In the opening scenes of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell (aka Tom Hanks) is sitting in a lounge chair in his backyard. Neil Armstrong has just stepped on the moon and astronaut Lovell is next in line. The “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” party has disbanded, and Lovell is pondering his spot in history. He squints up at his outstretched thumb playing peek-a-boo with the cratered orb of the night sky, and says to his wife, Marilyn, “It’s not a miracle, you know. He just decided to go.”

Most things of significance begin just like that. You decide. And then you jump. The rest you just sort of figure out along the way.

Athletes are creatures of habit. They are drawn like shards of steel to a horseshoe magnet to things people say they cannot do. It’s part of their unique make up, part of what separates them from the ordinary folks who do not feel the pull. They are all about the hard.

The way they work is influenced by that, too. And it’s not always in the best interest of their prowess. They can get addicted to the grind, as well as to the thing that rarely happens--the feat of realistic competition might not ever give them a chance to try. They work and work and work. Sometimes in the wrong ways, sometimes even, on the wrong things.

In elementary school, as a lead up to Thanksgiving, we drew turkeys by tracing our hands. A little thumb makes an excellent head from which to hang a wattle, and skinny fingers form a fabulous feather fan with just a smidge of imagination and a Crayola box of 64. My turkeys’ feathers were always elaborate, with bands of brightly contrasting color in shapes and designs more like the rick rack in my granny’s sewing box than the tail of a bird you’d find in a field. But I don’t guess I’d really ever seen one in real life at that age. I just designed what I thought it might look like. Or hoped that it could or would. That’s the beauty of not really knowing. You can make it look like whatever you want.

1. “ Teach your children well”—Crosby, Stills and Nash

A coach has to be good at lots of things.  Scheduling, strategizing, organizing, motivating, fundraising…the spectrum is wide and the expectations are high.  But the most important thing a coach will ever do is teach.  That’s the job, though it’s easy to get tricked into thinking there are more important things (like winning).   Teach.  Find ways to help others learn.  Be innovative.  Stay relevant.  Teach well.  That’s the heart of the position, regardless of how the job description reads.  The other stuff is just window dressing. 

“Don’t mess with happy.” That’s what Jay Wright said. He’s the immaculately dressed ball coach who strolls the sideline at the small parochial basketball powerhouse of Villanova. That’s been his response to the mating call of the biggest of the big, and I suppose to the pressures that accompany uber success as well. Don’t mess with happy. I love it. I keep it on a hot pink Post it note on the mirror in my study. It’s so insanely simple, I’m terrified I might forget.

My husband was born in Kansas, but he moved to Wyoming a couple of years before he started school. He was the middle child of school teacher parents, so he began Kindergarten with one foot already on third base. What he hadn’t been taught, he’d overheard, and what he hadn’t actually done, he’d watched. So, no one really should have been surprised at his response when early into semester one of organized schooling, his teacher asked the class to name the four seasons. A simple question to which he supplied an obvious answer: “Duck, Quail, Pheasant, and Deer.” One really ought to be more specific if wanting to talk about temperature and trees.

My dad’s dad was a reader.  The house he shared with Grandma on the corner of Plato Road had a library right off the front living room that was stuffed like a sausage with books and collections of periodicals.  The occasional table beside his chair in the living room always housed three things:  a pipe, a magnifying glass, and at least one or two editions of National Geographic magazine. Back editions of the clearly identifiable yellow rimmed covers formed a tower in the corner of the library floor.  I never knew if Grandpa Buben saved them all or just his favorites, but they drew me like a magnet, mostly for the pictures, of course.  That’s the way National Geographic told the stories of the world.  

The best thing about being a major college basketball coach for a quarter of a century is the people that the platform allows you to meet. Because I was the coach at Oklahoma, I had the opportunity to meet billionaires and world- renowned musicians and Hollywood movie stars and Oprah. (Yeah, she gets a category all her own). I’ve met incredibly intelligent people and side stitch funny people and eccentric interesting people and crazy artistic people, but I’ve never met anybody more impressive than the children and the families who I met at 1200 Children’s Avenue in Oklahoma City, the place where little people go to get well.

Every year it would happen.  Every year.  Without fail.  We’d gather as teams do at center court to ceremoniously begin a practice and it would happen.  Everybody would be clapping—players, coaches, maybe even managers-- but only 3 or 4 will actually be making sound come out.  It was like some sort of limp hand disease.  People’s palms connect (though sometimes in severe cases only their fingers!), but it didn’t make a pop. There was no force of air being smacked out of the middle.   The sound, or lack thereof, being more like two clouds bumping into one another making the air go ‘shhhh’.

Last week Arthur Ashe Stadium got baptized by the fountain of youth. New York City’s Grand Slam Event has provided, for over 50 years, a platform for a lengthy list of classic rivalry match-ups—heavyweight battles like Sampras-Agassi, Evert-Navratilova, and McEnroe-Conners-- just to name a few. Wimbledon’s antithesis has birthed iconic moments that have framed the sport of professional tennis on both the men’s and women’s sides. However, in the weeks leading up to this year’s Open, there wasn’t much of a buzz.

For as long as I can remember I have been enamored with Curious George. Our local library had a film series that my Granny took me to every Friday. We diminutives sat, feet dangling, on grown up plastic chairs in front of a painted cinder wall where the cartoon would come to life, spurring our imaginations and driving our orneriness. My heart skipped a beat every single time the clickety clop of the projector signaled the arrival of that funny little monkey. I can’t remember if there was music or even what the narrator’s voice sounded like, but I can still hear the crackling of the film as I sat with bated breath waiting for the man in the yellow hat to stride across the screen, smooth the ruffled edges, and save George from himself.

Half a year ago my son and his wife brought home a tiny wad of perfection balled up in the middle of an armored cradle we affectionately call a car seat. Both sets of grandparents and one very invested aunt had all submitted projections on how much the baby darling would weigh when she arrived, the closest in proximation winning the prize of holding her first. I don’t play slots and I don’t bet on horses and I rarely get the good hand when someone passes out the cards, but somehow I got lucky on this one and won the coveted prize.

On a recent flight, I was seated beside a couple who conversed in fits and starts. Though they did not once appear to be frustrated with one another or irritated in any way shape or form, when they talked, they spurted. She repeated herself a lot and he began to respond to her original statement in the middle of her restatement and for literally moments on end the two would talk simultaneously like the cacophony of birds playing chase in the trees.

I used to have a satin pillowcase with Charlie Waters’ face on it. He was the quarterback of the defensive backfield for the Dallas Cowboys during the glory years. The Doomsday Defense, of which he was a part, was notorious for being stingy, and skilled, and nasty humble-mean as they anchored the franchise that became America’s Team. They would take the field like a bunch of cattle rustlers just jogging out to do their job, and, more often than not, they’d jog back off three plays later, their grass and blood-stained uni’s the only sign that what they did was hard.

She had parted her hair on the right side for so long that a gap was there about half way across and above her right eyebrow where the hair just naturally separated like water does when it comes to a rock. And every time she went to get a haircut, for twenty plus years, her stylist sent it the other way. So awkward. (And so unlike him, really.) Just un-thought out, like those hotel showers that you can’t turn on without getting your arm wet all the way to your shoulder.

In the 5th grade I had a hype song.  Except we didn’t have earbuds.  Or headphones.  This was back in the Land Before Time when telephones were still plugged into the wall with a curly cord connecting the receiver to the base.  So mobile music was a ways away, which meant the hype had to have some shelf life.  Fortunately, brain cells are pretty spongy when you’re ten.  And Helen Reddy’s Australian accent was super sticky, so it worked out for me.  I was completely convinced she was the reason I always won the free throw contest held at halftime in the tournament at Zaneis, the gym just south of Healdton at the school that had no town

Her right foot turns in like a pigeon’s but it has nothing to do with how her limbs were crisscrossed in the womb or even that her daddy’s turned in, too, because it didn’t, but more so because that’s what Jordan’s did when he shot and when she was young all she ever wanted to do was be like Mike. When I was little my mom used to say, “Be careful or your face will freeze like that.” Her intention was to make me choose an expression a bit more pleasant for the occasion at hand. But truth was buried in that warning. The things we do repeatedly for an extended period of time become ours. We assume them.

I’m a card carrying member of the Ted Lasso Fan Club. Season Two debuted last Friday night finally feeding the legions of hungry fans whose bellies had been growling since Richmond lost at the end of last season. The loss relegated the Greyhounds to soccer’s lower division Champions League, giving Ted another phone booth to jump out of in season two. A suspended chance to remind us of all the power we have but so often give away.

On the top shelf of my closet sits a pink straw cowboy hat. It’s the pretend kind with a floppy brim and a chin tie, and it has a Kay Yow Cancer Fund Logo on the front. We all wore them like crowns at the inaugural Kay Yow Cancer Fund Golf Tournament in Dallas in 2008, our first ever fundraiser for the organization that continues the public fight that Coach Yow started privately in 1987. People came from everywhere to play. Bill Self came from Kansas. Geno from the east coast. Roy from North Carolina. Jody and Marsha from the Lone Star State. A nation of basketball coaches rose and gathered, just like Kay had dreamed they would. Not for her, but for the fight she had become the poster child for, a gig for which she didn’t volunteer but when drafted carried the flag like Patton at the Battle of the Bulge.

My friend just asked me that. He’s been one and he has several. I think long before I answer him because the answer isn’t at all what anybody wants to hear. It’s hard to define and even harder to measure, but this is what I think…