Proud Marys
By Callie Feyen
@calliefeyen
My husband Jesse and my oldest daughter Hadley are trying to explain to me what a first down is because I made the mistake of asking. We are at Notre Dame, watching their first football game of the season against an unranked Marshall. We’re getting creamed.
I thought first downs happened after a specific point on the football field but apparently they can happen anywhere. From that point the players have four chances to make a touchdown. This seems stupid and like too much math, but Hadley and Jesse are trying to explain that it isn’t stupid and actually no math is involved when Marshall scores again.
Their fans go nuts.
“We’re from nowhere!” one of them yells, looking directly at us. He is giddy. I don’t blame him. Marshall is whooping the gold off our players' helmets. “We come from nowhere!” he says again, then high-fives his friends.
“It’s going to be a long game,” Harper, my other daughter, says, handing me the box of popcorn we’re sharing.
It’s too hot for popcorn, but I stick my hand into the box and shuffle the kernels around.
“Nobody knows who we are!” the Marshall fan screams, still smiling, still in rapturous awe at what his team is accomplishing.
“OK, OK we get it,” I mumble, and pull a fistful of popcorn from the box.
I look at the clock and wonder why one minute can equal a billion minutes in football world. Time stands still and no one ever knows why.
Somebody knows. Two of them are sitting next to me but I’m not asking them. Instead, I eat my popcorn and watch what I do not understand while sweat leaks from every part of my body.
Again, Marshall scores and I’m ready to walk over to the campus bookstore, order an iced-coffee, and page through an InStyle magazine. I lean over to Jesse to tell him that’s what I’m going to do when a Marshall fan screams, “Your quarterback SUCKS!”
“OK, that’s not nice,” I say. “What if the quarterback’s mom heard that?”
My family erupts in laughter.
“Callie,” Jesse says, “look where we are.”
At the top of the stadium, is where. The players look like Storm Trooper action figures. Jesse is pointing out the obvious: the Notre Dame quarterbacks’ mother is nowhere near us and in fact did not hear the Marshall fan declare that her son sucks.
I wipe my hands free of salt from the popcorn and uncap my water bottle. “Still,” I begin, “You can be nice.” I look right at Mr. Team Marshall as I say it.
Somewhere this boy’s mother is watching her son throw himself at this game he loves. Somewhere she is watching him try and try and try again. I may not know the difference between a first down and fourth down, or why we need them in the first place, but I know what it means to be a mother who keeps watch. I roll my shoulders back, wipe the sweat from my brow and other places I didn’t know sweat could collect, and I keep watch with this mother I’ll never know but who I am connected with all the same.
***
Another football game, this one at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Home of the Pioneer Pioneers. Our school sits across from the Big House—the University of Michigan’s football stadium. Maybe that’s the reason for our redundancy.
We are playing Saline High School. They are the Hornets. Our mascot is a wagon. Theirs is the fiercest, meanest insect God created.
The quarterback for Pioneer is the son of one of my best friends. Tonight, he’s playing against a quarterback who’s already committed to play for Notre Dame. I don’t know a thing about him except that he’s good at football, and that years ago his brother died of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. He was five.
We are deep enough into the season that the golden hour sweeps her orange robe across the sky leaving a blue gray canvas that autumn’s leaves pop against. High schoolers file into the stadium in packs past us to the student section. These children who once held our hands to cross the street, walk up and down stairs, and climb into cars now claim space in this town apart from us. We are no longer showing them the world. They are taking part in it. It’s a thrill that comes with a sadness, like the leaves of fall that shine bright the colors of fire because there is no more chlorophyll left in them, and they’re dying. Every year they show us the brilliance in letting go.
I watch my friend’s son call the shots on the field and remember the Marshall game about a month ago. What kind of courage - or is it hope - does it take to play a game you are most likely going to lose? How much love do you have to have for a thing that all you know is to show up and give whatever it is you have?
***
About the only place in Ann Arbor that doesn’t shine maize and blue is Concordia University, where I work. We are the Cardinals.
I was hired as a Registrar Specialist. During my interview, I was asked what I knew about the job and why I wanted it. I didn’t know a thing about what a Registrar does so I talked about the cardinal—a giant one painted on the side of a barn that marks where the athletic fields are. I said Hadley used to play soccer on their field, and while I watched her play, I’d hear the chapel bells playing on campus. I said I knew about the significance of the cardinal—that it represents Jesus’ blood and the resurrection, and I liked the idea that Hadley was playing underneath a bird on the lookout—a bird keeping watch for all things being made new. I got the job, and about a year later, I agreed to teach an English class.
The course I teach is a supplemental course to English Composition. It’s a glorified study hall. The class is held in a room that was once a ballroom. My students complain about how out of the way it is, and probably I could change the location because of my Registrar connections, but I like this room. I like the soft yellow color on the walls and that I can see most of campus from its small windows I have to open using a crank. I like it for what it once was.
Today, no one shows up, and except for it being a blow to my ego, I’m not all that disappointed because today is also the day of Harper’s swim team’s State Meet. If no one shows up, I’ll leave early and head over to watch her swim.
Jesse and I were not all that prepared for Harper to be a competitive swimmer. For years, she refused to put her head under water, or take her hand off the side of the pool. I remember the day all that changed. It was on the morning of a Chad Tough Swim Across, a fundraiser my neighborhood pool takes part in, raising money for families and children who must battle horrible illness. Chad Tough is named after the boy who died of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma - the one whose brother will play for Notre Dame.
Harper agreed to swim, but she wasn’t going to name how many laps she’d do. She said she would swim until she couldn’t swim anymore, and then she’d be done. That morning, Harper swam for the entire hour, beating two high school boys in laps. She swam until the referee told her the event was over.
“I think she’s found her sport,” a mom who was standing next to me said. She is a friend who has stood with me watching our girls play soccer, softball, basketball, diving, and swim. That morning was one of maybe two hundred practices and games we’ve watched together. This is to say it was a moment like any other—charged with surprise and wonder, a little fear and lots of awe at our childrens’ willingness to try.
I start to pack up just as one of my students comes rushing in with his laptop open, and his backpack unzipped. It’s like a scene in Grey’s Anatomy if Grey’s Anatomy were a show about emergency writing situations.
“I’m so sorry,” he says and then proceeds to tell me about the football practice, the after practice meeting, the lift, all that came before. “And I gotta shower and eat,” he tells me and I understand all of it. Football is why he’s here. This sport is not a hobby. It is his passion; what his life—at least right now—is about. He has to take this class though, so he can keep his scholarship, so he can play the game.
“I really need your help,” he tells me, and sits down next to where I am standing, ready to go see Harper. He takes his knit cap off his head and tosses it on the table. “Dirty Birds” is sewn underneath a cardinal. It is what the football players call themselves—meaning, they’re the players who do the work that doesn’t always get noticed.
I sit down, unzip my backpack and pull out a notebook and a pen.
“How can I help?” I ask.
He says he needs help writing an essay for his Bible class.
He needs to write about an Old Testament story, and then write about how it points to the New Testament. “And then I have to write about what that has to do with me and my life.”
He stops talking and looks at me like he’s asked a question.
“OK,” is how I answer.
“I believe in God. But I don’t really go to church.” He says it fast and I want to tell him I believe in football. I know what a football looks like, but I don’t really know what a first down is. I don’t think he’ll think it’s funny, so instead I ask him if he knows about David and Goliath.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “David killed him with a sword.”
“No,” I say. “He killed him with a bunch of rocks.”
“Rocks?”
“Yeah, and do you know how big Goliath was?”
He tells me no.
“He was like Shaq.”
Silence.
“He was like LeBron.”
My student shifts in his seat.
“So David is this weakling, and Goliath is basically offended that he has to fight him because he’s this big time warrior.”
“And David beats him?”
“And David beats him.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“You know what this reminds me of Professor Feyen?”
“What?”
“That Michigan vs. App game.”
I laugh and tell him that is exactly what this is like. I don’t bring up the Notre Dame vs. Marshall game.
He starts to jot down notes. I show him the Bible reference so he can read more. He wants to know what this has to do with the New Testament, so I tell him that David is in the line of Jesus.
“In the line?” he asks.
“They’re like cousins,” I say. “Teammates,” I try again. “David did all he could and then Jesus stepped into the game.”
We talk about football next. This student knows both my friend’s son, and the boy who will play for Notre Dame. For years they all played on the same travel team.
“This season didn’t turn out how I hoped it would,” my student tells me. “I thought I’d play more. I thought we’d win more.”
I look at the clock on the wall. Harper will be behind the blocks, probably shaking out her muscles, or slapping her arms getting herself ready to dive into the water.
“You’re still on the team though,” I say. “You still want to play the game.”
“Yes,” he says.
I rip out a piece of paper from my notebook and ask him how long this paper has to be. He tells me three to five pages.
“Ok, so you’re going to write three pages,” I say and set up an outline.
“Page one - David and Goliath. Page two - Jesus. Page three - you.”
I slide the outline over to him. “Write about football.”
“Will you stay?” he asks.
There’s this story in the Bible where Mary, after finding out she’s pregnant with Jesus, meets her cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant. The joy in that scene has always scared me, knowing what I know about what’s going to happen to those baby boys. But I’m also grateful that they had each other. You’d need friends to help bear witness to your children throwing themselves at the world. Which I suppose, is all of us.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I will stay.”
Callie Feyen lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband, Jesse, and their two daughters, Hadley and Harper. She's written two books: Twirl: My Life in Stories, Writing, & Clothes, and The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet, both published by TS Poetry Press, and she has essays in Coffee + Crumbs' The Magic of Motherhood book. Callie holds an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University.