The Shoe Finally Dropped

Dearest Rachel –

There are days when I find myself wondering why I bother filling you in on the details of what’s going on here on the planet that you left behind. Whether it’s finances or the house or what could laughingly be referred to as my love life, what does any of it matter to you, since none of it can be a part of the world to come that you’re already a part of? The same goes for the stuff going on in the wider (present) world, and my opinions on those happenings that the two of us would discuss with each other, but now I’m just left expounding my own perspective, without your tempering influence.

And then, there’s the world of sport. Sure, you could recognize it as the source of entertainment that it is for many people, and even accept and enjoy the drama of a well-fought contest between players and teams, but as a general rule, it didn’t tend to interest you in life, so why should I think it would be worth telling you about, now that everything in this life has been rendered that much more meaningless to you in the course of leaving it all behind?

Still, I tend to think of you as wanting to know what’s going on with me until I get the chance to rejoin you, as narcissistic as that sounds now that I’m actually typing it out here. And the one thing going on in my life last night, much as I tried to ignore it – for reasons that I’ll get to soon enough – was the playoff game that put an end to the football season, as far as I’m concerned, since once the hometown (and possibly that much more so, if things continue to work out) Bears fall, there’s little point to keeping up with things as they lead up to the vaunted Super Bowl. Once I know ‘my’ team isn’t going to be the champion this year, what do I care who the champion is going to be?

Although, in all honesty, this wasn’t supposed to be our year to even get this far. Detroit was dominating last year, and was expected to do well, and of course, there’s always the Packers (and given that our church has been dealing with a schism between Chicago and Green Bay fans ever since we invited Pastor Scott down from Wisconsin to lead us, we’ve had to tread lightly on that topic, anyway). Plus, our quarterback is only in his second season; if we could break even, or be a game or two over .500, we could settle for that.

But it seems that we’ve been punching above our weight all season, with a number of games in which we’ve come from behind – often in the final quarter – to do it. The guy behind the center has been something of a magician in terms of pulling victories out of his helmet. If it wasn’t so nerve-wracking – having to wait until the last minute to see if there’s going to be another miracle – it would be fantastic drama. As it is, I wonder if the city has been suffering an inordinate increase in heart attacks on game days from the tension. It’s one of the reasons I can’t bring myself to watch the games anymore.

Well… that, and I don’t even know how and where to access the games at this point. It’s been so long since we’ve used the televisions in the house from anything other than computer monitors that I’m not sure how to access the television channels anymore – although I imagine you would be able to remedy that in a matter of minutes, assuming you even wanted to. It doesn’t help that most of the games appear to be on one subscription service or another (which, although we have one as a part of our Amazon Prime membership, I’ve never bothered with, and I never know if it has the game I’d otherwise be looking for), making it all no longer worth my time to look into, let alone bothering to watch. Combine these two factors, particularly the one where I’ve been expecting the other shoe to drop nearly every weekend (and in fact, the last two weeks of the regular season saw us losing games, suggesting that we weren’t nearly as good as our record would indicate), and you’d almost be proud of me for avoiding the subject.

But in an area (and even a family) where “did’ja see the game last night?” is a typical opening gambit to conversation, it’s almost necessary to keep up with the times, even when you have a good indication where it’s going to go. And so it was that, as I began to run out of new and interesting YouTube videos to watch, I tuned into a live stream that was relating the action on the field, which was already late in the fourth quarter, and – almost unsurprisingly – had them behind by a touchdown. It would take yet another miracle just to tie the game, let alone pull out a victory.

Somehow, though, they had that once last miracle, getting a touchdown in those waning minutes, and sending the game into overtime. And while their opponents (who you and your family used to have an affinity for, as they used the WIU area as a practice field back when they were still operating out of St. Louis) got the ball first, they had to surrender it to us after being unable to convert on a third down play. If we could march down into range where we could kick a field goal (or better yet, score a touchdown – not that it mattered, as a win would be a win), we could move on to the conference championship!

Alas, there are only so many miracles a team can draw out of its tight end; several plays into our own drive, a longer pass was underthrown, and caught by the last man one would want. From there, it was a fairly simple, methodical march (just like ours, but with better success) down the field; by the time their attempts at a touchdown were definitively rebuffed, they had ample time and space to kick all the score they needed to win the game and send our team home for the season. And somehow, all I could think was “well, that’s over with; now I can get on with life again,” even if ‘life’ at that moment was just calling it a night and getting to bed.

Look, I won’t go so far as to say that I’m glad the Bears lost last night; that would be bordering on heresy in a land where sport is occasionally treated as religion. But I will say that the emotion that best describes my reaction to it all is surprisingly more like relief as opposed to, say, disappointment. The shoe finally dropped; I don’t have to worry about them being outed as impostors anymore. They got farther than they were supposed to, so I can be happy with that, but I don’t have to worry about them being embarrassed on an ever-increasingly larger stage when it happens, because it was going to happen at some point. Now we can exhale and just move on.

If nothing else, at least we beat the Packers this year; that has to count for something.

Again, if this doesn’t interest you, I get it; at least you can take comfort that it’s over and done with, and that’s really what I intended to write to you about. For now, I’m just going to ask that you keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. Even if the season is over, I’m still going to need it.