As I’ve mentioned in several other posts in this series, I have been helping my husband publish his memoir, which he began writing almost twenty years ago as a spry seventy-year-old, sitting on the bench in Beeman Park in Studio City, watching our four-year-old son, Chris tear up the joint. Ah, those were the days, where, a successful television actor meant working four to six times a year, which left a lot of time for park bench sitting and introspection. I just went looking for a photo to include of the park from those days and googled Beeman Park. I think the place has had a definite face lift from the early 90s when we were habitués of it’s sandy slide and swing area. Ah the good old days. This was about the only image that looked the same.
Jimmie has always been a great dad – still is, but he’s slowing down and our son, now twenty-seven and a father himself, needs less from us in the way of park bench sitting. It’s one of life’s little ironies that just when you’d really like to spend a lot of time sitting on the bench with your kids they go and grow up and get busy in their blossoming careers. Doesn’t quite seem fair. But I digress.
So we submitted the manuscript to the Createspace folks a few weeks ago, and as promised, there was radio silence while they did their line editing. This past Monday, my day off, we heard via email, saying the project needed our attention. As promised, they had attached an editorial letter along with the copiously marked manuscript, lighter by about 1000 commas, and with all the titles of the plays like Girl on the Via Flaminia spelled correctly. All this time I had thought Circle-In-The-Square was the name of the theatre in the village in the 1960s. But no, just Circle In The Square is sufficient. You may have already noticed that my writing is markedly, (insufferably) better with numbers under 100 spelled out and much less use of the dreaded passive voice.
On the home front, it’s been a busy month, more doctors’ visits; so many, in fact, that after our third of this week, Jimmie said,
I have three days off from doctors’ appointments!
We’ll see about that. Maybe I can arrange something for you tomorrow? (Evil laugh as I twirl my moustache)
Last Saturday, we noted that Jimmie’s left foot was so swollen that he couldn’t get his shoe on. A trip to the podiatrist on Monday revealed he needs special shoes. Diabetic shoes – isn’t that charming?
Where did you get those lovely shoes?
Oh, these? They’re just my Diabetic shoes.
The Xray they took showed that he had also somehow broken a major bone in his left foot. He is now sporting a walking boot for the next 6 weeks. And we don’t have a clue how it happened.
In spite of that, we had a wonderful trip down to Anaheim last Friday night, where we watched our son coaching the defensive line of Tahoe Hockey Academy team, as they trounced Poway Unified 7-2.
Two things never occurred to me when we were hockey parents for thirteen years. Never thought that we’d be hockey parents of a hockey coach or that hockey coaches even had parents. You know what I mean – parents that came to games to root them on. Absurd, I realize, but I don’t ever remember looking around the stands and seeing old people like we are now there rooting for the hockey coaches. It also never occurred to me that we would be hockey parents again, eight years after we thought we were done. It’s kind of great to be back in the stands again, this times with our wallets intact.
This Tahoe Hockey Academy team looked amazing – tough, fast, working together, no overt egos out there hogging the pucks. They had clear systems that they were sticking by, and they were relentless on the opposing goal. Shot after shot after shot! I loved watching Chris call out to the boys on the ice to get them to come off. He and the other coaches worked so well together as they edited the lines. (See what I did there?) Deked and dangled that paragraph. (Non-hockey fans may have to look that one up…) Here’s a link.
The other thing I noticed was that these parents were extremely well-behaved. No screaming obscenities at the refs like the good old days. Things have changed in the youth hockey world since Chris came up.
After the game, we went to Ruby’s Diner and, surrounded by teens on homecoming weekend, we ordered greasy food and an oreo-cookie fantasy shake (Els) and laughed about the game and how weird it was to not be watching Chris on the ice. I don’t remember when I have seen him so happy, though. It was gratifying as a parent to see it all come together in one happy son. When we drove him back to the hotel to drop him off, we spied the team bus in the parking lot – pretty spiffy.
Also spiffy is the fact that this book is really happening. We received news today that a dear friend and major actor that he may be writing the foreword for the book. We are coming in to the home stretch on this project and hurtling toward our goal. Stay tuned for more updates!
lifeinthethe8tre 