Dear Paxton and Ike,

I fell in love with basketball on Saturday mornings at the YMCA when I was about 8 years old.

It required hustle, strategy, grit, and teamwork.

There were positions for short little scrappy players like me.

You could call a timeout when you were in a crunch.

It was ridiculously hard in the 4th quarter.

You could full-court press the other team and guarantee to get them frazzled.

In 6th grade, we were unstoppable.  Well, we were stopped twice, I suppose, but we finished the season with only those two losses.

High school was a different ballgame, pun intended.  The practices started and ended with sprints.  It was lifting before school and practice after.  It was physical therapy in the trainer’s room because they thought they could fix the fact that I was pigeon-toed.  It was a lot more competitive and a lot more people going for the same position. It meant watching upperclassmen wear the number that you had been rocking for three years.

I didn’t always see the last few minutes, or even the fourth quarter.  There were only 5 fouls, and a lot of games, I used all 5 of mine.  I left it all on the court.  I liked shooting, but more than that, I lived for defense.  I loved anticipating a pass, stealing the ball, flying up the court and getting the assist.  I wasn’t the best player that our little town had ever seen by far, but man, I loved that game.

Junior year of high school, I ended up at the hospital for emergency gallbladder surgery.  It was the week of tryouts.  I’ll never forget my first game back several weeks later at St. Teresa High School in Decatur, IL.  I went out in a JV game where the pace would be a little slower and the fouls a little less intense.  I wasn’t in long when I ended up falling on the ball, right on my stomach.  I remember sitting on the stairs outside the gym and crying, not sure if I was going to die because my insides just might have combusted or because I might not have enough time in the season to make it back to the player I knew I could be.

Maybe I subconsciously knew at that moment.  Or maybe I was just in pain.  But I never really got my love for the game back.  The rest of that season was messy.  Your junior and senior years are supposed to be the time that you soar and I fell on my face, literally.

When senior year came around, there were 6 of us who had played together, basically since Y ball.  I made the decision to not go out.  The season before had frustrated me and deep down, I think I feared senior night.  They couldn’t start all 6 of us, and what if I was the one that was on the bench when they announced the starting line-up?  The fear swallowed me.  I worried that the coaches minds were made up just based on my junior year.  It’s one of the decisions I’ve regretted most in my life.  I let fear win and I’ll never forgive myself for it. The thing about playing high school sports is you have no idea at the time just how important they are to your life.  You have no idea that one day you’ll look back and wish you had given it more, fully committed, and cared less about the rest of the drama of being a high schooler.

I woke up the other morning with a crying hangover.  You know the kind where it feels like you’ve been drinking all night, but the reality is you’ve cried so hard that you are sick to your stomach, your head is pounding and you don’t know why you fell asleep in that awkward position.

I haven’t wrote in awhile, because honestly, things just weren’t going my way and I’m not good at that.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s all passed in the blink of an eye.  We spent time with family, enjoyed it all, and made some amazing memories.  Pax, we celebrated your 3rd birthday with a rainbow party.  I told myself I wasn’t going to go all out, but you know that didn’t happen.

We bought a new vehicle (with a lot of help from your grandparents) because we were having all kinds of issues with the all wheel drive on our Enclave, and you can’t take those chances when you live in a place that tends to get at least 10 inches of snow every time they call for some flurries. We ended up with a certified used Jeep Grand Cherokee.  I say certified lightly.  At the dealership, they advertise this whole certified, so-many hundred point inspection thing.  After having issues with a vehicle, it made sense for us, who couldn’t afford brand new, to buy certified.  We spent over 3 hours at the dealership.  They gave us next to nothing for our Enclave because they pulled a report and found that we were actually the third owner (we thought we were the second) and that it had all kinds of issues before us. I just never know who to trust at those places. We got home and Grandpa Joe noticed that the antennae was missing off the top.  I thought, hmm, that’s weird that they didn’t catch that in their 3,000 point inspection.  Daddy called them and they said we could bring it in and they would either have it or order the part for us.  “Bringing it in” isn’t so easy because it’s at least a half hour from our house.  After that got fixed, I went to drive it one afternoon and grabbed the second fab.  Only, it didn’t work. I thought, hmm, that’s weird that they didn’t catch that in their 3,000 point inspection.  So, we called and they said that we could bring it in at some point, but we might have to pay for that.  The next day, I got in the Jeep after work and it said that tire pressure was low in the back left tire.  I drove to pick you both up and when I pulled into Ammy and PopPop’s house, I couldn’t make it up their driveway.  I checked the tire again, and it looked like it was maybe losing a little air, but not drastically.  I thought maybe the sensor was off.  When I pulled into our house, the dang tire was completely flat and you could hear the “psssssshhhhhh” as soon as I stepped out of the car.  No biggie, we’ll jack this baby up and change the tire.  Only problem was, it has a security lug nut on each tire.  We looked in the vehicle and couldn’t find anything, so I called the dealership.  Now remember, this is the third time they’ve heard from us in 5 days.  The guy tells me it should be in the glove box.  I inform him that it’s not.  He tells me that we’re going to have to get the vehicle towed to the dealership so they can take care of it, but the dealership will probably be closed when we get there.  I said some words that weren’t real nice and asked for the manager.  This was not our fault and we were not going to get the vehicle towed 30 miles away in the dark when it had been snowing.  Both of you were inside crying because you were hungry and you didn’t understand what was going on and basically Ike, you cry anytime I’m not holding you or giving you all my attention.  In the midst of me talking to the manager, he interrupts me and says, “first off, you need to calm down.  It’s just a flat tire.”

I’ve never liked the term “bat shit crazy,” but that’s what we’ll use to describe me in the next several moments.  I ended up holding the phone up to Ike and asking him if that sounded like just a flat tire?  It was so much more.  It was two kids that needed fed, it was a car that needed towed and a driveway that isn’t really set up for a tow truck.  It was a long day at work.  It was the fact that one of us wasn’t going to have a vehicle the next day.  It was the fact that none of this was our fault and HOW DID THEY NOT CATCH THIS ON THEIR 6,000 POINT INSPECTION??

The guy told me to call roadside assistance and to leave the fab in the dropbox and they’d look at it the following day. I asked him for the number and he didn’t know it.  This is real life, folks.  I called roadside assistance and they were going to send a tow truck, but they said it probably wouldn’t make it up our driveway so just go ahead and put the vehicle in the road and they would be there in the next hour.  Here’s a great idea, let’s put our dark grey jeep in the middle of the mountain roads in the dark.  I called the dealership back and informed them that we wouldn’t be there for another hour and a half and that my husband would ride with the two truck and we needed a loaner vehicle waiting for us at the dealership.  And, that our insurance didn’t cover the tow because it was over the allowed distance, so they would be taking care of that bill also.  The guy agreed, although he was still a jerk.

The tow truck shows up at 5:30.  Your daddy slowly drives the vehicle down to the truck and they get loaded up.  Meanwhile, I’m pissed off and trying to feed you, bathe you and just parent in general.  I called Ammy and just cried, thinking she might come over because I’m TERRIBLE at asking for help.  It’s one of the areas I need to work on the most.

I get a text from your daddy about an hour later.  THE TOW TRUCK BROKE DOWN and they were waiting for another tow truck to come ‘rescue’ them.  He didn’t get home until 9:30 that night.

When I called the following day to check in on the vehicle before picking it up after school, they let me know that they hadn’t started it because they couldn’t find it.  Apparently the vehicle sitting right in front of the service department door with a FLAT TIRE wasn’t enough of a clue.

Would you believe me if I told you that right after we got it back I was driving home and went to use the washer fluid and it didn’t work out of one side?  I thought, hmm, that’s weird that they didn’t catch that in their 9,000 point inspection.  True story, kids.  Certified isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Would you believe that our Enclave is currently listed on their website for much more than they gave us with a “Clean CarFax Report?”

In December, I began having nightmares about Ike.  99% of them, I think stemmed from the fact that his bedroom is so far away for ours.  In these dreams, I would look at the monitor and see someone coming in his room and taking him out of his crib and I could never get there in time.  Or we would be at a public place and all of the sudden, he was just gone.  There were so many scenarios, and they gave me a new kind of anxiety.  Somewhere in all of that, we decided to get in touch with a realtor and start looking at other houses.  We love our house, but I need to be closer to him.  We need a bit more space to run.  I need a space I can use for pictures. I want a house I can have family dinners at, a house where highchairs don’t take up the majority of our space.

We looked at quite a few over a couple months, and then while our realtor was out of town, in true Powell fashion, we found the house.  He set us up with another realtor to look at it the second day it was on the market.  The house was bank-owned and listed pretty low for a house its size.  It was right down the hill from Ammy and PopPop’s house.  It was over 2,000 square feet and had a perfect spot for a studio so I could get rolling with my photography again.  We expected it to be trashed, and in reality, it needed some love, but it was livable.  We could get this house and fix it up little by little as we go.  Just in case there was competition, we went in $15,000 above asking price that very same day.  The bank was going to take the highest bid, and we wanted to make sure that was us.

We went home and began getting our house ready to show.  We packed up what we didn’t need and things that were just taking up too much space.  We also packed up my dresser in order to make our bedroom look bigger.  We packed Ammy and PopPop’s garage with the very same things that had been cluttering our little house.  We had Monday off from school and spent that whole day running trips back and forth, knowing that later that week, as soon as we got the call, we’d list our house.

That night I went to grad school.  We had been on a break since mid-December and I really struggled with going back. The next day, we worked and then I had class again until 8:20 p.m.  I got home and Daddy told me that Ike had been walking around the house saying, “Mama, are you?”  That very same night, Pax, you grabbed me and asked me to stop working so much and have a Pax Bear and Mommy night.  I broke.  I’ve talked about the ‘mom guilt’ before, but it doesn’t get better.  I’m taking three classes this semester and I started to think that I may have actually taken on too much.  People always tell me that I can do things like this because that’s all they know of me, but what happens if they’re wrong?  What happens if I’m wrong?

On Wednesday, I texted Daddy before leaving school and told him that I wasn’t going to cook that night.  In fact, I wasn’t going to do anything but hold the two of you.  It was our night to reconnect.  It was my night to prove to you that I’m still in this for you.  We picked up a couple pizzas from Papa Murphy’s (they have the best gluten free crust) and got settled in.  A man had been working on a wall in our house that we had taken out, but never finished.  He called to say he was going to come by and get it done that night, and it should only take about 30 minutes.  I told Daddy to wait on the pizzas and we’d put them in as soon as he left. He showed up at 5:00, with his 5 year old son.  In any other situation, at any other time in my life, that probably would’ve been ok, but I had no idea.  His son, as sweet as can be, has special needs and clearly had a cold.  He came in with snot dripping down into his mouth, and his dad got to work.  I wiped his nose and showed him our toys and the whole time I was screaming from the inside.  I needed me time, I needed us time, I did not need to parent someone else’s kid when I was doing a bang-up job with my own.  Pax, you were just beautiful to watch interact with him.  You showed him every toy you have, and when he didn’t want to play what you wanted, you changed to make him happy.  Ike, you were crazy jealous when he was near me and I thanked my lucky stars that you were number 2 for us.  I don’t know how it would’ve worked if you had a younger sibling.  Daddy and I followed him around wiping his nose and cussing his father under our breaths. 30 minutes turned into an hour.  He started saying he was hungry, so I started getting out snacks and drinks, knowing we didn’t have enough pizza to feed him or his dad.  One hour turned into two.  We sat down for pizza that night at 7:15 and I was mad.

Thursday came and went and we got a text late that night that the bank would decide on offers and let us know the following day.  I stared at my phone obsessively the entire morning.  At lunch, I ran out to get some food for a friend whose daughter was sick.  I was in the Target checkout line when our realtor told me to call him ASAP.  I flew out of the store, got in the car, and prepared myself for our next step.  I couldn’t wait to call Daddy and tell him it was ours.  I couldn’t wait to take you both back to that house, you called it the house with so many rooms, and tell you that you could pick your room.

We didn’t get that house.  Our offer was the highest, but they went with someone who offered cash and $6,000 less than us.

I ugly cried in my car for the rest of my lunch break.  It’s weird when you’ve already mentally committed to something and someone takes that away.  I had our furniture organized, the paint colors picked out and I could already hear your happiness as you ran through the rooms.  I picked you up after work and we drove by that house, just like we did everyday the year before and everyday here on out. They had dug something up in the front yard, and Pax, you got all excited and said, “Look, they’re putting in a bouncy for me!” (That’s what you call trampolines.)  I broke again.

It was a combination of exhaustion, devastation, and upon reflection, just the fact that I’m no good at being told no.

So, I woke up that next morning with a crying hangover and I needed to call a timeout on life.  I needed to go into the locker room, sit on a bench, put a towel in my mouth and scream as loud as I could.  I needed to have a grand ole pity party or I wasn’t going to be able to finish the quarter, the half, the game.

Life isn’t like basketball.  You can’t just call timeouts.  Or maybe you run out of them before you are smart enough to save them for times when you actually need them.

Maybe it was just another foul, although those never bothered me too much.  Anyhow, I couldn’t get a timeout, I couldn’t get a 5 minute break to talk to my team in the locker room and then shoot a couple shots at halftime.  I had one choice, and that was to suck it up and keep going.

You both woke up with colds that morning.  Wonder where you could’ve possibly picked that up from?

As soon as they released the details about the closing, we tried one more time, because you know I don’t give up easily.  We found out that the guy who bought the house was going to flip it and list it for well over $100,000 more than he paid for it.  We offered him over $20,000 above the price he bought it for to walk away without doing any work.  We knew that as soon as he started fixing it, it would be out of our price range.  He countered with a ridiculous number that was nowhere near what we could afford right now and we countered again, this time $25,000 above what he paid.  He rejected our offer and we lost it again.

This is the point in the game where I lose control and end up with a technical.

*Side note- I never actually got a technical, but my friend Lindsey (the sweetest one of any of us) did, and even funnier, your Ammy did when she played in high school.

We’re still in our house.  It’s not on the market.  My dresser and most of your toys are in the garage at Ammy and PopPop’s house.  I still drive by that house every time I pick you up.  Yesterday, Pax, you noticed that there was a man at that house and that he had taken out all the toilets (and there were 4 of them- it was a person with food allergies/IBS/Celiac’s dream), the sinks, the oven, the dishwasher, the counters, etc.  I explained to you that he was going to fix up the house and then put a for sale sign in the yard.  You got all excited again and said that we could buy it after he fixes it.  I tried to reason with you that it would be too much and we don’t have that much money.  You thought for a second and said, “Sure we do.  Ike’s piggy bank is half full and I keep finding coins.”

If only it was that easy.

I wonder where we will be when you are old enough to read these.  Will we have a bigger house somewhere in our current neighborhood?  Will we find a house that’s still fairly small, but has all the bedrooms together?  Will we still be in this house with my underwear in a diaper box shoved under some clothes in the closet because my dresser is sitting in Ammy’s garage?  Will it even matter?

Life is tricky like this.  But just like my basketball career, you look back and realize what mattered and what didn’t.  I put a lot of pressure on myself because I like to be the best at whatever I do.  I find that while I’m trying to conquer the world, to win one more game, I end up giving 15% of myself here and there rather than giving 100% of myself to any one thing.  I work really hard at my job and I truly do love it.  My job changed in January and I get to spend time coaching other teachers, which is something I didn’t even know how much I enjoy doing.  When I get home, I have vowed that those precious few hours are just for you two.  I will play endless games of ring-around-the-rosie or cook you a fabulous meal that you won’t eat.  I will give you baths and read you bedtime stories, because you deserve your mom to be all of that for you.  But the truth is, some nights, I get home and just want to sit down.  I told myself that I wouldn’t do any homework while you are awake because you don’t deserve a mom behind her computer, you deserve one that is involved.  But the truth is, some nights, I have so much homework that I just can’t wait until 8:30 to start it when it’s due at midnight.  Some nights, I have to go to class and I get home to a quiet house.  Those nights I feel like a failure more than any others.  Those nights that I don’t get to tell you goodnight, to read you a story, to smell your freshly-lotioned piggies after your bath, those nights hurt something terrible.  Those are the nights when I look up at the scoreboard and wonder if I can pull back in the game.

Hang in there team, it’s only the third quarter, and I promise I’ll make it next season too.

After we graduated high school, they always had an Alumni Game in March to raise money for Habitat for Humanity.  I went back and played several years and your Ammy coached one of the alumni teams each year.  My last time playing, the year before I got pregnant with you, Pax, I was on the opposite team from Ammy’s.  I wasn’t in great shape, but I wasn’t in terrible shape either.  Your daddy came and watched me from the bleachers.  It was weird to have the right guy watching me from the bleachers instead of all the wrong guys I as so crazy about in high school. I suited up in a familiar uniform and went out with some women that I played with and some women that I barely knew.  I had a diet coke on the bench instead of a gatorade. I scored the most points that night and our team won.  I didn’t even foul out.  My coach from high school stopped me some 4-5 months later and made the comment that she heard that I really tore it up at the Alumni Game.  As ridiculous as it sounds, I got my last season, a chance to prove myself ten years later.  A 4th quarter when I thought I was out.

I have one more year before I have my Master’s Degree and then one more year after that to get my admin license.  I have several more nights of staying up way too late doing homework.  I have hundreds of pages of reports to write and hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles to read even after I’ve read Brown Bear, Brown Bear 15 times to you. But someday, someday I’ll get you a house like that house we loved.  Someday, we might even be able to afford one that’s all fixed up already.  Someday, we’ll look back on this and say that I could’ve quit and I didn’t.  I stuck it out for all 4 quarters and I was still playing senior season, last game, in the final 3 seconds.

Play until the buzzer.  No matter how hard it gets, and be thankful for all of those fouls because they just show that you have a little more heart.  Just take it easy after four.

I love you,

Your mom.

PS.  I’ll write soon about you two and how awesome you both are.  I just needed to get this out.  Because, you know what?  Sometimes you won’t get your way.  And sometimes you’ll just need to throw a little fit.