The Official Wife
By
Crystal Wood Campbell
Cover photo by Ruth Lovin!
Dedicated to Jeff, Cate, Addi, Luke, and Callum.
Thank you for your love and belief in me. I am blessed beyond understanding.
To God be all of the Glory. For without Him, what kind of life would this be?
To my mom and dad and to my grandparents in heaven, I love you and owe gratitude more than words can express.
Preface
For a few years I put off writing my story. It was going to be so personal and the what if’s got in my way. What if I said something that hurt someone? What if I said something that left me open to scrutiny and heartbreak? What if I blurted out a secret and I couldn’t take back what I had put out there in black and white?
Then one day the other what if’s popped up. What if my story could help someone? What if my courage gave someone else courage? What if this is just what God wants me to do? Who am I to argue with God? So I went for it. Knees knocking…and breath held, I went for it.
In writing this story, I want people to see that even though there are tough times in life, there are ways to conquer them. The first place to start overcoming obstacles is within ones self. Don’t play the blame game and by all means LAUGH! Laugh at yourself, laugh at your kids, and laugh at life because when you take life too serious, you take all of the fun out of it.
Find your courage.
I hope that you enjoy my family and our story as much as I do. It isn’t perfect and that is what makes it real. It is full of mistakes and twists. I am not making perfection –I am making a family.
Cheers and screams rain down from the stands onto the court. Anticipation of a great game can be as easily felt and the tip off starts the battle. The players’ blood is pumping, the coach’s board is all x’ed and o’ed and the cheerleaders are waving their pompoms, urging on the crazy college fans. If you look closely you will see one person sitting still way up in the corner not doing much cheering. (Freeze frame) That is me. The referee’s wife.
For nearly the last ten years starting the end of October and lasting through March, I become a widow. Now, I am not making light of the military wives’ sacrifice and having to deal with their loved one’s deployment; but, I relate it to that. Some refs even have hazardous war like conditions. Have you seen the Bobby Knight chair incident? Coaches have the love of their team and past players and the respect of the community. Players have fans and jerseys with their numbers on it. Referees have… a constant road schedule. Every other night a couple of dead and quite moist zebras lay in my laundry room floor begging for Oxy Clean. A roller travel bag, haphazardly opened, smells of muscle cream and sweat. I am the cheerleader to my husband’s career, not to mention that after these last ten years I can pack his bag as well as he can and have it ready at a moment’s notice. I don’t cheer for the teams. I cheer for the ref. For better or worse.
Since Jeff was little he has been around basketball; as a baby in his mom’s arms at games, as a toddler sitting on the bench with his dad, growing up and playing in school and college. Basketball has been a presence in his life always. Because of the love and enjoyment for the game of basketball, even after he has spent a lifetime of being in the middle of it, I try to encourage him in any way that he needs me to. I’m cheering him on when no one else is there to cheer. I’m there cheering when it seems like the whole world wants to cheer against the refs.
At first, I couldn’t understand how he could block out the crowd and the over the top comments but now I hear most of it and laugh. Heck, he laughs and the more creative the jab the better. Seriously, we paid good money to get those eyes to 20/20 and to offer your glasses is well… just out of date.
Once a spectator sitting on the floor told my husband who was working the side court that if he “backs up anymore” she was going to “tap that.” (Thank you. I think he does have a rather nice backside.) The addition of the white board to get a fan’s message across has proved entertaining. On one occasion, during a game, a fan wrote, “I farted” with an arrow pointing at a ref. He was warned not to write such things, funny as they may be, and he had a brilliant comeback with “I smell like roses.” You can see how this could and does get entertaining. So I enjoy going along and hearing about my husband’s day at work.
Coordinating schedules is somewhat of an art. It seems to have always been that way. We even got married according to game schedules. True, we decided to get married rather quickly and in the same week that we made the decision, we eloped. I guess we knew better than to let each other get away so we acted fast.
We had briefly been introduced in college. He had asked a common friend about dating me then, but I was already dating someone and out of respect he stayed away. Sigh. If only he had gone for it then, I might have been spared some heartache.
Sunday, February 10th 2002, we spent eight hours in a car asking questions and sharing stories and wants and future desires. We covered each and every topic that premarital counseling would have. I knew after that conversation that he was the right one for me. I had been terrible at love in the past. The thing about mistakes is that you learn from them, and I had already flunked in relationships and in marriage.
This is where I do a major rewind in time. My relationship baggage was heavy and even though I had dealt with it before I met him, it was Jeff that brought my doubt in having any lasting relationship back from the grave.
I took a little something from all of the relationships around me growing up. My momma always taught me to be nice to everyone and they would be nice to me. That is a beautiful thought and for the most part she was right. She tried to shelter me from friendships that might betray me but didn’t really know how to guide me in dating. It was the relationships with boys that cut my soul into pieces and tried to break me.
My mom had only ever dated my dad and they dated for four years before they got married- the same night that she graduated from high school. To say that she had any dating advice would be an understatement. She tried but both of them had no idea what was out there for a totally naïve, unprepared teenage girl. They allowed me to date someone much older and much more aware of the ways of the world. He saw a young girl that he could brainwash into thinking that no one else could love her as much as he did. He swore that he needed me and that he wanted me forever. I bought it all.
My parents kept a good watch on what I was exposed to. I had never seen a naked body- other than my own. The bra advertisements in the Sears catalog and Grandma’s soap operas were about as risqué as I had been privy to. When I look back, I see how he calculated a night that would change me. He rented a porn movie and then proceeded to force himself on me, even through my tears and pleas to stop. The details of that night are still gut-wrenching for me. He raped me and verbally abused me and on my sixteenth birthday I found myself in my bathroom crying with my mom because I was afraid that I was pregnant.
At the same time, another girl claimed that she was pregnant and that it was his. He insisted that he wasn’t able to have children because he and his first wife weren’t able to conceive. Obviously, that wasn’t true because he has children now. I stayed with him and his lies and abuse until I was almost seventeen. I never told anyone what he did to me. I didn’t want the shame and I didn’t want to embarrass my family or the story to get twisted. I still don’t want to talk about it. I buried in my past. It is just as painful and embarrassing twenty years later. I have no ill will towards him. I have forgiven him but to this day I can’t see his picture or hear his name without getting just a little nauseated. I pray that karma doesn’t come around to visit his daughters. No girl deserves that kind of treatment.
I suppose that whole period set up the next ten years of my life. As a teenager, I was highly impressionable and after that dating experience I had zero self-confidence when it came to boys. Like I said, I had horrible self-esteem when it came to dating. Not every guy that I dated was a jerk and I admit that I did my share of jerky things in relationships. It is important to know and own both sides of the story in relationships. I did date some really great guys but maybe because I was broken it didn’t work out. I ended up with not just one bad marriage but two before I finally said that I needed to fix me and not another guy. Sure, some horrible events had happened but I had to make a choice that they weren’t going to keep me jailed up. I had to decide that I was created for more than placing myself in relationships that cut me down and did little to encourage me. I had to own my mistakes and choices and move on.
Along with poor dating choices, my lifestyle in my early twenties wasn’t exactly putting me in the greatest mindset. I was living up the college life and was going out and partying and living a life that wasn’t me. I had people find out that I had been married young and divorced within months of getting married and they would just be appalled. There went more self-esteem down the drain. It is so much easier to think little of yourself than to think something good.
I never set out to be a marriage loser at an early age. Can you imagine that conversation? Little eight year old me sitting there, playing Barbies, dreaming about wedding dresses and flower arrangements thinking,
“For my first wedding, I want to use the color pink but not purple. I will save that for my second marriage.”
That is just absurd.
Judgment came from all sides it seemed. Some of my greatest critics were from the church. I was told that God wouldn’t give me children and that no one would love me because of my divorces. I had become a punch line of some sorts to friends and family. Boy! That helped the self-confidence. I laughed at myself to get through what I felt was a complete failure in life. I sat myself down and thought, “Man! I’m miserable. I’m going in circles and bad ones at that. I wonder why?”
That is when God tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Remember Me?”
It was a slow process in getting “me” straightened out. There was a bit of self-trickery to all of my low points. I always fooled myself into thinking that I was doing okay. I think that I knew that things weren’t okay but it was easier to pretend that I was doing great.
I guess that it is very safe to say that my referee saved my view on love. God saved my life and He used Jeff to help heal my heart. Jeff had a big part in me trusting a man with my heart again and thankfully, time fades the photographs in our minds.
By this point in my life and after all that I had put myself through I could pick out a great guy and not just any great guy… the perfect one for me. So in that long car ride on February 10th, just two months after we went on our first date, I looked at him and said, “You are just the kind of guy I should marry.”
I was kind of shocked that I had said it.
His eyes got big and he looked at me and said, “Well, you want to?”
“Sure, why not.” And with that we decided to get hitched.
We both were teachers. He taught at the alternative learning center in Claremore and I was a kindergarten teacher in Sapulpa. He had a house in Broken Arrow which fortunately was halfway between the two towns. Remember the schedule and it was in the heart of basketball season so he was swamped. The only night that we had off the next couple of weeks was during parent/teacher conferences that Thursday, February 14th. I didn’t want a wedding and he didn’t really want to wait. We got married in our living room with both of our parents witnessing and his father officiating the marriage vows.
We had told no one- not even siblings that we were getting married so you can imagine the looks that I got the next morning at my remaining parent/teacher conferences. Our friends thought that we were nuts and his sisters were in shock. One of my favorite pictures from our post wedding dinner was Jeff telling his sister Melody that he had gotten married. He is bright red and grinning from ear to ear. To say that his sisters were blind-sided is an understatement. My family has grown to expect the unexpected from me so they were a little less mouth agape.
We honeymooned the weekend in luxurious Chicago. Jeff had a game there and so I spectated my first game as Mrs. Referee at Chicago State University. For those of you not familiar with Chicago State, I was the lone white girl. That is no exaggeration. I learned what it felt like to be the outsider due to my skin color. You know the color of snow? Well one shade darker and that is just how white I am. With my dark hair, light green eyes and very pale skin, I was like a beacon flashing, “White chick”. One very nice student came over to me and kept me company. His first words were, “What are you doing here?” I then had the pleasure of explaining that I was on my honeymoon and that my groom was in his black and white attire on the floor. He stared blankly at me and we changed the subject to anything else. “How ‘bout dem bears?”
It seems like a lifetime ago and yet like just a few months have passed since we eloped. Looking back, in comparison to how much I love him now, there is no way that love led me down the aisle; or in our case in front of the fireplace in our living room. However, there is one certain thing -it was the best decision that I ever made.
Somehow, in all of that travel and missing home we managed to have four wonderful, beautiful children. And once upon a time, I wore high heels, make-up and something other than a ponytail. I am terribly afraid that if I do cut off my hair I will be forced to fix it.
For two years, we had tried to have a baby and with absolutely no luck. His schedule didn’t help one iota. We checked my plumbing. We checked his plumbing. All working. I was frustrated beyond belief. I was hurt and it was magnified every time that I watched someone else get pregnant, take home their baby and in what seemed like in no time at all, get pregnant again. When I finally did get pregnant, Jeff didn’t believe me. I think that he was stunned, like a deer in headlights. He didn’t know how to react. It wasn’t until he held our baby that he really believed that he was going to be a daddy.
The first of our little delights came two weeks late and at the beginning of March. We had our own version of March Madness that year. As I mentioned, he travels and travels a lot. By this time I was a blimp and my head looked like the blimp had blown a bubble to sit on top of it. So when you are large beyond your own belief with your first child and have no idea what to expect or when this blessed event will take place the last thing that you want to hear is that your spouse will be miles and miles and MILES away. I think that my impending delivery did get him out of a few speeding tickets that season.
“You see, Officer, my wife is about to have our first baby. I have got to get home and in a hurry.” I am sure that it was more charming and with more finesse than that but, you get the picture.
With every Braxton Hicks contraction I just knew that my calls to him at half time it was for real and that our much anticipated first-born would soon arrive. There were about three games when I swore that it really was time and Jeff would come rushing home from games that were just a few hours away. One of his coordinator of officials, the guy in charge of refs for a particular conference or conferences, told him jokingly that if he missed the birth for a game, “She will eventually forgive you.” He was smart and didn’t take the advice.
Finally, after being induced and failing at that, I was greeted with a c-section. What was my first thought? Good, we can plan any other babies’ delivery and he won’t have to be called away from an important game. Insanity? Why YES, yes it is. That is what real basketball wives go through. We plan around, on top of and through basketball schedules.
Cate arrived on 03-04-05 at 6:54 (3,4,5,6,5,4) weighing just over nine pounds. Jeff had to leave the next morning. He flew to Houston, Texas, officiated a game and flew back all in the same day. Bless his tired heart. He then had to deal with a very emotional new mother who kept thanking him for her new baby. Every so often I would break down in sobs and in crying broken English I would plead out, “Thannnnkk you for this beautiful baby. I…I love yooooouuu.”
For any soon to be mommies out there- NEVER watch “The Notebook” or any other sappy movie post-delivery. You are emotional enough and do not need any help in crying. At least this was my experience times four. The first time that I held each of my babies when it was just the two of us, I wept in the most joyous and overwhelmed kind of way. I was a momma.
In the two years before our baby Cate was born, my shortness came up in topic when talking about kids. Something most people don’t worry about. In basketball, height is huge and for a basketball crazed family, height is important.
Jeff would tell people that he had hoped for a post player kid. For those of you not familiar, post players are the taller players that score easily by dunking at will and as kids can play keep away better than anyone else just by holding the ball straight above their head. After telling people about his post man hopes he would elbow me and say, “Maybe just a great point guard.” Point guards are like the coaches on the court. They see the whole court and lead the team. They usually are the shorter players and good outside shooters because the tall men can block their shots fairly easily. A good point guard is invaluable but the big man always gets the attention. Most people pay attention to the points on the scoreboard but not so much the amount of assists (passes that end with the receiver scoring) that were accumulated by a player.
After baby Cate was born weighing over nine pounds and was fairly long, one of the first things he said was that he was back to hoping for a post player. I think that he almost did a cheer himself! Our last baby, Callum, is growing at fast pace. On his first birthday he was easily wearing 24 month clothing. I may have forgotten to tell him that even though I am short, I have seven foot tall cousins.
When baby Callum was born we had four kids ages five and under. We ended up with two girls, Cate Faith and Addison Love and then we had two boys, Luke John and Callum Reid. Three out of the four were born during basketball season…and he didn’t miss one birth. Game on.
Off the court: What is it like being married to a basketball official? As a wife, it can be so lonely and as a mother, there are times of complete and utter exhaustion during basketball season.
I wear many name tag patches. I am wife to Jeff; mother to Cate, Addi, Luke, and Callum; daughter to John and Glenda; homeroom mom to 20 prekindergarten kiddos; community volunteer; and a runner in constant training. (I think of myself as a runner but I believe that I have an addiction to running races for the ‘free’ t-shirt that your entry fee pays for.) All of these identities lead to times when you just want to crawl under the covers and collapse in tears and never get up.
I don’t how many times that I have taken a hot shower and just prayed. A good ugly cry all alone is sometimes just what the doctor ordered. My Christian faith sustains me in every way. That is the only way that I really make it. My fears are removed and my anxiety is calmed. When I am tired or when I can’t sleep, I turn to God. For me, I trust God with my husband, my children, my home, my sanity -my very life. People have let me down but, God never has. Because my husband feels the same way, I know that no matter where basketball travel takes Jeff, that I can always trust him. Anyway, we are a family of faith and it is with that faith that I send my husband out into the wide world of sporting, in this case, basketball, events.
There is so much more to a ref’s life that people don’t see. They aren’t mythical creatures that only come out during basketball season. The vast majority of them have 9-5 jobs. In my husband’s case, he has a teaching job and a summer construction job in addition to his officiating duties. Around here the only thing that collects dust is the bed.
Sometimes, we are just a blur of movement. I wasn’t always like this. I wasn’t always an object constantly in motion. I loved sleeping in and lazy days. Now I’m often woken up by a little finger tapping me and asking if it is “wake-up time”. Exercise and running were for sporty people and I hadn’t ever been classified as that type. I was unorganized and cleaned only when it appeared to be dirty. I sometimes wonder at what point my brain was snatched and traded in for a different almost obsessive compulsive one.
Oh, what changes motherhood brings and not just to a woman’s body. There is no downtime. I have gotten so used to being always busy that when I have nothing to do that I create busy work for myself. I get carried away with birthday parties, work around the house, and just functions around town. I love being involved with the kids at their school. I am like a grandma teacher. I get to whisk in at party time and get them all juiced up and then turn them over to their teachers to be responsible. My kids love seeing me at school and I have to admit it is pretty awesome seeing them excited.