Hearts and Ashes

This past weekend I was in the greeting card section in Publix looking for a Valentine card. I read card after card, trying to find one that was not goofy, or sappy, or corny, or inappropriate. All these cards expressing love, and I felt they were missing the point.

Now, I realize Valentine’s Day is a commercial extravaganza buoyed by red hearts, balloons, fluffy sentiments, chocolate, and champagne, but on a year in which Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday collide, in which the Hallmark trappings of hearts and balloons are juxtaposed with the introspection and sacrifice of Lent, every card I picked up seemed lacking.

I was flailing about on the surface when I was looking for depth.

Then came the Super Bowl which, according to a Nielson rating, made it the most viewed telecast since the moon landing in 1969. Headlines proclaiming TOUCHDOWN! did not refer to an event on the football field but to you-know-who’s airplane which had landed in time for kickoff. Instagram offered us glimpses of football players, dressed to the nines by their stylists, swaggering into the stadium with their bling, designer clothes, and Hollywood sunglasses. Even our president entered into the hoopla with an official White House announcement that he had joined TikTok.

In the words of a social commentator, we have become a society that likes to be entertained. What does this mean? We are inundated with the glitzy, glamorous, loud and outrageous—all offering a reality that is not real.

As I type this, two days after the Super Bowl and on the eve of both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, it is not lost on me that True Love is not found in the greeting card section, nor is it in the post-game kiss between a football player and a pop star. Instead, it is found in the absence of what society offers.

Because what society offers is Valentine’s Day, when what it needs is Ash Wednesday.

My Annual Super Bowl Commentary

In keeping with my yearly tradition of writing something about football for the Super Bowl, I present you with this year's post which will leave you feeling horrified or amused ... 

Once Upon a Time the boys were going through boxes in the attic and came across Joe's childhood sports books. Lots and lots of sports books, including The Encyclopedia of Football which is very helpful. For example, turn to Chapter 8: Football for Females (subtitled: How to Marry or Keep the Male Football Maniac).

Horrified? Amused? 

While you are pondering this, I am doing a Super Sophisticated Football Analysis to help me decide which team to support: 

-I have been to San Francisco, so the 49ers it is.

-But I have also been to Kansas City, so maybe the Chiefs.

-We have also toured Arrowhead Stadium, so Kansas City edges out.

-The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce thing complicates things. The guys in the family are for the 49ers because they are so over the hoopla; however, I have Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce to thank for the fact that I can actually name some football players: Travis Kelce, his brother, Jason Kelce, Patrick Mahomes, and Brock Purdy. So there is that.

-As for mascots, Sourdough Sam or KC Wolf? According to Sports Illustrated Mascot rankings, they are ranked #22 and #23 respectively. Well. Okay, I say neither. Blue (Indianapolis Colts) is cuter, and I like Poe the Raven (Baltimore Ravens) because it is nice to have a literature component at a sports venue. 

Decisions, decisions.

Birthday Musings

Some might consider February to be one of the dreariest months. It is cold, it is gray, it is damp.

But if you know me, then you know how I like cold, and gray, and damp. I like rainy days. And February also means Valentine’s Day and World Nutella Day. And my birthday.

So, there you have it. February is a GREAT month.

This morning in our family WhatsApp group, in honor of my birthday my aunt posted a photo of me taken many years ago while studying abroad in Spain. We were at the Royal Palace of la Granja in Segovia, and posing with me are Michele (an Italian student from Padova) and David (who was in my study group)—and I only remember their names because my aunt also included the back of the photo where I had written these details.

Now, I do not know what happened to Michele, and the only thing I remember about David was that he was AWFUL in Spanish (like, REALLY REALLY awful),  but I look back at that young college student posing with these two guys and I have several thoughts: it was, for me, a good hair day; I was wearing a pair of navy, linen shorts I had purchased at the mall; OH MY GOSH I spent a summer in Spain; and that I loved that shirt.

What in the heck happened to that shirt?!?

But with old photos comes a little reminiscing and more than a little nostalgia. Memories are a funny thing. There are those you will remember to your dying day, those you want to forget, and those you did not mean to forget but did, and now you are trying to call them forth. Then there are the emotive memories, the ones that have been reduced to a single emotion—the happy, sad, embarrassing, funny, scary.

And this old photo reminded me of a time which held all the above.

The early twenties can be intense, you know?

Memories are also fluid. I can merge the memory of who I was then with who I am now, and despite the years that have passed I can say that today, on my birthday, I am one and the same: just a little older, none the wiser (but still learning), I still have crazy hair, my passport is always ready and waiting for the next great travel adventure …

and I still like that shirt.