In the News

Just for information sake.  My girls' basketball team were defeated quite soundly yesterday.  I stood stoically on the sideline through the second quarter watching the girls sacrifice their egos at the hands of St. Saviour's College (I've never heard of St. Saviour, but I'm going to have to Google him - or her - to find out).  At one point we were down 40-0.  Granted, we did shoot the ball at least three times in the first half, but I put all the blame for our poor performance on the sun - it was in my girls' eyes.  Oh, wait, that was the second half.  I'll find some kind of excuse, bad coaching I think, for our decidedly one-sided defeat 54-6.

This blog is not about basketball and even though I could probably write thousands of words about the joy of coaching, this week I'll be projecting some thoughts about the news.

One of the perks for working at Faith Lutheran College is that one of the state newspapers, the Courier Mail, allows teachers (I get to be included in that segment of the population) to purchase the daily rag for $15 per year.  I thought that this would be an excellent idea to catch up on current events in the world, see how Queensland is doing with regards to national prowess.

Reading the Courier Mail, though, is like... well, you know when you're little, and you decide that the coolest thing in the world is to take your bike out onto a gravel road, push it to the top of a hill and then hop on.  You point the front tire down the middle of the road hoping beyond hope that the tire does not get caught in a rut or hit a big rock - then you let gravity do its thing.  At first its fun. The wind whips your hair a little bit; you begin to catch a few bugs in your teeth, you're feeling a little bit daring so you take your feet off the pedals - oh, it's so fun, so exciting, and then you realize...

So this is what a train conductor feels like when he (or she) sees a moose on the tracks and knows that no matter what, stopping is not really an option...

but you try to stop anyway.  Hand brakes (if you actually had any) aren't really going to work.  You're on a gravel road, the least amount of pressure will send you into a skid that will probably throw you into the cornfield.  Okay, so foot brakes it is, but you know that at the rate you're going, which feels like mach forty-two, foot brakes have as much an affect as wearing long sleeves, instead of a t-shirt out into a blizzard - it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.  Then, as a last resort, you think...

If I can just get my pedals twirling fast enough, perhaps I can slow the bike down that way...

So now you just look plain silly.  Feet flying, wheels spinning and then you hit that inevitable bump just twenty feet from the bottom.  Front tire twists to the side and you are sent over the handlebars for a quick date with the road where the main appetizer is a gravel sandwich.  Open wide.

And then you come to and realize that for the next four hours not only are you picking gravel from every layer of flesh in your body, but the grit in your teeth will not be washed down with any amount of rinsing.  You'll never feel clean again. 

Yeah, that's what reading the Courier Mail is like.  It's fun(ny) at first and then you pick up speed but then, there is no way of stopping the train wreck.  You're left picking grit out of your brain.  You'll never be clean again.  For instance, here is a gem I found a few days in the Courier Mail.  No kidding: actual news.

Headline:  CAT PEE DRIVES MAN TO ASSAULT CHARGE

(no shock that there is no byline for the article)

A MAN allegedly ran down his sister with his car after her cat urinated on his computer.  The woman, 19, received a fractured spine, a broken leg and a collapsed lung and remains in serious condition in hospital.  The stoush allegedly began after the woman's cat urinated on her brother's computer at a house in Winmalee in the Blue Mountains.  Police said the man, 20, dragged his sister across the floor and threw her cat into the car.  The woman was then struck by the car outside the home.  Police charged the brother with common assault and negligent driving.

I just want to pick through this 'news' for a little bit.  Police didn't charge him with attempted murder?  Negligent driving?  What?  Is this such a normal occurrence that it's called a common assault? 

Okay, hold on a minute, negligent driving.  It seems to me that there was nothing negligent about the brother's driving.  To me, it seems he certainly meant to run over his sister with the car.  Oh, wait a minute.  Maybe he actually meant to throw the sister in the car and run over the cat.  Yeah, that's what he was trying to do but he became disoriented by his rage and mixed up his sister with the cat.  Sure, now I can see that it was negligent driving.  He didn't really mean to fracture his sister's spine, leaving her an invalid for life (if she survives).

How is this okay on any level.  I understand that the odor of cat urine can drive any man crazy.  Just in the last weeks I myself have come to a place of feline hatred.  Our next door neighbor has three cats.  Two of them look like they have permanent burs in their hair.  These long haired pseudo-rodents have been wandering our neighborhood which,  in the best case scenario would be looking for mice to eat, but I'm pretty sure they have been simply using my yard as a port-a-toilet.  Every once in a while when return home later at night, I can see the reflection of the eyes of these cats - evil looking things.  They have this pleased look on their face when they see me as if they are saying, "Yeah, merry Christmas.  Your present is in the backyard and guess what?  I didn't flush." 

So, I shoo them off trying to remember to put on my checklist for the next day find uncovered cat feces in backyard.

I'm a busy person though and I rarely remember that my backyard is a litterbox for the neighbors demoncats.  I do remember, though, when I begin to mow and I chunk up little, smelly logs placed in little, smelly piles.  It would be one thing if I just chewed them up in my lawnmower, but the reek from these little feline logs is overwhelming and more than once, my children have found me curled up over the handle bars of the mower retching. 

"Daddy, are you okay?"

I point to the little pile I've just run over.  They scatter.  As I read that I notice that I scatter is a pun.  Scat, scatter... obviously the scent of cat excrement is doing something wrong to me. 

So, what I've begun to do is to make a lap around the yard every morning searching for these little land mines.  Sick, I know, but I take a plastic bag with me and pick up the steaming little piles and traipse across the street to line up the poo in the neighbors driveway right underneath her car tires.  (I do this in the dark because it wouldn't look good for the pastor to be seen taking vengeance on the neighbor - but, I can't help myself).  I imagine that every morning, as the neighbor drives somewhere, she arrives at her place and things, "What is that smell?"

Oh yes, she should know what that smell is.  If only her cat pooped in her own yard.

But never once have I thought to myself, I think it really would be a good idea for me to walk across the street, mangy cat in hand, throw the cat in my car and run my neighbor over.  Really, I've never thought that.  Call the animal services, yes.  Negligent driving, no.

At the end of the Courier Mail's article, I didn't add the last sentence.  I wanted to savor it for the journalistic, Pulitzeresque writing. 

The cat was not hurt.

That's where my mind was going.  I'm glad they added that last little tidbit in.  As if the cat's wellbeing had any bearing on the article other than to make light of the tragedy that has just happen.  Of course, this incident probably does not stand on its own and if this twenty-year-old and nineteen-year-old explosive brother sister combo were living at home together, there's going to be some fireworks sometimes.  Even though the Courier Mail mentioned the health of the cat, it failed to bring up the real question of the story...

Is the computer okay? 

Here's the news this week.  I look forward to adding a few more articles from the Courier Mail.  It definitely adds spice to life.

The Coach

I don't know if anyone has truly lived until they have coached 8th and 9th grade girls basketball. 

During the first term of the 2012 school year, I was asked to lead the boys basketball teams.  With visions of being the next Phil Jackson or Bobby Knight (without the chair-throwing tirades) I stepped out onto the cement, eyes brimming with excitement at the fifty boys that longed to throw the ball through the hoop.  I, of course, felt like I could motivate the young men - they could look up to me (a few of them peered down); like Gene Hackman in the movie Hoosiers, I would take these country boys to the big city and make champions of them, raise them above all expectations.

And then I found out that most of them could not even dribble the ball.  Some of them had come to basketball simply to avoid the general aggressiveness and violence of rugby.  After the first practice, I surveyed the fifty young men at my basketball disposal, and inwardly shook my head.  Fifteen were sitting along the fence, in the shade, chewing fingernails, shaking their heads sideways a la Bieber to keep the hair out of their faces.  Because sports are mandatory at the school, you have to choose something but, unfortunately for some of the boys, the Zumba class was full.

So, they came to me, awkward and, in some cases, almost completely immobile.  All of the visions of national championship glory (which of course there is none) came melting down around my head and the stark reality hit me:  Basketball is not really a sport that is taken very seriously in the Lockyer Valley, is it?

Don't get me wrong, there are a few good players on the team - we could pull together a starting five that wasn't tooooooo bad.  The point guard, not a bad dribbler, fancied himself a future Kobe Bryant, except he couldn't dribble with his left hand and had never made a shot farther than six feet out (that's not entirely true; most of the boys at recess practice half-court shots.  Just the kind of shot that comes in handy in most basketball games).  One boy, who is at least 6'5 and still growing, could be a pretty good player as soon as he figures out how all of his limbs work together for the good of the whole body.  I laughed with him one time as he gathered in a rebound and was so intent on keeping the ball away from other players, high above his head, that he forgot his feet were moving as she shuffled ten feet across the court.  The other players looked like gnats trying to swoop in and swat the ball out of his big hands.

Coaching the boys - it was fun.  By the end of the term we had established some basic rules for the game, the boys wanted to play, sitting on the bench was difficult for them, we won a few games and learned how to be a team.  No Mike Kzkryencsefski (I know that's not how it's spelled but you know who I'm talking about if you follow basketball) am I, but I could have done worse.

But girls basketball...

How do you motivate a pre-teen girl to exercise or even sweat (gasp! is such a thing possible?).  My first (and only) day of training with the girls was an opportunity to make me smile.  As I gathered the girls around me, perhaps like a hen with chicks, each of them unsuccessfully attempting to hold a basketball in their hands or under their arms, I asked how many of them had ever played basketball before.  They all looked around at each other then one girl raised her hand and said, "My brother and I played in the back yard once." 

I definitely have my work cut out for me.  Eleven girls on the team, ten of whom have an understanding that a basketball is round, and that's about it.  Many of the girls have played an Australian sport called netball which is similar to basketball in the fact that you must put a ball through a hoop ten feet in the air, but completely different in that there is no dribbling of the ball, no backboard, and if someone is shooting you must stand three feet away from them. 

The transition to basketball proves difficult for them.

I try to show them some basic skills.  Dribbling the ball is for the most part outside their skillset even when no one is guarding them.  One of the girls came back to me so excited, jumping up and down, giggling and shouting at the top of her voice, "I DRIBBLED THE BALL ALL THE WAY TO THE OTHER END OF THE COURT.  I ONLY STOPPED TWICE!"

This is not even the funniest thing:  during layup drills, we had to stop intermittently for some team congratulation time when any one of the girls would actually make a basket.  As one girl would awkwardly toss up a two handed pass/shot/backboard shatterer and it would go in, the girls would clap wildly and cheer, "We made one!  We made one!"  At least we've got good team spirit, how 'bout you?

We survived practice.  Not that it makes too much difference, but Australian basketball players should be better than American players because they have to factor in windspeed and humidity when shooting.  All of our games are outdoors played on cement or asphalt courts many of which are not kept in the best condition.  One of the boys games I had to clear a dead rat from underneath our basket before the game began.

So, the girls basketball team road the bus to Toowoomba the other day.  It's about a forty-five minute ride up the mountain range.  The girls sat at the back of the bus surrounded by the rugby team, the boys volleyball team and futsol team (don't worry, I'd never heard of it either, but it's like indoor soccer).  Because there were only nine girls on the traveling team and they were surrounded by pubescent boys, I guess it's safe to say they weren't focusing on the upcoming game. 

We departed the bus in a flurry of hair tossing, giggling and sly over the shoulder looks.  I knew that it would be a long afternoon.  Trekking across the grass to the sun drenched, exposed basketball courts, one of the girls asked me, "Coach, do you think we are going to win today?"  Staring straight ahead I said, "Nope."  Taken aback, I think she was trying to decide if I was serious.  We kept walking, she behind me at this point and I turned around and said, "I don't think we're going to win; I know we're going to win!"  The young girl gave out a 'woohoo' and waited for the other girls to catch up to her.  At that point I thought to myself, when exactly is lying to a child a sin?

The other team, dressed in their brilliant red school uniforms - all twenty of them, took the court.  The 'coach' from the other team approached me wondering 'how we were going to do this.' 

"Well, I was thinking we could play seven at a time, you know, get more of the girls playing..."  She kind of let the statement trail off as if hoping I would not know the rules for basketball which include a maximum of five players per team on the court at a time.  Holy Moses. 

"I think," I said while placing my referee's whistle over my head, "That we'll just stick with the rules Mr. Naismith had planned when he invented the game of basketball and go with five at a time."  I didn't really say that, but my words had the same tone.  "Do you mind if I do the refereeing?" I asked.

"No, no, you go ahead.  I don't even know the rules anyway."  You think?

So we began and my girls, I call them 'my' now because that's the way coaches feel when you become a team, my girls were winning at half-time.  Energized by my incredible coaching/reffing skills, we scored six whole baskets in the first half to lead by two points at the break.  I thought to myself, Can we really win this game?  Can I be a present day Nostradamus by predicting this win?

You know when you say or think things and then recover with a retort to yourself, I shouldn't have said/thought that.  Now I'm going to jinx it, well...

For the second half, I don't think we dribbled the ball down the entire length of the court.  We didn't even attempt a shot.  The only time the girls got excited was when the other team dribbled the ball off their own leg out of bounds.  My girls played netball defense meaning they stood three feet away from the shooter, behind her, waiting for the eleven attempts to be over so that the excitement of us taking the ball out of bounds could begin again. 

The other team scored thirty-two consecutive points dealing us a 50-18 defeat.  I knew we were really in for it when, at three-quarter time, our girls were exhausted.  The other team had twenty girls playing rotating them out at quarters; my nine just couldn't keep up even when they were playing netball defense.  The reality of our loss hit me when one of the girls tugged on my sleeve during the fourth quarter while I was refereeing and said, "Coach, coach, I hurt my ankle."  She hadn't even been on the court at the time.  I looked down at her ankle.  No swelling, no bruising, nothing... 

"I think you're going to be okay," I said.  She looked at me with pouting eyes and then it hit me - I have no idea how to motivate this girl to push through the 'pain.' 

"Coach, I need a bandage." 

"Fine," I said.  "There's the medical kit; wrap it up if you need."  She limped over to the medical bag, rummaged through it, and proceeded to put the ancient wrap around her ankle making sure everyone else on the team could see how she was struggling with her 'injury.'  As she finished up, I felt a tug at my sleeve. 

"Coach, I hurt my ankle."  I don't know how I kept my eyes from rolling.  "I need a bandage."

"I don't see a bruise," I said.

"I think the damage is internal."

I motioned with my head to the medical bag and asked the rest of the team, "Is there anyone that can play basketball?"  A few raised their hands but one girl with long brown hair and milky brown eyes said, "Coach, I can't play anymore."

For heaven's sake.  "Did you hurt your ankle, too?" I asked.

"No coach, it's my knee.  Look," she pointed to her left knee.  "I've got a splinter."

This is going to be a really fun year.  I'm serious when I say that.  As much as they might frustrate my minimal basketball sensibilities, I love the fact that they are willing to just be young ladies trying to do something different.  They are all distinct, like snowflakes on a glacier, each one needing something different than all the rest and it is up to me to figure out what motivates these girls.  And one day, when they make a basket, or get a rebound or even make it all the way down the court dribbling the whole time without stopping, they will turn to me to rejoice.

and then I realize again, you've never truly lived until you help someone else - especially kids.

Mothers Day

My mom and grandma came to visit us in Australia over the Eastertime. 

I guess you never really know what to expect when matriarchs come to visit.  For some people, Mom and Grandma take on varied roles ranging from Queen Bee to trident wielding Ursula from the Little Mermaid.  Others mothers are content with having the role of their mother remain just as it always has since they were infants: mother is a comfort blanket, sustenance provider, source of all goodness and mercy - some mothers are quite comfortable never letting their children grow up needing to be 'mommy' well into adult years and at times, I watch with squeamishosity when couples who have been married five to ten years still make no decision together without consulting the bethroned maidens of the family.

My mother and grandmother ride comfortably down the middle; their role of matriarch is a title of honor that has been earned through years of toiling, taking care of tear-stained faces, cleaning up vomit at three o'clock in the morning, sitting in a terrycloth bathrobe holding a frightened eight-year-old child who can't understand why the fever is making him see things.  My grandma and mother have eased into their respective roles as sustainer of family relations, but they have ceased to be the 'everything' that children need when they are growing up.

Instead of everything, they are something special.  The very fact that they live nine thousand miles away on the other side of the planet makes their trip here something extraordinary.  My grandmother hadn't been on a plane for years, well before my grandfather died.  Whenever one thinks about making a big trip, there is always some anxiety about how the trip will go; but to make a trip to Australia at the age of 87 - that, too, is something special.

As Grandma fretted and worried the weeks before she came, my mother told me what she was anxious about.

"What if I get sick?  I don't want to interrupt Reid's family life."

"I don't want to get in the way.  They have a small house the way it is."

"Oh, Reid will be taking too much time for us.  Won't we just be a bother?"

If I were eighty-seven years old and traveling to the other side of the planet, I'd be worrying about things like, "Did I pack my extra toupe?  I don't want to be caught outside without my hair.  If I get sick, I'm not going to be able to do all the things that I want to do.  Where's my ticket?  Did we buy tickets yet?  We're going to go where?  We're going to see whom?  Snnnnncchhhh -( that's me falling asleep in seven seconds in the middle of a conversation)"

My grandma is with it.  Not like a cool, hip grandma that gets tattoos and colors her hair and pretends to be someone she's not (or some age that she's certainly passed), but she's got hearing like an owl.  In fact, sometimes I think she is part owl, not just because she hears everything - I purposely tried whispering a few times just to see how much she was absorbing - but when she plays cards, or games with the girls, when something goes right she kind of hoots.  She'll play a card and go "Hoo hoo" and giggle her way to victory.  Barn owl, she's got to be part barn owl.

My mom, on the other hand, is like a dingo.  Follow me into the strangest analogy ever, and no, I don't think my mother looks or behaves like a dingo, but most people, myself included, are told that the dingo makes no sound, has no bark, but that is false.  Even though the dingo makes very little noise, they do have distinguishing sounds but they are heard infrequently.  Usually, chuffing sounds, small moans and such. 

The week before Easter, we went to the Glasshouse mountains to enjoy it's close proximity to the beach while at the same time enjoying the wonderful hiking trails and parks that surround the area.  The second morning, we decided to hike Ngungun mountain.  From a distance, this variation in topography looks underwhelming, but when you start hiking it, it is more mountain than molehill.  Christine, the girls and I had undertaken the mountain at various times being exhausted by the time we reached the top but taken aback by the view once we reached it.  So, we decided to take my mom up for the view.  Grandma decided that the two kilometer hike didn't work very well with her cane so she stayed back with my in-laws to prepare for the eventual raising of the flag on the summit. 

We set out with vigor; my mother did quite well stepping up the steadily rising slope chasing my three daughters whose vast reserves of energy might have taken them on a step ladder to the moon if given a chance.  But halfway up the mountain we encounter the hardest part; a vertical climb littered with scree and old tree handholds at an almost seventy-five degree angle.  I didn't have to see my mother's face to know what was going on inside of her head, "What have I gotten myself into?"  And just as more, "I'm going to make this if it's the last thing that I do - and I think it probably will be the last thing that I do."

She started up the slope; I could tell that she was getting tired.  She was making chuffing noises warning us that perhaps, just a little bit, that she had bit off more than she could swallow.  We didn't push her or press her but she was more worried about holding us up than she was herself.  I think that trait runs mightily in the matriarchs. 

"Whew," she said wiping her brow taking a swig of water.  With great joy, she watched my daughter climbing up into the caves seemingly oblivious to the inherent danger that gravity can cause.  "This is going to take longer than you thought with an old lady along."

"It's fine, Mom," I said taking a seat beside her.  "This is vacation.  It doesn't matter how long it takes."

Chuff.  Chuff.  She wasn't going to complain.  In fact, I don't know if I've ever heard her complain before, at least not in my presence.  Maybe it's selective memory, but that's something I can be proud of her for.  Chuff.  Chuff.

"You all go ahead.  I'll catch up with you at the top." 

Nice try, Mom.  We waited for her to catch her breath and slowly but surely, we ascended one step at a time as families do, soaking in the sights of increasing altitude noticing the blueness of the sky, the greeness of the trees and bigness of the world.  Each step farther was one step farther into unchartered territory for her.  As we get older, we tend to always do the things that we've always done, to play it safe.  But Mom did not do that and when we reached the top the vista was powerful; the three hundred and sixty degree panaroma included volcanic plugs of mountains long since eroded, the ocean just a few miles away, pineapple and macadamia nut plantations...

And a swarm of gnats. 

As she came back from the peak, my mother was happy, but waving her hands in front of her face, scrunching up her nose trying to keep the insects out while maintaining breath.  "Let's go," she said as she smiled.  I think she had four gnats running laps on her front teeth.  (I just made that up, but embellishing a story is always better than the real thing.) 

On the way back down, it was not as tiring but I could hear a little moan escape my mother's voicebox.  Like the dingo, which moans when it wants to return home, my mother's small mewls were her readiness to return down the mountain to escape the quivering in her legs.  We had a good laugh part way down (after the vertical descent, of course) because Mom's legs felt as if they would be good egg beaters.

After descending the mountain, taking water breaks here and there, listening for kookaburras, whip-birds and any other aves that might be in the area, we made it back to the car where we all gratefully jumped in.  I looked at Mom who was as red-faced as I from exertion and read a silent 'thank you' in her eyes.  To be pushed past the boundaries of what is normal is a priceless thing.  I got to share a really good moment with my mom and my family.  Those are building blocks of memories - going past the normal.

For the next two weeks, the barn owl, the dingo and the offspring (I guess I would be a 'barngo') enjoyed hikes (my grandmother did two hikes that were well over three miles long), traveled, played games - did it all.  As I looked back at the pictures taken over the two weeks that they were here, I noticed that I was almost always walking behind them watching them in wonder, whether holding my children's hands, stopping to look at scenery or simply just breathing in life.  It is the beauty of life to behold generations that take time together. 

That's the specialness of Mom's and Grandma's.  Now, I have these memories for Mother's day this year.