Steve

Mike Eruzione on Fatherhood and Miracles

Steve · July 20, 2011 · 2 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Chicago for a professional meeting of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, where one of the scheduled speakers was Mike Eruzione. Please tell me you know who Mike Eruzione is. Please…

Okay, I realize that not everyone is a sports fan, but Eruzione played a huge role in what is certainly one of the greatest moments in sports history. Ever. In 1980, in the midst of the Cold War when America desperately needed something to believe in, he was the captain of the United States Olympic Hockey Team, back in the day when real amateurs represented our country in a sports world filled with professionals.

Your one wild and precious life

Steve · June 26, 2011 · 31 Comments

sunrise — Sunrise at Daytona, by Steve Givens, 2011

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?– Mary Oliver

As I have written previously, this summer I was scheduled to undergo a stem cell transplant to fight what had been diagnosed as myelodysplastic syndrome (see my postings from March 27, April 2 and April 13). This syndrome, which is all too close a cousin of leukemia, was caused by last summer’s chemotherapy treatments for another rare blood disease. Anyway…

Want to hear a good story? Listen to your elders…

Steve · May 31, 2011 · 4 Comments

IMG_8437_2 — Daytona Beach, photo by Steve Givens, June 2011

Out on the beach today, I saw an old guy sitting in a wheelchair, staring out at the surging ocean. The waves off Daytona Beach were crashing loudly just 50 feet out, but by the time they reached the wheels of his chair they were just harmless bubbles and foam. He sat there for some time, and I wondered what was going through his mind.

Likely, he was wondering how it has all come to this – sitting in a chair and staring at the ocean instead of plunging headlong into the oncoming waves. Perhaps he had been a championship swimmer or a surfer dude in the 1950s. Perhaps he stormed a beach in France and can never shake those gruesome memories. No doubt he saw the hard, fit bodies of the young men and women running and playing around him and remembered his own halcyon days of summer. But I’ll never know what he was thinking because I didn’t ask him. I just saw him as “an old guy in a wheelchair.”

The way we spend our days…

Steve · April 29, 2011 · 7 Comments

jj2 — Jon and Jess, photo by Steve Givens

Last night was the rehearsal dinner for my son’s wedding this Saturday. I had the honor to offer a few words and a toast for them at the gathering for family and the wedding party, and while I was writing the toast earlier in the day, these words by the wonderful writer Annie Dillard came to mind:

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

A Rebuilding Year: Shooting for Perfection

Steve · April 13, 2011 · 7 Comments

spring1 — Spring 2011. Photo by Steve Givens

“Again I will build you, and you shall be built.” Jeremiah 31:4

If all goes as planned, sometime this summer I will be rebuilt, remade and renewed when the flow of someone else’s stem cells enters my bloodstream and makes its way, literally, to the marrow of my bones. So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be rebuilt from the metaphorical ground up. And, well, it’s spring and all that.