This goalie says, “I find your aim to be …. disappointing.”
Springtime, or close enough to spring, means one important thing. Lacrosse season is here. I watched Georgetown (ranked 19) beat Notre Dame (ranked 1) in Indiana. Very exciting. I played lax WBITD (Way Back In The Day), and my family has some lacrosse heritage – my dad was a goalie for City College in the late 1920s, and my brother Bill was crease defense at Towson High and Mount Washington LC. My first lacrosse sticks had no plastic or metal. Breaking them in took half a season, and when they broke we cried. About a half dozen of my nephews’ children now play, including Tierney Smink, whom you see here snagging a tricky bounce shot.
Eight weeks have passed since I retired from medicine. I plan to continue to write weekly observations (Yes’m, they are called “blogs,” and I agree – it’s still an unattractive word) during the next 10 months to help me chart my way to an MFA.
On Tuesday I attended a virtual open house for one of the MFA programs to which I might apply. On Wednesday our writing group – the Veterans’ Writing Collective – met. I tried a little historical fiction and enjoyed what my friends are writing. The group seems to be gathering some momentum. On Saturday I attended a Writers’ League of Texas program in Bulverde: two talks/discussions at the Mammen Family Public Library, which was also open, at a different entrance, for voting – local elections. The parking lot was full. Small cars were not in abundance. Various flags flew from the truck beds. I met Amanda Johnston, the 2024 Texas Poet Laureate and an alum of the Stonecoast MFA, who showed us some poems. She said, “Poetry is not science,” and I thought that was worth thinking about. Kimberly Garza, PhD, who teaches at UTSA, had us do an exercise: Tell us where you are from. I wrote,
A big house at the top of the road, but so much smaller when visited a lifetime later. Gardens and thunderstorms, running home when lightning and fat rain fell in dust, slamming shutters before the grey gusts did their worst. Dew in May, strawberries and cherries. Mockingbirds and squirrels. Sunrise in bloom.
This prompt and my response seem to have primed me to find another portal into the realm of deeper memory. The next day I was raking and pruning the overgrowth and weeds near the alley. I was sticky sweaty with scratched forearms and dust in my eyes in the late afternoon. Suddenly I could smell a fabulous roast, maybe turkey or ham, well-done, and plenty. One of the neighbors must have been setting Sunday dinner on the dining room table. I could smell yes it must have been chops and broccoli, applesauce, a big dish of potatoes. Maybe cobbler still too warm to touch now cooling on the windowsill. Cool tumblers of whole milk with sweat on the glass. Napkins and the good plates, silverware properly set. Tuck in your shirt and mind the elbows, young man. Put that lacrosse stick on the porch with the others. But I don’t want to go in to dinner, yet, because the neighborhood kids are running and laughing, actually more like screaming but who wants to go in on a Sunday night, imprisoned by dinner and manners, then oh yeah I’m famished, could eat a horse, but dang I have to do my math homework and stuff. Ugh. But if I can do it fast maybe mom will let me watch Ed Sullivan.
That was a TV show. It came on at 8, bedtime, so you better eat your brussels sprouts so mom will let you.
Never did like like brussels sprouts.
Ed Sullivan had the Beatles as musical guests. They sang “I Want to Hold your Hand,” which inspired me on the next day, Monday morning, to try the same line with Darlene, who sat in from of me at Rogers Forge Elementary School. She said she she did not want to hold my hand. She liked Johnny Cheek. For the next 17 years, my confidence with girls was shattered. Geez, Darlene!
You had to be there, at the big house at the top of the road. Or you could be in another place and time and smell Sunday dinner on a warm late winter afternoon and go back for a little visit.
Scott D. McLean, MD 