Basketball

I loved to play basketball.  I played in high school for awhile, until my knee hurt too much.  I wasn't all that good - I was never a good ball handler, and I wasn't a scorer.  I liked defense, but I didn't have much meat on my bones back then.  But I did love to play.

I played intramurals in college.  If I remember correctly, my team won the all-sorority tournament.  I'll leave it to you all to judge how impressive that was.  I had a few more pounds on my frame by then, and my knee cartilage wasn't as inflamed because I wasn't playing regularly.  I still wasn't a good ball handler, and I still wasn't a scorer, but I think I was a pretty fierce defender.

So - both of my children play basketball.  I like to watch them play, and I like to see them improve.  They both had a game Friday night.  After the game, they were shooting around, and playing each other one on one.  They were having such a good time, I wanted to join in.  I challenged them to two on one - them against me.  There will be a day when both of my kids indivually can smoke me on the court, but Friday night was not that day.  My son said that I was playing some pretty tough D.  My daughter tried to play me close, and unfortunatley got a little too close.  She got clipped on the chin, but no harm done.  It was a  great time, and I guess I had forgotten how it felt to be out on the court. 

5 minutes later, my lungs gave out, so I told the kids it was time to go home.  On the way home, my son commented again on my defense.  I replied that if I could play him like that at 40, just think of how I played at 20!  The look on his face was priceless.  He was impressed, and I think I found just a little bit of my youth for a moment. 

Found It - a little

I was just thinking about our family's regular morning routine, and I think this is one place where I found my groove.  I'm not writing this for any other reason than to celebrate the small things that make life work.  If I may say so, I think that we have a pretty good thing going in the mornings.  Everyone does what they need to do, when they need to do it, and most mornings, we are even ready a few minutes early.  But if one thing just doesn't go right - just one person not holding up their end of things, it doesn't work too well.  It's interesting that there's such a fine line sometimes between finding it and losing it!

One of the things I like best about our mornings is that I'm NOT the first one up!  I hate getting out of bed, and being the first one out of bed just makes it that much worse.  So, hubby gets up first while I grab a couple more zzzz's.  And then the well oiled morning machine in the Holloway house really gets going.  Most mornings I even get my tea made for me.  There are things that we have thrown out from the regular morning routine - I don't cook (Ha - I barely even cook at supper time, no way that's gonna happen when I'm not fully awake yet!), lunches are packed the night before if they are needed, backpacks are loaded the previous evening, and instruments are ready to go.  This is the first year of band in our house, and I gotta say, I'm not real fond of the 7 am start time two days a week.  But in the end, the morning routine has adjusted to that early start, and I'm shocked most band mornings that my family, none of us being morning people, are all ready on time.

And maybe that's what makes me feel so good about my "finding it" - the fact that if given a choice, all of us would stay in bed until we woke up naturally sometime between 8 and 10 am.  We are not a family of morning people, and we all love to sleep in.  So the fact that we work so well together in the morning and don't really struggle to stay on time is a major accomplishment.  So yeah for team Holloway!