Tour de France

So, the thing is... this is the column that almost wasn't.

Did you think I forgot to send my column this week? I’m sorry this column is so late. But, well, I've a confession to make.

I'm addicted to the Tour de France.

I can't help it! I'm just totally caught up in the drama, the strategy, the personalities, and, oh yeah, insulting the French media. (Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking but I know a nice pit bull, too and I still wouldn't leave my children alone with her. The French media really doesn't like the American team and no matter how thrilling the ride by Lance Armstrong, the cameras will always fixate on some poor French rider who is struggling just to finish. And the US sports networks aren't allowed on the road to cover the darn thing... oh, don't get me started. At the height of my indignation this week, I parked next to a car with the bumper sticker “Texas. Bigger than France.” That about sums things up for me.)

If you are like most sports fans, you've vaguely HEARD of the Tour but it's not exactly on your list of top ten sporting events of the year. I'm basing this assessment on the fact that only the obscure Outdoor Life Network is carrying daily coverage of it. We had to buy a satellite dish to even GET that channel. (Please do NOT bring this subject up with my husband. Ana's at an impressionable stage and her vocabulary of expletives is currently limited to “Well, I'll be a ding-dong-danged!” from one of the Thomas Train books.) But I think it's about the most exciting and physically challenging event I have ever even heard of, second maybe only to, well, giving birth.

I got all involved last year and you can't imagine how into it I am this year. Lance Armstrong, the premier American rider for the US team, calls Austin his home, you know, and for those of you non-Austinites, he's trying to win the Tour for the third straight time. If he does it (and he's looking really, really good), he'll be the first American to win three straight Tours. (In fact, only one American has ever won it at all --Greg Lemond. He won it three times but not consecutively.)

So, how did I get hooked? Well, what happened LAST year was that I went into pre-term labor over the July 4th weekend and was promptly sent to bed until the contractions stopped. Which they never did, right up until my planned c-section on October 11. (You know, for a woman who has had two caesarians, I've sure spent a lot of time in labor.) My husband and I can roll our eyes and wonder how we ever got through it (now that Smiley Jane is safely landed and poised to take over the world) but it was amazingly stressful at the time.

The Tour de France sort of became my pregnancy metaphor. Every evening, I would move to the couch in the living room and my husband and I would watch the Tour highlights. And we'd time how far apart the contractions were to see if we'd be making yet another trip to the hospital. It seemed that when Lance was winning a stage, the contractions were almost unnoticeable. When he hung back and rode with the Peleton (the main group of riders), the contractions stayed steady but not alarming. And the stage where he ran out of fuel, or “bonked” as they say, we had to call the after hours clinic to find out if we would be checking into the hospital. I'm sure most of it was coincidence, or perhaps I just needed reassurance that sometimes the good guys win, but whatever the case, when Lance Armstrong won the Tour, I had a feeling that maybe we'd win our own grueling endurance test.

We read Lance’s autobiography, which is a pretty amazing story about his battle with cancer and how it changed him so profoundly for the better. The man has the heart of a champion and that essential killer instinct that makes him not just a survivor, but a winner. But he's not an entirely sympathetic character, Armstrong. He's fueled by a lot of anger and he certainly has his share of ego. Reading between the lines, he still carries around a lot of baggage from his childhood and although he's 29 now and a father himself, you can still see the little boy who had so much to prove way back then and who got hurt by the adults around him. Maybe that's why he touches me --I can't stand for children to suffer for the misdeeds of adults.

Anyway, after we became more familiar with Armstrong's story and much more knowledgeable about the Tour (which is very complex -- it's not just ONE race, or even one race every day. There are loads more jerseys than just the yellow one in contention. I had no idea.), we started realizing that there were parts of our life that ran parallel to the various stages of the Tour. We joke that having our credit cards paid off has all the strange positive physics of the Peleton. Or we laugh that we are participating in our own team time trial as we try to get both kids fed, bathed and in bed. I won the yellow jersey after the individual time trial which involved averting a poop accident, starting a load of laundry, and preventing a concussion on the part of She Who Must Walk Before Ten Months, all without burning dinner or going completely out of my mind.

This past week (when my oldest daughter officially gave up her daily nap and my youngest had her worst bout of teething so far (still no teeth) and when I couldn't find time to even shower or sleep, much less get my column out in time) was definitely akin to the mountain stages --the most arduous days of the Tour. I felt like I was doing well just to survive this week. One night, I, who have diapered my oldest every night since her birth some three and a quarter years ago, simply FORGOT to put a diaper on her. She's now completely potty trained EXCEPT AT NIGHT and I apparently forgot that important point. I only have TWO children. You'd think I could remember that they both wear diapers at night.

So, right when I was beating myself up for barely coping this week, a friend sent me an e-mail I had sent her right when I first went into labor a year ago. Reading through my terrified message was just the reality check I needed. The remembrance of how we spent this month last year and how scary it all was --how close we came to losing our Smiley Jane --made me take a deep breath and regroup. It's interesting how Mother Nature blunts our memories. Interesting and merciful, I guess.

Anyway, here we are, a year later, with nine-month-old Smiley Jane, who is just such a happy, joyful, positive presence in our lives. I don’t know what we'd do without her. She completes our family and she's just a HILARIOUS little roommate. And she gives unsolicited open mouth kisses right now so I am one happy mom.

It's funny, people are always asking me why we named her Jane since it's a pretty stark contrast to the more exotic trend in names right now. Well, we liked Jane for two reasons. First, I think it's a name without a clearly associated image. From Mansfield to Hathaway, you've got the whole spectrum of brains and beauty. And I'm betting our Jane will end up defining her name, just as forcefully and with as much joy as she inhabits every day of her life. The second reason is that Jane means “gift from God.” And she is.

I feel incredibly blessed when I remember that she was almost the baby who wasn't. And that THIS year, we get to just WATCH the Tour de France. GO, LANCE!!

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Barbara Cooper is the mother of Ana (3) and Jane (nine months). She lives in Austin, Texas and she really likes French FOOD.

**End note: Announcing the birth of my newest baby (my husband just fainted): the http://www.sothethingis.com web site!! It's very rough and needs a ton of work but you can at least read the first twelve columns there and see pictures of Smiley Jane and Astronaut Ana. I'm still trying to learn the software to design the site and I'm still looking for some shareware that I can use to create message boards but at least it's up and running. (My apologies to my spouse, who works in the Technology sector. Other than arranging the registration of the domain name and setting the server thingy up, the actual site itself was my doing and should not reflect badly on him or his company!)