Today is Super Bowl Sunday, and I’m ending an unexpected five day weekend thinking about sports, family, and passion.
When people ask me where I got what is sometimes an encyclopedic knowledge of NFL championships, they’re usually surprised when I tell them that it was my grandmother. She was a huge Dallas Cowboys fan (she thought Roger Staubach and Tom Landry were good Methodists) and loved nothing better than to watch them deliver a sound ass kicking while she put a roast or a chicken in the oven. I spent most weekends with her and my grandfather when I was small. They were only 30 minutes from us, Dad was in medical school and residency, Mom was teaching a full load at Tidewater Community College, and Meemaw rightly saw that they needed some time to themselves. Sunday dinners were when everyone came together. If Dad didn’t have to study, he’d join Popa on the golf course, and Mom would come and help with the meal. I’d listen to her and Meemaw talk (I did a lot of that–listening) and they’d send me to the living room to check on the score when there was something they didn’t want me to hear.
I usually heard it anyway. My ears were better then.
So it was my job, along with theirs, to get Dad and Popa up-to-speed before we sat down to eat. I will still make a chicken or a roast (or Mom’s version of Meemaw’s spaghetti) on Sundays. In fact, I will probably make it instead of chili tonight. Just one of those olfactory/taste memories that warms me up, you know?
Meemaw also had this friend at work who was quite the artist and poet. Every year, they had a one dollar bet on the Super Bowl, and every year, without fail, she’d win. So he’d find a creative way to illustrate and frame her winnings. Literally frame them. I’ve posted a picture of his 1969 creation. 50 years ago, Joe Namath promised a victory for the Jets and delivered. So Meemaw’s coworker gave her a poem, a picture, and 100 pennies. (There was also the year he presented her a pic of a Viking with half-dollars for eyes. That one gave my younger sister nightmares for years.) Sadly, the frame fell off my study wall a few years back, and two pennies peeled off the illustration. I’ll need to replace them and get it fixed, rehang it.
Visual memories that warm me up, you know?
The big Toner family news this week is that our youngest daughter, Sara, has committed to play D1 lacrosse at San Diego State. While we are sports fans, her father and I are FAR from coordinated…or fast…or even physically capable in the classic sense. There are athletes in our family, though, and Sara has her father’s sense of humor and my nose, so she’s ours. I’m Facebook friends with our older daughter’s high school band director, who paid this compliment when we posted the news:
“I’m pretty sure the Toner family motto is ‘Whatever you do, be a total badass at it.’”
My reply was the following:
“Actually, the Toner family motto is, ‘If you’re gonna play, play with the blood.”
Then I admitted to stealing that from the series Mozart in the Jungle and to being late to that party, like I am to every quality book, movie, TV show, blogging…
In the show, this is the mantra, for four seasons, of the conductor of the NY Symphony. Maestro Rodrigo lives by a maxim my role models have preached since I could hear. To find a passion. That life is hard, we’ll have to work our asses off, so we might as well work our asses off doing something we love. I am incredibly proud of both of our daughters and what they’ve accomplished, incredibly excited for their futures.
But what will always bring me joy is to watch them take joy. That is what makes both of them bring such life to the stage, to the practice field, to their relationships as they have matured into two amazing young women.
When I think of it, that’s how my grandmother played with the blood. For her family. For us. She was one of the brightest people I’ve ever known, verbally quick, musically gifted. She enjoyed banter and crosswords and singing, listening to, dancing to music. There were so many avenues she could have pursued. Hers was just a time when not many women did that. She had too many others to take care of, and for those of us lucky enough to be one of those, we felt the ferocity of her love. Every day.
There’s an Alice Walker poem that always makes me think of her, of all the women in our lives who have “played with the blood” for others. Those who came before me, and those who come after, will forever leave me humbled and proud.
Women by Alice Walker
They were women then
My mama’s generation
Husky of voice–stout of
Step
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors
And ironed
Starched white
Shirts
How they led
Armies
Headragged generals
Across mined
Fields
Booby trapped
Ditches
To discover books
Desks
A place for us
How they knew what we
Must know
Without knowing a page
Of it
Themselves.
Happy Super Bowl Sunday. Keep playing with the blood.
Sally Huggins Toner 