Martins Show Up

Technically I'm not a Martin anymore in name. I went the traditional route and took Michael's last name as my own. I am all about Girl Power and womyn's rights and everything, but I just like this tradition. I'm starting a family with him, I want our children to have one name, so I took his. It's the way my family's always done it, so this wasn't exactly headline news. But I did take my maiden name as my middle name to keep with me. I figured that 'Martin' was much more a part of me than my previous middle name and I wanted to keep it.

But even though I have a new last name, I still consider myself a Martin, and have carried the Martin idioms with me into this new world of marriedhood. This is the first in what will be at least a five part series of Martin sayings that my parents taught me.

The first is "Martins Show Up." I was reminded of this gem by a long phone call with my dad a couple weeks ago. He was telling me how sad he was that he'd recently had to lay off a bunch of employees. They were good people who hadn't done anything wrong, just that their business had to let people go to be able to continue operating. After my dad (the vice president of the company) delivered the news personally to the employees, one stood up and thanked my dad for giving the news personally instead of staying locked up in his office behind a big desk to let someone else do the dirty work.

My dad told him that Martins show up.

When I was in high school I played for a soccer team that was probably one of the top four programs in Arizona. I loved the girls on this team. We'd traveled together, practiced a few times a week, won, lost, cried together. I had a managable relationship with the coach and had been with them since I moved to Arizona. But I wasn't getting help from the coach in getting college recognition, so I started guest playing with the #2 team in Arizona in tournaments that my regular team didn't get in to. (Don't talk to me about the #1 team. Is it offensive to call Sereno Nazi-ish? Sereno is a surefire way to kill your love of the sport). I found out that I liked these new girls too, it was a better team that was going to better tournaments and had college coaches at a lot of games. If I wanted to play soccer in college - and I did - this was a better club for it.

My parents and I sat down and tried to decide if I should permanently leave my old team and move to this new one. Not to let my histrionic side go wild, but this was the hardest decision of my life. I'm not kidding, I had nightmares. I didn't want to be a traitor to my old team, but I also didn't want to kiss my college dreams goodbye. I would wake up knowing what I should do, then wake up feeling a different way. In the end, I knew that staying with my old team would be simpler, but going to the new team would be right.

Other girls had left our team before. Normally they'd just stop showing up, or they'd have their mom call the coach and break the news that way. We would always hate it when girls would take this easy way out. My parents told me that Martins show up. It would certainly not be easy, but I owed my team a face-to-face explanation. So on what would prove to be an intensely difficult evening, I showed up at the next practice and told my girls - in tears - why I was leaving for another competing squad. Some girls were mad. Some understood. Some gave me a hug and cried too. Some walked off without saying goodbye.

It was so hard, but I'm glad I did it. It taught me that you can't run from a fight. If you're tough enough to make a choice for an action, you have to be tough enough to execute it with honor.

I hope you don't mind reading about my Martin Idioms. I thought about writing these a few weeks ago but hesitated because I worried it would seem like I'm bragging about how cool my family sayings are. Or whatever. But I couldn't think of much else to blog about lately and decided to go for it. If you're reading this blog, chances are you know me personally so you don't mind hearing about little things my parents taught me. Maybe you have your own family sayings? I'd love to hear about them in your own blog or in the comments.