Colleen Conrad

I sit in the bleachers next to my dad and try to pretend like I’m not crying. 

I watch my mom cheer along with a dozen high school girls, all in various stages of elation (tears, screaming, laughing), as one of them hoists a trophy over her head and presents it to the crowd as if to share it with them.  I can already see that image in the local papers, along with a similar picture of that very girl—the lone senior and captain on the roster—hugging my mother, her coach. 

My mom coaches varsity softball in my hometown, and over the last few years she has enjoyed an impressive series of winning seasons.  Tonight’s win marks her second regional championship, and redemption after a disappointing loss that unexpectedly knocked her team out of play-offs last year. 

I flew home to surprise my mother in the middle of the series, hoping to meet and cheer on the girls through to the last games of their season.  I’d heard about them in every conversation with my mom for the last four months—just see the recipe below.

And so it is that I hold back tears as I watch these girls celebrate.  I just met them, but I know them nonetheless.  What is it about girls’ sports that makes these moments so special?  In this case, with these teammates, it’s the level of support that they offer each other.  It’s the unique personalities that they celebrate, in turn, about each other.  I’ve experienced that type of respect and love enough times to recognize it when it’s there. 

When we get home from the game, I sit down with my parents for a celebratory drink.  My mom’s best friend—a teammate of hers from college, as a matter of fact—and her husband join us.  An outstanding athlete himself in his own day, Norman comments on the game:

“You know what’s different about girls’ sports?” he asks us rhetorically.  He talks about how when he played baseball, no one talked to you when you struck out at a critical point in the big game, or told you it was going to be okay.  You put your head down, he says, grabbed your glove, and waited in shame for the inning to end so that you could attempt to redeem yourself.  He points out that in tonight’s game, when one of the girls would strike out, her teammates patted her on the back, hugged her, and told her to keep her head up.  

We all nod at him in agreement.  I recall how, in the last of my mom’s games that I’d watched, the girls all hollered at me from the bus after the victory.

“You’re good luck, Colleen!” they shouted.  They wanted to share their success with me—someone that they’d just met the day before.  They wanted everyone to be a part of the win.  I neglected to point out to them that they’d managed to win every single game already this season despite my absence up until that point. 

I’ve certainly been a part of teams that were more Mean Girls than The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, but my mom’s current team is full of encouraging, kind, positive young women.  And that’s the kind of team that makes me want to cry, whether they win or lose.  They’re the young women that remind me why girls’ sports are so valuable. 

Aside from the confidence and positive body image that studies show girls develop through athletics, it’s the relationships and the team mentality that stand out to me now.  Amidst the cyber-bullying, teen mom reality shows, and vampire-boyfriend romances that dominate teenage culture right now, girls’ sports have stood strong as a place where young women love each other for their talents and for who they are, rather than what they look like or who they date.  They build each other up and work together; they accept each others’ flaws and admire their strengths; they mourn the losses and they revel in the wins together.  Just like Emily raising the trophy to the stands to share it with as many people as she can, these girls are selfless and sacrificing for each other.  They are a unit.  A thriving, cooperative, generous team in the purest sense of the word. 

I’m almost envious that they have each other, and then I remind myself that I’ve had that before myself, and that I’m a better person because of it.

Recipe for a Team 

Ingredients:

1 good-natured, college-worthy pitcher with a staggering record of strikeouts (junior)

1 powerful, smart, over-achieving catcher (junior)

1 fiery and fast-as-lightning short stop, preferably already having made a verbal

commitment to a college team (junior)

1 third-baseman with soft hands that pick up every bunt and eat foul balls alive (junior)

1 designated hitter whose self-esteem will benefit from media praise for her

performance (sophomore)

1 first-baseman who has also played the lead in the school musical, with a voice and

energy that can barely be contained on the field (junior)

1 second-baseman with a challenging home life, hailing from a famous baseball family

(sophomore)

1 quirky and clever, hard-hitting leftfielder (sophomore)

1 young right-fielder, still acclimating to life as a varsity athlete (freshman)

1 spunky, determined leader in centerfield (senior; captain)

*Blend pitcher and catcher until firm.  Repeat ground balls and double-plays with remaining infield ingredients and combine the two mixtures.  Pepper outfield with pop-flies and hard skipping ground balls until tough.  Add to remaining ingredients.  Sprinkle with team bonding activities, fund-raising efforts, and a challenging spring schedule.  Place on a newly-skinned field.  Add heat and enjoy the show.

I’m grateful for…

…the lessons that my middle school ultimate players teach me about character, sincerity, and laughter.

…Facebook.  No, seriously.  Living as far away as I do from many of the people I love most in the world, FB has helped keep me connected to them.

…this quiet Sunday afternoon to do with as I please.  No grading, no coaching, no talking, even.  Ah, blissful time.  Peaceful solitude.

…my fast-approaching summer break.  Sometimes being a teacher rocks.

…the dozens of gorgeous roses sitting on my counter from a group of amazing kids and parents.

…the truly wonderful friends that I’ve made in my life, scattered around the country and the world.

I recently wrote about vampire boyfriends.  You know the type—brooding loners with baggage who make the good girls swoon.  The boys who are equally dashing and damaged.  They’re so bad for us, but we can’t seem to stay away.  They’re our vampires; simultaneously dangerous and irresistible.  They bleed us dry, but we keep coming back for more.

But every Dylan has his Brandon, and every Edward has his Jacob.  For every blood-sucking vampire, there’s an affectionate and snuggly werewolf.  Just as Bella is drawn to Edward’s cold, desperate, controlling nature, so is she comforted by Jacob’s warm, safe, loyalty.  She’s torn between the cat-like vampire and the puppyish werewolf.  Ah, how to choose…

I’ve had my fair share of vampires, but my first real boyfriend was definitely a werewolf.

It was the end of eighth grade.  Nick* was a year older than I was, and I’d never really noticed him despite his friendly personality and his impressive athletic ability.  He was new to my town that year, and excelled at soccer, basketball and baseball.  He was an honors student.  Smiley.  Nice to everyone.  Teachers loved him.  He was good-looking in an un-intimidating, affable kind of way.  By no means hot, but certainly attractive.  His smile was absolutely goofy, but he used it so frequently that you couldn’t help but grin along with him. 

Immediately after we started going out, Nick and I fell into a comfortable routine of talking on the phone every night, seeing each other every weekend, and spending time with each other’s families.  It was so…easy.  So uncomplicated.  Nick was every bit as kind, gentle, and dedicated as Jacob Black.  Just as hopelessly romantic, and just as endearingly protective (even to the point of being whiney). 

Perhaps the best part about werewolf boyfriends is how they make us feel.  I was never self-conscious with Nick.  He made me feel good about myself, and secure with our relationship.  He never acted “too cool” around me to his friends.  He told me I was pretty and smart.  For every game of his that I attended, he’d cheer me on at my sporting events.  In some ways, I have him to thank for the level of academic success that I experienced in high school, because he encouraged me to sign up for a notoriously-challenging advanced history class as a freshman.  I still remember his response when I asked him what he thought about the class. 

“I think you can do it,” he said, quite simply. 

And so I did.  And it quite likely changed the trajectory of my academic career.

Now, like any wolfboy, Nick had his flaws, too.  He was weepy to the point of irritating at times.  He was mildly possessive, and reluctant to take risks.  While I enjoyed the security of the relationship, it naturally grew boring and we eventually parted ways after close to a year.

My next serious boyfriend was Aaron.  A vampire, of course.

So who is the preferred choice?  The risk-taking vampire, or the reliable werewolf? 

I suppose that if you’re an adolescent girl like Bella, looking for adventure and someone who will make your heart beat wildly in your chest, it’s probably Edward the vampire.  But I think that every teenager needs a werewolf, too.  Because for every time that the vampire lets her down, she needs a werewolf to pick her back up again. 

Hmm…Calling all vampire-werewolf hybrids…

*Name has been changed

I hated 7^th grade.

Hated.  It.

My best friend at the time was Marie Kendricks,* and looking back I still think she was one of the best friends I’ve ever had.  She was loyal and gentle and smart.  We spent our Saturday afternoons riding our bikes around my neighborhood and writing stories about her horses.  We were friends because we genuinely liked each other.  She was there for me during the tumultuous transition between elementary and junior high school; childhood and adolescence.  A time when I was still figuring out who I was, and whether I actually liked that person at all. 

I was also tangentially friends with the “cool” clique.  But I always felt like I was friends with them only by association.  Like they never actually called me or wanted me around or really knew me the way that Marie did. 

So despite my friendship with Marie, I was unhappy.  Regardless of the fact that I had a supportive family, was voted class athlete, and went out with some of the cutest boys, I felt like a loser.  I was miserable.

By 8^th grade, I’d figured things out a bit more.  I developed a circle of friends that I really felt close to.  Girls I trusted and liked.  Marie and I drifted apart as kids do, but my new friendships were based on some of the same properties.  I felt satisfied.  Comfortable. 

At the end of 9^th grade, a friend commented to me that I’d been part of the “popular crowd” back in 7^th grade.  I was flabbergasted. 

I realized then that while others may have seen me as an insider, I’d felt like an outcast and a wannabe.  The perception didn’t matter.  Apparent popularity sucked.  It was hollow.  Empty.  Lonely.  (If only I’d seen Heathers sooner!)

Many years later, I often find myself in the same position.  Still striving.  Still feeling hurt when I’m not invited directly to a happy hour or a party.  It doesn’t even matter if the event includes people I like or not, or if it’s something that I want to attend.  I still feel bad when I’m left out.  Granted, these emotions don’t dominate my life in the way that they did when I was in junior high, but they’re present nonetheless. 

I know, I know…It’s terribly lame and pathetic, and I should have long-since outgrown it.  One could even argue that I’m asking for too much, because I know full-well that I have more than my fair share of amazing friends.  But what can I say?  I suppose I’m still a 7^th grader at heart.  I’m thirty years old, and I still want to be part of the popular crowd!  I still want everyone to like me! 

Do any of us ever really get over middle school?

*Names have been changed.

Who can name the character and Broadway show that brought us this brilliant commentary on popularity?

POPULAR! You’re gonna be popular!
I’ll teach you the proper ploys,
When you talk to boys,
Little ways to flirt and flounce, ooh!
I’ll show you what shoes to wear!
How to fix your hair!
Everything that really counts to be…

POPULAR! I’ll help you be popular!
You’ll hang with the right cohorts,
You’ll be good at sports,
Know the slang you’ve got to know.
So let’s start,
‘Cause you’ve got an awfully long way to go!

A friend noticed that my last few posts have been about “dealing with issues.”  I declined his very generous offer to come to Austin and “kick some ass,” but figured that now might be a good time to post something a bit more lighthearted.  More optimistic.  Or not quite so weepy, at least.

Thus begins my Gratitude Journal. 

Yes, there are days when it all seems like too much, when I would prefer to curl up under the covers and forget the world, but what about the other days?  The days when I can see the forest for the trees?  The days when I get some perspective and see the beauty all around me?

Today I’m grateful for….

…Cold spring days in Austin.  (Such a pleasant surprise!)

…Experiences that remind me how valuable my job is, and help me to believe that I’m good at it.

…Hey Cupcake.  My favorite is the red velvet.

…Leftover Indian food.  Mmmm….

“Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.”

–Markus Zusak, The Book Thief (p. 80)

I have some amazing friends.  Truly loyal friends.  Hilarious, intelligent, call-in-a-crisis friends.  Friends in Massachusetts, California, New York, Pennsylvania, Austin, TX…

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t get lonely.

In fact, there are times when I hit dark patches, and even my oldest, dearest, best friends can’t pull me back out into the light.

So as lucky as I am to have these friends, and as grateful as I am for them, I feel lucky as well to have words.

Because my pen and my journals saw me through years of adolescent angst.  Dog-eared pages in my favorite books (and even my not-favorites, at times) talked me through college homesickness.  Now my laptop is getting me through…well, life.

Words are my lifeline.  They’re my friends when no one is around, or when I can’t face even the people who know me best.  They’re the best therapy that I know of. 

The quote under my senior picture in my high school yearbook is by Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls:

“Would you trade your words for freedom?  That’s the barter for a blind man.”

(This is also the quote below my email signature now, twelve years later.)

And of course the answer to Amy’s question is, unequivocally, no.  It goes without saying that I never would be free–much less happy, or comforted, or fulfilled–without my words.

When I was a teenager, my dentist noticed that I was grinding my teeth in my sleep. 

            “Why?” I asked him.

            “Probably stress,” he said. 

            At the time, all I could think was that he was telling me I was stressed out at the same time that he was diagnosing me with a condition that was doing permanent, continual damage to my teeth. 

“Great,” I thought.  “Tell me more things that are wrong with me.  That will cut down on my stress.”

I didn’t think I was anxious back then.  I didn’t feel like a worrier.  In fact, I was surprised by my dentist’s assessment.  I honestly thought that I was pretty carefree, despite the fact that I often struggled to fall asleep.  (When I was eleven my dad suggested that I say Hail Marys to combat my insomnia.  Gee, Dad, thanks for that sound advice.) 

Then one night, after college, I was so overcome with frustration and tension that I went around my apartment slamming doors as hard as I could.  I suppose I could have gone for a run, or bought a punching bag, but slamming those doors just felt so satisfying.

Roughly a year after my door-slamming incident, I moved to Austin.  And here I am still. 

I remember being so startled by the ferocity of the thunderstorms here.  I’ve always loved thunderstorms, and there’s nothing like a late-summer T-storm in New England, when the clouds roll in like gangbusters and the sky opens up with thunder and lightning. 

But let me tell you, the storms in Texas put them to shame.  Here, they’re just so loud, so sudden, so angry.  We don’t get much rain here in ATX, so when it storms it’s like the skies have been holding in all of their fury and their rage and their blustering, and then just poured it down on us all at once.

I guess, in a way, they’re like me.

Because when I was in high school I dealt with my stress with some teeth-grinding and trouble falling asleep.  I wasn’t outwardly expressing it, aside from through my writing.  But now, as a grown woman, I’m so painfully filled with anxiety all the time that I spend most of my life stewing inside my own head.  And once in a while, I turn into an all-out wild-and-crazy thunderstorm.  (And not in a Girls Gone Wild kind of way.)  I suppose it’s fitting that the most impressive storms I’ve ever seen have taken place in this city, at this time of my life, when my own emotions are raging out of control.

So maybe there’s a reason why I’ve always embraced thunderstorms.  Maybe it’s because I see something of myself in them.  I just wish I had a better raincoat.

 “‘Writing is different,’ Salinger insists.  ‘Other people get into occupations by accident or design; but writers are born.  We have to write.  I have to write.  I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I’d say writer, even if I’d never sold a word.  Writers write.  Other people talk‘” (Kinsella 109).

I’m reading Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella right now.  Being a huge fan of the movie Field of Dreams, it was only a matter of time before I picked up the original text.

I didn’t know that the fictional, reclusive writer Terence Mann (played by James Earl Jones) was originally written as none other than J.D. Salinger.  I’d always simply assumed that he was based on the writer, as they had a number of obvious similarities.  Both had books that were simultaneously banned and hailed as classics; both were seen as literary heroes; and both were mysteriously withdrawn in later life.  I don’t even think that the film tries to hide the parallels between the two writers, aside from changing the name and the race.  

The jury is still out on how I feel about the book on the whole.  Sometimes I feel like I’m trudging through an excess of heavy-handed figurative language (“Shoeless Joe Jackson glides over the plush velvet grass, silent as a jungle cat” [17]; ” “a moon bright as butter” [265]; “the strangle of grass, bent by evening breezes, peers inside” [135]).  Other times I’m moved to tears by the nostalgic, magical quality of the writing. 

Either way, the segments featuring Kinsella’s imagined version of J.D. Salinger are fascinating.  It’s like Kinsella the writer is giving himself–and his readers–an opportunity to answer all of the questions that we have about a legendary, puzzling figure in American literary history.  Why did Salinger retreat into solitude?  What happened to his prolific writing career?  What was he LIKE?  Especially given Salinger’s recent death, it’s a timely piece of reading.  Fictional, of course, and pure fancy, but engaging nonetheless.  I feel like I’m cheating, somehow; like I’m kissing a Paul Newman impersonator or dancing with a mannequin dressed as Patrick Swayze.

Ray Kinsella grills Salinger, asking him all of those burning questions we want answered.  As they travel the country together on a mystical journey, Salinger becomes increasingly likable and down-to-earth.  A man I imagine to have been withdrawn and curmudgeonly is portrayed as easy-going and gentle.  At one point, Ray asks why “Jerry” never talks about writing.  The writer replies that talking about writing is different from discussing any other occupation (quoted above).

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit that I can talk about just about anything…including my writing.  And I’m not sure it’s fair to say that other people aren’t born into what they do, because I do think that there are born mechanics and teachers and CEOs.  But the point about writers being writers regardless of publication…Now that I agree with.

About two years ago I visited my best friend, Sarah, in New York.  My last night there, she took me to a party where I met a guy who had recently graduated with his MFA in creative writing.  He was working on a novel. 

When I asked him what he did, he replied, “I’m a writer.”  Just like that.

When he asked me what I did, I answered with the same.  “I’m a writer,” I told him simply, like I’d said it a million times before.  It slipped out before I could even contemplate its truth.

Maybe it was the fact that I’d had a few too many drinks that night, or maybe I was just repeating his words like a lame parrot.  But when I told Sarah, she asked me, “Don’t you think that means that writing is your true calling?” 

So the point above is well-taken, and it made me sigh with relief when I read it.  Writers aren’t defined by publication, they’re established at birth.  Like me.

My current manuscript began as a third-person narrative.  But when I realized that I was losing the thread of the plot and central conflict, I shifted to first-person.  I feel like I’ve picked up that thread again.  I feel like the story is stronger; firmer; right.

One of the main obstacles in this change is the struggle to establish my protagonist’s voice as authentic and believable.  She’s a 15-year-old girl, and it’s clear that my former omniscient narrator used vocabulary that may not occur to a teenager.  Some critique partners pointed this out, and I agreed with their assessment.  So I began to adjust my diction to fit the voice of an adolescent girl, which turned out to be yet another challenge.  I use those big words naturally; removing them from my vernacular isn’t easy.  I don’t even notice them most of the time, and when I do I wrestle with how to remove them.  What words do I use instead?  What would Taylor think here?  Say there? 

My research–primarily reading young adult novels and watching popular teen soaps–would indicate that kids actually appreciate the big words.  They respond to them.  The witty, intelligent teen banter is engaging and clever.  Granted, teenagers may not truly talk like that on a daily basis, but there’s no questioning the popularity of Twlight, Hunger Games, Dawson’s Creek, The Secret Life…

So I wonder:  Should I force my own hand to make different word choices?  If my character speaks to me using these words, should I force her to stop?  Or is that, in fact, condescending to my audience?  Kids are so much smarter than we often give them credit for.  Even if these words don’t come naturally to the average teen, kids can follow the lingo.  They understand.  They appreciate it and they grow from it.  Maybe that’s my job–my obligation–to let my character speak for herself in the way that she speaks to me.   Or perhaps I just need to make clearer choices about who my protagonist is.  Regardless, Taylor’s voice is a work in progress.