The Power of Audible Play Calling

When a quarterback changes the play at the line of scrimmage it’s called “Audibling.” Yes, that’s a legitimate verb-ing of the word “audible.”

Other ways to say it: He called an audible. He made adjustments. He changed the play.

The QB sees something he doesn’t like (or something he does like, maybe a favorable match up or a weakness in the defense) and he changes the play. The ability to adjust on the fly is one of those skills veteran quarterbacks acquire after thousands of snaps, thousands of defensive reads, thousands of hours watching tape. The best quarterbacks make the right play-changes: they recognize something, make adjustments, and turn the play into a big gain.

It’s their experience that justifies their audibling.

So how do I get away with it? I have just one child. I did not raise my little siblings, have nieces or nephews on whom to practice, nor a close friend who showed me the ropes. I’ve always been a rookie at this. What gives me the confidence to repeatedly call audibles where Hollie is concerned?

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a change junkie. I don’t want the same thing to happen every day. I don’t want the routine that is so ingrained that weeks or years pass and I don’t even notice they’ve slipped by. While Hollie has a schedule, I provide as much flexibility within that schedule as I can.

I like to call it Mickey Mouse Parenting, working off a checklist. As long as all of these things get done before we move forward, we’re okay; they don’t have to be done a specific order.

Maybe it comes from experience with software implementations which try to do as many things simultaneously as possible. Maybe it’s the milestone approach my PhD program took where things happened concurrently. I have a flexible approach because I know the best laid plans are only plans until you start to execute them. Then they’re life and life sometimes has rogue linebackers who sneak through the line and sack the quarterback. Life sometimes jumps up for the interception and turns your running backs into tacklers.

In every play, you have to be ready to shift from offense to defense. 

It helps if you call an audible. If you adjust to the defensive schema you see.

I have always called audibles in my relationship with Charlie. He’s used to it. Toward the end of the day I might call and let him know we’re doing happy hour this evening, so meet us at the bar. We used to make spontaneous road trips, extend weekends into Monday, and buy last-minute tickets for shows.

We once decided on a Friday night to go to the Daytona 500 on Sunday. We got in the car Saturday afternoon, met a buddy in Florence, drove through the night, and made it to the race three hours before green flag.

Admittedly, we’re less impulsive now. But our Friday driveway parties are part of my audible-calling nature, trivia night at the bar is an audible I keep in my back pocket, and I very rarely turn down an invitation to go anywhere unless it requires giving up my Sunday.

Where Hollie is concerned, audibles can mean instability. 

It can mean she comes home from school and I’m not here because I added an extra meeting downtown. Maybe after swim team we have to go to the grocery store or maybe we have to pick up a friend’s kid from school today. Audibles make teachers and administrators crazy because they have hundreds of children. But I have just one. And she can bend, flex, go-with-the-flow because I resisted that type-A parenting advice of scheduling your baby to keep your own sanity. A schedule for Hollie would have made me miserable.

Being able to audible means being able to adjust to current circumstances. Adjusting doesn’t mean accepting, it just means recognizing that your wide receiver is double-teamed which means your running back can get open. So change the play.

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

A lot of GenXers are loathe to admit we should have been wearing bike helmets as kids. It seems silly to us that our kids see them as essential as a seatbelt in the backseat or hand sanitizer before snack.

When did we get so deliberate in our safety efforts?

While I may forget to remind her about the helmet, I have been very deliberate in a specific realm of Hollie’s life: communication. Charlie and I are really, really good at communication. We expect Hollie to be, too. 

It takes work, though. Especially when she doesn’t always have the vocabulary to express herself.

Hollie and I stood on the stairwell and looked up at the family pictures I’d assembled there.

“What do the words say?” I asked her.

“Caring. Kindness. Love.” She read each one, rolling the syllables over in her mouth. “Honesty. Trust. Integrity.”

“Those are our family values,” I said. “Caring. Kindness. Love. I expect you to treat your friends with those values. Do you understand?”

She nodded. She’s learning. And I’m doing the best I can to teach her. 

So this is an apology to her friends, our neighbors, and any other kids we come in combat with. She’s learning.

I don’t want Hollie to adopt “hug your sibling” apology skills. 

I want her to understand what an apology actually is:

1. acknowledge what you did
2. acknowledge the outcome of that action
3. recognize why the outcome was hurtful or bad
4. demonstrate remorse.

And if she can do one and two but doesn’t think there is a bad or hurtful outcome, then I won’t force her to apologize.

What parents of onlies know

Charlie and I are both middle kids. Classic cases of left-out, overlooked, constantly compromising, and all that other middle kid BS.  Maybe it was all we knew, but we expected to have multiple kids in our household.

For any number of reasons, though, we seem destined to be a threesome. Which is more than fine. We’re so blessed with HB. She’s practically perfect in every way.

Around Halloween we took her to the ballet to see Dracula and I learned a few things I think maybe parents of more-than-one don’t know.  Here they are, in no particular order:

Sitting between your parents is a BIG deal.

Hollie insisted on being between us at the ballet. When we have family movie night at home, she tugs Charlie over to my side of the couch to squeeze herself in the middle. Sunday mornings she climbs up in the bed and flops Guh-Gus, her elephant pillow, right smack between us and burrows in with him.

Raising a Fighter

Hollie’s a picky eater. She’s got the foods she likes and she sticks with them. She’s an only child. She likes her alone time. She’s also an independent child. She doesn’t like being bossed around by me and Charlie.

More than once on vacation we found ourselves in a standoff with Hollie.

Over going to play golf. She didn’t want to. We did.

Over leaving the wave pool at the water park. She didn’t want to. We did.

Over going out for dinner. She didn’t want to. We did.

Over eating what she’d ordered. She refused.

Over leaving the Hilton Resort Orlando after checkout on Thursday. We had to.

We fight over brushing her hair.

We fight over brushing her teeth.

These days it seems like we fight about pretty much everything. Which is a good thing. It means she trusts us enough to state her desires with some confidence they’ll be met.

It means she has specific desires and is learning how to rationally explain those desires. 

I ask questions to get her to elaborate on her logic. I sometimes let her win.

Being willing to fight means she’s assertive enough to get what she wants. It means she won't be bullied, go along with the crowd, or believe her wants don’t matter.

Then, last week, I read this blog post about letting a little girl say “no.” And I did what I think the blogger wanted me to do, I really thought about it.

Mom to one, just one, my one

I’m a pretty good mom but I’m not good with other people’s kids.

I don’t know those children as well as I know mine, haven’t grown used to their voices, their questions, or their habits. Perhaps I might. Were I around them a lot, I might.

Our friend Torie, Hollie’s preschool teacher, Torie’s good at other people’s children.

But me, I kinda suck at them. Here are a few reasons why (cuz bloggers love lists):

1. I don’t take their injuries seriously enough.

My friend Kevin brought his kids to the park for a playdate with us and while he’d taken the eldest to the bathroom, the middle fell and busted his face on a step.

Bless his heart, that kid wailed.

“Oh my,” I said, “let’s go get your dad.”

I didn’t know how to hug him or help him or comfort him or even staunch the bleeding cuz, wow, that sure does look awful.

What the hell happened to May?

So I knew it had been a while since I’d posted here. I’ve done some posts on GenX Stories. I participated in Submit-O-Rama May, so I had to update the progress there.

I have also been on the Northeast Area Update on the Chamber blog, though I have a great ghostwriter this summer, my cousin Preston.

But when I came over here just now to check on Clemson Road, I saw I’ve been gone since April.

Whaaaaaaaat?

Yup. Sorry, dear readers, but Life on Clemson Road has not stood still while I was away. In fact, it picked up momentum and all these things happened:

Thank You Notes to My Constellation

Taking a cue from Jimmy Fallon, I’d like for this week’s post, just a few days after commencement, to be my Thank You Notes.

Thank You

Charlie, for putting up with the days I was reading and the days I was writing and all the boring conversations I made you listen to that involved my dissertation. But mostly thank you for believing in me and for being the person I high-fived when I heard those all-too-important words in August.

Thank You

Hollie Russ, for slowing down the dissertation process and forcing me to live in the moment – which is where Nana always said I should try harder to be. I know this journey started before you got here, but I hope you’ll carry with you forever the memories of its conclusion.

A Mom's Lesson to her Unbrushed Princess

We don’t brush Hollie’s hair on Sundays. Well, not if we can help it.

Every weekday morning after she’s prodded from bed, stuffed into clothing, and dragged into the hallway, Hollie is propped up at the bathroom sink for a teeth scrub and a hair styling.

She hates this.

“I’m sooooooo tired!” she wails.

“You’re hurting me!” she grouses.

“Oowww! MOOOOOM!”

There are no witnesses to this nonsense except me and someday these mornings will be long gone and I’ll get nostalgic thinking of them. But as they’re happening, I feel like Eleanor Bear in Brave.

“Och, you’re acting like a child!”

Of course she is.

I like to let her be one as much as I can. I like to let her be petulant and reluctant and pouty and emotional as much as I can.

There will come a time when she must control these emotions. When she must conceal her frustration, her annoyance, her anger. 

There will come a time when she will be so busy being polite that she’ll forget to be herself.

She may one day catch herself in that moment and think, “How have I become the silly woman who smiles and nods while I’m screaming inside?”

It’s taken me a long time to define the boundaries between being myself and being someone others find acceptable. For years I lived under the mantra of “Be Yourself,” and believed that in all things, myself was good enough.

Then someone told me it wasn’t.

And I believed that person.

I know there will come a day when Hollie thinks being herself isn’t enough. I hope she’ll ask me about it. I hope she’ll say, “Mom, what should I do?”

So that I can say, “You’re more than enough. You’re amazing. You’re brilliant. You’re lovely. If other people don’t like you for who you are, that’s their own problem.”

Because, really, the very best lesson I can teach her is to have the grit to persevere. She shouldn’t kneel before adversity and hope to be blessed by others’ power. She should stand tall, take aim, and loose another arrow. 

Aye, keep shooting until the Self-Doubt and Insecurity are vanquished. 

On Sundays, she gets just a little taste of that. She gets to be a ragamuffin: tangled, tousled, knotty, and free. She gets to be herself in all her untamed glory.

It’s as much a break for her as it is for me. One day a week I don’t have to hold her down and rip the brush through the knots. One day a week where I have to forget about what others might think of the ragamuffin we’ve brought to Applebees or to Publix.

One day a week when I have to remind myself that it’s no one else’s damn business why she looks like a disaster.

Fuck them.

One day a week that I get to remember when I got my tattoos, when I pierced my tongue, when I started cussing in front of grown-ups and stopped pretending to have a faith I don’t.

I know she’s a child. I know it’s my job to teach her how to behave around others. I also know that she’s learning that. Really. 

I get manners. I get polite company. I get that she needs to be able to move among society and that people’s opinions of her will largely impact how successfully she is able to do that.

This un-brushed hair thing is a phase, like wearing two different shoes was. She’s outgrown that and she’ll outgrow this. But I let her wear a boot and a sandal. A flip flop and a sneaker. A sparkly red shoe and a sparkly black shoe because those small freedoms built her confidence.

She’ll match her clothing someday.

She’ll brush her hair.

She’s a child now but she will not always be.

If I have any say in it, though, she’ll always be original, confident, and willing to be herself even when others disapprove.

Just so long as she does not place her weapons on the table.

What I’ve Learned in Kindergarten

Charlie and I stayed up too late last night watching DVR’d shows and enjoying each other’s company and a second bottle of wine. 

This morning I didn’t even try to get up at my usual 5 a.m. I set my alarm for 6. Then I turned it off and climbed back in bed. But when I glanced at the clock at 6:50 I heard this phrase in my head:

“It’s not for you. It’s for Hollie. Get her off to a good start this morning.”

A month ago, on the first day of kindergarten, I walked past the lady with box of Kleenex and held Hollie’s hand all the way to her classroom. When it was time to leave I knelt beside her said, “Kindergarten isn’t for grown-ups,” and kissed her goodbye.

Don't Say You Didn't Try

I swam in high school. When I decided to go to Clemson University I asked my swim coach if he thought I was good enough to swim there. He said no.

In 1995 I was swimming eight times a week but for all that work, I'd only dropped three seconds off my 100 butterfly. I'd seen myself get stronger and faster but I'd need to drop four more seconds to make the team at Clemson, my coach said. Four seconds seemed impossible.

So I finished the high school season and the summer season and when I went to Clemson in August I joined the crew team.

Say it was a chance to do something new.

A couple of people to whom I've told that story said they would have responded differently. 

My friend Rob, a 1997 Naval Academy graduate, said, "See, that's when I would have worked my ass off to prove him wrong."

Just the other day a woman I'd only just met, a nurse and mom of three, a part-time tri-athlete who said things like, "I just want to do something," when describing her workouts, agreed with Rob. She said she'd work extra hard to prove my old swim coach wrong. Then she said her daughter was the same way and it was very frustrating for her.

And I thought, "How does Hollie react when she's told she can't do something?"

A Life Well Built

At the beginning of the month I wanted a transformation. I wanted things to be different and by different I meant better. I wanted to be better.

I spend a lot of time wanting that.

I’m a continuous improvement junky and I’m always looking for jump starts, challenges, commitments I can make that will make me better. So at the beginning of June, in search of a transformation, I began the 30X30 challenge hosted by my friend Khara. I signed up for the 30 day Blogathon hosted by Michelle Rafter. I also put myself back in the pool.

Thirty days to transform. Go!

It’s Day 24 and Khara wants us to write about a mistake we’ve made. I made a mistake by planning a transformation.