Tackle Football

Lately, the favorite game in the house is called "tackle football."

I have no idea how this came about. If you believe that, I have a nice piece of real estate on a faraway planet to sell you.

To play, we congregate in the den and choose teams. Nathaniel and Isaiah, on one side, generally want to be the Beavers, after their Uncle Matt's basketball team. I, the other team, end up being the Raisins, always the opponent, always the enemy, because it is the team that Aunt LeeAnn and her family root for, and the perennial foil to the Patriots.

I stopped writing this post, because, well, I don't remember now. It's a rare uninterrupted moment on a Sunday morning, so let me try to finish this.

So, we have two teams, invariably the Beavers and the Raisins. The goal line is a rug in the library, and  the playing field is the living room, with the sofa and the TV stand forming the sidelines. We have  sweet, squishy Nerf football. Starting on one end, Nathaniel and Isaiah line up on one side, with one of them being the quarterback.

"Hut, Hut, hike," one says. Then he takes the ball and begins running. The other brother, in this case Isaiah, waddles alongside.

Writing timeout: Isaiah has brought me Elmo and Ernie stuffed dolls, and he's now climbed up on a chair and is reaching for a piece of toast. He seems content.

Back to the action. I tackle the ballcarrier, in this case Nathaniel, and the brothers line up again and repeat the sequence. This time, Isaiah is the ballcarrier, and he hugs the ball up high against his chest, grasping it with both hands as he squeals with delight and chugs forward. Daddy executes a gentle takedown, just shy of the rug paydirt.

Third down and goal.

Nathaniel lines up as quarterback/running back, calls the signals and bursts forward. I lunge to make the tackle, miss, and Nathaniel scampers into the end zone. Arms raised, he yells "touchdown!"

High fives are exchanged, and now the Raisins get the ball.

Daddy comes up to the line, surveys the defensive duo, chants "hut, hut, hike" and lurches forward as he "runs" on his knees. Nathaniel plows into his father, shoulder down, knocking him over.

Isaiah piles on with delight after the whistle. Shockingly, no flag is thrown.

Two more plays, two more bone-crunching tackles from the inspired Beavers defense. Daddy's drive is stuffed short of the end zone.

And so on – that is, until Daddy's knees begin to ache, and he calls it quits.

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It's just tremendous to be a father and see your boys take pleasure in a game that you yourself enjoy. Lately, Isaiah has been obsessed with what he calls "tackle football,"

Another pause. Nathaniel would like to watch another episode of "My Little Pony." This how I stole those uninterrupted moments. Completely manufactured.

As I was saying, Isaiah has been obsessed with what he calls "tackle football." Any picture he sees of a football player, in a magazine or on TV, gets him chanting for tackle football. Any picture of an athlete in general, regardless of the sport, gets the chant, too. I find this very cute, mainly because it echoes my own love for sports.

This may seem highly premature, but I've already been thinking about what I'll do if my sons want to actually play football. I'm truly split on a decision at this time. On one hand, I really like the game, and I think the boys would, too. Back in high school, I would've loved to play safety and just pop people. So, perhaps there's some vicarious "wish I had done that" going on with letting the boys play.

Yet I'd be a fool if I wasn't aware of the game's dangers, especially as disturbing reports mount of concussions coupled with advances in neuroscience and greater insights into the effect of repeated blows to the head. Who would put his or her child in a situation where such injuries can arise?

Yet what are the odds of my child being seriously hurt playing football, versus other sports, be they basketball, hockey or baseball? And, might there be far better technology, and vigilance, by the time they reach the age at which the violent nature of football becomes the norm?

Most importantly, perhaps, what if either or both of them really want to play? Am in the position to deny them, when I sparked their interest in the first place?

I don't have a good answer for that.

Raisins Fanatics

On the day of the Super Bowl, it's the right time to talk about some Raisins Fanatics.

I'm talking about my sister and her family and their obsessive devotion to that football team from Baltimore that squares off this evening against the 49ers.

My sister never liked football – or most other sports, for that matter – yet she has been converted into a football fanatic and into a Ravens superfan, as if she had been dunked into the NFL's holy waters. More on that startling transformation in a minute.

First, though, let's talk about the Raisins. That's what Nathaniel calls the Ravens. We've been reluctant to correct him, because it's so cute. Little ones have the darndest ways of pronouncing words. Isaiah, for example, adds a syllable to a certain caped crusader, calling him "Bad A Man." Nathaniel had all sorts of permutations to words. Among a few:

"Chokky milk" = chocolate milk
"Down nairs" = down stairs
"Ubba dubba der" = over there
"Sabati" = Spaghetti
"Orangen" = clementine
"Crumb" = salad crouton (Not a mispronunciation, but a novel descriptive and thus cute nonetheless, at least in our book)

Not to be done, Isaiah and his mispronunciations:
Ughie = Cookie Monster
Auka = Oscar the Grouch
Elmo = OK, he got that one
"Gapa" = Chewbacca (assuming I spelled it correctly)
"Dee Dah" = Yoda
"Orangen" = See Nathaniel, above
"Bum Bum Bad Guy" = Darth Vader (This requires some explaining. "Bum Bum" is the beginning of the Star Wars evil empire song, which both Nathaniel and Isaiah have memorized. "Bad Guy" speaks for itself.)

Back to the Raisins and my sister. You see, Lee Ann barely cared about sports from she was coerced into being a cheerleader for my youth football team in Houston (We were the Oilers. That's the hometown for ya.) through adulthood. But the last few years, long after she and her husband, Rob (who grew up a Detroit Lions fan) and their family moved to Baltimore, she grew this strange attachment to the football team. The Orioles? No. Area college teams? Please. But the Ravens? Oh yeah.

The fandom has grown over time, like kudzu, to where it has invaded every aspect of their lives come football season. A game is not missed on the TV, with the family decked  out in Ray Rice and Ray Lewis jerseys for the occasion. For Christmas, a son saved up enough money to buy a signed, framed picture of Ray Lewis that hangs proudly in the front foyer, I am told. And, in the two weeks leading up to the game, my sister – so dispassionate about athletics for nearly her entire life – has been relentlessly posting pro-Ravens propaganda on to Facebook and Lord knows where else.

Rabid, meet my sister.

I say this mostly tongue in cheek, once I got over the shell shock of her transformation. We all have things that we care deeply about that strikes the next person as a little strange, eccentric or downright kooky. We all have our oddities. I am not casting aspersions. She is my sister, you know. I'm just poking some fun – at her but at myself, too.

For not too long ago, I used to go ape----- over games, especially matchups involving Duke basketball. Ironically, as my passion has waned in light of my changing view that sports is entertainment more than anything else, my sister appears to have gone in the opposite direction with her emotional attachment. Who says we don't change?

Of course, I will watch the Super Bowl this evening. With more than mild interest. After all, it is the Super Bowl. And, I will root for the Ravens, even though they knocked off the Patriots. It's a gritty bunch, and I like gritty, always have. But I have a feeling that my level of interest will nowhere near that of my sister and her bunch.

I just hope their fandom is amply rewarded.

Let it Snow

I'm pretty excited. It's looking like it'll snow tonight and tomorrow.

I love the snow. I love watching it fall, as individual flakes flutter to the ground. I love watching it stick, and accumulate in a creamy, white meringue on the ground. I love the tranquility that a snowfall brings, how it muzzles much of the non-natural world around us, leaving nature to sing her song. I love how it looks, a crisply fresh topping that masks much of what is otherwise unsightly. I love how thankful it makes you feel to have a warm home and a loving family (and a glass of good wine).

I don't like to shovel it. Just to get that straight. My romanticism does not border on losing my lucidity.

I also like what snow brings, and by that I mean sledding. No matter the danger (see post in December), I really, really like taking the boys sledding. I love careening down the hill, eyes watering, the wind biting at my face, as I plummet downward, desperately trying to steer us away from trees, signposts, curbs, kids and other hazards. It's an easily acquired rush of adrenaline, a very cheap thrill.

We've had just one good snowfall this winter, around Christmas, and with the state, and much of the Midwest in a drought, as January neared an end, we wondered whether there'd be another. And the weather – not to dwell too much on the weather (Hello, do you believe in climate change, you remaining doubters?) – has been like a yo yo. Today, for instance, the temperature climbed above 60º – 60 degrees – before beginning a descent so rapid that it would have made a parachutist dizzy. By tonight, we will be below freezing, and what has been rain will turn to snow and continue as such for much of the day tomorrow. In all, the weather watchers – those glorious folks who can be wrong half the time yet enjoy complete job security – say we'll get between 5 and 7 inches.

By tomorrow night, we'll drop to 3º. So, in a span of about 36 hours, we'll watch the air temperature see-saw by about 60 degrees. Wow.

No wonder I've seen geese flying in different directions the past couple of days. They must be as confused as a hiker with a broken compass.

Getting beyond yet another example of wild weather and the growing body of evidence of our unrelenting upending of the world's climate, I'm just looking forward to the snow. Heck, I may be even stay up late enough to greet the first flakes as they descend from the sky.

Bring 'em on!

(I'll worry about shoveling later.)

Night Running

For the first time in nearly a decade, I've found it challenging to run regularly.

No, I haven't suddenly lost my joy of slapping feet on pavement. Nor have I injured myself or reached the point at which muscles, tendons and joints rebel.

For a while, I could blame the fall off on our move to Iowa. There was so much to do – find a town and a home in which to live, transition to a new job and a newly created one at that with its attendant expectations and pressures. Then, once we did move to our home, we were consumed by all the renovations needed to make it habitable.

And, oh yeah, we have two very active young boys.

So, on this long to-do list, running pretty much took up the caboose. Even as we got more settled in our house and I more comfortable with what I was doing at work, I still was having difficulty carving out the time to run.

I could hardly blame the children, or Michelle, for the lack of time. I mean, I could wake up early in the morning, before work, and go for a jog. A lot of people do that. But I'm not a morning person. I'll be darned if I'm going to watch the sunrise as I'm grimacing through a workout. In fact, the last time I forced myself to run in the early morning was when I was training for my first marathon in 2003. And yet the few times I managed to roust myself, I do remember an intense feeling of satisfaction as I watched the sun rise above the ocean and bathe me with first rays, like I had been born again. But despite the emotional rapture, I mostly avoided morning jogs.

Nights are tough, too. That's children time, and it simply wouldn't be fair to give that up for my own wants and needs.

I had a handy runaround for a while. I ran twice a week during the lunch hour with some coworkers from my department and other offices around the Brown U. campus. The building where I worked had a shower, so it was easy to pop in, wash up and be back at my desk with little time in transit. Plus, I could check my email immediately after the run, in the off chance that I needed to respond to something immediately.

It was a very good gig, better than I should have known.

There's no such arrangement here. No coworkers to run with during lunch. And, worse, no nearby shower. Instead, there's a university rec center that I can pay to join (inexpensively, I might add), but it's several blocks away. Likewise, the city's rec center is several blocks away (although with free lockers and showers). Logistically, it just makes the whole exercise a lot tougher.

It all left me with a gnawing frustration. I need an outlet; and, I'm not talking about crocheting, or something like that. Real, physical activity, to clear my mind and wear out my body. That's what I need, or I feel caged, bottled up.

In short, I needed to figure out how to get running again.

A couple of weeks ago, it finally dawned on me: How about running at night? Come home after work, play with the children for a bit, sit with them for dinner, put them to sleep. And when that's all done, go out for a run.

The thought had crossed my mind before, but I had swatted it away. I didn't feel comfortable not seeing where I was running, afraid I would step into a hole or trip over something in the road. I also didn't have any fluorescent running clothes, which made me fearful of not being seen by a wayward car. And, by the time we get the children in bed, it's usually pushing 8 o'clock, and my mind is closer to bed than to anything else.

Something had to give. It was either night or nothing. So, one night about three weeks ago I skipped dinner and after getting the children to sleep, I slipped on a light-colored winter running shirt and took off.

The neat thing about our little town is it doesn't take long to get out of it. This is no urban jungle. In fact, where we live, I'm on a rural road in minutes. My favorite one is a straight shot north out of town. I slip by the Cornell College ballfields, over the railroad tracks and countryside, here I am. I chug along, over one small rise, past a house on the right and its barking dog, over a bridge and the iced sliver of a creek. A little farther on, I see the lights of a smattering of houses in the woods on the right, and then it's up another rise to a view toward the horizon in all directions. I run a while longer, my breath leaving a wispy trail with each exhale in the cold air. The turnaround is a real highlight. As soon as I do it, I look up, and soak in the stars in the southern sky, fully illuminated, a jumble of constellations framed against the faint silkiness of the Milky Way. Directly in front of me on the horizon are the twinkling golden lights on the hill and a church spire silhouetted against the night sky.

I smile and plod toward home.

Hoopin' weekend

It was a hoopin' weekend.

We traveled this past weekend to watch my brother-in-law Matt's basketball team play. That's Minot State University (No. Dakota), a newly minted NCAA Div. II team to those who are unaware. It was Michelle and my (and the boys') first time to see Matt live, although we've watched numerous games when was head coach at Jamestown College and now that he's with the Beavers.

For me, a lover of roundball, it was a special treat. Watching games is so much more fun when you feel like you have something invested that is more than casual entertainment. Granted, I love my Duke Blue Devils, as it's my alma mater. But there's a different feeling when someone from your (extended) family is involved, whose energy, ambitions and livelihood are on the line. You are all in, and there's no in between.

It is that way with Matt's teams. So, when we looked at Minot State's schedule at the beginning of the year, this weekend jumped out at us. For two reasons, principally: One, the team would be in northeast Nebraska and Sioux Falls, So. Dakota, the closest they'd be to us this season. And, that, folks, is not all that close, 5 1/2 hours away. We also noticed that the first game, on Friday, of the back-to-back twinbill was against Wayne State, where Matt started as a graduate assistant and rose to assistant coach in four-plus years there. So, let's say there'd be a little something extra for that contest, no matter what Matt or anyone else said.

We took off for Wayne about 1 on Friday afternoon. The game started at 8, so we figured we had plenty of time. Yes and no. I tend to underestimate Iowa's width, so that took a little longer than anticipated. Michelle and I underestimated how long it takes little boys to get out of a car, walk into a bathroom, pull down britches and pee. And, neither of us took fully into account driving rural roads in a remote section of Nebraska at night.

I'm talking Nebraska 175 west. Go look at the map. 175 branches from I-29, heading like a straight shot west. Road atlases are deceptive in many ways. States generally fit on one page, no matter their size. So you get Nebraska on one page, just as you'd have Rhode Island. Need to look at that legend, because what may be a thumb's length in Nebraska is probably the same as driving the length of the Ocean State. Maybe more.

Back to 175. This stretch looked simple, as I said, nothing more than a straight line west. Well, we got off I-29 and within minutes were crossing an old steel-trussed bridge that arched like a gymnast on a balance beam. To our surprise, we saw a sign as we crossed that there was a toll. $1. When we got over the bridge, there was a single-level structure a half-step up from a shack. No gate. No lights. No sign telling you to stop. We slowed down, unsure where the window was, or the attendant for that matter. As we drove along the side, we saw a figure at a window. We stopped. An old lady in a dress slid open the window, took the dollar, politely said thank you and slid it shut, all in about 15 seconds. Transaction completed, we were on our way, and our lady probably returned to her knitting.

175 is one of the most entertaining roads I've driven. For the better part of 10 miles, it was like riding a roller coaster. Up, up we go, reach the top, and down, down, down we go. Reach the bottom, and up, up, up we go again. Hump after hump, hill after hill, exactly the same. No curve, no deviation. Up, down, up, down. A biker's nightmare, a geologist's dream.

We made it to Wayne about 20 minutes before game time, with me gunning it about 80 on the rural roads. The game was entertaining, if not thrilling. Both teams appeared to be going through the motions, not playing badly per se, but not competing with any more intensity than you might find at a NBA regular season matchup. But Wayne State made the mistake of letting Minot State hang around for too long, and a couple of treys late put the Beavers ahead, and they played excellent defense down the stretch to steal a win.

The next night, we were in South Dakota, as the Beavers took on Augustana College, a superior team on paper and in the standings. Minot fell behind early and trailed by 8-12 points most of the game. Yet late, they forced a few turnovers, made some nice plays and nearly pulled off the upset, losing by two.

All in all, a good weekend for team comprised of NAIA players playing in a higher league. Credit to Matt, he's got his team playing cohesively, with passion, intensity and grittiness. The players have bought into his philosophy, and they've notched some nice wins to reward their effort and conviction. They may not be pretty, but the Beavers are a fun team to watch, a bunch you can feel good about rooting for.

I also realized from this weekend how complicated it is to coach college basketball at any level. It is not simply coaching basketball, although the practices, the strategizing, the game tape analysis, the in-game instructions and adjustments are so much more complex than even an ardent fan like me can fully appreciate. There's also all the logistics; the team meals, arranging the hotels, the travel (by bus, too), the academics, the management of players and your own coaches. It's just a heck of a lot of moving parts. And underlying all of that is one simple truth: Winning matters entirely.

You've got to really love what you're doing to put up with all that.

We know Matt does. And we're glad we have his team to root for.

Little Grownup

It seems like it happened overnight, but our little Nathaniel has become quite the little grownup.

Most mornings, including weekends, he gets up, strolls to the bathroom, pees, and returns to his room to play quietly while mommy and daddy snooze (and that sleepmonster, Isaiah, too). Sometimes, he doesn't come into our bedroom until after 8.

Shangri-la, baby.

It gets better. Natty Lou has taken an interest in dressing himself, especially when his clothes du jour include a Star Wars t-shirt and sweatpants. Michelle noticed this behavior and decided to up the ante. One night, she spread Nathaniel's clothes on the floor, just like he would be wearing them. Beginning at one end, the layout looked like this: Socks, then jeans (or sweatpants), with underwear (Mickey Mouse and Star Wars) laid on top, followed by t-shirt (or undershirt) and long-sleeve sweater, pullover or shirt. If you were to view it from above, the arrangement resembled a two-dimensional stick figure, with the floor as a backdrop.

Nathaniel knew exactly what to do. He got up, dressed himself and barged into our room, proud of his achievement.

It was one early morning wake up call we could handle.

Sledding

Surprise, surprise! A blog post. Really.

Right before Christmas, it snowed for the first time this season. We got roughly five inches, enough to lay a pretty blanket of white on the ground and to make the holidays seem pretty and bright. 

It was also enough to make sledding a go. The day after it snowed, a Friday as I recall, Uncle Matt came over, and he and I took the boys out in search of a hill. I knew about one definitive sledding hill; when Michelle and I were scouting towns in which to live last summer, we noticed that Mount Vernon reserved one street for sledding. We knew this, because at the top of the street (and the top of the hill) there was a gate that would close off the street to vehicles. Down the street there were other gates along the side streets to keep vehicles from crossing the sledding hill-street. To clinch it all, there also was a sign that laid out the sledding hours and rules.

A street that is turned into a sledding hill. We thought that was pretty cool.

Back to the story: So, I knew about the street sledding hill. But a neighbor who grew up in Mt Vernon told me that a lot of bigger children use that hill, and, considering our boys are just 4 and 2, respectively, I was concerned they might get overrun. So, we all tromped over to Cornell College, its campus located on a hill, to find a spot.

Surprisingly, despite many slopes, it was hard to find a good sledding place. The college is pretty densely packed, and many of the hills led into a street, or parking lot, or there were a bunch of trees. Eventually, Matt, the boys, and I found a decent slope, and we got to it. We just had to be careful to make sure we stopped ourselves before we hit a concrete wall, and we had to avoid steering too far to the right, so we wouldn't go careening over a six-foot drop into a parking lot. Not ideal, but we made the best of it, and most importantly the boys had a good time.

Still, the street sledding hill was in the back of my mind as I decided to take the boys sledding the following weekend. I must admit that I was curious about the hill. Just passing by it as we walked by the street on our way downtown, and back, I knew it was a good sledding hill. At the top was a nice crown that after several feet, became a steep descent that went about the length of a block. Then the street, leveled off gradually. In all, if you could get good momentum and stay on course, it appeared you could go for 6 to 7 blocks. That's a doggone good run.

Knowing all this, I couldn't resist the temptation any longer. I packed the boys in a tow wagon, and we headed toward the street sledding hill. To my surprise, there were only a smattering of people there – a lady and two youngish children and a dad with a pair of youngsters. I felt better about our decision immediately. But what next? I couldn't leave 2-year-old Isaiah at the top of the hill himself, so I needed to figure out how we'd all go down together. We had two sleds, a rectangular toboggan and a plastic saucer. I tried all three of us on the toboggan. We lurched forward, then quickly veered leftward. Before I knew it, we careened onto the bank, our sled flew out from under us, and we all tumbled out onto the snow. 

Isaiah wasn't thrilled about our spill. So, that was the end of the three-person toboggan. My next idea was to put the boys into the toboggan, and to follow them in the saucer, while holding onto their sled. This actually worked better than expected: We slid down the hill, and we got some good velocity. The trouble was we had no way to control ourselves. Inevitably, the boys' toboggan would get turned around, or mine, or both. While thrilling, it also introduced the element of danger, of running into a tree or spilling over the side of the course. Still, it was the best we could do, and it all went just fine until the last run.

It all started out fine. The boys leading on the toboggan, me following on the saucer, one hand clasped to the boys' sled. Partway down, the boys turned backward, and the rope got tangled under their sled. I tried to yank the rope out as I was turning backward. We kept skidding down the hill, now on the steep part, both of us facing backward. Now, we were moving right, toward the side of the street. I glanced behind me, made a quick check of our location, and turned my attention back to trying to turn the boys' sled into the forward position. Bam! My lower back smacked into a signpost, thinly covered by an orange vest. The boys had tumbled off their sled and were looking at me. I was so shocked I just sat there and laughed. 

Isaiah didn't think it was funny. He was pretty traumatized. And, once I got up, I wasn't laughing either.   I walked gingerly, hunched over, as we trudged home.

The thing about sledding, though, is once you start doing it, despite the hazards and spills, you don't want to stop. So, a couple of weekends later, we were back out there, this time accompanied by Michelle. We've been in a deep freeze, with nighttime temperatures often in the single digits. The hill, with all its use and the freezing weather, had gotten quite icy. It was so slick in spots that you could slide down it on your stomach. Still, we were there; shouldn't we do it?

Well, we did. And it was great. It was great, because I figured how to guide the toboggan, meaning I could "steer" it down the hill, keep it in the middle of the course and give us a nice, long ride all the way to the bottom. Let me tell you, it was awesome. Fast, zippy, wind-in-your-face, hair-raising ride. Even better, the boys loved it, too.

Can't wait to get out there again.