Underneath The Stadium Lights

Friday night was my youngest son's first varsity high school football game. It was an away game and on the 30 minute drive to the opposing team's stadium, my husband and I shared some thoughts. This is a new journey for us with our last child. A journey we both had hoped would be possible. A journey we will enjoy as much as possible.

My husband was an athlete, a gifted one. I say was only because both of his knees and one shoulder are shot from his own athletic pursuits. His time has passed, painfully. He is proud of our son and understands better than I do what it's like to play on a football team. He understands better than most people actually.

As we sat in the stands I could see my husband's mind had gone off to a place I know nothing about....and mine went to my own personal and private one. The lights in the stadium were turned on, blazing and blinding, up over a grey and pinkish sky about to fade to black. It was a gorgeous late summer evening, warm and clear. I sat there thinking about other football stadiums I had sat in over the years when my thoughts were interrupted. The teams were ready to take the field. We stood, the national anthem sung and we settled in to wait for kickoff.

That's when it hit me. The band began a cadence to punctuate the kickoff. I sat there frozen in time...it was the same cadence I can remember from 1975, my senior year in high school. I shut my eyes and I was there, sitting in the stands, with my friends on another warm September Friday night. Waiting for the whistle to blow, waiting for the game to begin. With my eyes shut I hear the cheerleaders, I hear the band and I hear the excitement in the crowd. I was right back there in an instant.

I opened my eyes and came back to the present and saw my son was lined up, waiting for the whistle. I wonder if he could hear the crowd or did his pounding heart drown out the noise. I wonder how it feels for him, under those lights, in place waiting for this chapter in his life to begin. I wonder if he knows how lucky he is, if he knows how quickly this chapter will pass. I wonder if he knows how special this will all be someday.

I wonder if he knows that his father's big hands are balled up tight and his jaw is clenched. I wonder if he knows that every muscle in his father's body is clenched and tight waiting for that first contact. I wonder if he knows he's not alone out there on that field. I wonder if he knows that his father is right there beside him.

I wonder if he knows just how much his father loves him, how much he worries about him. I wonder if he knows how proud his father is at this moment and how overwhelmed he is with emotion. It isn't the lights in the stadium that has his dark brown eyes glittering. No it is not.

If my husband were to glance in my direction he would see that my eyes are glittering right along with his.

Right along with them.
Indeed.

The Highs and the Lows

There are some songs that no matter when you hear them or where you are when you hear them....you stop and let the song wash over you. One of those songs, for me, is Desperado written by Glenn Frye and Don Henley. It's a song with a hauntingly lonesome melody but the lyric is what stops me cold. It's a guy's song of sorts but I have always identified with it. The lyric's message has always made me think of those times in life when we are alone by choice. Those times when we separate ourselves from friends and loved ones because it's just too hard to be around people, just too painful.

One phrase is the heart of the lyric for me. The one bright spot, the redemptive moment that always stops me and reminds me about how to live a life worth living.

You're losing all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away....

Life is hard, living is hard and walking life's journey can hurt with every single and solitary step. When we separate ourselves we attempt to insulate. When we insulate we stop feeling. When we stop feeling I think we stop living. It's a place I never want to be. For as much as we want to protect ourselves from hurt when we insulate we also can't feel the highs, can't feel the good, can't feel the wondrous happiness that can be found in life. If we wrap that insulation around us too tightly the feeling really does go away. We end up feeling nothing.

This was a week of highs and lows for me. I felt buried under a weight I could hardly bear. I insulated, I separated from friends and was quiet. I was fearful of losing a very special part of my life. I was also fearful of life's changes and what they would mean to me. Then....out of nowhere the high came swift and sweet. I was a witness this week to my daughter's life as it begins a beautiful new chapter and my father's as it begins to end. I was a witness to how little in life I can control and how desperately I want to do just that. The insulation does protect but it doesn't let us feel. It doesn't let us live.

Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away....

Highs and lows.

I pray it never goes away. For my sake, I pray it never goes away.
Indeed.

My Bronx Tale

My husband and I took a day trip this past week. We both took a day off from work and drove into New York City. We make many trips of the sort, usually to Manhattan, at various times of the year. This week our destination was The Bronx. My husband was in the mood to feel his ethnic roots.

The Bronx is home to Arthur Avenue, a wonderful strip of retail shops and restaurants which comprise what many consider to be New York City's real Little Italy.

Several of my husband's Aunts and Uncles hail from the Bronx. When he was a child, his parents packed up the family and spent many happy trips there. He still talks about going to Mass Sunday mornings and on the walk back to his Aunt Jeanette's apartment Uncle Al, her husband, would take him to a pastry shop for a treat. Happy memories for him, certainly. Memories he likes to hang on to.

I get a kick out of how happy he gets as soon as we start the trek across the George Washington Bridge. We talk about what we are going to buy, where we might eat. We talk about our past trips and we talk about the trips he took as a child. This week was no exception. It was a welcome relief after the period of tension and discord that had descended upon our household. A welcome relief to be sure.

My husband comes from a very traditional Italian family. A family, sadly, fractured and decimated by a bitter divorce between his parents. A divorce that occurred nearly forty years ago. One that tore the family apart and the estrangements, rifts and pain still exist to this day. I am always saddened to think about how that divorce affected him, how it still affects him and our life together.

The trip into NYC was pleasant. We arrived early and found our parking on 187th St.. My husband called ahead, on the drive in, to place his order with Chris at Borgatti's (15 dozen cheese ravioli and 10 pounds of angel hair pasta). We planned to peruse the shops around the neighborhood for a few hours and have lunch at a favorite spot. I found a sweet espresso set and a wine decanter with glasses I could not live without. We stopped in Addeo's for pani di casa and bread crumbs. We bought soprasota, mortadela and capicola. We bought a chunk of locatelli cheese, shredded and parcelled into containers. We bought the things we can't get here at home, things that are not quite as good as they have for sale up on Arthur Avenue. Most of what we bought was for our family and friends who give us "orders" to bring such things when we visit. Of course we are happy to oblige.

The ride back home was more subdued, my husband continuing along on his mental stroll down a painful memory lane. I do my best to be understanding. I do my best to understand when he checks out and gets lost in his own head. I haven't had the experiences he's had nor have I dealt with my own family trials in the manner he does. We're different that way. Thank goodness.

Different because for all of the years that have passed and all of the sadness he's felt, he remains entrenched in a past that won't ever change. A past that won't, for all the world, come back. He longs for a family that once was while I watch and wonder if he fully appreciates the family that is. The family I have given him. We're different because I live in the here and now. I look around and see what I have. We're different because I look ahead at what is to come for this family, my family. The family we created.

If he isn't careful he could someday find himself looking back with longing at that family as well.
Indeed.

Meatloaf and Maggie

My Dad is in the hospital. Again.

I can't even count the number of times he's been hospitalized in the last year. So many things seem to be going wrong inside him and it feels like the doctors are now just putting out fires as they start up.

It's difficult for me to watch his decline. My Dad was always a big, ruddy Irish man. Tall, athletic, funny and larger than life to me. Black hair, blue eyes and a wit as sharp as a razor yet joyful at the same time.

My Dad is known to a fair amount of folks around here. He was a coach, he dabbled in politics and was active in several social organizations. So much of that has changed. These last years he's been famous for having such a keen interest in his grandson's sporting endeavors. My boys grew up with him the way I did, watching college football on Saturday afternoons and the big leagues on Sundays. When ABC's Wide World of Sports came on we both half sang/half hummed the opening theme during which Jim McKay recites the famous line...The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Punctuating the agony of defeat was footage of an Olympic ski jumper who falls and careens off the end of the jump, invariably causing my Dad to mutter, the poor bastard.

That's my Dad. Irreverent at times, silly, smart and sensible. Watching him change has been painful. Waiting for him to return even more so. It's been a long wait for me to be sure.

I called his room at the hospital last night.. He was asking if Maggie his Pug put on any weight since he's been there. Mind you he's only been admitted two days. He said, "You know your mother will stuff her until she chokes the poor girl". As if he never gave her any extra treats. To change the subject I asked about his dinner to which he replied with a note of blandness, "It was meatloaf". Then I asked him if it was good. His reply... "Oh yes and it barked at me".

That's my Dad. I know he's trying to return.

Trying

Indeed

Love Lost and Pink Elephants

Sadly I bore witness to tragedy this week. Real tragedy, real human loss and irreparable heartache. Two perfectly matched, perfectly suited people were separated, for all time, by the untimely death of one, leaving the other to drift along with nothing but nothing at all now.

Love was lost. A great love between these two people, a part of perfection we all wish would touch us.

Those who knew them feel cheated, feel robbed, feel angry. We all got to go along for the ride and see up close and personal just what real passionate love is. We sailed along vicariously, we applauded their vigor and wished on lucky stars that we would someday have what they did.

And now a great big pink elephant has plopped itself down near me and has been staring quite intently in my direction. I know I need to acknowledge it and talk about what it so persistently seems bent on pushing me toward. I know I need to address, and put a voice to, a more subtle tragedy that I pretend isn't there. A tragedy in the making if I allow it to be. Ever since the dreaded news reached my ears I felt the cold grip of fear grasp firmly, attaching itself to me, and I have no way to shake it. No way to shake it unless look at it squarely and say out loud just what it is that I am so afraid of. Only my words, only my honest admission will send that pink elephant packing and release me from that gripping fear. Release me from the fear that tightens my throat and chokes the words that I really need to say.

Words I need to say.

Indeed