Disc in!

People don’t think of it as a spectator sport. There are no bleachers, no stadium seating, no admission tickets. And there’s always plenty of room in the parking lot. The sport of Ultimate is a well-kept secret in this area.

The Snowstorm City Ultimate League played every Tuesday this summer. My husband, my parents and I brought folding chairs and sat on the sidelines, amidst the bags of discs and clothing and water jugs and the players who were sitting on the ground, stretching as they waited their turn to sub in.

Boy in Black was captain of a team that included all four of my kids, plus Blonde Niece, some of our extras, and some Boy in Black’s teammates from the Snowstorm University team. It’s fun to watch a team when you know everyone. First Extra and Boy in Black have been friends since first grade, and they can communicate without words. First Extra is a handler, which means he’s good at throwing the disc, and Boy in Black is especially good at cutting, which means running to jump and catch the disc. I'd see First Extra take a quick glance in Boy in Black's direction, and then a split second later the disc would come arching through the air over the heads of other players while Boy in Black leaped to grab it.

Ultimate is an exciting game to watch. It’s fast-moving, so that there’s always something to see. Players make spectacular dives to catch a disc. Ultimate is about a million times more exciting than softball, a sport that is so slow-moving that I’ve never been able to watch for more than an inning. Because Ultimate is self-officiated, you never have to wait for an umpire or a referee: almost everything gets settled with just a few words.

“Foul!” one player will yell.
The player on the other team will shrug: “No contest.”

And then the disc is back in play ….

My son With-a-Why was the youngest player in the league -- the only player who ever sat on his mother's lap when he was subbing out -- and Boy in Black’s team was definitely the young team in the group. But playing against more experienced players challenged them, and it was great to see them improve as the summer went on. On the sidelines, I could often hear the more experienced players talking to younger players, giving them advice and encouragement even when they were on opposite teams. Listening to the players joke around with each other and yell stuff to their teammates was almost as much fun as watching the game itself.



In both photos, the kid in the bright pink bandana is Boy in Black. He wears that same pink bandana every time he plays Ultimate. In the top photo, he's doing an offensive layout, a dive to catch the disc and score. The boy with the flourescent yellow shorts, black shirt, and curly ponytail is Shaggy Hair Boy. You can't see my daughter in the huddle -- she must be on the other side -- but that blonde ponytail belongs to Blonde Niece. And the kid dressed all in purple, who is almost as tall as the other players now? That's With-a-Why, who is no longer a little boy ....

Look! A minnow!

Whenever my husband and I visit the mountains, we take one morning to walk around Bryophyte Lake. Halfway around the lake is a bridge where we can sit in the sun, dangle our feet in the lake water, and talk. It's a quiet spot, and usually we're there alone, but this time we were entertained by a family of small children who came running down the bridge and were eager to look at the lake up close.

August night

Skater Boy and Long Dark Hair sit on the floor in the kitchen area, dumping boxes of cornstarch into a stockpot of water. They are either making a ridiculous amount of gravy or doing some kind of informal scientific experiment. “We’re making a non-Newtonian fluid,” Skater Boy says when I ask. Shaggy Hair Boy shows me how I can punch the fluid hard – and it acts like a solid. Long Dark Hair takes off his shoe to stick his foot in the pot. “One of these days, we’re going to fill a whole wading pool,” Boy in Black says.

Quick and With-a-Why, sitting on the carpet near the couch, play chess and trade trivia about the show Scrubs. Shaggy Hair Boy and Philosophical Boy spread a bedsheet on the table and dump out poker chips. Beautiful Smart Wonderful Daughter and Boy in Black lounge on the couch with their laptop computers open. My daughter says she’s editing something and Boy in Black says he’s doing research, but mostly they are talking to each other. Boy in Black and Quick get into an intellectual debate about the merits of different brands of breakfast cereal. “If the word fruit is spelled with double O’s, I can’t eat it,” says Quick. Six laptop computers are strewn about the room and one of them is playing the Ghostbuster song, rather loudly.

In just a few weeks, my three oldest kids – and almost all of my extras – will be leaving for college or grad school. It’s going to be awfully quiet here.

Headache

I love thunderstorms. I like to watch as trees bend in fierce winds, rain turns the world grey and misty, and lightning breaks the whole sky open. It feels luxurious to snuggle in a dry bed with a down quilt while thunder crashes outside the window and rain cascades down from gutters filled too quickly.

But the hours before a thunderstorm can be painful. Low-pressure systems wreak havoc with my head, triggering migraines that send me into a dark closet with an ice pack and an inability to handle anything.

I’ve learned some tricks to warding off migraines: getting enough sleep, staying hydrated, eliminating meat and dairy from my diet, meditating to reduce stress, running hot water on my hands and feet, staying away from triggers like cigarette smoke or new plastic, doing reiki on myself, drinking sports drinks with electrolytes, taking a nap as soon as I feel one coming on. Because I’ve gotten pretty good at anticipating migraines and taking care of myself, I don’t get them as often as I used to.

But still, this has been a difficult summer. We’ve had so many dramatic changes in weather that I’ve been fighting off headaches constantly. On Sunday, I had the worst migraine I’ve had in a few years; it was relief when the thunderstorm began that night, and the pressure in my head began to lift while I lay in bed and listened to the rain.

Morning on a mountain lake

Always, in the mountains, I like to wake up early and walk through the wet grass to the edge of the lake and watch while the sun and clouds decide what kind of day we're going to have.

Haunted

On summer nights, a ghost glides up and down the staircases at the old mountain hotel. That’s what they say. The building is more than 100 years old, but it still looks very much like it did for most of last century – a dining room with a tin ceiling and big windows, three floors of rooms overlooking a mountain lake, and wrap-around porches set with Adirondack chairs. I can see why a woman who spent summer evenings dancing in the mountains would come back in the afterlife to slide down the banisters.

I wasn’t scared of the ghost. I had a plan. If she came gliding past me as I walked back to our room at night, I’d introduce myself and say, “I bet you know my Dad. He was the accordion player.”

Yes, in summers during the 1950s, my father lived and worked at the mountain hotel, playing every evening in the building he called the Casino. The guests dressed up in those days, the women’s dresses swishing as they strode across the porches and gathered at the Casino to dance. Down in the bar, an old photo shows my father dressed in white, with a black bow tie and his accordion –looking like a well-groomed, short-haired version of my son Shaggy Hair Boy.

Of course, it's possible that the ghost might resent the fact that my father, age 78, is still alive and healthy, while she's been dead for years. As I walked up the staircase after dark, I began hoping she wasn't someone who had an unrequited crush on the young musician with the dark hair. It's a bit alarming to walk through a haunted building and realize that your safety might depend on how much your father flirted a certain ghost when she was young.

During our stay at the hotel, I kept telling my husband all the stories my father tells me when we visit the mountains every fall: “One dark night a car almost drove off the dock: the driver thought it was a bridge.” In the lobby, we looked through the old photo albums that held random photos of the inn looking as it had in the old days. The hotel was empty for most of the 1980s and 1990s – that’s when the rumors about the ghost had started – and only in 2003 did someone finally buy the place and begin the renovations.

As I sat with my husband on the balcony outside our room, I could hear the noises of the hotel around me: a family group giggling and pushing each other as they posed on the lawn for a photo in front of the lake, the crunch of tires on the gravel as guests arrived for dinner, the murmur of conversation from dinner guests eating on the porch, the thud of footsteps as a small child ran along the wooden porch. Plenty of life to keep that ghost company.

Back in the day

Gone to the mountains

I've gone to the mountains for a few days with my husband -- our annual trip to do a little hiking, perhaps canoe on a mountain lake, and spend a couple of nights in an old mountain inn.

Blueberry pie

Artist Friend always brags about what great pie crust he makes. But since he lives more than 500 miles away and I see him mostly at academic conferences, I’ve never actually tasted his pie crust.

Until now.

Last night, Artist Friend came to visit us here in Snowstorm Region. His brother, his nephew, and his niece were with him, stopping overnight on their way to the mountains for a week-long backpacking trip. Artist Friend walked in carrying blueberries and announcing his intention to make a pie.

We sat around and talked, and Artist Friend made a blueberry pie. The pie smelled so good as it baked that we ate it while it was still warm. I have to admit, that pie crust tasted pretty good. This morning, I made myself a cup of hot tea and ate the last piece of pie for breakfast just before I said goodbye to the group.

Auld lang syne

When I tell stories about childhood, I often mention Outdoor Girl. Throughout my school years, we had all kinds of adventures together, from horseback riding in a gravel pit to swimming in a pond on an eighth grade retreat to winter camping in the mountains. But I don’t see her often as an adult because she lives in The Middle of Nowhere, which is located somewhere in the south. She and her husband are farmers who raise cattle and dogs, and they don’t get away from the farm much. She comes back to Snowstorm Region sometimes to see her family, but often it’s the same week that my husband and I are off on our family vacation.

When she called Thursday night to say she was in town, we tried to figure out when we’d seen each other last. I’ve got a photo of her oldest son sitting with Boy in Black on her mother’s deck, their chubby toddler legs hanging over the edge. Both boys are now over six feet tall. So yeah, it’s been awhile.

But when I walked into her parents’ house last night, I was surprised by how things didn’t seem different at all. Her hair is white now instead of dark, but otherwise, she looks the same. Her parents – both warm, gracious people – still seem like family to me. Outdoor Girl and I jumped immediately into conversation about our lives, our kids, our work. I ended up staying for dinner – just like I used to when I was a teenager – and hanging out with the family. Thirty years have passed since Outdoor Girl and I graduated from high school – and we’ve been apart for all that time – but we had no trouble just picking up the conversation as if we were still riding the school bus home together.