Should I declare bankruptcy before or after my son’s AAU basketball season?

I recently registered my son for AAU basketball, which is exciting because I don’t have an NBA salary, and I’m told this is the best way to ensure my son will one day earn one. The registration fee was a kabillion dollars, which did not cover uniforms, gym rental, equipment, tournament participation, or the small palette of electrolyte drinks he requires for baseline hydration, but, hey! There’s an entrance fee for everything. 

First, though, I had to Venmo a stranger a quarter of a million dollars for my son to try out, which is a totally normal thing to pay for, since I wouldn’t expect anyone in an Adidas track suit to use their eyeballs for free, while hand-selecting the players that will optimize their roster, and finance their gas money to and from this insane tournament schedule that appears to take us well into Spring 2034. I then received an e-mail at midnight congratulating us on our assignment to the Suffolk Sonics, and letting us know that practice would begin the next day at 6 a.m.--location TBD. We were in!!

My son refers to basketball as his “main sport,” as if he were Bo Jackson and Nike might sponsor him for a cross-training sneaker with all of his other athletic pursuits. But really, my son spends his entire day dunking on me and air-balling tissues into the waste basket. Basketball is The Sport, so naturally, we cannot possibly just play a town intramural league for the love of the game. What? And risk being unserious? About his and our future!? 

The trouble with this private league, in addition to the moral dilemma of advancing an elitist athletic industrial complex, though, is that the practice schedule changes every 15 minutes. The WhatsApp group chat pings me all day: “Sorry for the late notice but we are changing venues tonight!!” This wouldn’t otherwise pose a problem (if I were in the NBA and therefore had a concierge-level limo service to shuttle my son across state lines to elite training facilities), but alas, I am a single parent with four jobs, so the fact that I was in the parking lot last night already when they changed the venue was--haha!--not my favorite part. I dare not express my displeasure, though, as the last time I asked in WhatsApp if the practice schedule was solidified for the week, my son said, “Bruh. Lowkey no one tryna catch strays in the group chat,” which I assume means LeBron James’s mom would never.

We’ve only had one tournament so far, for which I paid half a gajillion dollars to park and to enter the gym in order to watch the child I grew in my womb get body-checked by a swarm of men I can only assume the opposing team poached from a construction site the morning of the tournament. In other words, the perfect training grounds for my son to gro pro!! The only rub was that his coach wasn’t even there. (Apparently he was at a game for the other private league team he coaches?) So someone’s dad hopped in, and while he didn’t know any of the kid’s names, or any of the plays they had supposedly learned in practice, he was competent in scribbling on the portable whiteboard. You’d think a more specialized skillset would be required to mobilize this team to victory, but they pretty much just did whatever and won. 

It was exciting to see the team starting off the season with a dub. The next tournament is tomorrow but I’m told it’s not listed on the app we were told to download, but it’ll be announced on another app that is still in development. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it to the next tournament, though. I need to check with my mortgage lender about refinancing my home so I can afford to attend. With any luck, I’ll see the coach at the next one, too! 

Bunk Bed Assembly

I am assembling a bunk bed in an otherwise empty bedroom and the metaphors abound. I am profoundly aware that I am stacking bed frames and stories upon stories upon stories.

I am here because I chose this hard, this stack of hards. I chose to leave a marriage of 17 years this last year. In this, I am not heroic. I am merely a woman who could not see a future where she could model good parenting and good partnership simultaneously, given the way a life’s fabric can shred and fray. I am here, perhaps, because I lacked imagination of a future where we rebuilt our sinking IKEA bed plank by plank. Or maybe I am here because I leaned in to my imagination, where I believed I might be capable of starting over, of co-parenting and reducing the atmospheric tension, and betting on myself.

This bunk bed will not build itself, which is fine as I enjoy the tedious meditation of Allen wrenching screws and double-checking instruction manual diagrams. My co-worker tells me I should invite a friend over to help me, but I have always enjoyed the solitude of a manual task. The times when I have had to share a job and to communicate to someone else the precise logistical maneuvers I intend to make, (rather than simply winging it) has always exposed my feverish independence. I am a firstborn with a stubborn streak and yet I am utterly at peace as I hex key my way through each bar and beam of this bunked contraption.

My bunkmate of 17 years was remarkably gifted in curiosity. He wanted to know how a thing was made, how the machine was engineered, what made a person tick. He knew how to build a thing before he set about doing the dang thing. He knew what people needed before they knew themselves. I could never project so far; my high beams were always too dim. I muddled through, killing plants and misassembling dressers so that the drawers clunked off the rails every time they opened.

This bunk bed is not a twinset but a full-over-full mattress bunk bed for the children whose limbs and senses of self are growing. Their inward and outward journeys are bewildering and beautiful to me. I am the woman who once lied on their bedroom floors for hours until they were fast asleep, but now I assemble the beds they will prefer I never come near, not even to wash the sheets they deny ever need to be washed. They are close siblings and will not allow the other to be left behind, but they will undoubtedly fight over who will get stuck with top bunk. They will stay up late debating the deeper meanings of Kendrick Lamar lyrics. Bars, man.

I carry long metal spindles and hook them into the strange catch-holes of this bedframe. This bunk bed was bought with Amazon gift cards from thankful student families who could not possibly have known how they are allowing me to build something new for my little family. How they are giving my children, and perhaps their mom, as well, a place to find rest.

A Letter to the Parents Who Dread the First Day of School Photos

Hello, Dear One,

’Tis the season, again. I know how you are bracing yourself for the photos that dance across your feed of Everyone Else’s Children Who Look Happy. They appear thrilled to be headed back to school. You notice their ruddy, sun-kissed faces, their smartly pressed uniforms. Maybe it’s the backpacks full of brand new supplies and so.much.potential that grip you for a moment before you remember this is not your story.

Maybe once upon a time you were in the camp of those who were ecstatic to snap and post photos of your children on the first day of school. The two pocket folders were ready for A papers, the calendar was ripe for new adventures. You felt proud and excited and maybe a touch trepidatious. Would their teacher be kind and inspiring? Who would be their friends in homeroom? What would happen at recess and would your little person be brave and inclusive? Would this be the best year of school ever?

Perhaps you no longer allow yourself to feel this hope, because of how your story unfolded in school years past. You try to put stock in the promise of a clean slate, but all you hear are the calls from the principal or the school counselor or the learning specialist or the math teacher AGAIN, again with the missed assignments or the behavior or the sickness or the mood swings. Your heart is still aching from the bullying or the distracting or the excluding that went down last year. You don’t have to work hard to imagine the dynamics that will replicate themselves— just shuffle the cast and the scenery a bit and you already know the script for Act I.

Or maybe you do have all the hope in the world for this school year, given the only direction to go from rock bottom is up. You’ve already been to the darkest place, to the Upside Down, and you already got that ticket punched. You know what it’s like to watch your kid go undiagnosed or unmedicated or unacknowledged or unprotected. You are far too acquainted with a lack of to not be able to believe in the abundance.

Still, your optimism is guarded. You want to believe, but you are cautious. Your heart has been broken before. You are tired. You’ve had to advocate so fiercely in the past. You think, surely that needle’s got to move. Is this the year when the progress report shows actual progress? You see everyone else’s kids smiling as they board the big yellow school bus and you wonder if yours will ever have a seat on there, or if they will always ride the struggle bus.

Dear one, I want you to know that you are not alone. I have ridden the struggle bus as a parent and as an educator for years. I often feel that I am sitting alone on the bus, looking out a murky window to yards where everyone else is having the time of their lives. It is only when I have raised my hand, though, to let others know that there’s a seat next to me, right here on this busted bench with gum stuck to the bottom of the seat, that I’ve felt such freedom. The journey of shepherding kids through school is so damn hard, especially if your kid’s factory settings are not the default. But it can also be pretty gnarly and hilarious and complicated and enriching. Why would we want to pretend otherwise?

Back to school photos tell the story of A Beginning, but even beginnings, as you know, can be fraught. Everyone else seems to approach the year with ease. To you, the beginning of the school year can feel heavy and anxious-making and downright baffling. How did we get here again?

Except, we are not Here Again, after all. We’re another year wiser, and another year stronger. Our backpacks are a bit more battered, but they are full of lessons and strategies for navigating the difficulties and the red tape. We may again find a seat reserved for us and our kid(s) on the struggle bus, but we’re seasoned students of this struggle. The story of the year ahead may be familiar in theme, but if you thought it would be a solo journey—plot twist—your First Day of School Photo isn’t a selfie. It’s an ussie.

Solidarity,
A Struggle Bus Rider