The Other Shoe
Waiting and waiting
I got out of the shower in our cozy hotel room earlier this month and heard the sound of music coming through the door. My son was pacing the hotel room, practicing singing the Dutch national anthem. He’d told me before we left for Dallas that he “didn’t want to look like an ass” at the World Cup game, all dressed in orange but not singing along to the national anthem. He didn’t just hop on a bandwagon here - he’s been rooting for the Netherlands since he started watching soccer as a 4 year old. Virgil van Dijk has been a favorite player for years and he’d be damned if anyone mistook him for a casual fan.
I felt almost unbearably fond of him in that moment and aware, once again, of small, anxious part of me that wondered when things would start going wrong.
See, the thing is that we’d been having a GREAT weekend. Our travel to Dallas went smoothly, our hotel was in a great location that meant we could walk to the game, and we spent the four days of the trip meeting people from all over the world, lounging by the pool, and (for my son) playing hours of pick-up soccer with Japanese and Mexican kids who were rooting for different teams but shared his love of the beautiful game.
I’d been planning this trip for a long time and it felt extra sweet to get so much 1:1 time with my son, knowing he leaves for college in just two months. I love him and I like him and there is nobody else I’d rather have been on a World Cup trip with1.
Throughout the planning of this (likely literally) once-in-a-lifetime trip, I’d felt mostly proud of myself. Proud of myself for having the kind of relationship with my kid where I knew we’d enjoy traveling together. Proud of my research and organizational skills that meant that we got to go to a game we really wanted to see and stay in a hotel that was pretty damn dreamy. Proud of myself for getting my financial life into a place where we could make a trip like this happen without having to take on credit card debt2.
But I’ve also had moments of internal discomfort about it too.
Would people think we are fancy, doing a trip like this, especially when one of the biggest on-going news stories about the World Cup has been how expensive tickets are3?
(Why do I feel so uncomfortable with the idea of people thinking I’m fancy? What the hell does “fancy” even mean"?)
Does it sound like bragging if I tell people about this trip?
(Why can’t I trust that people in my life will be excited for us?)
What if something goes wrong? What if the tickets are somehow a scam? What if one or both of us gets sick? What if the hotel doesn’t have our reservation? What if the rental car place tries to scam us4?
(When will the other shoe drop? What does the other shoe look like? What’s the worst thing that could happen and when will it happen?)
But the weekend and the rest of the trip also went off without a hitch (though we would have preferred the Dutch to win rather than tie their game). It actually was an even better trip than I dreamed of, filled with little moments (like the pick-up soccer games) that are the unplanned magic of traveling. We made it home with a suitcase filled with candy from our field trip to Buc-ees and a mutual agreement that the trip was basically perfect.
The other shoe never dropped.
***
I’m not a very anxious person.
I’m a planner. I’m driven by a strong need for security (especially fiscal security). I have a not-so-secret belief that the Taylor Swift song “You’re On Your Own, Kid” is actually written for me, personally, because nobody else will ever be as committed to taking care of me as I will be.
My default setting is to basically assume that I can survive anything as long as I have a good pen, a fresh notebook, and a willingness to work harder than anyone else.
(I also have ADHD, so I don’t tend to spend a lot of time perseverating, which kind of helps on the anxiety front, I think)
One simply doesn’t have to deal with anxiety when she has SYSTEMS! and PLANS! and SPREADSHEETS!
So it felt odd to feel these flashes of anxiety and pessimism in the midst of a weekend that was, if nothing else, a kind of testament to my organizational skills and my willingness to work hard to meet financial goals.
This anxiety, the nervous anticipation for the let down that must surely come with so much happiness, is an echo. These are, for me, thelingering effects of growing up actually poor5 and in a house where the shots were mostly called by one parent’s untreated mental illness.
The other shoe was always dropping. Being okay was, at best, a profoundly temporary state. When there is no safety net (financial or emotional), it doesn’t cost much for something to be a disaster; every good day can turn into tears and yelling in an instant.
It makes sense to be suspicious of joy.
***
At some point in the weekend I remembered the poem Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh6
And I’m not saying that poetry is the cure for a fucked up childhood… that’s therapy’s job.
But, man, sometimes it helps.
Because, sometimes, it all really does go according to plan.
Joy doesn’t always bring disaster. Imagine that.
***
These aren’t Sunday Suggestions because, wow, I’m late on this post. But here are some things I’ve been into lately:
Highly relate to this because, wow, yes FIFA is hella corrupt: “I Hate FIFA but I Love the World Cup”
This home may have a famous pedigree (it was one of Diane Keaton’s, apparently) but I am TROUBLED by the amount of lamps.
These are, sincerely, one of the most horrifying shoes I have ever seen. Good gravy, imagine seeing someone wearing these on a humid day… gag.
I would be happy to visit any of these “underrated” places.
Hard agree with this post on the value of teenagers getting retail/service jobs
There are lots of other people that it would be super fun to be on this trip with but he’s the biggest soccer fan I know and the one who I knew would most enjoy the whole overwhelming experience of a World Cup
Something that would NOT have been true in some other phases of my life. I had close to $25K in credit card debt by my early 20s, and it took WORK to get out of that hole. I always tell people I was more proud of paying off the last bit of my credit card debt than I was when I graduated college and I stand by that. Learning how to get my financial life together was harder work than getting through college
FWIW, the tickets were expensive, but I was able to get them back in December and didn’t have to buy them on the resale market so we didn’t pay nearly as much as some fans unfortunately had to if they wanted to see a game
Honestly, this is a legit fear. I do not trust the rental car industry AT ALL. But I booked through Costco travel, so I feel a little more confident about it, because I do trust Costco
Life food stamps and only having one pair of shoes poor
A poem I encountered for the first time in poetry class as a prompt and inspired my own version
The Diane Keaton "ranch" is so confusing. The aerial view is of the neighborhood, which looks pretty congested but the pictures try really hard to say "we're on a ranch!". I went to a wedding in a barn back when that was a cool thing to do and was shocked that the barn was in the middle of a condo development. This feels like that, only with way more lights. And $22 million still doesn't help you escape Millennial Gray floors.
So we're the same person - creating checklists while listening to our mutual fav Taylor song (I gasped when you said that).