Thankscoming

This is my third year of writing a Thanksgiving Day post.

This year, I feel oddly liberated from our family's Midwestern traditions.  And I don't feel like it's so important that we're all together, doing the same thing in the same place.

I'm not longing for the chilly Illinois winds. And for family news, gossip and pictures?  I've got Facebook.  Colorful fall leaves?  They're already in the blue bins.

Instead, I'm thinking ahead.

Here's a list of things I plan to be thankful for next year:

- For finally meeting young Kalven

- For seeing my niece and nephew bring new children into the world

- For the weekend in Tallahassee with Tommy and Andrew, watching the Seminoles beat the Gators

- For the 2012 Sidewalk Chalk Art festival - posing with my giant neon shark (see "mother earth" from the 2011 show (not mine) to the right here)

- For peaceful, blissful, un-lonely hours spent driving in the mini, top down, watching cattle and palmetto and keeping an eye open for turtles and snakes in the road

- For the redneck voice - (another great year) - and that I got to say "Jimbo Fisher" a lot with it

- For Starbucks (OK, I really do need to lay off the caffeine (that was said in the redneck voice))

- For earning my post-graduate degree in adolescent management - enough said

- For Florida - the gulf, the storms, the sun, the feeling

- For the chance to look up at the stars and see the Milky Way on the beach at Boca Grande

- For seeing Matthew take one more step toward the Air Force Academy

- For seeing Tommy step up to his destiny

- For seeing Andrew get one year closer to the man I know he will be

- For the wonderful women in my life

- For Julie (again and again)

- For my parents

- For my cool, smart brother and his new peace

- For my new friends and old friends - and for me learning how to be a better friend

- For a victorious end to the fight - and a blessed return to normality

I am optimistic and hopeful.  And thankful.

Bring me back the coach

It was a complicated week-long journey of twisted teenage pretzel logic: unpaid speeding tickets, missing vehicle registrations, inept police departments, interstate licensing regulations, motor vehicle appointment scheduling mix ups, about-to-be-revoked licenses, and a non-renewal letter from State Farm.

The underwriters decided that the $30,000 we've paid in premiums over the last 6 years wasn't enough for the risk.

So, the parental management team threw up their hands. Here again was our nemesis - the dreaded two-headed demon of frontal brain dissociation and teenage hormones.

My reaction, of course, was to escape into a ghost book or a new conspiracy theory. But before I could, Julie pulled out her journal, sat down next to me, and read me a story. It was an entry I wrote myself, on a cold day in February, 1999.

"Today we cleaned out the garage and set up the Playschool hoop inside. Andrew and I started a game, and he dunked the ball every time.

Then Tommy shows up. He and I play alone for a while. I narrate, saying things like 'the kid never misses!' His face is lit up with a huge smile. Then the three of us start playing a game - Tommy and I against Andrew. Tommy is wearing his new coat from Kohl's, not a Bulls coat but it's the same colors, red and black - and he loves it."

Well, Tommy decides he wants to be the 'coach' for Andrew and me. He sits on the steps and says, 'time out for some snacks for the players.' The 'coach' goes inside and gets some snacks for us. He comes back into the garage with a Tupperware bowl filled with orange Jello. It's actually half-eaten and it has three spoons in it. He also brings out some strawberry yogurt.

His heart is so bright and innocent and warm. I ate the Jello on the sidelines with the coach - the great, irreplaceable, bounding Tommy."

It's been a long time since that frigid February day, but I remembered it again - with longing - as she read it, like it was just yesterday. It is a reminder of the essence of the soul. I can see him again like I've always seen him - from a diaper-wearing, bottle-drinking backyard explorer to the coach of the garage basketball team.  Goodness and innocence.

And it importantly reminds me of something else: when the zombie underwriters send you a nasty non-renewal, or when the DMV pushes you into their maddening maze, it's time to stop, sit on the steps, and have some orange jello.

It tastes like goodness and innocence. Simple, sweet, pure. And it's good for your soul.

Thank you, coach. Now let's go fix those little things.

The Unconquered

In Doak Campbell Stadium, watching the Florida State football game from the student section, I remembered.

It was parents' weekend. The unlucky N.C. State team looked like a group that the Globetrotters would have paid to be their foil.

It was an afternoon of life in the moment. In a place overflowing with karmic celebration - youth and innocence, pride and passion, hope and excitement. In their college faces, a prescience of possibilities; of dreams yet fulfilled but confidently expected.

I imagined their futures as I looked around.

It was impossibly larger than real life; like it could only have been created by a gigantic glitter-boy generator. There were sequined drum majorettes, spinning their batons high into the blue fall sky, conducting uncontrollable expressions of joy. The sun sparkled off of the band in strobing flashes of light.

Among hats and helmets, pom poms and round-off flips, a Seminole warrior atop an appaloosa charged onto the field and plunged a flaming spear of defiance into the turf.

I looked across the waves of garnet and I could see their goodness. They stood in their tee shirts and jeans, tomahawk-chopping and chanting for the entire game.  In rows and aisles, they were absorbed in every play, every song, every hand gesture.  They laughed and high-fived. They took turns starting the noisy crescendos that began every kick-off or punt.

These are the same strangers that are frustratingly glued to their smart phones and laptops and who spend too many hours on Facebook. They stay up too late and are sloppy. They cook on their George Foreman grills at 3am in their tiny dorm rooms and apartments. They sleep until noon. They text too much.

But God, they are wonderful.

They hunch over their white Apple laptops in libraries, smiling at each other and posting on Facebook. Drinking Starbucks. Thinking about going to Ken's Bar at midnight.

They're a new species - and they make me believe in the future.

As technical geeks and academic magicians, they've been able to overcome challenges never imposed upon (or imagined by) previous generations. They're expected to embrace change and learn it overnight. And deal with economic pain in our society unseen since the great depression.    

They're not timid - not frightened by people telling them that they can't do something. They've been empowered by instant communication and distant connections. They've seen more in their 20-odd years than most of us saw by our 50's. They have hundreds of close friends they network with every day and  new attitudes about marriages and mortgages and expectations.

As I think back on that afternoon in the student section, I get goosebumps.  I remember. It's that same feeling I had, long ago. Before minivans and mortgages.

And I know who the Seminoles really are now.

They are the unconquered.  And they are just in time.