Thankfulness

Tony Bennett UVA basketball

It is hard to watch your children do something that you know will hurt them, even if they love it more than anything in the world. It is hard to allow them the space to make their own choices, even if you know how those choices will turn out.

But a big part of parenting is doing just that. We spend so long believing that the hardest part of parenting is holding on.

Holding on to a newborn you are sure is going to slip from your clumsy hands. Holding on to your sanity as you fumble through the day on no sleep. Holding on to a spoon, slippery with mushy peas. Holding on to a toddler’s hand as they take wobbly steps. Holding on to art work and memories of misspoken words. Holding on until they are just a little older. Read more...

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Joy Comes in the Morning

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The night my father died, I did not sleep. My mind was humming with the kind of things you think about after your dad dies.  But mostly I was thinking about how to tell my children. How to tell them that everything had changed but that everything would be okay. How to counter the blows which their faith in God, still nascent and unquestioning, would suffer. How to protect their innocence, their joy.

I sat on a sofa, waiting for them to come around the corner. My 7 year was the first one down, his hair askew, holding his blanket around his neck like a superhero cape. The child whom, a few hours earlier, I had held while the paramedics tried to resuscitate my father. The child who believed the reassuring words I had whispered in his ear to muffle the sounds of the static on their radios. He rounded the corner cautiously, afraid of what he might find, yet positive, in the way that only a child can be, that there was a happy ending.  My 5 year old followed him, blissfully unaware that the world he knew when he fell asleep was no longer the same. Read more...

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The Big Dance

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Three years ago, Virginia basketball was headed for the NIT, another in a seemingly endless series of mediocre seasons ending in disappointment.

Exactly one year later, they were the ACC regular season and tournament champions and a Number 1 seed in the NCAAs.

So much can change in one year.

That season was magical. The kind of magic that you feel when you are a kid on Christmas morning. The kind of magic that makes you believe anything is possible.

We lost in the Sweet Sixteen that year, bounced early by a foe we never saw coming. A few months later, I lost my dad. Read more...

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54 seconds

For 39 minutes last Tuesday night, Virginia played its worst basketball of the season. For 39 minutes, they played like the team that had lost four games to unranked opponents.

Those losses stung. Losses always do. But what I told my boys – and I’m fairly certain I meant it – is that losses are okay, good even, if you can learn something from them. If they show you what your weaknesses are so you can figure out how to correct them.

I’d like to say I was just talking about basketball but I wasn’t. We all lose. We lose friends, we lose business deals, we lose arguments. Read more...

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The Moment When Everything Is Possible

Sunday morning I put on my lucky orange pants for the last time this season.  I didn’t know it at the time of course, although I had an inkling. That is, after all, the nature of the post-season – survive and advance or lose and go home.

One year ago, I stood in a similar stadium, watching Virginia play the very same team, and there wasn’t a single part of me that believed it would be the last time.  Hope is a funny thing that way.

But one year ago, I didn’t know what I do know. That you cannot will something to be simply because you believe.  One year ago, I hadn’t yet listened to the voices of the paramedics performing CPR on my dad.  I hadn’t held my child and told him everything was going to be okay, even though I knew it wasn’t.  In my head I knew.  But my heart still believed in the improbable.  As my brain was busy calculating the ugly logistics of death, my heart was exhilarating in the moment that was surely ahead of us when the doctors would joyfully tell us of the medical miracle that they had performed. Read more...

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Sometimes It’s More Than a Game: Why I Took My Kids Out of School for a Basketball Game

Someone gently reminded me the other day that I have been uncharacteristically quiet since Christmas.  And I gently reminded my friend that the Lucky Orange Pants have been busy with more important things.  Like basketball  season.

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that Virginia is one of two undefeated teams left in college basketball and ranked second in the country.

Second.  In the whole country.  For someone with a massive fear of heights, and a long memory of crashing and burning, this is a scary place to be. Read more...

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Passion

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In the course of your life, there are certain moments that you remember as clearly as if they happened yesterday. Some are big moments, but most of them are small.  And this weekend, at Tony Bennett Basketball Camp, was one of those moments for Jack.  And for me.

But not for the reason you think.

Despite his most fervent desire, the idea that Jack would even be able to attend a college basketball camp was a stretch at best because of a rare disease no one has heard of (for more read here).  But this one – 2 half days with parents in attendance – seemed like the best shot we’d ever have to give him this dream.  Way too often in my younger life, I preemptively said no to things that I suspected I couldn’t do.  And that was the safe thing to be sure.  But I also regret that I didn’t just try some things, even if they would have ended up with me unable to walk for days. Read more...

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Guess Hooooo’s going to Greensboro?

Some girls dream of jewelry or exotic vacations.  Some dream of giant closets filled with shoes.  Some dream of being movie stars or CEOs.

But me, I dream of ACC Tournament tickets. And now I have ’em. So I will be there to cheer on my Wahoos, in my lucky orange pants, while Billy and the boys pretend not to know me.

I started packing today and had the damndest time trying to decide which of our Hoogalia to bring.  Because there is a lot.  6 pairs of orange pants, 3 pairs blue corduroy pants, 1 pair orange AND blue pants, 4 orange sweaters, 1 blue and white polka dot shirt, 3 navy blue polos, 312 orange and/or blue button downs, 9 virginia tshirts, 4 orange and blue striped shirts.  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg… Read more...

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