My Next Best Day

Published in the Idaho State Journal in July 2013.

It’s summer road trip season! After so many alphabet games and rounds of slug bug, I imagine that my car starts in on a game of questions. What’s your biggest regret? What’s your favorite characteristic about yourself? What was the best day of your life?

I like to ponder that one. Do you have so many best days it would be hard to pick one? Did your mind immediately turn to your worst day? Are you an optimist who hopes the best day is yet to come?

Part of me is that optimist, but so far the best day of my life was Oct. 27, 1990. This could be a high school championship story spun like an Idaho fish tale spanning several pages, but I’m optimistic I can be brief.

We lost our first volleyball game of the state tournament, so we had to play all the way through the loser’s bracket. I was the only player not to sub out. During our sixth match of the day, a beautiful set was delivered by the lone sophomore on our team, and I nailed it. The kill ricocheted off of an opponent’s head and the final whistle sounded just before 11 p.m.

I hugged the setter like she just threw a world series 7th game no-hitter, and the team swarmed our embrace. Very few athletes get to end their high school careers like I did.

From waking up in the hotel before 7 a.m. with a blend of goofy high school antics and serious mental game prep all the way up until they handed me the trophy near midnight, that day was grand. All of our parents had driven to the tournament, and they were just as exhausted.

They huddled to take pictures with their smiles mirroring ours except for my mom. She was standing off to the side quietly whimpering with tears. I was embarrassed and almost sprained an eye while rolling them. None of the other parents were crying. Sheesh, Mom!

I gave her the obligatory two-second hug and told her I’d see her later. We all rode the bus home rather than ride with our folks, and I slept on the floor cuddling the Idaho-shaped trophy like a teddy bear.

The next day when I got the chance to scold Mom for crying in front of everyone, she started bawling all over again. Good grief. She noted the girl who set the ball to me. Watching our teamwork and celebration was something she wasn’t sure she would see in her lifetime. She was proud of my team’s performance, but she was more proud of our camaraderie. Seeing that I was confused and growing further disgusted, she explicitly pointed out that my setter was black. So?

Mom was in high school when Rosa Parks led the Montgomery bus boycott and in college when Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Hugs and celebrations like that were scant when my mom was my age. The August anniversary of that speech undoubtedly marks a best day for many. When my mom was discussing this with me, I could barely see past my own perspective and experience and didn’t understand why she was making a big deal out of something that wasn’t. I get it now.

As we celebrated America’s 237th birthday, we are still surrounded by all sorts of social change and development. Some swift; some slow and steady. I see progress, and I see relapses. Lingering divides point toward every generation needing reminders of our history and humanity.

I understand Mom’s tears now, too, because “Grey’s Anatomy”, flyers for lost pets, old people holding hands, or witnessing a missionary’s return all have me inventing and lamenting “allergies.” You don’t have to be LDS to feel a snippet of that joyful anticipation and sacrifice when you see a mother’s eyes scanning the terminal; you just have to be human. I bet many of those returns are best days for those missionaries and their families.

A lot of best days are possible when we can simply live, work, laugh and play together. Pitch, set, pass, kick or hit the darn ball and forget all the rest. I still play volleyball now and then, but I’ve replaced my kneepads with tissues. It seems all of the eyeball rolling at my mom has made them prone to leaks. I never know when they will spring one, and I never know when my next best day will come.