Seams

My glory days as a high school athlete were limited to one shining moment. I was on the junior-varsity basketball team, and kind of really didn’t deserve to even be there, but there was no ninth-grade team that year. We had a varsity game over Christmas break, and most of the regular players were gone, so every able-bodied JV player was invited to ride the bench. We were getting creamed, so the coach decided to let us have a few moments on the court. The ball ended up in my hands, and I pulled up a shot with the velocity of a rocket and the projection of a brick. Miraculously, it bounced off the backboard and went in.

I continued to play in adulthood, in part because I loved the game, and in part because I felt there was a little more to learn from it. A bunch of teachers and dads from the school where I worked got together in a tiny gym on Saturday mornings.  A new dad joined us one Saturday, and it was easy to see he knew what he was doing. He was able to get the ball down court with ease, and put some serious mustard into every single one of his passes. I got to talking with him at a break, and he volunteered some insights into his success on the court.

I’m not really a basketball player, he said. Hockey is my game, but it’s kind of similar. In hockey you only get ahead if you find a seam in the defense. You have to see where the holes are, between the defense and your teammate, and that’s where you send the puck.

My basketball playing got a little better after that to be sure, as his counsel gave me a new set of eyes to view the game. By the time I retired from Saturday basketball, my passes were sharper, and my instincts were stronger.  Not bad for a guy everybody had come to expect to just be taller than everybody else.

My life got better too. I always thought I was the odd duck, the guy on the margins who saw life differently than everybody else, and was, by definition, a little behind everybody else. I now realized that wasn’t the case. I delighted in the unusual, in the ironic, in the exceptionally beautiful, and in the truly good.  While many people around me were going about their day-to-day lives, and not thinking twice about the exceptional, I was perpetually looking for the seams, the places where the light shone just a little brighter.  Not behind.  Just different.

It’s been a while since that hockey dad helped me out.  The world continues to stand still for me in the exceptional moments– the first snowfall, the unpredictable wonder of children, the joy of those videos when military parents surprise their kids by coming home from duty early, and other things that are so perfect to me, it makes me wonder why all of life isn’t perfect. This isn’t always an easy way to look at life, but, like a jazz musician who works for the right improvisation, I wouldn’t want to be in a place where all I did was play wedding band covers. I now realize that has less to do with the instrument you’re playing, and more with how you see the music that’s set before you.

Circumspecta. Percogita. Vola.

For My Youngest

Each motion is purpose.
Too many head to the kitchen
Then once there
Have no clue why they came.
Singular intent
Finds you cooking
Snacking
Caffeinating
While the world leans on the faucet.
Besides
That perpetual smile
And those kind eyes
Create newness of
Warmth
Welcome
Reality.

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