Super Bowl Sunday

It's a quiet Super Bowl Sunday here--just Steve and me and some chicken wing dip.  It reminds me of a night eight years ago when I wrote the following entry in my notebook:

She and her two teenage boys had been looking forward to playoff weekend all week.  But a basketball game that had been cancelled earlier in the season had been rescheduled for Saturday evening, taking her younger son out of town.  Then at the last minute, a friend invited her older son to go skiing.  "Do you mind, Mom?" he asked her.  What could she say?  After wishing for skis of his own for two year, he'd finally gotten new skis (and used boots) for his birthday in November but until now hadn't had a chance to use them.  It was an invitation for the first ski trip of the season.  How could she say what she was thinking, "Yes, I mind.  Don't go skiing.  Don't grow up.  Don't leave me."  Instead she smiled and said, "You should go.  We can watch tomorrow's games together." She could see the relief on his face  as he hurried to get ready.  A little while later she watched him load his skis into the family van and drive away.  Her twelve-year-old daughter was at a friend's birthday party until 8:30, and her husband never cared much about watching football, so she watched alone.  Even though she'd grown up in Steeler country, and this was a big game for the Steelers and their rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, she realized, suddenly, that what she liked the most about watching football was watching it with her boys.

The Steelers ended up winning that game (but lost to the Patriots the next weekend), and my boys and I ended up watching the next day's (and the next week's) playoff games together.  In fact, we've watched a lot of football games together since that night.  But also since that night, my boys have grown up and moved out, as I knew one day they would.  So tonight when I'm watching the Super Bowl alone, I'll be missing them.  But I'll be glad that they taught me to watch football, and I'll be glad they are happily watching the game with friends, and I'll be glad for all the good memories I have to keep me warm on this snowy Super Bowl Sunday.

  

Let's Go, Buffalo!

I grew up in Steeler country, back in the days of Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, and Lynn Swann.  When we settled in western New York in the mid-'80s, I started hearing about another football team: the Buffalo Bills.  I didn't pay too much attention to them at first, but by then end of the '80s and the beginning of the '90s, they were impossible to ignore.  I remember buying our first little Buffalo Bills sweatshirt for the spirit days they had on Fridays when my oldest child was in kindergarten.  From then on, we never looked back.  Despite the four Super Bowl losses and many other heartbreaking losses in the years since then, we've never stopped rooting for the Bills.  We watched training camp on hot summer afternoons when it used to be held at SUNY Fredonia and waited in line for autographs after the practices; we bought Flutie Flakes and more Buffalo Bills jerseys and t-shirts and hats and wall hangings and mugs than I can count; and all three of my kids have been to Ralph Wilson Stadium in Orchard Park to watch the Bills in person.  My middle child, who is, by far, the biggest Bills fan in our family, is there today.  For his sake and all the other loyal Bills fans at the game, I hope they pull off a win.  But even if they don't, we'll all keep cheering for them and believing that the next win, the next playoff run, and the next Super Bowl are just around the corner.  Let's go, Buffalo!

The Orange Bowl

As I was walking today, I paused to look at the Orange Bowl.  To an outsider, it might look like a run-down, maybe even abandoned, football field, but to those who live here, the Orange Bowl is the proud home of the Fredonia Hillbillies.  It sits at the bottom of the hill that leads up to what was, until recently, Wheelock Primary School.  But before Wheelock Primary School, it was the site of Fredonia High School.  Many years ago, the team name was Hilltoppers, or so we've been told, presumably because the school was on the top of West Main Hill.  When and why we became the Hillbillies, I do not know, but we wear our black and orange with pride!   The high school is now on the other side of town, but the Orange Bowl remains.  Although we don’t have a fancy synthetic turf field surrounded by a new all-purpose track, and although bleachers and press box are old and rickety, and although when it rains (which is often), the incline gets so muddy, the superintendent has been known to stand guard and give people a hand up, I love the Orange Bowl.  As I stood by the fence, my mind went back to when our family was young and we lived in a house right near the field.  On game nights, we used to walk down the street and spend a few minutes watching the Hillbillies in action from the fence while the kids ran up and down the hill.  A few years later when the kids were older, we started going to the home games; we had moved by then, but our house was still within walking distance, so on crisp fall nights, we walked through town to the Orange Bowl.  For years our kids were in the band and in the stands with their friends, and we were there, too, cheering the Hillbillies on.  But then the last Wendell graduated from Fredonia High School.  We’ve been back a time or two since, but I know fewer and fewer of the players on the field and the parents in the stands.  So I’m back to watching from the fence for a few minutes on Friday nights during football season.  And on this misty Tuesday afternoon in May when the only activity on the field is a couple of grazing groundhogs, I find myself hoping the Orange Bowl stays exactly the way it is for another generation of Hillbillies.