How Coaching a 6th Grade Football Team Helped This Glamour Girl Cope with Death and Divorce

As so often happens in life, I have ended up in many situations I never dreamed I’d be in: dancing on tour with the Go-Go’s; riding a Vespa across a stage while Placido Domingo sings my favorite aria; belly dancing in the bush with a native tribe in Kenya; go-go dancing on a box with a ten-foot tall lobster with the B-52’s next to me singing Rock Lobster; opening for Paul McCartney dressed like a princess; graduating from Harvard; so today when I stood on the football field at the local elementary school coaching my 12-year-old son’s flag football game, and that surreal feeling of “Who’s life am I living?” came over me, I did what I do best: I buckled in and went on the ride.

A year ago, two doozy hits took me down for the count: my beloved father moved in with me so I could get him proper medical care and within six very intense weeks of doctor visits saying “Yes we can get him better,” and “No, there’s nothing we can do”; 2am ambulance calls; and finally landing in hospice where the ravages of cancer twisted us all to a new level of suffering, I was putting Vaseline on his lips as he took his last breath.

My heart truly and deeply broke.

Three weeks later, my son was sleeping in my bed because he was having nightmares. At 5am I crawled up the stairs to snuggle with my husband, who was sleeping in my son’s bed, only to find him on his ipad, which he quickly hid from me. He tried to lie his way out of it, but he finally admitted he had been having an affair for a long time. “You’re in love?” I asked him. He laughed and said, “No.” Then he ran out the door, with my 13-year-old daughter screaming from deep in her guts at him, “Don’t leave!!!!!!!!!”

Sixteen years together, two children, twelve years of a sexy romantic marriage, cheering for him every step of the way, and somehow I missed that my husband was living a double life. I thought he adored me, cherished me, and loved me deeply.

I was completely blindsided, and my ability to believe in fantasy apparently overrode reality and truth.

I keep thinking he’s going to kiss me on the forehead and wake me up and my father will be here and my kids won’t be suffering and this will have all been a terrible nightmare.

In a cruel ironic twist, he teaches Ethics at a college in Boston. Fucking Ethics. If it wasn’t so heartbreaking, it would be hilarious.

So here I am, 49 years old, on the football field in late October in New England, orange leaves swirling around me, a cool wind whipping my hair, that smell I love of burning leaves in the air, and a gang of 12-year-old boys looking to me for guidance.

I had no intention of coaching anything ever. In fact, I have found coaches in general to be a loud and rowdy bunch. I’m not a sports person, I’m an eccentric glamourpuss, more comfortable in a pink petticoat with bright red lipstick than a football jersey. I’ve never played football, and I don’t even like to watch it unless my son is playing, and even then, the struggle is real.

But the team couldn’t happen without a volunteer coach, so I volunteered and took a crash course in the rules, watching Youtube tutorials and asking questions.

What’s an endzone?

From here to here.

(I scratch my head.) So, you’re saying if they get between these two lines they score points, yes?

(Now they scratch their heads.)

The ref asks me if we want to punt. I don’t know what a punt is, although it sounds kind of dirty. I glance at my team, they all nod so I say yes, we want to punt. And later I’ll ask everyone I know to explain a punt to me, and I’m still not clear on it. After a touchdown where I’m screaming the loudest as my little guy races down the field, the ref says 1 or 2? I have no idea what he’s talking about, so I always say 2, since 2 is more than 1. I’m still not exactly sure what that means, although I now know its points. I have two other moms coaching with me, and they have learned on the fly with me, although they seem to know more than I do, at least they dress sporty, so they must know more than I do. I run along the sidelines in my floppy sunhats, giant sunglasses, my retro dress with the apples on it and a petticoat underneath, and my Gucci sneakers that are covered in rainbow sparkles that say “LOVED”.

They’re sneakers: they count as sporty-ish.

And I like to remind myself that I am loved, even when I feel that I’m not.

And guess what? We’ve won enough games to put us in first place. Last week we defeated the undefeated team in the league.

But today, well today, we got crushed. The other team made four immediate touchdowns. Four! Negativity cloaked our team in clouds darker than the lurking rainclouds overhead. One boy quit trying. One started complaining. Two had their arms over their heads saying, “We’re getting crushed. It’s over.” And one started crying.

I called them together. “Guys, listen up. There is no complaining and no negativity. That’s bad sportsmanship.” I searched my brain for something they could relate to. “Do you think Black Panther started complaining when the bad guys had him pinned down under his foot and he was covered in dirt and blood and in pain? Do you think he started crying and saying, “It’s over”? NO! He got up and tried harder with laser focus and he beat the villain! We can still beat them!”

I wasn’t sure they were buying my speech, but they had stopped panicking and were watching me so I kept going. “Look, I went to my first Patriots game last weekend. I was trying to get some tips and at half time it was 24 to nothing for the other team. The Pats were losing. Did they come out crying and saying we’re crushed? NO! They came back out with MORE FOCUS, and tried even harder, and they won. If I see any of you out there not trying, I will take you off the field and replace you with someone who cares. If we go down, we will go down fighting! We can do this, and even if we don’t win, we will play our best and hardest until the very last second. Let’s do this.”

They all stared at me.

My voice was hoarse from yelling, but we played the second half, made three touchdowns, and even though the other team made another one, we stopped them from making a few more.

I ran up and down the sidelines, cheering my kids on, taking out anyone who quit trying and replacing them with a player who wanted it, until the first player was ready to come back in. We lost, but we went down fighting. In the end, I gathered them together and told them, “You did a great job because you DIDN’T GIVE UP! You tried harder. That’s what you do. Life will crush you, because that’s what life does in between the magical moments, but you don’t lay down, you get up and you crush it!”

And I came home, hoarse and jubilant that they made it through.

Then I realized, I need to coach myself. How many times a day in the past year did I cry ‘Uncle’? Doubled over and sobbing on the floor, I’d cry, “Life, you win, you’ve done it, you’ve crushed me, I’m done.”  Sobbing, heartbroken, bereft, griefstricken, I’d fall to my knees and feel like my heart was going to just stop. Well, guess what? I always managed to stand back up. And I’m doing more than just standing, I’m dancing, twirling my sadness into art, turning my “wailing into dancing” as my favorite Psalm says. Well, it’s the only Psalm I know, and if you’re going to know one Psalm, it’s a beauty.

When people ask me how I’m doing, I say, “I’m steering the ship. There’s nobody else now, just me, and the kids are on the ship and this ship is not going down, not with me at the wheel.”

And in my mind, our beautiful ship looks like a pirate ship sailing through warm starry skies with me at the battered wooden wheel, the wind in the kids’ hair and a rainbow sail lit by moonlight. My brother always tells me, “Stay the course, you’re doing great.” I love that image of the three of us, me and the kids, staying the course, steering towards the North Star, in warm starlit skies.

On our Flag Football team, our secret code name for our Hail Mary play is “On Your Knees”. I didn’t know football had secret codes! I love secret codes! That means everyone runs to anywhere that’s open, turns to catch the ball, and makes the touchdown. In this play, anything is possible, miracles are possible, even the slowest fumbling kid can score–you just have to get open. Life hasn’t crushed me, because I’m open, open to the next adventure, steering the ship, staying the course, strong and steady, and if my team remembers anything from this year of playing 6^th grade flag football, I hope they remember the heartbroken crazy lady coach running down their sidelines in her pink petticoat, yelling at them to get up, focus, and try harder, no matter what, and most importantly, to get open and stay open, because that’s how the miracles happen.