Category: family

My Challenger Lesson, Strong 30 Years After

I was 10.

Space was exciting, astronauts were cool.

I’m sure I had watched other shuttle launches. In memory, it seems there was always an emphasis on them at school, and they would always be on the news.

I don’t remember when, exactly, I learned of the explosion. I’m pretty sure we didn’t watch it live at school — that would have left a definite impression — but I don’t know if it was announced there or if I heard about it later, at home, on the evening news.

What I distinctly remember is my father, discussing it at the dinner table.

I think, perhaps, he was trying to ease my fear about the incident. (I was afraid of a great many things when I was young, often irrationally, and something as awful as the shuttle explosion would set me right off.)

I don’t remember a lot of the details in the conversation, but I remember one part of it very distinctly: my father, saying, “I’d go up tomorrow if they asked me.”

I imagine he’d say the same today, as would I.

We do not fear our failures; we learn, we move on, ever hopeful.

A Trappist Toast

Today would have been my maternal grandmother’s 89th birthday. 

My mom and my younger sister, who still live in our hometown, usually visit her grave, and, since the timing is right, use this as the occasion to put out the holiday poinsettias at the family plot. 

My sister plays Roy Orbison songs because he was my grandmother’s favorite.

I’m never quite sure what to do with myself. 


I don’t live close enough to visit the cemetery, and I don’t have the same connection to the music as my sister. 

Usually I spend some time thinking of her, remembering, wondering, imagining the things I would talk to her about if I she were here, as though she’d just been away for a while. 

Today, I decided to go try a new Trappist beer. 

I don’t recall her ever drinking beer, and I don’t know what opinions she might have had about Trappist monks. She died well before I took an interest in either, so her take on these subjects shall remain a mystery to me, a couple more items on the long list of things I wonder about when I think of her and all the years she’s been gone. 


I imagine she’d tell me to enjoy myself, and probably chide me to behave and not overdo it, and I’d assure her that drinking Trappist beer is a religious experience, not an intoxicating one. 

And she’d get the joke, which would elicit that disapproving-yet-loving scowl of hers, and she’d tell me to come closer, which I would do despite knowing what was coming. 

What was coming would be a grandmotherly swat on the backside and her wagging a finger and telling me to be nice or the Devil would get me. 

And I would nod, and agree, and never tell her I’m agnostic. 

Then she would tell me I need to write more, and I would promise that I’m working on it, and I would mean it, because no one breaks promises to Nanny. 

So the end of the day would find me savoring the beer, blinking my watery eyes, and keeping the promise. 

I’ll Drink to This

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and I’m an American with a bit of Irish blood, married to an American with more than a bit of Irish blood … so, drinking and revelry shall commence.

Or, more accurately, commenced two days ago.

The city of Atlanta believes in only holding parades on Saturdays — and with our traffic, who can blame them? — and pubs are always eager to get an early start on any holiday, so we’ve been honoring our heritage more or less continually since that morning.

On average, the volume of Guinness has probably exceeded the volume of Irish in my blood.

Where was I?

Right. Drinking.

An Englishman, an American, and an Irishman are out drinking.

Three flies come along.

One lands in each man’s glass.

The Englishman sniffs, pushes his drink away.

The American shrugs, removes the fly, and continues drinking.

The Irishman removes the fly and screams, “Spit it out, ya bastard!”

I regret never having told that joke to my grandmother, daughter of Irish immigrants, source of my Irish blood. I imagine she would have liked it. Anyway, I’ll raise a glass to her tonight, and I’ll try my best to identify with the Irishman.

Sunday Sports Thoughts, March 9, 2014

Without going into excessive detail about the particulars, the way the NFL schedule works, you can know, for certain, that a given team will host another team (not in its division) once every six years. 

Three years ago, I made a note that my father-in-law’s favorite team, the Detroit Lions, were due to visit the Atlanta Falcons this year. 
I planned for it. 
I intended to get tickets. 

Then the official 2014 schedule was released, and guess which Falcons game the NFL decided to send to London? 

Ugh.