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Month: October 2019

Family Football

Family Football

How long has it been since you were at a high school football game on a Friday night? For me, it probably would have been 59 years, until last week.

I remember one game in particular from back in 1960, when a certain young man was kind to me on a bitter cold Friday night in northern Ohio. My date had gone off to visit with some of his friends several rows away and left me sitting with Ray, whose usual date had not come to the game because she had a cold. We always double dated to the games because Ray had access to the family car, and my date didn’t have that privilege.

I remember Ray talking with me as the game progressed, and at half time he went and got us hot chocolate. Five years later, I married Ray, who was Chris’s father.

Fortunately, last Friday’s game was not freezing cold, as we watched my grandson, Vinnie Marquez, number 7, play at Oakmont High School in Roseville, California.

A few weeks ago, a friend of Chris, who lives in Stockton, was on Facebook at one of Vin’s games, and I thought “I guess I’m not a very good grandma because I haven’t been to any of his games.” I suppose I could have gone to a game, but I tend to wait to be invited to things.

Then suddenly, I was specifically invited to attend this game. It was “honor the seniors” night, where senior football players, cheer leaders, dance team, and band members walked out on the field with their families as the announcer identified each family member by name.

The players and cheer leaders walked before the game began, the others at half time. And they took video and still photos, which showed up on my iPhone on Saturday and Sunday.

Chris, Marilyn, Vinnie, and Jeremy in the middle of the football field on Friday, October 25, 2019

Vinnie has been playing football since he was seven. I had seen him play once about five years ago when his school played another team in Stockton at St. Mary’s school. At that game, I had trouble keeping track of him on the field, but this time he was easy to spot on most of the plays. He plays wide receiver, so he is all over the place. He also holds the ball for the kick after a touchdown.

The Oakmont Vikings started the season well – undefeated the first four games. But once the other teams got up to speed, they have lost a few games. The opposing team from Rio Linda won the toss and had a big lead at the end of the first quarter. Oakmont fought back, but lost 35 – 63.

A month ago, I never expected I’d be sitting on bleachers on a night in October. Life has its little surprises and gifts, like sitting around relaxing with family—a welcome respite after ten weeks of cutting ivy in my yard.

If you want to know what happened between the football game in 1960 and now, you can read the whole story in my memoir, “Looking for Connection” available as an eBook on Amazon here.

As for me, I’ll be busy all week cleaning up my yard from the mess the wind made on Sunday.

 

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Watching it All Unravel

Watching it All Unravel

Side view of collage

Ten years ago, I carefully shortened the sleeves on a jacket I had made on a knitting machine some years before. I didn’t want the whole sleeve to unravel, so I sewed bias tape on each of them before I cut them. Of course, the discarded part did start to unravel, and I was fascinated to watch the loops relax and let go.

I used that fabric in a large, forty inch square collage. The base was three sheets of heavy corrugated cardboard glued together that had been some of the packing on something we bought while remodeling the apartment that is attached behind my free standing garage. I covered this with a knitted dress-weight material that has a free-form design in sky blue, coral, and yellow on white, which folds around to the back side. The collage is framed with a piece of rope sewn to the fabric around the edge.

At the time we were being told that light bulbs would no longer be made— only those squiggly fluorescent things, that we could no longer use our fireplaces, that GMO foods were going to replace what we were eating, and people were buying “carbon footprints” so they could travel on airplanes without feeling guilty.

Close up of knitted sleeve

Magazine photos were pasted randomly on the fabric. The unraveling sleeve was added along the left side. The chaos in the center is a tangle of red bias tape and strips of a basket-making material from some kind of grass woven together.

Detail of red tape

At a give-a-way of basketry materials, I had picked up a sheaf of gold construction paper that had been stored rolled up for a long time, and had gotten wet on one side and corroded nicely so you can see the layers. I positioned this on the right side of the board on top of a photo copy of our founding documents—“We the People . . .”

Detail of yellow paper

I was surprised and pleased that it made it into one of the Lodi Art Center’s annual shows when they were being held at Woodbridge Winery.

This collage has been hanging above the clothes dryer in the utility room in back of the apartment behind the garage for the last five years because there was enough wall space next to the attached shelving.

Watching it All Unravel

While I was rummaging around in that room last week, I took the time to stand there and remember making this collage. It had felt like life as I knew it was unraveling when I made it. I was ahead of my time—now it feels like that again, but for different reasons.

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