Oklahoma and Iowa hung on to the bitter end.

These two middle-America states were among the first in the country to offer girls the opportunity to play basketball and two of the last to allow us to run up and down the floor. If you were a girl growing up amid the corn or the wheat prior to the early ‘90s, “girls’ basketball” was a different game than the one that’s now breaking attendance records everywhere we look. Girls were allowed to play but expected to stop on a dime at the line that cuts the court in half. Apparently, our guts would explode if we ran to the end line and back.

My dad once ran for school board in the small rural town where I grew up. There was some fuss about our superintendent-- best I remember-- though specific fuss about what I’m no longer sure. (If indeed I ever was.) I just remember people being wound up. Almost everyone in the 14 square miles of our oilfield community had pledged allegiance to an opinion and thus had chosen a side. Our tiny town was as fractured as an oil and gas pay zone after the drilling is done.

He came out of nowhere, this long, lanky kid with unkempt curls held back by a thin, elastic band like soccer players wear. “How can I help?” he asked, as my lostness must have been plastered like a billboard on my face.

“Panko breadcrumbs,” I said leaving a verbal ellipsis on the end.

“Aisle four,” he immediately responded while pointing, “about halfway down on your left.”

Go write. And please don’t try to get it right. Just write. Because trying to do it the way you think it’s supposed to be done just gets in the way.

The daily practice of writing is a foundational habit loads of successful people share. Daily writing grounds busy minds. It serves as a conveyor belt for sorting thoughts and feelings. It leads people out of corners they have backed or worked their way into by revealing doors and windows they weren’t aware were there. And yet just as many folks who do write don’t because they think they don’t know how.

I covet the certainty of young eyes that see so clearly before the world gets in the way. Austyn, my granddaughter, is almost two-and-a-half, and mostly she’s pretty clear about what she wants. But what she always knows for sure is what she doesn’t.

“All things in moderation,” Benjamin Franklin said. And Aristotle before him. And Jesus through the apostle Paul, way before either of them. “Let moderation be known.”

Plants need water, but too much causes fungus. And root rot. An overzealous gardener can drown a hardy hydrangea into the ground. Fire contained within a cauldron of rocks keeps us warm and emits a smell that chandlers scramble to duplicate and sell in stores. But fire, if uncontrolled, devastates and destroys, leaving behind the stubborn stench of all it has consumed. Too much ice cream will make your stomach hurt. Too much sun will harm your skin. Too much exercise will break down your body. Too much sleep can cause fatigue.

In the fall of 2009, our basketball team kicked-off the season by competing in a pre-season tournament in the Virgin Islands. We were on the heels of our program’s second Final Four appearance, but we had just graduated our leading scorer and rebounder, along with her twin sister who was a major contributor, and a walk-on turned captain who had become our glue. The world was watching with a side-eye to see how we would fare. 

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.