I played college basketball for a baseball coach. He played college basketball for “the” Henry P. Iba at Oklahoma State University, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know what he was doing. But two out of three days every week, he’d close basketball practice with a metaphor about trying to steal second with your foot on first or a mini sermon about the danger of swinging for balls that were high or wide early in the count. It was always fairly obvious where his heart was most at home.

Last week, the spine of Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? finally broke away. For less than a twenty-dollar bill, I could buy a new one on Amazon that would be on my doorstep tomorrow. But I don’t want a new one. I want this one. This one holds Eric Carle’s story, my son’s bedtime rituals, my daughter’s two year old sing-songy voice, and now my granddaughter’s head bob inside of it. It is a haven, you could say, for my most favorite things.

In the 4th grade, I learned how to sew a patchwork pillow. We did it in class. Parents were livid. They didn’t think we were ‘learning’. Our teacher, Mrs. Henderson, had long dark hair that was thick and shiny, the kind that looked like she brushed it at least 100 strokes before bed every night. She wore bright clothes and a headband that held back her hair, not like a hippie but more like a cover girl who had just washed her face. And she taught us stuff. How to make a pillow is what I remember most.

Perhaps the most debated rule in all of college basketball is the block/charge call when a player is driving to the hoop. Nothing so sways the energy of an arena quite like this officiating decision. Fans bolt out of their seats in either elation or fits of rage when the referee blows her whistle, puts one hand behind her head, and points the other way.

Coaches lose their minds.

In October of 2020, exactly 4 days before Halloween, the sky in central Oklahoma opened up and ice gushed out. No trees had even begun to lose their leaves yet, as the average temperature that fall had been 73 degrees. (Oklahoma’s weather is nothing if not bi- polar.) The rain started in quasi pellets, melty ice drops that clung to everything they touched. And it just kept falling into and throughout the night.

As Tiger began making his way up the hill on eighteen, it was obvious to all who were watching that he knew. The steely-eyed stare that typically acts as gatekeeper preventing all that’s out from getting in and all that’s in from getting out had already packed up and gone home for the day. Tiger wouldn’t be around for the weekend. But that was just facts; it wasn’t what he knew.

For legit fishermen, casting is like breathing. Those who seriously fish toss their lines draped with bait across the air and into the water hundreds of times throughout a day on the lake. And they do so with uncanny precision.  They can whip a line armed with a jig into the crevice of a tight crook of the lake while operating the trolling motor with one foot and never giving a thought about their thumb on the spool of line. The not-thought-about thumb has a critical job, though. Without it working its magic, the cast will turn out in a mess. 

The lady at the airport bookstore in Denver wasn’t wrong. But she wasn’t right either. She said people shouldn’t write in the margins of books. She said books were made to be read-- not written in-- and that marking them up lowered their value. This was information she chose to volunteer as I prepared to take a chance on a New York Times best seller from the display in the front and a random collection of essays I found hiding behind the journals on a crowded shelf in the back. “As a matter of fact,” the chatty salesclerk added, “books that have been written in, cannot be returned and exchanged as part of the bookstore’s share program.” A truth that followed an opinion as it came to her stance on books.

Every spring on the last day of school before summer break, a bittersweet “Hoorah!” lassoed my heart. I was the weird little kid who loved summer but couldn’t wait for fall to come so that I could go back to school. Summer was fantastic--it was basketball camp and softball tournaments and riding my bike and running through a sprinkler in the yard--but I loved school. And I loved all the teachers in it. So much so, that when I grew up, I wanted to be one. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a life.

“What do you do with all your time?” they ask, as if somebody gave me some extra, like a bonus spin on the Price is Right. I know what they mean when they ask, though, and while my insides are always smirking, I hope my mouth isn’t as well. What the curious really want to know is, “Now that you have retired, how do you spend your days?” (And yes, I’m not a fan of the word “retired”, though it does by definition mean “to leave one’s job”.) I have all kinds of answers to the question—however it comes out--in a can inside my mind. And all of them are true. But time isn’t really the prize you get when you jump off the hamster wheel. Though everybody thinks it is.

…Something happens to a man when a baby comes along. Something happens to everyone remotely connected to the baby when a baby comes along, but the shift that occurs in a dad is palpable. It’s like his skin turns inside out. The tough stuff is still there, it’s just way more concentrated in certain areas and way less all inclusive. Suddenly, there are fissures where things can travel in and out.  

I was walking out of the alcove where all the teacher mailboxes were housed at Norman High School when I heard the news. I had just picked up the attendance sheets from my box and was headed hurriedly through the lounge back to my lair in the north gym when a couple of sports junkie teachers who were posted up during their planning period listening to local talk radio shared the news.

“Hey, did you hear that OU is dropping women’s basketball?” they said.

“What? What are you talking about?” I asked.

(The final in the series of three for those walking to “Pomp and Circumstance” this spring…)

I heard a story when I was little. I’m not sure if it was from a preacher in the pulpit or a teacher in a classroom or my Granny while we were hanging the laundry on the line, but it stuck, and I remember it sometimes, usually right after I’m smugly disappointed in whatever I have found.

You will fail. Ouch. I know, but hear me out.  

You will succeed, too.  Some of you in the most extraordinary ways.  But trust me on this, if you’re trying to do much of anything at all you are going to fail.  And it’s not going to be any fun when you do.

The Japanese have a saying that in translation reads: “Fall down 7, get up 8.” I bought a t-shirt with that splattered across the front for my daughter when she was a toddler. It’s a pretty good idea however old you are. 

Over the past couple of years, a lot of traditions have been kicked to the curb. I’m glad the pomp and circumstance of high school graduation isn’t one of them. Something about medieval robes and silly mortarboards held in place by reems of bobby pins says the individuals wearing them are somebody—somebody going somewhere—somebody going somewhere toward something--even if they haven’t figured out the particulars yet. And that is such good news. Their percolating potential gives us all a little gas.

My granddaughter has just learned to wobble-run. She does so, carrying her hands like tiny purses in front of her armpits, where they act as natural backstops that spring out in immediate extension to protect her perfect face. The falling is just part of the moving. She seems to get that instinctively. It’s the price of doing business in an ambulatory life. Crashing doesn’t faze my girl. She just pops right back up like Gumby and goes on her way again. I’m the one on pins and needles. At least once a day I jolt—too late and too far away to prevent disaster. The tiny miracles of near misses punctuate our day.

If you’re reading this, you have one. Or you had one—though I can’t imagine a mom being past tense even if she’s gone. It’s the universal tie that binds, the inextricable link of life. We are because she was.

And is.

And forever more shall be.

Mothers have the most demanding, integral job on the planet—and yet what’s crazy is nobody knows how to do it. None of us. Not even the supermoms who self-profess by the stickers on the SUV’s back glass. We all just grope around in the dark hoping against all hope that we don’t break things as we go. And yet, mothers are supposed to know… how to do things, when to do things, and what the best things are to do. But there’s so much we do not know.

My first tennis coach suggested that we do 90-minute lessons, instead of an hour. He said it always takes at least 5 to 10 minutes to get warmed up, even if you’ve stretched and jogged and your body is ready to go. And, he said, people always quit early, so what we’re left with then is about an hour where we can really get things done.

Then I said, “Hmmm,” while in my head I was thinking, “Who are these people he trains?”

Quit early? Who does that? Stopping before the finish line was not a thing that I signed off on, was accustomed to, or would be doing when I trained. Nonetheless, I was ecstatic with his 90- minute proposition. (More is always better, right?!) I could not wait to dive in.

On an ordinary Wednesday in the spring of 1995, I hustled out the side doors of the gym at Norman High School during my morning planning period to grab a fast-food biscuit from the joint across the street. I drove because it was faster than walking and I had to hurry back for my next class, but I vividly remember thinking, I should have enjoyed the air. Oklahoma weather can be cantankerous, especially in the spring, but April 19th was in the early stages of a picture-perfect day.

One day somebody just decided that there was no longer any reason to put two spaces after a period. And whoever it was didn’t tell anybody. It feels like a secret initiative designed to age shame. I remember when it hit me, and I just couldn’t believe it was a thing. My daughter told me I had too many spaces after my periods, and I of course, responded, “No I don’t.” I was a typing champion. There are things I know some things about.