Getting Hooked

“Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear”

It’s strange to just pick up and go, to leave town and start over. Uncertainty abounds. I have moved past the strangeness, I think, and am embarking on becoming acclimated to the south. There is an adjustment period taking place in a subtle way for me. We learned in business school about the honeymoon period that occurs after culture shock transpires. When people relocate to new countries, for example, the elation of novelty and newness a different culture eventually wears. What happens next is most crucial in determining a long-term cultural adjustment and whether a successful transition is to occur. Does moving halfway across the country constitute culture shock?

Texas is a magnificent state. Between the distant borders, circularly canniness highways and sap-filled trees are glorious sunrises, distinct cultural traits and decoratively endless drives. The part about living in Austin that enthralls me most is all the activity going on around me. There’s a gym on nearly every block. Every day there are bicyclers trekking the bike lanes on the main highways. These men and women coast along as if they have nowhere else to be. Sometimes they take up the entire lane, annoyingly disrupting traffic. A quick stop at any supermarket on a Saturday will find one engaging with a dozen Texas Longhorn fans. The cashiers wear burnt orange T-shirts and talk about the football team as if they were part of the family. I suppose this isn’t so strange. Go to any local store in New York and you are bound to find lingering overzealous Jets and Giants fans (and where I come from, the nearest professional sports stadium is at least an hour and a half drive). Austin is Longhorn country, for sure. The Longhorns even have their own television station. There is pride in cheering for the local university here, and that I can appreciate. I have always wanted to be a part of a real college sports town. With that, I didn’t realize I have would also become entranced by the lively activity of this city. 

So, when does the excitement of endless activity begin to wear down? How long before Austin is…well, just Austin. I think it will take a while for me. I don’t quite feel settled in yet. I feel I have a lot to learn about this place, these people, the local spots.  I’m looking forward to discovering some decent tennis courts and biking the park trails I know exist around every other corner. The excitement of live music, ethnic food and gloating college sports fans is going to fill my future highlights. I can be certain about that.

“Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there with open arms and open eyes”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slRNXrn_5vE

How I Spent My Summer Vacation & How Andy Murray Helped Redefine My Love Life

“One day He’s coming, O glorious day”

There are still several sultry days and nights remaining this summer, especially here in the triple- digit-temperature region of Hill Country Texas.  I absolutely love college football, fresh picked apples and back to school bargains. Yet each year, I still find myself pleading for an extension on the summer season. This summer has already been one to remember. The short version is this: I earned my MBA in June, moved to Texas in July and began a fresh new sort of existence this August. All monumental occasions, to say the least.

As the final weeks of summer linger, I can’t help but think what remains in the coming days of my favorite time of year. In just these past three weeks, I’ve made a remarkable discovery and experienced a transitory mindset regarding love (one of my well-versed and highly opinionated topics). I credit Andy Murray, the great British Olympian tennis player who cruised by Roger Federer to win gold earlier this month, with this tidy revelation. Murray won me over in the process, not because of his muscular calves dancing in the backcourt or sure-handed volleys at net. Though, those characteristics are hard to resist in a tennis player.  Andy Murray won my heart because his sizable victory over the FedEx machine helped redefine my definition of love (not to mention stamp his place in history). Murray lost in a tight match to Roger at Wimbledon months before the Olympics. He parlayed that mighty effort into something even the best of men’s tennis players can envy. Andy Murray didn’t quit. He brushed off the ever-present tears, the riveting Grand Slam loss and an entire country of disappointed tea drinkers to earn the gold medal in the London games. How does this affect my love life? Well, as it turns out, I was that same discouraged Murray of Wimbledon not long ago. It was sure a proud moment earning my MBA.  A move to Texas to be with my sister and keep my job was nice too. Life could not possibly be more exciting for me than it has been this summer. Or could it?  How did I really spend my summer?

Memorial Day came and went without my painting our parent’s back porch for the first time since they moved out of our family home. June was like a bolt of flashing light complete with high gas bills. There were case studies, reports and animated lectures. Trips to campus twice a week, and sometimes more. There were work days and weekend trail rides. I even enjoyed an ice cream with my community pastor, who convinced me I was doing enough in the name of faith. In fact, he assured me something great was waiting for me in Austin, but that I would not expect it when it happened. I kept that thought in the back of my mind with the last flinch of hope I ignited in my heart. I was anticipating a day where "the one" would walk into my life, but never expecting to actually live it. I was leaving New York with my heart in my hands. Everything seemed to be ending on a low note, especially those moments concerned with love.

I remembered back to all the nights when I cried (and there were many) because it was almost too much to comprehend. There actually came a point where I wished to myself I wasn’t so prone to falling in love. It was as if wishing to not be good at something so compelling and extraordinary. But like every other girl who has ever tried repeatedly to wash a boy away with tears, I knew I would not do so. I was programmed to know love when I felt it, or so was my thought. The end of an era had culminated, and with it, the insecure notion that I would never arrive at the extravagant and enchanting feeling of being in love. Then came July. I packed, unpacked, sold my belongings to complete strangers and then packed again. Boxes of DVDs were shipped. Teddy bears found their way into vacuum packed baggies. I soon exchanged my address for one in a zip code nearly 1,800 miles away from the comfort of the only place I had ever called home. Alone at the airport that late July Tuesday morning, I didn’t have the slightest clue how I would be spending the rest of my summer. The only sure thing I flew away with (along with my overloaded green suitcase and laptop) was a desire to reassess what I truly needed in love. The need to wait patiently for the day it would all work out in the right way. If I could only see beyond the failed attempt of my previous lopsided misfortune.

August sweltered in with a hint of hope. Austin, Texas has tennis courts, baseball stadiums and bike routes. There are a plethora of options for food, shopping and worship services on Sundays. And just as Christ has always been my rock in times of fear, here He was allowing me to be led to a stable ground among people who were chattier, less complicated and more down-to-earth than others I had known. There I was sharing espresso with a stranger I just met.  He wasn’t like other men who seemed to have chips on their shoulder. He was actually friendly, and liked drinking coffee. I laughed maybe this is where I had been going wrong all along. I never did date any man who liked coffee.  Here was a man who not only smiled at me, but smiled with me. We had some common interests and it seemed as if I would at least gain a new friend in this strange town. Could it be that we could shoot hoops together instead of him making me jump through hoops? I knew not what to expect, or rather I had no expectations. I only trusted in the hope I brought with me all those miles. His hope.

Andy Murray won the gold medal and suddenly, I was feeling as golden and fluffy haired as the Brit himself. It could possibly be that I had discovered a new definition of what love is. Love used to be a crushing intoxication of mixed emotions. But now, love is a blank score with an unwritten slate. Love is whatever you make it, whatever you dream it to be. Love is not a trampled and defeated heart that spends an abundance of time in hopeless want. It is not the pursuit of proving yourself. Rather, love is a comeback. It is a revenge, not on somebody, but on that freeing emotion that conquers your heart. Love, if nothing else, is a possibility.

Life has a way of arriving when we least expect it. Champions take shape, and when the probability of another defeat is at its greatest, recapture their worth. Murray is victorious, and I spent my summer vacation revamping my winning formula for love.

“The grave could not keep Him from rising again”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xODpgyqGCYM

A Way...

Excerpt#2

There exists a moment in everyone’s life when they realize what they have is simple and pure, and good enough. I know this to be the truth, even as I dismiss the complexity of my mysterious adoration for Dylan Mandarini. Mysterious, I reckon, only in the sense his heart lingers, firmly stamped to the hidden throne of my own.  Yet, here is where I am now, awake inside this thought: the pure and the simple truth of knowing life is good enough with the memory of a single day.

Little Luke enters a world today full of mystery and adoration. He opens his eyes, flutters his eyelashes and cries to his father. Both faces, father and son, are captivated with a wonder previously unknown.

“You did it Jeanne!”  A chant of enthusiasm shoots from the corner of the small room. The baby continues to wail helplessly, despite producing a sense of infinite satisfaction from his onlookers. My smile is delayed and happiness disguised, but that overwhelming sensation of being in love erupts inside. I have been in love before, but it has never transpired with such ease. Was it a change in my forlorn self or a change in my circumstances?

The patience of a man is his most revered quality. I can venerate this quality only because time has provided a redeeming effect on the plaintive anthem of my past. To love is to paradoxically feel joy and pain, numbness and intensity of emotion. Dylan is a summer song of yesterday.

To backtrack is to retract from this moment. I shall not do so, for Luke’s sake, and for my own.

Today is a day Luke will not remember, but its memory will remind him of the world’s pure, simple truths. My son Luke begins his life in the hands of my heart’s friend.

My Father's Style

To dad, who through everything is the man I believe in the most.

The back of his head, with his black hair softly blowing in the September wind, pops out of his red sedan. The shadow from his dress shoes appears lengthy, dispersed among the gravel parking lot. He opens the trunk and lifts a chair out into the sun. The chair remains, leaning against the bumper of the car. Dad shows up at the tennis court in his work suit and tie. His eyes search the court for the little girl he tucks in to bed each night. She is there between the fence holes, swiftly decking a ball across the net into her opponent’s ribs. He hesitates before smiling.  Dad claps his right hand against his thigh to celebrate the point. He rubs his eyes and peeks around the walkway to the school. There aren’t any other fathers watching their daughters play. There isn’t a spectator on the rusted wooden bleacher seats. The girl takes a tennis ball and bounces it twice. She spots her father on the hill outside the courts and breathes a deep sigh. Her serve is wide to the left of the service box. Dad advances to the bottom of the hill, showering her with a reassuring grin as he descends the muddy grass. He is there for her, although it’s not in style among her peers. She is his reason for smiling. He is her purpose for believing.

Subtlety

“A spirit that won’t let me go”

There is subtlety to the way strings connect with a tennis ball and create a game. We take for granted the subtle movements and physics at work in each shot we make. How is it we are able to return a ball out of the air and deposit it in exactly the right spot with a subtle tap of the racquet? It’s quite extraordinary, even with all the advances in technology, how tennis players are able to divide, conquer and exchange this moving ball with a set of strings arranged in an oval frame. I think of the drop shot as the most subtle of tennis maneuvers. It’s a subtle move of the wrist that does the trick. It’s barely noticeable, really.

What are the subtle exchanges in your life? Which words are the subtle unspoken ones that stay on your ears the longest? What about when a friend subtlety says your name, followed by a friendly hello. I remember the final time I saw a dying friend. I leaned over her hospital bed. Her smile broke me down inside. She touched my wrist with such subtlety I will remember that gentleness the most. Where do you experience life’s subtleties? Mine are in the subtle touches of a friend, the soft kiss given by a lover,  the smile from a stranger, the unceasing ocean splashing softly in the distance, the forgiving Lord’s promise carried in my heart, the sureness and the peacefulness of a tennis court, the silent breaks of a song. I’m led to believe there is more to every part of our lives than meets the eye. In every breath, there is a subtle miracle somehow revealed. All of us have similar experiences, but each of us sees differently. The subtlest part of life I’ve come to know lies not in my sight but in my spirit. It is there I happen across the most recognizable of subtleties.

“The light of your eyes still shines”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwyWNanGkjE

Cherish

“Just can’t turn and walk away”

Tomorrow marks my last twenty days in New York. Here are twenty of my most memorable “firsts” from living in New York.

1.      My first bicycle. It had training wheels and a bell.

2.      My first shopping trip to buy a baseball glove. It was a gold and black Wilson.

3.      My first time having a sleepover at my house. It was a blast.

4.      My first time saying goodbye to my sister as she left for college. It made me cry.

5.      My first time leaving home and my parents. It was bittersweet.

6.      My first trip to New Paltz as a kid. It was to go swimming at the community pool.

7.      My first ride to Fredonia as an undergraduate student. It was long.

8.      My first time attending a funeral. It was my grandmother’s.

9.      My first baseball game. It was a Shea Stadium with my dad and sister.

10.  My first trip to the Bronx Zoo. It involved underground groundhog holes

11.  My first time driving a car. It was a ’93 Nissan Altima.

12.  My first slow dance. It was in a church.

13.  My first kiss. It was at a desk.

14.  My first love. It was a sunny day.

15.  My first heartbreak. It was a holiday.

16.  My first sports heartbreak. It was the Dallas Cowboys

17.  My first taste of Mom’s no bake cookies. It was scrumptious.

18.  My first softball shutout. It was surreal.

19.  My first tennis sections championship. It was overdue.

20.  My first concert. It was 98 degrees.

“And I thought I’d seen it all because it’s been a long, long time”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkiZSTIGpIY

A New

The things I think when away from you

Keep me close to feeling new

The steady sun rising in July

In perfect cadence with the light of your eye

The wild deer who hears the hum

Between our voices and the summer drum

The holy hand of He who loves

Completes the sweet sound of doves

The whispering wind that speaks of home

Rides the waves as we do roam

I wash my tears in memory

Of those suns, and you near me

To think your arms in mine again

Bring me to that place of when

Where newness sings a subtle rhyme


And our two hearts refresh the chime



Will I ever again be held by you



In tender kisses, as if a new