family and football

Blessings, great blessings. My ex-husband just went across town after four nights here, to spend a last day with his children and grandsons before flying back to Washington tonight. We hugged tightly when he left. "Thank you for a great visit," he said. "This feels like home." And of course it was his home for four years; we bought this house together in 1986. But then our marriage ended; he moved out, and there were difficult years, and now we are together again. He is one of my best friends. And in May, he's planning to drive back with his wife and their seven-year old daughter, our children's sister, for a visit with us all, as they did last year. I have to say, I'm proud of these things. In healing a painful rift and creating a new template for close family, we have done something pretty rare and immensely important.

Yesterday was football. In the afternoon, Edgar and Eli went to Sam's current place of work which is a sports bar, with giant TV's turned to the game, some big game apparently, and with foosball, basketball and all manner of fun things for a young man who had a ball, literally and figuratively. Then they came back to Anna's where the next game, the big one, started and Anna had prepared a grand feast for all, as is her wont. It was Pittsburg Steelers versus New England Patriots and my family was split, Ed and Sam for the latter and Anna for the former. Thomas and I don't care at all, so I played with the boys and read many stories and put Eli to bed while the adults cheered and groaned. It felt so normal, something normal families do, not people like me. I would never in a million years watch a football game on my own; my parents never did. But it was fun. Once.

Twins and buddies. Eli's glasses are for play (he's in his Steelers sweatshirt), his grandpa's are not.

Now life resumes. I have not worked or exercised or done anything except talk and play with little boys and eat for four days. Time to re-establish my routine.

It was also wonderful that Edgar was here during this especially fraught time, watching the truly mind-boggling spectacles south of the border, his new home - the biggest march in the country's history versus the invention of "alternate facts." What a ride this is going to be.