Boys' Ski Trip

It was a reunion of sorts. The Holik boys gathered in our house for breakfast before they took a 10-hour drive to Colorado for a ski trip. Well, for some of them it would just be a trip because they weren’t going to ski and at least three of them were merely going snowboarding. So ski trip was really misnomer, but it mattered very little. They seemed to enjoy each other’s company no matter what they did. They appeared to have a good ole time just sitting around the table eating the burritos we bought for them from Josie’s. They were going to leave at around ten, but were delayed until 11, for they had to pick up Trevor from the airport and then pick up the rental van. I was pretty sad sending them away for a few days. Although I coveted my privacy, having the boys home just made everything right again. They took a part of me with them when they went off to college, and my heart was made whole every time they came home, yet they never stayed very long and the constant goodbyes, the patching-up and tearing-away, seems to make my heart more and more fragile as days go by.

Such is life, I suppose. I am terrible at saying goodbyes, just like another poet much greater than I am. “I can scarcely bid you good bye in a letter. I always made an awkward bow.”

Belated Turkey Bowl Report

My opponents picked a good time for them to play our annual Sea Family Turkey Bowl, delayed by bad weather and Rob’s absence during the Thanksgiving holiday. It was a good time for them because it was Sunday afternoon when they were well rested while I, being a pastor, was dead tired after preaching two sermons and holding the baptismal service of four new believers. In other words, I was worn out and it was obviously to their great advantage. This was part of their well thought-out gamesmanship, to say the least. Anyway, being a man of great competitive spirit, I accepted their challenge with unsurpassed gusto.

I was a little rusty since I had had to rest my sore arm for the whole year, so my quarterbacking was a little off. The first pass I threw was picked off by Michael for a TD. I was mad at myself but I quickly collected myself and on the next play I had Rob run a crossing route. I hit him on stride and he ran for a touchdown to tie the game. The game went back and forth and was pretty tight all the way through. Rob and I ran a lot of trick plays and they seemed to work every time, even though our opponents appeared to know our game plan. Well, they simply could not stop us. I even caught a long pass behind my back and almost scored, but was caught from behind by William. I must have lost a step. The boys were rough on me throughout the game and one time Michael even threw an illegal block in a running play and laid me out flat on the ground. They didn’t seem to be too concerned about breaking my old bones. Rob and I took a one-touchdown lead toward the end of the contest and seemed well on our way to taking the game, but Michael made a one-handed interception of an ill-advised pass that Rob threw and ran back for a TD. From then on momentum shifted and they took yet another victory. So far my team’s losing streak stands at five. Pretty sad indeed.

We always have a race after the game and this time I came out on top. Pretty good for an old man, right? Although the boys accused me of taking too big of a head start, I won just the same. My opponents talked a lot of trash after the game that annoyed me a great deal. They even accused me of having poor sportsmanship. Well, I was on my best behavior except for one incident when I turned my back to my opponents and shook my backside a little bit. I meant no harm at all, but they interpreted it as something worse. Well, perhaps I lost it a little. I guess after years of practice, I still haven’t learned the art of losing very well.

Dating Guru Lesson of Love #1

Romantic love starts with a powerful feeling and ends with a powerful will. Two must work together in order for it to work and to last. The reason why romances are so short-lived these days is because the later is severely lacking. We feel to love, but not always will to love.

All human loves, eros included, reside mostly in the will, and partly in the feeling. Love is located in the will so that when the feeling of affection is no longer present, people can continue to love; it is found in the will so that people can love their enemies.

Lovers do sometimes turn into enemies. “The more I love you, the more I hate you,” goes a Chinese pop song. With a strong will to love, we can even love the enemies who share the same bed with us. If love is all feeling but little or no will, the Lord Jesus would never had commanded his disciples to love their enemies.

Why go through such trouble just to love? You may ask. Love is to be enjoyed, not to be endured. You are right. But unless you are willing to endure the hardship that comes with love, you will never get to enjoy the sweetness of love. People who give up too easily will never get to taste the fruit of a love relationship.

For romantic love to come to fruition, it has less to do with the person whom you love than your commitment to love itself. The thrill of falling in love is so much like leaping into a cool pond on a hot summer day (credit this idea to C.S Lewis), but after you are in it, you must start swimming, and during the course the fuzzy feeling of love may or may not be there, but you still have to swim just the same, no matter how tired you are. People who continue to seek the initial feeling of leaping into the pond by diving into a new exotic swimming hole will end up not knowing what love really is. Love isn’t just candle light dinners and moonlit walks; it is composed of changing dirty diapers and pushing strollers, sleepless nights and wearisome days, guts and tears, and thousands of apologies and forgiveness. Love is not for the faint-hearted and half-hearted. If you are not willing to suffer for love, you are not sufficient to love.

So switching the partner of your romantic interest may not be the answer, for all ponds are pretty much equally deep and leaping into them basically yields the same feeling. It is what we do after the feeling is no longer there that really counts. If love fails, blame yourself first, for you may not be fit to love. You blame your partner too readily and give up too easily.

What else- for my fifty-fifth

What else is new to see except what I have seen?
What else is new to hear except what I have heard?
What else is new to experience except what I have experienced?
What else is new to embrace except what I have embraced
In this world?
That is getting old at age fifty-five
When youth is no more, neither is passion for all
And days dawn and down as lengthening wrinkles slowly crawl
On my face that looks toward my west
To see if the sunset can again sparkle and leap for joy
Before it turns to a glorious sunrise in another world.

I knew I was getting old when I

Had to nap for thirty minutes after I ran and walked for less than a mile, did nine and half push-ups (I was tempted to count my last a full one, but my integrity wouldn’t allow,) and ten sit-ups.

My six-pack gradually turned into one and I had to squeeze it hard when I tried to bend down to tie my shoes.

When my youngest son took me to the cleaners for the first time in his life in a tennis match and rubbed it in by trying to comfort me, saying “Dad, you are not so bad for your age.” Well, at least I can still beat Mr. Wolfshohl who is about my age, thanks to his bad knees that hamper his movement a little bit. I could tell he was a better player than me the only time we played, but I was in a better shape then. Speaking of tennis, I had to ask my opponent, who was an oldy himself, to decide the game by a coin toss in a 4.0 city championship final. We were both too tired to finish the match.

I have no retort when Michael challenges, which he does all the time: “Dad, you want to fight?” The few times I mustered enough courage to do it, he picked me up and threw me across the living room as if I were a toothpick and caused his mother to scream out loud: “Don’t kill your Daddy!”

In our annual turkey bowl, in which our team’s (Rob and I) losing streak now stands at 3, I caught a ball and took off for a sure TD. Oh, what a feeling to see nothing but green grass before me! But William tracked me down and tackled me from behind, causing me to tumble twice. When I came to, I had to check to see if all my body parts were still functioning. I guess I had lost a step or two. By the way, William probably overdid it that time. His brothers were mad at him. “Are you trying to kill Daddy,” they yelled at him.

I hit a serve with all my might in a heated tennis match against a Chinese girl and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder that knocked my powerful right arm out of commission for the longest time. In fact, it took me almost a year to heal completely. Instead of throwing the football, I had to push it last year in both our Turkey Bowl and the Christmas Bowl, and I think that was the only reason that we lost. I had the unpleasant duty of guarding JD’s dad and I barely touched him one time, but he fell down in a big tumble. I guess he and I are about the same age. Yes, we are getting old. By the way, I went to see a Kungfu doctor, the Chinese version of chiropractor, when I was in Taiwan, but it only made things worse. Michael was right about this.

Well, I will quit here. My posts tend to be longwinded, which is another sure sign that I am getting old. Hey, don’t be giddy about it - you are getting old too. “Old man, look at my life, I’m a lot like you were.” Where does this line come from? Any other geezer out there?

Romancing Aggieland

William is about to graduate and he has decided not to “walk” at the commencement, thus saving us yet another eight hour trip to Aggieland. With William graduating, a chapter of our family history comes to a close. I don’t know when will be the next time Kathy and I will make another trip to College Station.

It was about eight years ago that we set feet on the hallowed ground when we took Rob to visit colleges during his junior year in high school. I knew very little about A&M and being a graduate of Ole Miss I somehow had an abnormal aversion for any “cow college,” which was the label we had for all a&m colleges. It was a hot summer day and the campus did not impress me all that much. It was Rob’s decision concerning his college choice, so I tried to remain neutral by not expressing my opinion. After touring the school and listening to a lot of things that didn’t really mean all that much to me, we left College Station for Austin, thinking it probably would be our last time there, not knowing that Rob had a different idea. For him it was love at first sight. He had made his decision.

Austin might have a bigger name than College Station, but it is not bigger in substance. It was dislike at first sight for me, for liberalism with all its arrogance and pretence really rubbed me the wrong way and I smelled its stench the moment I stepped onto the tu campus. (My apologies to our friends at the state capitol. UT is really a great school in her own right.) Michael was only a year behind his brother, but for some odd reason he was seriously thinking about attending UT. I had a strong sense as I was standing in the square at the entrance of the school that my son would lose his faith in God if I were to send him to that university. For a long while Michael really was thinking about going to Austin and he once mentioned to me the only thing he didn’t like were the school colors. I think it was probably a sibling rivalry kind of thing, but Rob somehow decided that he had a monopoly on A&M and was vehemently opposed to the idea of Michael going there. But after becoming an Aggie, I guess Rob finally came to his senses and softened up his stance. Michael quickly switched his allegiance and, a year later, he became an Aggie himself.

With two boys attending the school, I started to take an interest in the university and came to realize that there was so much to love about the place and the rich traditions that the school espoused were no longer outlandish to me. I learned to hum the Aggie War Hymn and often bellowed out a hearty “whoop.”

Every time we visited the school we took our youngest with us. William, who was three years behind Rob, was a brilliant student and was more inclined to arts and literature, so we really didn’t consider A&M very seriously. Unlike the OU people, who actively recruited William, the office of admissions at A&M only paid him “paper service” by merely offering him a National Merit scholarship and not much more. So he ended up going to OU and it turned out to be a misjudgment on my part. William enjoyed his short stay at the school, but his love lay elsewhere and, after a year or so, he himself became an Aggie, which made everything right again. Three brothers were finally together in their affection for and allegiance to a grand university.

Kathy was pretty self-assured and, being a daughter of a Harvard man and having the privilege of being cared for by a world renowned pediatrician in Boston, she had no need to seek a name school to boost her ego. Not so with me though. I quickly attached myself to Ole Miss after I got there, albeit I was a mere graduate student, and learned to love all her traditions, both glorious and ignoble. (I still fly a little rebel flag on my nightstand.) But I have discovered that I am more and more interested in Aggie sports and even have gone so far as to subscribe to Aggie Yell on Rivals and read Texags diligently every morning.

With three boys graduating from A&M, I think I am entitled to call myself an Aggie, even though I don’t have a ring to show for it. It’s kind of trite, but I can at least make the claim of “my sons and my money went to A&M.” After years of flirting with the school, I can now say with certainty that I am an Aggie at heart. I was shopping at United Supermarket and a guy with a pharmacist’s white coat chased me down and asked what year I was and it took me a while to realize I was wearing an Aggie sweat shirt and he was a fellow Aggie brother. I wanted so much to tell a lie by giving a random year, but thought better of it and responded: “All my sons are Aggies, but I went to Ole Miss.” I felt so bad that I disappointed him and actually was overcome by a sense of shame.