Wahoowa

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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Loss, Love

Dreams

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Image courtesy of Pexels
Image courtesy of Pexels

My favorite time of the day is the space between sleep and wakefulness, when you are vaguely cognizant of being warm and comfortable and you have not yet remembered the things that hurt. The blurry place before the light sharpens into hard angles when you cannot yet distinguish between what you have dreamed and what is real.

The place where, for one brief moment yesterday, I had a father again.

Like most of my dreams, this one came back to me in a series of disjointed pictures. We were looking for something. Keys one minute, pieces of a puzzle the next. One nameless object after another. Read more...

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Growing Up, Love

16 Years of Choices

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2015-10-22 21.32.32

This week, Billy and I celebrated the 16th anniversary of our first date (our “dateaversary” as we call it). A night that we walked into a bar as friends, just like so many other night. We drank some beers, watched a ballgame, and chose to take a leap.

Our story did not begin that night. Stories, after all, do not have beginnings or endings but simply arbitrary dates from which we mark a before and an after. October 19th is that day for us.

Billy once told me that fate brought us together; that there were too many coincidences, too many ghosts, too many decisions that could have gone the other way for it to be random.  But even if fate brought us together on the lawn of the law school, it was we who made the choice to be together that night in October. Read more...

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Believe, Love

Radical Hospitality

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DeAnna Casey Photography
DeAnna Casey Photography

Some months ago, our assistant rector gave a beautiful sermon about radical hospitality. Although his sermon was more specifically concerned with the social upheaval of the summer and the church’s duty to extend radical hospitality to those who had been disenfranchised or marginalized, I took his message on a very personal level instead.

Maybe it was because the sermon coincided with the first anniversary of my father’s death and my heart was raw from the emotion of that service.

Maybe it was because I was struggling to make sense of a friend who no longer seemed to care about me. Read more...

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Loss

The Last First: A Year of Grief

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2014-10-07 14.27.41***Update: See this post featured on Scary Mommy and The Mighty!

In the last 365 days since my father’s death, we have faced and surmounted a litany of firsts – from big ticket items like holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries to smaller hurdles like the first time my mom had to zip up her own dress or the night I absentmindedly called my dad’s phone and heard it ringing in my own desk.

Today is the last first. The first anniversary of his death.

In some ways, it feels like just yesterday he was standing in my kitchen and in others, it feels like I have aged a lifetime in these 365 days. A year is so short but the days are so long. Read more...

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Growing Up, Loss, Love

The Still of the Night

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3am

I am an unabashed night owl, a trait I inherited from my father.  No really – researchers have actually found that there is a genetic component to a person’s circadian rhythms. Growing up, I would often come downstairs in the middle of the night to find him reading or working or making up his own crossword puzzles. Sometimes we would talk but often I would simply curl up next to him, my head rising and falling on his chest in rhythm with his breathing.  Nighttime was when he helped me solve my problems, mended my broken heart, and told me fantastic stories.  Nighttime was our time. Read more...

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Believe, Loss, Wahoowa

The Moment When Everything Is Possible

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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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Loss, Love, Parenthood, Uncategorized

Legacy

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A month ago, I had the great pleasure of accompanying Jack’s class on a field trip to the Chrysler Museum.  As we were passing through Huber Court, Jack caught sight of my parents’ names etched in the marble wall and stopped mid-stride.  Oblivious to the boisterous chatter of his classmates fading into the glass gallery down the hall, Jack stood immobile.   And then he slowly reached out his hand.

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Silently I watched him run his fingers over the grooves in the marble, painstakingly tracing each letter in my father’s name.  I knew what he was doing.  He was willing himself to see and feel my father instead of just a name carved in the cold marble. Read more...

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Loss, Love

What Harry Potter Taught Me About Love and Loss

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In the months since my father has died, I have heard the same question over and over again: “Are you really okay?”  Most of the time it is a genuine question, although sometimes it is dutifully asked as a perfunctory exercise of social graces.

Either way, my answer is always the same: “I’m really okay.”  I always have been, even if I didn’t understand why.

But the parade of confused looks and barely hidden disbelief at my unconventional reaction made me start to think that everyone else knew something I didn’t. Read more...

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Love, Parenthood, Wahoowa

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

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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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Loss, Love, Relationships

A Year in Review

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I should have known that 2014 was going to be a . . . challenging year when it began with a virulent bout of the stomach flu.

But things started to look up after a week at Disneyworld with our favorite people. After the Lucky Orange Pants had the time of their life at the ACC tournament and the Sweet Sixteen.  At Will’s preschool graduation. An unforgettable weekend at UVA basketball camp.  When my brother got engaged to the greatest girl in the world.  After an inauspicious beginning, 2014 was looking like the best year on record. Read more...

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Growing Up, Love, Parenthood

The Little Boy Who Made Us Complete

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Six years ago today, I became a mother of boys.  Plural.  And it wasn’t long after Billy put our second baby boy in my arms that the questions began.

“Wow.  Two boys.  You must be….busy.”

“Are you going to try for a third?”  Third is always code for girl.

“At least you don’t have to pay for any weddings!” (always said with a chuckle).

The comments and questions come in many variations, with different tilts of the head, raised eyebrows, and innuendos hidden by smiles.  And every time I hear one, my blood boils.
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Believe, Christmas

What Santa Brought Me For Christmas

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I didn’t have a chance to write my letter to Santa this year.  All December long, I kept a running list in my head, and, just like the boys, added and subtracted things along the way.  I never took pen to paper, partially because there was always something else to do.  Decorating our tree, decorating mom’s tree, coordinating teacher presents, Christmas cards, fixing the strands of lights that had gone out, baking, assembling, guessing which Star Wars lego sets were really the ones the boys wanted. Read more...

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Christmas, Relationships

Special Friends

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25 years ago, my parents decided to have a small Christmas party in their new house, inviting a small group of their special friends.  In some ways, the party has changed very little from its original incarnation.  Every year, people subtly begin asking in September whether we have picked a date yet so they can mark it on their calendars.  Every year, my mother bests herself with witty turns of phrase on the invitation.  Every year, my dad makes sure that everyone’s glass is full at all times.  Every year, there is a giant 12 foot tree in the living room.  Every year, we take our family picture in front of it right before we open the front door.  And every year, we invite only our special friends. Read more...

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Christmas, Loss

What’s Not in My Christmas Card This Year

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Of all of my favorite Christmas activities – and good Lord there are many – doing our Christmas card is high on the list.    Normally, I love coming up with pithy holiday puns for the greeting.  I relish spending countless hours I don’t actually have looking back through pictures and choosing the ones that capture the personality of the boys, even if their hair isn’t brushed or their clothes don’t match.  The pictures that tell the story of us.

But this year I have been uninspired.  My heart just hasn’t been in it. Read more...

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