March Madness

7 th grade

When our son was still in junior high and high school this time of year there was pretty much nothing but nets on the TV.  There would be sheets of paper with all the brackets printed on them.  John Roger would add the names of the teams as they advanced or fell off the sheet.

cavshistory.com 

I could name members of different colleges and some pro teams.  I even had a favorite college player, Danny Ferry of the Duke Blue Devils.  A few years later while on a business trip I attended a professional ball game courtesy of the Litton sales department.  And there was Ferry working up a sweat and looking good!

sports.espn.go.com

photo from wikipedia.com

John Roger's bedroom walls and ceiling were covered with posters of hard rock bands and sports icons.  Of course Michael Jordan was on the wall or ceiling.  Dallas Cowboy posters supplied by my family held places of honor.  Bo Jackson graced another wall along with his book on the shelf.  And there were the cheesecake posters as JR's age increased his interest range.  This was all mixed with the left over Star Wars of John Roger's elementary school years.

Good times to remember.  Times when me and my man child are able to share good experiences.  Unfortunately, I was not as calm and even tempered as I should have been as a parent.  Too dominating, too emotional, too much of a lot of things.  So now I simply take a deep breath and pray that God has healed the scars I left on my beloved son.  But that is in the past.

It is so easy for us humans to get stuck in the quicksand of the past.  Past mistakes.  Past failures.  Past bad judgments.  Past missed opportunities.  I have been guilty at times of being the person facing backwards as life moved along.  Looking back at what I did wrong, what I missed, whose fault it was, just a bunch of quicksand pits.  And each pit sucked a little more of the present from me causing me to make more of the same pit falls.

In 2002 thanks to good doctors and good insurance, I attended a month long chronic pain therapy class.  The classes were 4 days a week, 8 hours a day and quite demanding.  After completion of the month long class I continued individual therapy for PTSD.  In November of that same year, I was freed of my demons of regret.  Now that does not mean I have everything together.  No, I am still human and have lots of all sorts of negative stuff.  The past no longer dominates my life.  I feel like I have advanced to almost the top bracket.

In 2012 I could not name one basketball player, not even one college team in the playoffs.  Who is the top professional basketball player now?  Without the influence of a young man obsessed with sports living under my roof, none of this seems important any more.  Today John Roger, now the dad of our grandsons, swapped text messages with us about spring break activities with his sons.  A warm feeling settles over me as I think of him and those 3 newest sports fanatics talking about the ball games.  Dad and sons just sharing a little March Madness.