Today I get real with my deepest fear. It’s about time, right? I’ve been writing these muses since November, and I bet you don’t know why I’m holed up in this teepee.

Read on so we can have a little pow-wow and I’ll tell you a few ball tall tales while we’re at it.

Okay, okay. It’s not my teepee and I don’t teepee-cally hang out in it, the girls used it when they were little, definitely once because it has green paint on it. But I needed a photo, and we’ve been decluttering, and as you can see by the wrinkles, it’s had its day, just like me.

So what’s up with my deepest fear? A dear reader suggested I write stories about me. Well, gulp. This writing thing was all fun and games until I had to enter the picture.

When I was little, my idea of hide and seek meant to stay right there in the middle of the room and close my eyes. (I believed that no one could find me that way)…Luckily my kids always played “the normal” way.

Even though I know so much better now, there are those moments when fear gets the best of me, and I wish I could close my eyes and be invisible. Or hole up in the girl’s teepee.

Before this goes too far, I’ll tell you. Only I’m stretching myself here. I mean really stretching. I’ll slip it in, and maybe you won’t notice–I can’t deal with change, la-di-dah!

I said it. Yes, I know how embarrassing this is because life is change. It’s an inherent part of the deal. Here’s your life now go forth and expect to change. From the minute we’re brand spanking new until the end of our days on earth. Yet, I can’t deal with beginnings and endings, and I want the middle to go on forever. It’s the adult version of me hiding in the middle of a room with my eyes closed, hoping no one’ll find me.

Why do you think I couldn’t write my book for 35+ years (so long of a stretch that a killjoy in the book publishing industry once advised me to say one+, anything over one would scare an agent). Plus, it wasn’t technically that long; there were stops and starts along the way so I could prolong the middle for a few more decades.

But I can’t stretch out my kids the way I did that book. They managed to complete their 6th and 10th Grade years without leaving the house to go to school. The only thing I didn’t do was sit on them to make them stop growing.

And despite my best efforts to immortalize them as my babies forever, my kids are like the Who’s in Whoville. The Grinch stole all their toys, but they still got up Christmas day to sing. Just as my girls lost their school, their friends, and their life as they knew it, yet they make music anyway.

It’s really sweet. They’re thriving, despite behind-the-scenes efforts on my part to sabotage their growth.

Who am I kidding? Time keeps marching by just like it’s supposed to. I’m the only one pressed to stop it in its tracks.

While I’m being real with you, the thought of my kid’s growing up had me so freaked out; last year, while there was still theater, I dared myself to stop being a blank page, and I hit the stage in Mamma Mia! (There’s an exclamation point at the end of that because that’s how the show’s copyrighted, though I could have just as easily put the emphasis there since I had no idea what I was doing and I practically crawled on that stage opening night). Everyone thought I was doing it to get closer to the girls when here’s that horrible truth again. It was for me. That nightmare of being a washed-up, middle-aged mama with no kids in tow was far more real than the fear of being out there and starting something new.

In fact, one of my earliest posts was on that topic goodbye-mommyhood.

So there it was. A beginning (that ironically happened to be in the middle of my life). And that one event turned a midlife crisis into midlife hoopla.

And if you don’t get me yet about this fun thing yet, I turned my back on my college journalism professor who encouraged me to write a book out of college. I went into TV instead.

Working at Comedy Central was so much cooler right? There were jokes, even though I was stiff and serious back then. But someone had to be the straight man when everyone’s voice message said, “leave a joke after the tone.” My boss was a Harvard Lampoonie; it’s not a real word, it’s just what I called him, so he didn’t play into that part of the culture either.

But just like my teacher predicted, going into TV was the kiss of death of creativity. Indeed the book ideas were dry during that period of my life.

But last year, I danced and sang my way into another book idea: Mamma Mia! Having fun through my mid-life crisis. So I wrote three-quarters of it (this time it only took me less than a year) and was almost through the middle nearing the– no don’t say it–when I attended a conference. The rules for publishing non-fiction are very different than fiction, so I never gave much thought to memoir before. Only another dream basher in the publishing world told me I need to be famous, or at least have a following. Argh! I was almost at the finish line, and bam, I got knocked back to the middle.

In all fairness isn’t that where I’m at my best? Mom and dad should have had three kids. I would have made an awesome middle child.

Ah, which brings us to the crux of this whole thing. When I’m feeling like the world that I know is out of control and one fear drifts into the next, I think of something good to focus on instead and write my next blog post.

So let’s take my Dad. A new book, perhaps? If not a book, I’ve been toying around with writing enough, I can make a heck of a narrative out of it. So let me start with what I know.

What was he doing when he faced midlife? He was part-owner of the Miami Heat with Mr. Schaffel (PS217–the public school he played basketball for back in Brooklyn). Okay. Can’t touch that one. Two childhood friends had the vision to create a new team out of vacant lots where the homeless lived in Miami when I was still in High School. That would have made him about 42. But it didn’t come to fruition until I was in college. In my opinion, it was just my Dad doing something else with a basketball.

For Dad, he had his midlife crisis as a player when his injury ended his career. Washed up at 32 (his age and number), though none of us thought of that before. Or at least that’s what the Peter Pan syndrome would tell us it was all about the-peter-pan-syndrome.

He didn’t have a choice in the matter, but he’d also say he liked it better that way. He’d never have to face the day that he wasn’t good enough anymore.

He had to re-envision what life would be if he wasn’t one of twelve lords-a-leaping after a ball. But he’d done a lot of that soul searching already.

It’s what I’m going through. If I’m not a Mom, the only thing I wanted to be once I had kids of my own, who am I? It’s too daunting still. I can’t go there just yet. I wrote about that already, too what-role-am-i.

So I look back to when Dad was a kid. There’s nothing too big for me in those stories.

You know, Dad liked to play ball back then, and it wasn’t only basketball. He played baseball, too. I loved to hear about how he only knew that he loved sports. There’s a tall tale or two you can make up with a story like that.

To think my youngest will be the same age as Dad in just five months. Wow! And Dad even got recruited to play when he was 15. At that time it was the Milwaukee Braves (now the Atlanta Braves), a scout wanted Dad to go to tryouts, but Grandpa said, “You’re going to college.”

Plus, he got bored with it. “If you weren’t a pitcher or a catcher…” But what kind of daughter of a baseball player would that have made me? I don’t even like the sport. In college, I went on three dates with a baseball player, and on our last date I had already had my exit line because I could see someone saying it in a movie, “You know the rule, three strikes and you’re out.” I wouldn’t be writing about Dad had he played baseball, let me tell you that much.

But Dad had already trailed off into another memory this time at UNC because I’d asked him, didn’t you also get recruited for football also?

It was UNC vs. North Carolina State in Raleigh. In the previous game at Chapel Hill, Dad tried to dunk the ball with two hands and landed flat on his back. The ball hit the rim and fell into Dad’s hands. Dad was back to save face, even with the rival crowd waving “Dunk one” signs. I would have crawled in my tee-pee and never come out. Thankfully, for both of us, Dad had a great game, and UNC won.

Afterward, Dean Smith told Dad there’s someone from the Dallas Cowboys who wanted to talk. He pulled Dad aside and asked if he wanted to play for the Dallas Cowboys.

The only football Dad had ever played was two-hand touch, they’d go around the cars and call the sidewalk out-of-bounds. He’d never put on a shoulder pad or a helmet his entire life.

They had three outstanding basketball college players who had made the transition to professional football already, so they believed that Dad could join them. They wanted to sign him after the draft for a two-year contract, at $20,000 a year. That was more than the NBA offered.

“I turned him down very nicely and thanked him. I couldn’t picture myself playing football. Thank goodness. Imagine Billy the football player? Of course, he said no.

I think of all those mere mishaps, and though it makes me glad I’m not the daughter of a baseball or football player, I think I’ve also learned something from these tales. When fear is getting the best of me, I might’ve just said, “Whoa, calm down slugger.” Oh, wrong sport.

Who am I kidding? We can’t tame fear. It’s what motivates us. When it screams and hollers at us until we can’t take it anymore. That’s when we leave the teepee. It’s just the kick in the pants we need!

It’s greater than us, and we have no choice but to listen to it anyway. And it just might mean that change is on the horizon. Did we have to end up here? I mean, really?

It’s time to retreat until next week. But I’m not going to end on a note like this. In fact, if you’ll excuse me I have a teepee that needs me.