An Alternative to Today's Other Post... Post

It's been a week now since I last invited you over, sorry about that.  Days are busy and this and that and the other thing needed to be done and, more and more, I am trying to be less topical and such around here, so, truly, it shouldn't matter when I write these.  Theoretically...

The boys played in a soccer tourney this last weekend.  The first game was at eight in the morning here in Ohio... yes, before the time changed.  They didn't play in the dark but suffice to say that when we pulled into the complex car lights were shining on the fields so the boys and girls could get warmed up.  They needed it, not the light but the warming up.  It was like thirty-seven and there was snow in the air.  It sort of sucked but, you know what, it'll be one of the few soccer games they may remember in thirty years.  I played a ton of football games and only a few in mud and snow and storms and a particularly eerie game in the fog do I really remember.

They won, or maybe they tied that one and won the one at ten... I don't remember, really.  I remember them whimpering and winning in the wind, at some point that day.  It was nicer on Sunday, they had a "shootout" and Z was in goal.  That was sorta rough... for Marci and I.  There was another game, we won, I think, and then they played one later after we went for hamburgers and, something else.  Oh, they came in as runners-up for their division, "wings," I think, and they got a cool trophy, cup to be accurate.

You see, I shouldn't let the memory wait so long before I try to get it down.  It fades, but it also seems to distill, crystallize.  It seems now like a rembrance from long ago, from my childhood, or yours.

Zack drew this when Marci suggested he draw the soccer matches that Sunday night as a fire popped in the living-room:

Well, that about covers it.

It was an emotional weekend for them.  Not in a bad way just in a boy way.  They lost, they bonded, they won, they tied, they had their first shootout, they had their last game as a team.  Hard stuff.  Good stuff.  The stuff of dreams.  Stuff that works.  Before bed that night we were cleaning up a little and Zack accidentally crumpled up a drawing that Nick had made earlier that day.  A nothing little sketch of a guy in a tasseled toboggan, a sort of self-portrait I suspect now in retrospect.

Nick got really upset about it getting messed up, irrationally so it seemed at the time.  I asked him why he was so upset.

"I love that little guy," was all he said.

What he really said was he loved what had happened, he loved his place in it, he loved his friends and his brother and his home and his fireplace and bed and... well, you get it.

Here's the little guy:

I love him, too.


From Marci's "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."

"I lost my hat ... and my dignity."


There is truth in this...


Thanks for coming around today.  I wrote something else today as well, but, it's not for everyone, really.  Some might say it is a little mean or out of character, but, It was something I needed to say.   If you're interested take a look here.