football mourning.

i have a pet peeve. it's when people hear that i am a new england patriots fan and they ask me why. seriously? i'm from maine. maine is IN new england. i could maybe understand if they were the "boston patriots" (which even then if you have ever been to maine you would know that we consider ourselves an extension of boston when it comes to the celtics and red sox). but the new england patriots? that's like asking someone who lives in dallas why they're a cowboys fan.

it's simple geography, friends.

anyway. today i'm in football mourning. i'm not kidding. i wish i was. my dad passed his love and passion for sports down to me. from a very young age i loved them. we went to games together (i had a debut on a local television station when i was three or four; as i recall my dad had taken me to a high school basketball tournament game... a big deal here in maine... and the camera zoomed in on me, sitting next to my dad, asleep on his shoulder). we watched games together. we talked about games together.

it was our thing.

from march madness, to fantasy football (i beat him more times than he would probably ever admit), to growing up shooting hoops in the driveway, we shared it all.

yesterday, i missed him.

our team, the new england patriots, were in another superbowl. dad and i had been so excited to watch sports together once nick&i moved to maine this summer. nick couldn't wait either. but unfortunately, we were only able to watch a few games together before dad was gone. i did, however, get to watch the game last night in one of my dad's patriots tshirts. an avid fan, he had made it to gillette stadium for his first patriots game just a few weeks before he was admitted to the hospital in boston. he had been SO excited. even with my emmy-belly, dad's shirt was absolutely ginormous but i loved wearing it while i watched "our team".

dad would've been disgusted by the loss. when the giants beat the patriots four years ago in the superbowl, corrupting their perfect season, i called my dad after the game. "i'm depressed" he said. and wasn't kidding. sure, it only lasted about a day until he was back to his jovial self, but we take our sports very seriously.

so today, i've been doing laundry, baking bread, experimenting with homemade coffee syrup... anything to keep my mind off of the fact that we lost last night. but i realize even more so, i'm trying to distract myself from realizing that i don't have my dad to call and talk to about the big game.

nick&i always say loving sports is a fun thing when your teams win and a hard thing when they lose. nick often quotes a line from the movie fever pitch where an uncle is warning his nephew about becoming a red sox fan "careful, kid... they'll break your haaht." (translated: heart. no, that's not a typo. it's how people talk around here)

it's that way with sports. you win some, you lose some. but the wins are a whole lot more fun.

dad, i know you could probably care less about football now that you're with jesus. just wanted you to know that nick&i will keep your sports-loving-legacy alive. bella woke up last night when i checked on her before i went to bed. and as she sleepily lifted her head from her crib, with squinted eyes, she whispered "football?"

i knew you'd be proud.