child beside her mother
is my soul within me

I am terribly grateful for the mother I had.  She really did love me endlessly, I know that.  So much so that when I read the psalm and thought about the image David used, I knew what he was talking about even if the hope he suggests in the neighboring verses is a more difficult concept for me.    Being a weaned child with its mother is being in perfect peace, I got that part, thanks I am sure to my own mom.  It is a truly sacred and satisfying connection.  I like the image.  I like that I still experience this peace as I fall asleep too.  I am lucky, and I enjoy thinking about powerful images and simple gifts.