Life Lessons From Behind the Plate

 

I did not ask for the job.

In fact, I had successfully avoided it for years.

But here I was on a hot Thursday evening trying to fiddle and fuddle with the umpire’s gear.

I was about to call balls and strikes for my son’s little league game.

Yikes!

Nervously, like someone who doesn’t quite belong, I crept behind the catcher and assumed my position at home plate. I thought about what “umpire voice” I might create. I might have even smiled at the idea that behind the COVID and umpire face masks and fashionable shin guards, I could become whoever I wanted for the next two hours.

I could be a bully umpire with a booming voice. I could be the friendly umpire who gave free advice to all within shouting distance. “Kid, make the tag this way at home plate. And by the way, when you invest, it is important to diversify your assets.”

I might torment these elementary school pitchers with a strike zone so small it would lead to temper tantrums on the mound. Or the opposite – calling a strike zone so lenient the hitters would snarl at me as I called strikes on pitches in the dirt or over their heads.

But as reality snuck in, I actually tried to do what good umpires do – stay out of the way and approach invisibility.

Around the 3^rd inning, still struggling to position my COVID and umpire facemasks, I noticed something interesting.

A perfect pitch came toward the plate. Down the middle, waist-high.

“Strike” I shouted in my best umpire voice.

I heard grumbles from batter and parents alike. These were noises of disgust, communicating something like, “Really, you called that a strike?”

I began to listen closer.

Every pitch, whether I called “ball” or “strike” and regardless of how clear the correct call was, there were those grumbles.

I quickly learned to silence this background noise, realizing there was no pitch where everyone was going to be happy with how I called it.

In a way, I wish life and work blatantly grumbled at everything I do as it did that day on the baseball diamond. It is quite liberating to know that you no longer live to please everyone around you. Behind home plate, it was clear that pleasing everyone was not possible.

And thus, even though I was there to “ump” while the little leaguers "played", now I was the one with the biggest smile of all. I might have even been the one having the most fun.

Now, if only I could get these two darn facemasks to stay on.

 

Good Things Lie Ahead

I am guessing you have felt it.

Maybe you have participated or contributed to it.

Exuberant hope

Unmasked optimism

After a year of living in fear and isolation, bound and gagged, there is a loosening of the bonds. We struggle and wriggle to get free.

Relaxed restrictions, a return of sports and indoor dining. Whispers of live music and public swimming pools about to return. Travel without guilt.

All of it like a fresh breeze on a summer evening, a break from the day’s heat endured.

Enjoy it, brothers and sisters.

I think of a patient I saw yesterday in the clinic, where I am still only seeing about 30% of my patients in-person. In this case we got to some deeper things that were going on with the person’s health and in their life. These are the things that are never listed on the “reason for visit” in medicine. As I got up to leave the room, I paused and shared, “I don’t know that we would have dug this deep if this had been a phone visit.” They nodded in agreement.

Take this opportunity to connect with people. That same intentionality that has led us to protect each other over the last year now a chance to connect with one another. There is a lot there under the surface. 14 months-worth of stuff, to be exact.

I also know that this next stage will be hard for many of us. It will be guided by social science and a year of conditioning to be wary and fearful as much it will be guided by the science of COVID prevalence and vaccine rates.

There was a moment in our Running Medicine group a week ago where we dealt with very different feelings about getting the group of masked runners and walkers into a bigger circle. There was clearly not a consensus to form a larger group, and so we kept the circles separate and small. It was not a moment to cite stats on transmissibility of COVID. It was a chance to listen to each other and do what was most comfortable for everyone present. A week later, the bigger circle formed.

Just as we have done since last March, let’s respect each other’s space in these months ahead. Space to digest a new CDC or state update in very different ways. One might exclaim “We aren’t ready to do that yet” while their neighbor exclaims, “It’s about time.” Neither end of the spectrum right or wrong.

Enjoy this stage of the journey.

Connect with others.

Give space and grace for those around you.

Good things lie ahead.

 

 

Petrichor Resplendence

Petrichor: a pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.The word is constructed from Greek petra, "rock", or petros, "stone", and īchōr, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.

 

The rain fell on our dry, weary, sandy expanse

Filling rivers and roots with life’s flow

 

Once again, ichor of the gods gushing forth

Pouring hope into the acequias of our land and our minds

Deluge of renewal

Wellspring withering doubt and despair

 

How sweet is the smell!

Amazing has indeed graced us

We are found!

 

I asked a group their emotions when the rain fell after 3 month drought

Relief, the most common answer

One week earlier, same word used to describe our feeling from Floyd verdict

Both reminding us to push on

            push through (mud and muck and madness)

            pray do (our hands when rain they meet)

But first

Bathe in olfactory opulence

Squish hands and toes into the mud

We are found!