It hit me from out of nowhere the summer after I turned ten…

The Lindsey All-Star Camp brochure had been lying on our kitchen counter for months. It was a full-color, tri-fold production with a picture of its founder, Charlie Heatley, on the front. Inside it had a sample daily schedule, some pictures of coaching headliners, and an aerial shot of a gym full of ambitious campers-- seemingly dribbling in unison-- in matching white camp T-shirts with their respective last names ironed across the back. The portion of the brochure below the dotted line where you filled out your personal information had been clipped and sent in with a check only days after the opportunity had arrived in the mail. I looked at it minus its entry form, every single day for months. I could not wait to go.

A lady met me at the door welcoming me to the group’s monthly meeting. After a quick exchange of pleasantries, she must have noticed my eyes pass by and then return to the table near the door. On it were piles of greenish-yellow neon vests, signs on sticks, and skinny, orange wands. She answered before I even asked. 

MY DAD COULD REALLY DRAW. He worked in the oil and gas world, but that was just how the bills got paid. On the side, he painted signs for money, as lettering was his sweet spot. Almost every small business in our rural Oklahoma town had Dad’s handiwork on its welcome board. While painting gave him great enjoyment and padded where the ends wouldn’t meet, his passion was a pencil and pad.

I TOOK A SHAKESPEARE COURSE in college. Our class met  in a kind of long, rectangular, nondescript classroom on the top floor  of the library building. It was a handful of upperclassmen—mostly  English majors, though not necessarily English Education majors— and me. Our Shakespearean textbook was an enormous red hardback  with print smaller than the type in my King James Bible. Reading  one page was a job. I remember being terrified from the outset that  I would have trouble keeping up. 

WHEN LITTLE PEOPLE GO TO big schools, it can be scary.  Mostly for a little person’s mom. When I took my firstborn to his first day of school, I recorded a grand video of his timid entrance on my Channel 5-sized video camera. I can close my eyes still and see his pensive face resting in his hand at his desk as he seemed to be taking stock of the whole wide world he’d entered and all the new people in it. 

MIDDLE SCHOOL IS MESSY. Awkwardness is the norm, cool isn’t even a possibility, and from those halls of dysfunction, high  school looks like a dreamy place you see on TV. Ninth grade is the  footbridge connecting the two. I had no more taken a step on that  creaky wooden connector when my anything-but-cool freshman  English teacher handed me a key to a door I didn’t know existed. 

Somewhere around two minutes into the second quarter, I saw it in her eyes. She had slipped inside the curtain to the place they don’t sell tickets to. It didn’t matter that there weren’t many people in the arena. It didn’t matter who the opponent was. She had entered a place where names, numbers, time, and score felt immaterial--because she held them all in the palm of her hand.

Five minutes, when you’re waiting for a verdict, or a diagnosis, or laying upside down in a dentist’s chair with your mouth propped open on blocks, feel eternal. Seconds drip as if distended, each one clinging mercilessly to the one that came before. But five minutes, when you’re reading a beautiful page-turner or playing a game you love or holding a sweet sleeping baby in your arms, fly. The seconds chase each other in a full-out sprint, barely touching as they hand off the baton.

Mrs. Davis wore a key on a chain around her neck all day. That’s what my 31-year-old son remembers about September 11th of his 4th grade year. He and his classmates watched movies at school the entire afternoon--with intermittent indoor recess breaks--which he realized was a bit weird but way too good of a thing to question too intently at the time. He was nine. The novelty felt grand.

Between the villages of Praiano and Positano on southern Italy’s Amalfi coast, lies a hidden treasure tucked in a cave by the side of the road. It’s easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there and hard to get a look at even if you do. 

He sang all the time. “Amazing Grace.” “Victory in Jesus.” “Cowboy Joe,” (the University of Wyoming fight song)…

      “He’s a high-falootin’ rootin’ tootin/ Son of a gun from old Wyoming/ Ragtime cowboy (talk about your cowboy)….”

Songs lived in his head and danced on his lips.

Every day I walk. It’s the best exercise there is (say those who are supposedly in the know.) But I don’t walk for the physical benefits, I walk for my brain. When my body moves, my mind wanders.  And the striding conjures up all kinds of things. It summons questions that don’t have clear cut answers… sentences that hold their own alone but are looking for companions… titles of chapters, books, and blogs whose insides haven’t yet congealed. Floating around freely inside my head, words somehow find their sea legs in conjunction with one another while my body moves.

My writing practice is a pact I made with myself. I sit down and string words together every day-- not because anyone told me to or expects me to or would be bent out of shape if I didn’t-- but because I decided I would do it. No wages would be withheld if I didn’t (because it’s not a job and I’m not getting paid.) The world wouldn’t come to a screeching halt if I skipped a week (because most people don’t even know “A Weigh of Life” exists and thus wouldn’t miss it if it were gone.) You know what would happen if I didn’t post a blog every Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m.? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Hardly anyone would even notice—maybe not even family or close friends.

Last week, the Savannah Bananas came to town.  In case you’re not familiar, they’re the traveling baseball circus that has since 2016 turned America’s favorite pastime upside down. For $25, patrons attending Banana games receive a ticket for two hours of dancing, singing, acrobatics-- and baseball—plus all the food and drink they care to consume. The Bananas’ organization has one goal: make baseball fun. Their home games have a waitlist 60,000 people long.

When I was in the dog days of building the women’s basketball program at the University of Oklahoma, I called my good friend Geno Auriemma one evening to solicit some advice. When he answered, I laid out the laundry list of things that had recently gone awry. Those players I had were impossible!  I had to do everything! They were so needy! I raced on without a breath. 

For most of my life, my heart has skipped a beat in May. I could feel it coming. The sad-happy cliffhanger that marks the close of the school year would roar in like a thunderstorm that had been predicted and prepared for but surprised us just the same. May felt magnificent.  Bottomless. Slippery. Simultaneously like a thing we’d like to hang on to forever and yet couldn’t wait to give away. May was the month that wrapped us up and spit us out into the world. 

I don’t do instructions. They give me the heebie-jeebies. The dissecting and the symbols and the do-not-skip-this steps can make anything feel like quantum physics. I’d rather just mess up a bunch and find my own way through. But last Saturday, I waded through a do-it-yourself black- and-white booklet that came stuffed inside the first of two giant boxes full of varying sizes of wood along with bags and bags of bolts and screws. In most matters of construction, I go for a run—as far away from the instruction book as humanly possible-- and let my husband do the dirty work. Not Saturday, though. Saturday, I was all 69 pages in because we had a swing set to build.

As a college basketball coach, I was often asked, “When searching for players to recruit, do you look for skill or athleticism?”

“Ummm, both please.”

“Both” was the truest answer, but that’s not what people wanted to hear. What they wanted to know was, if forced to pick, which would I prefer. There’s just something about a rabbit hole that most of us can’t resist. And the world can’t get enough of either/or.

Practice makes perfect. At least that’s what my fifth-grade basketball coach used to say. 

When you repeat a process, you get better at it. The reps help you figure out what works and what doesn’t, what’s helpful and what’s not. And you get smoother, faster-- more efficient and more skilled-- at whatever it is you are practicing. From dribbling a basketball to changing a tire to speaking in front of people, the more you do it, the better you get. 

The best basketball teams almost always are so because they have at least one guy with eyes in the back of his head.  One guy who sees not just what is happening but any number of things that could be happening next.  One guy who makes everybody else look like a million dollars because of where he puts the ball.