| | There are places I remember...
all my life...
The Daily News
1 So...I visited my Dad yesterday, and he related this extremely short and quite philosophical anecdote:
2 A young girl and her Dad boarded an airplane for a routine trip one day. They buckled in, and were ready to take off, when the little girl nervously looked to her Dad and said, "My hands are cold, and nobody loves me!"
3 Her Dad thought for a second, then turned to his beautiful daughter and said, "Sit on your hands, and God loves you."
4 Sweet.
5 That's my Dad, in a nutshell. He is always one who could say amazing things in few words.
6 If I may remind, last May, after my Mom passed away, we had all the usual stresses not only of dealing with our own means of all that comes with losing a parent, spiritual guide, and darned good dancer, but with arranging flowers, preparing for the celebration at our house, and sharing memories with friends, food, and prayers for Mom.
7 At one point, I called my Dad on the phone and asked what he wanted printed on the sash you put on flowers at a celebration of someone's life, in this case, the woman he adored and cherished from the moment he had met her.
8 His response, with no hesitation: "I still do."
9 I stood for a second holding the receiver in my hand, and smiled.
10 How do you smile at something as tragic as the loss of a parent, or in this instant, of a lifelong soulmate?
11 Dad let all of us know. That's him. Succinct, intelligent, and a master poet.
12 His bone cancer has started to cause pain, which isn't fun, but which he seems again to keep as real, and as a testament as to why I have always wished I were half the man he is.
13 He's my Dad, and I love him. GREAT afternoon, despite all, and I came home refreshed and refurbished.
14 Whew.
15 Moving on, Part 1: To the many more, I wish to thank you for understanding all of my moodiness, goofiness, smiles, anger, misgivings, and misunderstandings in the past few weeks. It has been a tremendously tough time, but a spiritual climb that keeps teaching me to live life, and to love life, and to thank all my friends and family for putting up with my goofiness and seeming emotion-packed stints.
16 I love all of you, and thank you for understanding. It's been an amazing year in so many ways, and yet the emotions have run extreme ever since May, when we lost Mom.
17 The nice thing about all of this is that I can look back and realize how truly blessed I have been my entire life. My parents are to be praised for having been so supportive, funny, graceful, and always there for our entire family. Having both gone through several years of hospitals, procedures, sufferings, and yet watching them remain strong, funny, intelligent, and always supportive has been a true rollercoaster, but one that has brought myself and my family tremendous moments of appreciation and joy in so many ways.
18 Anyway, it was a wonderful day spent with Dad, and as we move into the new year, I hope to have many more.
19 Moving on, Part the Second: I think one of the saddest moments of yesterday is my Dad telling me he is not renewing his season tickets to the 49ers next year. He is a lifelong season ticket holder, and had gone to games for years before my Mom became paralyzed and sick. After her passing in May, I was able to go to a coupla Niner games with him, and LOVED it.
20 When I was a wee lad, I used to accompany him to games every Sunday the Niners were in town. I later went on to work as a vendor at Niner games, Giants' games, A's' games, Raiders' games, Cal games, Stanford games, and nearly any other venue you could name. My main jobs were at Niners and Giants, one of the most incredible jobs one could have as a young person.
21 Perhaps my greatest vending moment came when I worked the immortal Niners/Cowboys game that featured "The Catch", which subsequently put the Niners into the Super Bowl for the very first time.
22 I had sold a LOT of beer at that event, and with two minutes left, worked my way over to section 43, where my Mom and Dad, along with their friends from their younger days all sat, people from my childhood neighborhood all huddled together nervously watching as the Niners came back and won a game that perhaps they shouldn't have. The Niners were trailing 27-21 with 58 seconds left in the game, and were driving on a third down and long.
23 What football fan could ever forget Joe Montana rolling right, seemingly in trouble, and throwing an almost uncatchable ball to the soaring Dwight Clark, whose fingertips pulled the ball down in the end zone for an amazing comeback with 51 seconds left on the clock? I even remember the name of the play, "Sprint Right Option". When Clark pulled that ball down, we screamed, cheered, whooped it up, but within seconds we also realized there was still a lot of time left on the clock.
24 I remember distinctly being worried that Dallas would mount a last-minute comeback, which they did. They got the ball all the way up to the 50-yard line on a long pass from Dallas' Danny White to wide receiver Drew Pearson. The Niner's Eric Wright reached out and horse-collared Pearson, saving us from a Dallas touchdown.
25 On the very next play Lawrence Pillers stripped the ball from Dallas' QB Danny White, and the Niners pounced on it, securing their ticket to their first Super Bowl, and their place in football folklore. Mom, Dad, their best friends, their best friends' kids, and myself screamed, hugged, laughed, and high-fived into the night.
26 We still talk about it, to this day. Dad's seats became golden, right on the 40-yard line during the golden age of the 49ers. When he told me he wasn't getting tickets next year, my heart dropped. He can't make it up his porch anymore without having trouble breathing, so the walk to his seats seems out of the question now.
27 That one hurt. I'm thinking of talking to my sisters about paying for the tickets and sharing them, just so we could keep a tradition in the family that has been going on since I was born.
28 Whew.
29 Moving on, Part the Third: Had a great weekend, really. On Saturday I went to Public Storage and cleaned out a buncha old stuff, including hundreds of pictures of old shows and other YB memorabilia. When I first hopped over to EV, I had to get my classroom stuff and theatre stuff out of YB within days, so I rented this Public Storage unit, and have had it for several years. I never wanted to go in there, because I had many of the programs from the Shows, several things that were out on stage, and a tons of videos, pictures, cards, letters, and wall plaques that were just too painful to look at, given all that has gone on.
30 Ironically, nobody was around to go in there with me, so it was a little tough getting over there, but I wanted to get that stuff out before the first of the month.
31 Turned out that doing that by myself was rather cathartic.The sun shone brightly on Saturday, and I found myself once again on Tully Road, bumper to bumper, and doing a classic Drama Workshop "tech". It felt exactly the same, only I was moving things I could use into a storage room on the first floor of my building at EV.
32 Fortunately for me, me new friend and confidant Rafa, our head custodian, was there and willing to let me in. I spent the entire morning and afternoon alone and enjoying the life I had left, as well as symbolically leaving my old life behind and putting a flag into the grounds of the Chill-on-the-Hill.
33 It was nice finally moving completely in. It was sort of like finally putting the past behind and loving the present, and REALLY appreciating my new digs, even though I've already been there for four years. I had always delayed moving all that stuff, and now I bring the past into the present, but with a real focus on the future.
34 Emotional? Perhaps. It's been an emotional year, what with so many people falling sick, and having to worry about so many critical things. Saturday was a bit of a catharsis, where I was able to put the past finally to bed, and to dream of what new memories and challenges I will face with my students, with my Dad, with my family, and with my life.
35 I came away with a wonderful feeling of acceptance, and with still more excitement for my future at EV. It is nice to know that any time I wish, I could go downstairs and use some of the drama flats, and many of the techniques I developed at YB. There is a sort of spiritual constant, and now a wonderful connection between the two places. Life isn't always a moving on; it's often a spiritual connection between past, present, and future. I love my present, look forward to my future, but will always carry the real people and things with me through life.
36 All these places have their moments. 37 I love you all, everything.
38 Live life.
39 Love life.
40 Peace.
~H~
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