Flatball Radio | Chelsea Putnam – “Barely Viable”
by | August 10, 2015, 5:51am 0
When I first moved to Portland, Chelsea Putnam was the top player in town. In 2009, Chelsea was picked as one of the 13 players to represent the United States at the World Games. Chelsea’s relentless and ambitious side was well balanced with an insatiable desire to have fun and be playful, evidenced by how she could often be found in the backyard of a Portland party, leg-wrestling someone in a crazy game she made up. I shared a tattered, brown Potlatch jersey with her (Go Vagabonds!), and while she dominated on the field, I have more distinct memories of her doing “flip throws” with a soccer ball. Like with everything else, she went full tilt to perform the acrobatic throw and had to stop when she nearly destroyed her back.
Chelsea’s life changed as she became a mother of three. During workshopping, her newborn twins were honorable members of our storytelling crew. Sometimes she had to breastfeed, sometimes they interrupted stories and sometimes another storyteller would gently holding a twin while he slept. It added an extra layer of fun to our workshopping process.
The defining moment for Chelsea came during a five minute break, when she was waiting for her husband to drop off the twins. Following a brief, two hour reprieve from maternal duties, Chelsea was on high alert for the twins’ return. She heard something outside and said, “Oh, that must be Matt with the twins.” She opened up the door and all of us could hear is sirens blaring – a firetruck was racing by on the adjacent street. With three kids under three years old, you can imagine just how noisy her life had gotten when she was mistaking firetrucks for her children.The fog of motherhood didn’t dilute Chelsea’s natural buoyancy or the power of her life experiences as told in her Flatball Radio story.
Photo by Gene Buonaccorsi — www.eugenebuonaccorsi.com
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