Essays

Watching the NBA this season makes me think of empty gyms not as unfortunate pandemic protocol, but as basketball returning to its purest state.

Though we fight every step up and out, we ascend by sheer muscle of will, purpose, and service. The convergence is with our highest and best self. The blade of change slices our tender middle; we smooth the jaggedness of some force we didn’t see coming.

For years, I thought I was the sole oddball in my family obsessed with memorabilia. If not for an impromptu visit to my Aunt Doris’s house, I might never have known otherwise.

Reading the order of worship, I began to warm with Christmas sentiment — authentic gratitude for God’s incomparable expression of love — as I slowly worked my thoughts through the list of familiar hymns and carols we would soon sing or hear. Then one stopped me cold.

The mood in the Jeep quieted when we turned down a dirt road running through a trailer park. Every trailer had at least two, sometimes three dogs lounging by their porch steps. I guessed that none were spayed or neutered.

That first edition of The Random House Unabridged contains about 300,000 entries. In all, 2,091 thumb-indexed pages. All of this seemed like most of the world’s knowledge to a young me, and flipping through it while lying on the short-napped, striped carpet was, if not my favorite pastime, at least a worthwhile one.