From a conversation earlier tonight

since you already went and generalized about "us southerners" let it be known that i can detect the slightest amount of sugar in my tea and when i do, i turn my nose up at it. and i'm with you--tea cannot be beat.

it's funny that you should say that actually. a few messages ago i dug up my list of things that i want to do in my life. some of them are very small things and some are quite outlandish (of course) and some i've done before but always make my day to do again. one of those being drink iced tea on the front porch swing. my aunt has the best old farm house and every summer we sit on the front porch, she and i in the swing, whoever else is with us in the chairs and we drink tea--sometimes with some fresh mint out of her garden. we just sit and swing and talk and enjoy the day. that's one of the ones that stood out to me on my list tonight.

my mom always makes sun tea out on our front porch and with me and my brother at the house we go through a jug a day. one of my favorite things in the world is to sit on our porch (tea in hand, of course) and look out over the land we own as a summer thunderstorm comes rolling in on us. not the dark kind of thunderstorm but the summer kind where the sky stays light and the suns back out in 30 minutes. sit and watch the rain come down and listen to the thunder come rolling down through the small valley in front of us, toward us, then over us, then on past us, then wait for the sun to move down and send us its warm, soft, fleeting kisses of orange, purple and red over that same field after the storm rolls out, as if to say, i was here for you during that but it's time for me to go on too.

Well has it been said that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Twenty minutes before my Texas 4000 for Cancer meeting on Monday night, which happens every week as we prepare for our ride this summer, a ride to raise money for and spread hope and knowledge about cancer, I found out that my friend's mom died--from cancer. It was one of the most difficult things I've had to do--go to that meeting and sit there while my teammates talked about how many great things our organization is doing, while one of my closest friends had JUST lost her best friend in the world, how she was and will continue to grieve, and that the efforts I am doing to help beat this disease couldn't keep my friend, her mom, and her family from suffering now. Too late. I'm too late. Tina just lost her mom...

I saw Tina right up until the time she got the call to go home and say her goodbyes, and although she seemed as though she was ready, I couldn't imagine the hurt she was going through when it actually happened.

Diane found that she had lung cancer this past summer, and over the Christmas break, after surgeries and chemo, was told that her lung, brain and lymph node cancers were all but gone. Just over a month later her doctors told her that it was back, in nearly every one of her organs, and she had a month of quality life left. So she went home to her family.

She treated us all like her children. She had so much spirit at our games that she would always make tons of UT garb to hand out to our fans so they could show their support as well--especially at the World Series--so much so that ESPN did a feature on her and Tina.

While I was having a hard time grasping the situation and also having a negative attitude about our ride, Tina is actually the person who made me feel better. She wrote a letter to all her friends saying that she would put aside her selfish desires to keep her mom with her if it meant that she didn't have to suffer anymore. Even though we are making progress in the fight against cancer and people beat this disease more and more often, we're not there yet. While I couldn't do anything to help Tina and Diane, maybe my efforts will have a small part in finding a cure. Until then I can only remember the people I've lost to this awful disease...

Diane Hendry
My cousin Luke Rollins
My grandmom Granny

So here we are

Spring time is rolling around and something weird is happening inside me. At first I couldn't figure it out then came to realize that something is missing. For the past 11 years, this is the time of year when I start playing ball again. What is missing is sinking my spikes into the dirt and running onto the grass in the outfield of a ball field with the warmth of the recently returned sun on my shoulders, my favorite mitt perfectly returning to my hand, and the excitement of the rest of my teammates because we all know it's the beginning of something special.

This spring I don't get to experience that. But by no means do I regret retiring. Continuing to play ball in the environment that I was playing in would have eventually led me to have such a bitter, hateful feeling towards the whole situation that that's all I would have remembered. If I had continued my career and this was me thinking about ball 2 or 3 years down the road I probably wouldn't be experiencing this nostaligia for the times I spent on the field. Instead I wouldn't think of it at all, rather I would completely block it out of my mind since the thought of playing would only remind me of the resentment I felt toward the things that drove me to retire.

Fortunately that's not the case, and I'm not at all bitter about how things went down. It was a difficult decision that I thought about for over a year, and one that forced me to walk away from something I absolutely love in order to pursue my happiness--even though it now comes from other new sources instead of from playing ball--but my happiness is the most important thing. Because I made that difficult decision, I can think about all those first days getting back on the field, about waking up at 6am to go bust my ass and test my limits and push the limits of my teammates because sometime soon it's going to help me beat out a basehit, about beating the hell out of our rivals--and getting revenge against them when they beat us, about traveling together, about getting sick of everyone else on the team because we'd spent so much time together and then giving them the biggest hug after pulling off a huge win, about dancing in the lockerroom and all the other crazy shit that went down in there, about hackey circles. About all of that great stuff.

Those are the reasons why I was playing all along anyway.

aah-aa, yeeah-eah

I closed my eyes and let my imagination go. It wound me up so tight I thought I'd not come down but when I did, it was on an amazing trip to places in my mind that I haven't reached in a long time. My creativity is on the loose and it's so good. It's amazing what my mind will do if I just close my eyes and let it go. Having my creative processes firing up again is quite refreshing--I'm drawing again and seeing things differently than I do every other day of the week. I'm tapping part of me that has been on hiatus for the past two years or so, but now I'm armed with the knowledge to help me keep it right this time.