Pouring Music From a Cup

“Trust the wait Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible” A friend sent this to me recently. A few days later, another came. It was a beautiful photograph of a pink and lavender sunrise layered upon the rolling ocean, reminiscent of the glorious dawns I was privileged to see when I was a boy with my father camping and fishing on the barrier islands off the coast of Virginia. Written in black scroll across the waking sky:   What if I fall? Oh, but my dear, what if you fly? But I won’t fly. I never fly. Like Icarus, I yearn to fly; more times than I can count I have tried to fly. Yet, upon my memory, always the result has been disappointment and discouragement. Even when I felt I was destined- called -damn near dragged by caroling angels to the high alter to be anointed with glittering, gossamer wings, I have fallen. Fallen short. Fallen out of favor. Fallen in spirit.   Still, inspired by the s...

My younger son, who is not yet fourteen, is a walking encyclopedia of baseball knowledge. He idly watches Youtube videos of playoff games, World Series games, landmark games, championship games- you name it -into the wee hours of the night when he should be sleeping. During the baseball season he wears the rest of us out watching the MLB channel and will give up a steak dinner at Outback and a stop at Caravel Ice Cream if it means he'll miss the first three innings of a Rangers game.       Just for fun one day I asked him who won game three of the 1986 American League Championship Series, and he not only told me who won the game (I couldn't have even told you which two teams were in the series if you'd put a machete to my throat), he told me the starting pitchers, the game situation when the winning hit was struck, who made the hit, and where the ball was hit. Impressed but thinking he had just gotten lucky, I tried him again. Game four of the 1970 World Se...