Last month in May, before the summer heat set in, Kate and I took our three littles to the beach for a long weekend. Although it was chilly by my standards, folks were still in the ocean. I wasn't that brave and just stood at waters edge as my gang, Leo, Ella and Jordan jumped waves in laughter. Afterwards, I took them to the outdoor pool and they "dared" each other to jump in and eventually Leo accepted the challenge and canon balled into the deep end, which broke the ice and had all three swimming away, only to come out with blue lips, shivering and saying "Daddy, I am cold." No kidding I smiled and wrapped them each in a towel and a hug and we walked back to the house for a dip in the hot Jacuzzi.Great memories.
That evening, after warm baths and our favorite Saturday night dinner (frozen pizza), we setup for family movie night and the feature flick was "The Wizard of Oz." The kiddos are 6 ½ now, and we finally felt it was not too scary for them to watch, especially if we were all together. In addition, we had just completed two weeks of bed time reading of the book The Wizard of Oz, and the kids really enjoyed it. When I was young, my mom and dad didn’t really read that much to me or my sisters and brother, (or at least I don’t remember it) but Kate's mom read books every night, with her favorite being Bilbo Baggans and The Hobbit. So we are trying to start the same tradition and instill a love of reading and story for our kiddos.
I do remember watching The Wizard of Oz on TV in the basement of our home in Warminster, PA way back in 1968. I was 6 years old and I watched it by myself, slumped on the old orange second hand couch downstairs. I remember not moving the entire two hours as I was mesmerized by Dorothy, the lion, scarecrow and tinman. I told my kids that story and my youngest, 4 year old Jordan asked, "where were your mommy and daddy?" I don’t know.
Back at the beach, we all had a wonderful family night watching The Wizard of Oz on our big screen TV cuddled and snuggled together on the couch wrapped in soft covers and pillows. We like to call that "assuming the position" when someone spreads out for a TV show on the couch. Now I have no idea how big a memory or impact the night will represent in my kids mind, but it was special to me. As I looked at the scene there in the living room with all of us watching the movie, I reflected to that basement couch back in Warminster, and It seemed like only yesterday …. But it was actually 47 years ago. Wow. Time flies!
On my drive to the beach that weekend, I got a call from an old UNC football team mate who just wanted to reach out and say” hello” after he read a review on my book THE QB MENTOR in a local publication. I was amazed at how quickly we jumped right back into our friendship, even though it had been 30+ years since our time together. We talked about family and leukemia, life and legacy. We were bonded by our faith and our belief in life and eternal life, and we laughed at the past, the present and the future that we were both sure we shared.
So, when I went to sleep that night I remember having a very perplexed sense of time. What is time? And who does it apply to?
I didn’t have any answers and don’t have any proposed insights in this blog, but I did conclude that time is a human construct, and that it applies to the physical. Time seems to be a temporal and material measure, not an eternal or spiritual metric. How else can we explain friendships that have no contact for decades, and yet within a sentence, it’s as if time never passed? Or how about my memory of being six years old and experiencing the Wizard of Oz, and then in what seemed like the very next moment, watching the same movie with my own six year old kiddos almost 50 years later.
I smiled and slept well that entire weekend, which is a blessing, because, unfortunately a good night’s sleep isn’t always available. For me, there isn’t a day, or even half of a day when I don’t have to wrestle with some thought of mortality and the meaning of my latest blood counts or bout with an unexpected surge of fatigue. But for that weekend, it felt so monumentally obvious to me that time is a treasure that does not run out. Rather it is the metric we use to mark our relationships and our memories with those we love in life, and thereafter.
I love Wizard of Oz. I love my family and friends. I hope you enjoy yours too.
Amen and AMEN