This is not really a column about football, I assure
you, but my beloved Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl recently. My family and I enjoyed every minute of it,
all season long. We watched and waited
and cheered and groaned and for much of the last few months, it was a huge deal
in our lives.
And it is a huge deal. I’ve been living and dying with
the team for over 40 years. I’ve
infected my children with the burden of being a Philadelphia Sports fan, and
there’s a lot about the shared experience that we have really enjoyed. It’s allowed us to share a level of
continuity with my parents and grandparents, who are no longer with us, but
were very much there in spirit this month when the Eagles FINALLY won a
Championship for the first time since 1960.
We watched the games, sitting in the same positions,
with the dog to my direct left, Bud the Dinosaur on the small couch, Pengy and
his Eagles scarf, with Boyo sitting in his spot, me in mine, and so on. We were very driven by mojo…and it seemed to
keep working, so we went with it. I wore
the same shirts all season. In the days
leading up to the Super Bowl, I was excited and confident. Those are not the usual emotions of an Eagles
fan, and that itself made me a little uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to feel and many of my
fellow fans felt the same way. I was never really worried. I didn’t know why at the time, but I do now.
Watching the game itself was intense and occasionally
stressful. When we got to the end, I
felt like we had a real shot. When it
was over, there was an outpouring of emotion.
It made me miss my parents and grateful that I got to share the ride
with my children.
In the days following, I couldn’t stop watching the
highlights. Every time that last pass is
flying through the air, I still worry that Gronk is going to come down with
it. I feel relief every time. We ordered all sorts of new Super Bowl
swag. I went to the parade in
Philadelphia yesterday and it was an amazing experience. I’ll tell that story another time, because as
important as the Eagles victory is, as transcendent as it is for a rabidly
loyal and frustrated fan base, as big of a Sea Change as it is for us all, as
big of a shift away from “Nega-delphia” as this cathartic victory may be; it’s
not the biggest thing going on in my life right now.
My daughter is currently in surgery as I write
this. She has scoliosis that we’ve been
treating for several years now. It
progressed to the point that surgery was necessary. The operation was scheduled months ago, and
there have been tests and scans and other things to get ready for. And then there was our lives, and lots of other
distractions. The Eagles amazing season
was a very welcome one at that, but once the game was over and the euphoria
wore off, the next big thing for all of us to look forward to was a major
operation and months of convalescence and healing.
So, as I write this sitting in the waiting room, I’m
reminded of a discussion I had after the Super Bowl. Someone asked if it had sunk in yet that
they’d won and I’d said, “Not really,” as at that moment, it felt like it
hadn’t. It felt a little surreal, but I
found in the days to come, I didn’t have the same level of emotion about the
whole thing. I thought going to the
parade would make it more “real” for me, and in many ways, it has. Seeing the team and the trophy and
celebrating with all of my crazy brethren was truly satisfying. But the truth is, I realize now that the wife
and the whole family have been in surgery-mode for the last two months. While there have been those welcome
distractions, Christmas, New Years, time down the shore, football and other
sports, some new movies, eating stuff I shouldn’t, getting to my new gym,
considering starting a publishing company, time with friends and family ad so
on, I realize now we’ve all been in this and I have been locked into Daddy mode
preparing myself for this moment right now, where I’m waiting for them to come
out and tell me that she’s out of surgery and that everything went well and
that she’s going to be ok.
That’s the release I’m waiting on right now. The last few months have been about getting
myself and the family ready for right now.
Making sure everything’s ready at home, ready with the family and our
friends, making sure that everything is in place so that I can be here in this
moment, because as important as everything else in the world might be, there is
simply nothing more important than my children.
I know that’s true of every parent, but there are
gratefully finite moments and circumstances where we are faced with that reality
so acutely and be viscerally and gut-punchingly reminded of how much our
children matter. It was pretty emotional
for me just now, seeing her in the hospital gown, laying on the bed as they
prepared to roll her into the Operating Room, where my status as “Dad” does not
afford me a seat. I held it together and
we told fart jokes and she laughed and was smiling as they wheeled the bed away
from me. I’m still holding it together
as I’m not allowing my brain to go off into the realm of “complications” or
“well, this has never happened before in this surgery” and other such nervous
speculation. Rest assured, growing up in
a family very much touched by way-too-early deaths created in me a penchant for
leaning towards the hypochondriacal. To
this day, my brain takes me places when I worry that I don’t care for, but I’ve
learned to manage it. I don’t have full-blown
panics when a loved one is late to call or arrive when expected, but I could.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have moments where my mind
takes me to the worst possible outcome of relatively innocuous things, but
therapy and maturity have helped me manage all that. That said, the struggle was and remains real,
but my role as a parent has seasoned me somewhat. In the end, the only thing that matters is
that within the next few hours, someone is going to tell me that everything
went great and that the wife and I can go back and see her.
That’s when I’ll lose it and I can’t wait. Everything else, including the Eagles miraculous
run, has been a lead up to this, and rest assured, my “game face” is on. Then the recovery begins, but that’s a whole
new thing. The whole family will be
ready, once we get that “All Clear” that I’m waiting on right now.
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