love big. love hard.
Dear Daddy,
Oh how I want to talk to you today. There’s so much I’ve wanted to tell you, so much I want you to know about the last three months. When we were living with mom this summer, I would often come downstairs in the middle of the night and walk into the den, half expecting to find you reading on the sofa. I so wanted to curl up next to you like I did when I was younger. To have you put your arm around my shoulder and hear you say “tell your dear old dad what’s bothering you.”
Last week marked the official end to summer. This was old news to many of us who said goodbye to summer weeks ago. Perhaps at the exact moment we were photographing our children (looking the best they will look all year long) holding their Pinterest-inspired first day of school signs. We have already grudgingly readjusted to the strictures of routine and schedule and simultaneously given up caring what they look like when they go to school. Nearly one month in to the school year, my boys left the house looking as if they had not brushed their hair in 4 days. And last week I let them wear stripes on stripes. Don’t judge.
I got home from the Virginia game late on Saturday night and this was waiting for me:
A container of personalized New York Football Giants M&Ms – a present from my college roommate who had to suffer through years of my football obsession while she was trying to get her molecular biology homework done.
As I was standing in the kitchen eating them (I hadn’t had dinner after all), the words jumped out at me.
Make a wish.
That is the essence of loving any sports team, isn’t it?
After months of despondently pretending to care about tennis and golf and baseball while secretly watching reruns of the 1982 Peach Bowl on ESPN Classic, the drought is finally over. With August comes a return to all that is good with the world.
Football.
I love everything about football. College or NFL. Televised or live. I love the play calls, the pageantry, the speculation over coaching hires and recruiting. Most of all, I love being a fan. Since I was a little girl, I have loved my Giants and my Wahoos. But truthfully I will watch any game, any time, anywhere.
“I’m fine.” I don’t know how many times I have said that over the last 6 weeks since my father died. My father died. Those words still seem odd to say. Odder still that they flow trippingly off my tongue as if I were simply recounting where we went for summer vacation.
It is a well-established fact that I am a regular crier. I excel at crying. Happy tears, sad tears, exhausted tears, frustrated tears, nostalgic tears. They have all been a part of my weekly repertoire for 38 years. Sappy commercial? Check. Wistful memory of the boys when they were babies? You bet. Random song on the radio? Yup. Hard day? Too tired? Proud parental moment? Bad blisters? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. You name it, I have cried because of it.
When I was seven years old, a particularly fierce thunderstorm swept through town one night. One of those southern summer storms that shakes the walls of the house and the nerves of its occupants – especially the little ones. Sensing my palpable fear, my dad quietly took my hand and asked me to come watch the storm with him. I shelved my trepidation and accompanied him to the sun porch on the side of our house that had floor to ceiling windows.
As the storm put on a magnificent display, I sat on my father’s lap and listened to him quietly talk about calculating the distance of the storm by counting the seconds between thunder and lightning, why light travels faster than sound, and the origins of electrical pulses in the sky. Every time I jumped at the sound of a thunder clap, he gently put his hand on my forearm and immediately my heart rate slowed down. When the storm finally ebbed, I realized that I was completely relaxed.