THE CONSTANT
I think about Edith Fuller a lot. Edith Fuller, if you don’t remember—and there’s absolutely no reason you should, all things considered—was a wunderkind kindergartener who qualified to represent Tulsa in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. You know, the one for eighth graders. At 6, Edith was the youngest contestant in the history of the Bee, and as such was the darling of the media covering the event. And with good reason—as she had no idea of the relative enormity of her achievement, she carried herself with the infectious humility of a genuine 6-year-old, not a media darling. She was basically the Bad News Bears of the Spelling Bee: a scrappy little towheaded upstart that you couldn’t help but root for. She made the final round of competition but caught some brutal words early in the day, and spent the rest of the event doing insanely adorable color commentary and interviews. And then the tournament was over, and Edith went home with her family and back to being a 6-year-old. I could not wait to see her come back as a first-grader. I was so very excited to see how far she could get with another year of study under her belt, so when the next year’s finalists were announced, I immediately searched the list to find her speller number. And she wasn’t there. She hadn’t qualified. There was no joy in Mudville; first-grade Edith had struck out. I felt a slight measure of relief for whichever 8th-grader from the greater Tulsa region had pulled off the upset. Turns out it wasn’t an eighth-grader, though. It was a dapper little 3rd grader in a bow tie. Young Sal Lakmissetti had done the impossible and knocked out America’s sweetheart. I was happy for him—until I read about how it happened. One of the reasons that watching the Bee is so emotionally involving is that the tension between the spellers and their occasionally overbearing parents can be so heart-wrenchingly intense. Edith had been a respite from that—her parents seemed to have been surprised that she had developed those skills. Sal’s dad on the other hand, had gotten indignant when Sal lost to Edith in Tulsa the year before. So he hired the previous year’s tournament champion to give Sal private lessons for a year. You know, the way you do when you want your 3rd grader to trounce a 1st grader in a contest for 13-year-olds. Not for nothing, but that is basically the plot of the movie Bad Words. Sal’s dad had turned him into Chitanya Chopra. I wonder if Sal’s dad knows how to spell “autofellatio.” I wonder if Edith had been heartbroken when she lost the Tulsa bee. Turns out, the next year she wasn’t interested in participating at all. And her dad didn’t push her, because it wasn’t about him. Edith Fuller’s dad got it right, and he just let her be a second-grader and pursue whatever her enormous second-grader heart wanted. I was ecstatic she didn’t return, that she was out there getting to be a kid. The funny thing is, I’m not really obsessed with spelling per se. What I am obsessed with, however, is the raw human drama of watching painfully awkward home-schooled kids on ESPN. There’s no denying the hilarity of some of their more awkward moments. But the real reason to watch is to marvel at their bravery. I’ve heard it alleged that the #1 most commonly held phobia in American adults is a fear of public speaking. And yet year after year, some of the most sheltered kids in America gather in a hotel in DC called The Gaylord (because these kids aren’t bullied enough, I guess), and walk up to a microphone before millions and risk entire-hometown-disappointing embarrassment. Wanting to more fully understand what these kids go through, I let my family talk me into entering an adult spelling bee sponsored by the local library. After my initial disappointment that “adult spelling bee” didn’t mean it was a four-letter-words contest, I got fully enthused at the prospect of competing, and even had our friend Scott design a t-shirt for me to compete in, emblazoned with a bee illustration and the mantra that governed my participation: “Edith Fuller is my constant.” By “constant”, I was referencing what was maybe the best-ever episode of Lost, a self-contained narrative about a man searching for the love of his life across shifting time periods. The usual complications of time travel narratives were overcome by the idea that in order for him to find his true path, he had to serve as a “constant” to remind other people what their true purpose was. My true purpose in entering the bee was to try to have the kind of come-what-may attitude that made Edith shine. And that’s largely the way it went down. I breezed through the first few rounds with ease, the words got hard in a hurry, but I acquitted myself nicely. After a solid initial hour that whittled a field of about forty people down to six, I was relieved when I got thrown a softball for an umbrella-drink-loving goober like me: daiquiri. Which I promptly misspelled. I’ll never forgive myself for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but I’m always happy to throw that t-shirt on these days. Of course, now, a couple years removed my own bee experience, it’s more evident than ever to me that when I throw that t-shirt on, Edith Fuller is a codename. A transparent alias, at that. I’m sure you have a person in your life that serves as your constant: not necessarily your partner or best friend (though it could be), but the person you go to when you need to be reminded of who you really are. What you’re really about. Who believes in you with no agenda. I’ve been lucky to be that for a few people—I was my brother Patrick’s constant, for instance. And while Declan’s always been my wartime consigliere—there’s no one more clutch in a crisis—Delaney has always been my constant. They say having kids is like living with your heart outside your body, and that has always hit me at a cellular level. I don’t talk about it often—or ever really—as it’s not something that happened to me, or that I went through, it’s Delaney's story. But for context I need you to know that when she had a debilitating mystery affliction a couple years ago, she was put through a series of tests for terminal illnesses. Those tests came back negative, but for a little while I had to confront the possibility of losing my baby girl and it nearly fucking broke me. Thank jeebus, the folks at the Mayo Clinic were able to diagnose her malady, and it’s something she had to learn to live with, and cope with, and thrive with. And she’s done all of that, admirably, but it required her to delay college for a frustrating year. Given the ways we’ve all been sidelined lately, it’s done me good to remember the ways Delaney got through her involuntary gap year with grace. Multiple creative projects. Tending to the care of small things. Finding ways to breathe through the worst of it. And leaning on the people who love her most. And I’ve treasured her as my constant like never before, and spending time with her got me through being 2x4’ed by my avowed best friend. (There’s been some good-natured conjecture by well-meaning friends as to whether the most recent playlist was indeed a break-up mix. First of all, I don’t want to knock whatever any of you have do to get over somebody, but listening to a bunch of songs that rub your nose in the loss just isn’t my thing. There’s no denying that when I sequenced the songs, I was struck by the lyrical subtext that emerged, but they weren’t selected for that purpose. In fact, most of those songs were in the playlist before I found out what had happened. But it merits a thoughtful inquest, in any case. You poor bastards.) And I guess that’s the thing. There’s something legitimately sad about when your best-laid plans and most fervent desires don’t work out the way you envisioned, especially when it was completely out of your control. (And dear readers, as you well know, most things are out of our control.) But maybe, just maybe, if you can somehow keep your eyes open for the joy you find on the detour, and have a sense of where—or more specifically who—your true north is, you might wind up writing a better story than the one you had planned. And maybe this new story was the point of you all along. I love the thought that right now, in all likelihood, Edith is doing something that's simultaneously challenging and entirely age-appropriate. Which, in a very real way, will be her trophy for not participating. I don't think Edith's done with the Bee, but I'm also not sure I would be heartbroken if she was. And I absolutely believe that, much like Delaney, Edith has more in store for us than we could ever imagine. Even in the middle of missing my people—and especially my North Dakota hussy constant—I have to say that being reminded of who I really can be has me feeling like one of the Bad News Bears myself these days, with all the swagger of Ahmad stepping up to the plate in the Astrodome: “Back up, suckers. I feel good.”
