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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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Post-Season Football and Family: So Hard, So Worth It

Post season: it’s the toughest season of all. If done right, it’s the equivalent of an extra half-a-season: 5 games, culminating in a trophy and rings.
Again, if done right.
And let’s face it, we want it done right.
And doing it right is far from easy, but always worth it. I have to remind myself of that.

Especially because post season is wrapped up in the most wonderful season of all – the holiday season —and that complicates matters. A lot. It adds about a gazillion stressors to players’ and coaches’ lives alike.


If all goes according to plan, family gatherings will be cut short or missed… family pictures, too. Along with basketball games, wrestling matches, Nutcracker performances, school plays, chorus concerts, bedtimes, holiday movie nights.

So many missed family times… but also, so much family time gained, too.
Because for us, football is family.
And oh, how we love this game.
It’s not the touchdowns and tackles that make our hearts sing with joy and our lungs ache with love (although it certainly doesn’t hurt)…

It’s the players and men out on that field. It’s the knowing them, the loving them, the watching them accomplish tasks they never dreamed they could accomplish.

It’s seeing them forge bonds of brotherhood. Watching them face challenges with passion and confidence. Witnessing them relying on others as much as themselves. Embracing family. Understanding that family is strength and family is love and family is a powerful, moving force.It’s never easy. But it’s also always worth it.

Nobody moves mountain alone. Nobody wins at football or at life, alone. That takes commitment and common ground, and hard work, and family.

Over the next few weeks and for the rest of their lives, these players and coaches can accomplish great things because they know and understand the importance of family. Because they are members of the best family of all: the Canes Football Family.

Come on, Fam!! Let’s do this hard thing!!

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OUR TOWN 💜💛

I’ve written before about our town. About the love I have for her. About her people and her spirit, her buildings and her backbone. About how I love her church bells chiming happily on Sunday mornings from my back porch and the home crowd cheering heartily on Friday nights from my perch in Weinman Stadium.

Cartersville is not just a great hometown, she’s the best hometown.

And even though she doesn’t have to prove herself as such, week in and week out, she does it anyway. She rises to the top, like cream… like Cane Sugar. Is that even a thing? Well, I say it is because the heart and soul of C’ville rose to the occasion this past week for those of our community in need.

It all began on Sunday night, when announcements were posted in emails and voicemails and on social media: a food drive was underway. And yes, while this happens every year once the leaves and temps start turning in our town, this time, we truly showed out.

This time, Sam Jones Methodist Church’s “It’s Scary to be Hungry” annual campaign, in conjunction with Pritchard Injury Firm and the city schools, collected over 6000 cans in just five days. The fifth day culminated in “Blackout Hunger Day” and the Blackout Game on Friday Night under the lights in Weinman Stadium.

Our schools and our community and our CANES delivered — proving once again that Cartersville is not just a great town it’s the BEST town.

It’s our town — and good gracious, does our town know how to be the BEST!
(Photo cred: Sports Furnace Athletics DrRuss21)

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The Season that Eclipses our Seasons

It’s the first week of August

Heat shimmers off asphalt

Tomatoes wither on the vine

And in fields everywhere —

In small towns and big cities alike —

Players are planting their cleats in the turf 

And sewing reps for the upcoming season

And coaches are planting kernels of wisdom 

Pouring their heads and hearts

Into the storehouses of our future

So that soon

Footballs with hang times 

As high as the mercury

Will tee off and inkblot the sun

In half-second oval eclipses

To kickoff the season that eclipses our seasons.

When Friday Nights light up the sky

Scorching skirmishes 

On lines of scrimmages

Linemen brawling

Helmets flashing

Shoulders clashing

Turf pellets scattering like buckshot

Behind the blazing feet of the skills fleet

While the quarterback searches for split-second targets

and sheets of sweat slick everyone’s neck

and the drumlines roll

and the symbols clash 

and the whistles keen

and the fans all dream

Of cooler nights

As they wait for the relief of

Halftimes

Under velvet twilights;

Where fans collect

To dissect

The first two quarters

Hair and skin draped in soggy blankets of sweat 

While moths bash their bodies in cataclysmic ballets 

beneath blazing stadium lights 

and starlings and swallows 

scoop them like popcorn from the sky

While actual popcorn

clutched in white paper bags

perfumes the air below

Butter dripping off dipping fingers

As the dew point drops to

collected condensation, while the crowd’s conversation

turns to playoff runs, and championship sights

and cooler, so much cooler nights.

And the coaches in the locker rooms

Adjust and turn

And the players in the position groups

Listen and learn

grow and glean kernels of wisdom

in victory and defeat

in the season that eclipses our seasons.

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A Strange and Beautiful Win

“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.” — Edgar Allan Poe

Last night was a beautiful win — but oh, the strangeness.

Come-from-behind wins in the final minutes of a game are the stuff legends are made of. The stuff that makes victory taste even sweeter.

But they are also some of the strangest game-scenarios of a coach’s wife’s life.

They are not my favorite. But they are. They are a paradox. (And as an English teacher, I love a good paradox.)

Last night was a hard-fought defensive battle. (As a defensive coach’s wife, you love it AND you hate it. Again, with the paradox.) And what you really love when your husband coaches defense is a shut out.
And our defense DID shut out their team’s offense, but THEIR defense… well, that’s where their 14 points came from.

And you have to hand it to that defense. They played hard. They hit hard and charged hard and sacked hard.And our offense will feel the effects of that HARD for awhile.

But our defense, they played hard too. They hit hard and charged hard and stole that ball hard when it mattered most.

And our offense scored when it mattered most — and scored just enough when it mattered most.

And while we might have liked a few more points on that final scoreboard, and a few less battle scars at the end of the fight, it was still beautiful.

Yes, there was some definite strangeness in the proportions — but oh, what an exquisitely beautiful win. #CANES

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Our Hometown’s Heart of Gold

What can I say that hasn’t been said about Trevor Lawrence? Not a thing.   

Still, it’s worth saying that the reason our family — and so many families in this, his hometown — are so proud of him and love him so much isn’t because he’s the football player who was just drafted # 1 overall.

 No, we all love him because of his heart.   

How he pours his heart into his faith, his people, his community, and his sport… and in that order. (The order of priorities that got him trolled recently by social media hate-mongers.)


Because in a world accustomed to egos and bad behavior, Trevor is an anomoly. And people don’t know how to deal with it. They’re so used to celebrating celebrities celebrating themselves, that they don’t know how to handle one who seeks purpose beyond the spotlight.


 But Trevor does just that. Relying on God and his conscience to guide him. Trevor has real conviction and a moral integrity that often takes years to come by (if ever). None of it is an act. This is no finger-point-at-the-sky-for-the-cameras kind of faith, and he is no press-conference-full-of-pomp-and-promotion kind of player.    

There’s a reason he didn’t have major news networks at the high school when he committed to Clemson in 2016 and why he didn’t travel to Cleveland for the 2021 draft yesterday. Hype and hoopla, football and the fans don’t drive him. Love does. God’s love and his heart.  

And we in his community love him for it. How he’s hyper-focused on where he’s going, but hasn’t lost sight of where he came from. How he surrounds himself with folks he can trust and stays loyal to the ones who helped him get where he’s at. 


Our two boys have grown up seeing Trevor play ball. From the practice field to the Friday night lights to the Saturdays in Death Valley, they know Trevor. But they know him for more than the player with the golden arm. They know him for the person with the heart of gold who always has a smile, a hug, a high five, and a “how y’all doing?” when he sees them. 


They know him for his heart. And I would like to think America will get to know him for his heart too. To focus on who he is, not just what he does. Because Trevor Lawrence is so much more than the NFL’s 2021 #1 Draft Pick.


He is a really, really good human ready to accomplish really, really beautiful things, all while slinging a really, really mean football.

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Sunday Night Baking for our Inside Linebacker Boys

This week, the 2017 football season officially kicks off. And that means that from here on out, on any given Sunday, you’ll find me in my kitchen baking up treats for my husband’s players.

He coaches inside linebackers – those middle of the defense playmakers, ever ready and willing to bounce blockers, blitz quarterbacks and tackle large quantities of fullbacks and fudge brownies.

And I love baking these boys some sweets as much if not more than they love eating them. Baking is one of my all-time favorite pastimes. For me, it’s a form of love. I bake for people I admire and respect, and I bake for people I appreciate. And I always, always bake for people I love: my children, my friends, and now, Cartersville’s inside linebackers.

I mean, what’s not to love? What’s not to respect? They work hard and they play hard. They take their knocks and they get back up again. They understand discipline and commitment better than men quadruple their age. They are well-studied and they are selfless. And I figure baking up something special on a Sunday afternoon is the least I can do to let these young men know how much I appreciate what they do for their teammates and for their coaches.

It’s a tradition I began last year when my husband joined a team more focused on family than any we’ve ever been a part of.  We are a community and my baked goods are my attempt at communion – at feeding their souls with foods consecrated by love.

This coaching crew is qualified in so many different areas, but I must say that one of their finest talents is building relationships with the young men who risk limb and ligaments for a ballgame.

A ballgame, yes — but it’s so much more than a ballgame, as well. It helps these young men realize the importance of being a part of something bigger than themselves. Everyone is an integral part of the team. They work hard. Together. They grow strong. Together. If they win, they do it together. If they lose, they do it together. They are a team.

The offense doesn’t win without the defense. The defense doesn’t score without the offense – well, sometimes they do, but that’s beside the point. The point is, they are all needed: the quarterback, the h-back, the receivers, the linemen, the corners, the linebackers, the nose guard, the kickers. They are all part of the team. Without each one of these positions, the game would flounder and fail. It would be nothing but a muddled up mosh pit of egos stomping their feet and flailing their arms, and ramming and jamming at one another — with absolutely no point and no progress.

Kind of like the world was this weekend. A world full of egos. Look at me! See me! I matter! No one else matters but me!

It’s becoming abundantly clear that there are vast numbers of people out in this world who know nothing about hard work, toughness, sacrifice and teamwork.

Life is a contact sport. It is hard. It is tough. And it requires sacrifice and teamwork and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

And that’s what I admire most about these Cartersville coaches and their football philosophy: the love they give their players. And they’re not afraid to show it. I’ve seen it from the stands, and I’ve seen it in the field house. I’ve seen it at practice, and I’ve seen it in games. They love their players. A lot.

And to quote a little Seuss, unless someone like them cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better. It’s not.

I’m starting to think the world needs more football. And a whole lot more coaches like Canes coaches.

 

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Football Gives me All the Feels: Confessions of a Coach’s Wife

It’s the beginning of the football season once again, and there’s not too much I can say about the football life of a football wife that I haven’t said before.

You already know I love it. And you already know it makes me crazy. Some days I can’t sing its praises enough. Others, I want to wring its disembodied little intangible neck. It robs me of time and it showers me with blessings.

It is a paradox of ginormous proportions.

This past Sunday morning I sat on my back porch, the silken and slippery humid air settling and sliding off my limbs, making everything feel slow and sweet simply because it was Sunday morning.  You know, all easy like.

So I breathed in the easy. I breathed in the sweet, succulent calm, and I held it deep down in core of my soul.  And there it remains. My future calm in the storm of the impending football season.

Wordsworth was fueled by powerful emotions recollected in tranquility. Me, I’m fueled by the opposite: tranquility recollected during powerful emotions. Because starting tomorrow, and for the next five months, my life will be FILLED with powerful emotions. Wave after wave of powerful emotions. No doubt about it.

Starting with love. I’ve always had a hard, strong love for the game. It began in middle school, when I fell hard for the Dallas Cowboys of my youth and the TCU Horned Frogs of my hometown. This was no puppy love. It was true and it was deep and it was eternal.

And with that love comes butterflies – a tickling, nervous anticipation every, single game night. When I see those stadium lights, haloed in the gloaming, sparkling with the wings of a thousand frenzied moths, saluted by the cheers of a thousand frenzied fans, my belly goes downright giddy.

But along with all the love comes intense jealousy — jealousy of the time it steals away from our family, the demands it puts on the man we love most. It keeps him from us for most of the week and it keeps him from most of what our family holds most sacred: meal times and bath times and story times and bed.

He came home late the other night – for the third time this week — calves flecked with paint from lining the field. It was well past the boys’ bedtime. They had missed him. Again. And they had said so. Again. Several times. And it’s only the first week of many, many weeks we will miss him this season.

So yeah, I get jealous sometimes — of the time that it takes. And sometimes it makes me sad. And sometimes it makes me mad. Like that other night, when Mike came home late, all paint-flecked calves and sweat-stained shirt and flat-out worn-out…

But when I saw him, a calm settled over me, my Sunday Morning Calm. I remembered. I remembered that this is my love — this man and this sport. This is my life and this is my destiny — a destiny written long ago, in the helmeted stars of America’s team.

Yep, football makes me crazy. And happy. And angry. And happy. And jealous. And happy. And frantic. And happy. And, well, you name it, I feel it. All the feels. The great, big, powerful feels. Except for sorry. Football never makes me feel sorry.

 

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