Sometimes you just can’t get a break.

“I like your shoes Daddy. They’re very beautiful.”
“I like your shoes too buddy.”

Andy and I each got our first pair of Crocs the other day. His are neon green. Mine are navy blue. I am feeling the love. Best $40 I have spent in a long time!

(ps: There is a Crocs outlet store in Edinburgh, Indiana for those of you that may be heading South on I-65 anytime soon. Take the 2nd exit… it’s around the back on the right side of the outlet shops.)

Yeah!!

The fan created a steady whirring sound and gently moved the humid air across the bed. He was illuminated by the city lights coming in through the open windows, and she watched his eye lids flutter, he, too, unable to keep them closed to allow sleep to come.

“When did you fall in love with me?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said, pausing to consider her question. Staring up at the ceiling, his breathing sped up a bit, providing his brain with the proper oxygen to access memories. “I think the first time I wanted to say it…” his voice trailed off.

“You wanted to say it before you said it?”

“Well, yeah. A few times,” he replied. “Do you remember the time you started dancing the Charleston in my living room for no reason? I think that’s when I knew.”

She smiled with the knowledge that the man beside her, for all his anxieties and bashful approach to life, still managed to understand her joi de vivre and loved her for it.

“I love you so very much,” she told him as she leaned over to kiss his chest in the place where his heart beat closest to the surface.

He kissed her forehead and turned over to sleep. “I love you too.”

With the constant nagging that most all of my posts are political, I wanted to make the following announcement: good things are possible, even when you might least expect it.

Somewhere, in the least appealing corner of the Midwest, there lives a man who loves the game of basketball. Not ever blessed with great skill in this game, he has for more than twenty years enthusiastically taken every opportunity to play the game- sometimes among those known to him- and often not.  The gains brought by experience and an ever-increasing knowledge of the game seemed over time to be degraded in equal measure by increasing age and varying physical shape.

This man continued to play, continued to struggle, continued to love the game. Then one day he made a realization: against young men ten years his junior and orders of magnitude more gifted- he was holding his own. It was on a day that he fared particularly well that it became clear: the years and all of the struggle had yielded progress. Laden with ankle and knee braces and a 10 minute pre and post game stretch routine, he was playing the best basketball of his life at 32 years of age.

Though not long for the part of the world where the ability to box out was vital social currency, he took solace in this realization. He was excited about what it might mean for the future. Most of all, he was comforted about the larger reality once again laid bare: progress is possible, even when most in doubt.

 

Today was a day of firsts in many ways. Andy, my 4 year old son, and I played ball and bat for the first time.

It all started when we were riding on bikes on our court (cul-de-sac for those who use cul-de-sac). It was a perfect Spring day… cool, overcast, and windy. But it felt nice. Temperature was good. The smell of rain in the air. He was riding his big wheel… big wheels rule by the way, even though they are a crash hazard if you make a sudden turn.

But he wears his little red dinosaur helmet, and being his dad, I wear my helmet too. We passed a storm sewer grate in front of the curb of our neighbors house, and we found this raggedy old ball. It wasn’t made of nerf, but it was nerf-life. Heavier though, and it would bounce really well. But it wouldn’t hurt if it hit you… really the perfect ball for a little boy and his dad to play their first game of ball and bat.

We ditched out bikes and helmets, then stumbled upon another first. The best location for us to play was IN THE STREET. Now normally, we are very worried about him being near the street, but it was early afternoon, most of the neighbors still at work, and all the bigger kids still in school. Great! Our yard just doesn’t really cut it, b/c our front, side, and back yards are all on rolling ground, not your typical, flat Indiana lawn. It’s kinda nice actually, but just not the best for playing ball and bat. So I made an executive decision… we’re playing in the street!

I was pitching; he was hitting. Well I was catcher too… because somehow when he’d miss I’d get stuck with chasing the ball down behind him. It was cool for a while, but then I had him get a few misses. He whacked a few pretty good. He’s played a few times before with Wendy, but for him and me, it was a first.

Then I took a crack at batting and at first, I was just tossing them up to myself and hitting them to him. Then I got this idea to hit one straight up into the air to see how high it would go. And that’s when I had this really cool memory surface from the back of my mind. It was of my Uncle Bob. We were playing with a bouncy kick ball out in front of my parents’ house in the street, on the court I grew up on. He kicked the ball up so high into the air, it was like it really disappeared into the clouds for a few seconds! I of course was amused and amazed. I don’t remember how old I was. But I always remembered that moment, and associated it with Uncle Bob. I hadn’t thought about it for years, until that moment when I blasted that little friendly nerf-like ball straight up into the air.

Then Andy had the same reaction I did when I was a kid. WOOOOOOOW! Do it again! Zen mind, beginner’s mind. Things are always fresh and new to the young.

After a while, we headed back inside, watched a little tv, had some lunch, then took a nap. We love our naps. Another time to be quiet and think, and dream. I’m going to dream about us playing together more during these perfect spring days.

Uncle Bob… if you’re reading this… thanks for kicking that ball up into the clouds.

Today I ate lunch at an old-school Sczechwan Chinese restaurant with a buddy of mine.  It smelled like frying hamburger and the walls had a disconcerting amount of mirrors. We were catching up over chicken kung pow (him) and broccoli in garlic sauce (me). He was telling me about a friend of ours and a new rule in his life regarding his extensive film collection:

Friend: So his girlfriend has a new rule. For every movie that comes into the apartment, two have to leave.

Me: Harsh. I never liked her.

Friend: I know. I can’t believe they are still together. She’s really enforcing this rule.

Me: So what were the movies?

Friend: He really wanted to bring in Juno.

Me: What did he give up?

Friend: Fraternity Fuckfest and Grand Theft Anal.

Me: Of course!

Friend: He gave them to me, and I was all, ‘I’m not even into anal’.  Do you want it?

Me: No thanks. I’m not really into anal either.

We moved on to other topics and finished the meal. In an ‘I swear I don’t make this stuff up’ gift of happenstance, my fortune cookie read: “Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men”.  If anyone wants to play the lotto, the lucky numbers were 21, 22, 31, 34, 45, 46.

 

 Perhaps you too know this phenomenon. No one in my house is able to go to the bathroom without the permission and guidance of one of my three cats. The yellow-eyed supervisor pictured above is that leader of this little bathroom gang. And I have a confession to make: in this world of ever-changing strangeness, I am more and more appreciative all the time of this loyalty, of this routine. So few institutions, indeed so few human beings, are as dependable as mister meepers. So here’s to you Meepcat. Thanks for being there- even in my- ahem- darkest moments.

One day I will have a daughter.  She will have curly brown hair and be hyper-articulate.  Then she will grow up and fall in love with a fanboy (see previous post). 

Sometimes I think I’m too brash, but then I watch things like this and my uterus hurts and then I again feel confident in my femininity.