Poem for Tuesday, Football, Family and Cats

Poem to First Love
By Matthew Yeager

To have been told "I love you" by you could well be, for me,
the highlight of my life, the best feeling, the best peak
on my feeling graph, in the way that the Chrysler building
might not be the tallest building in the NY sky but is
the best, the most exquisitely spired, or the way that
Hank Aaron's career home-run total is not the highest
but the best, the one that signifies the purest greatness.
So improbable!  To have met you at all and then
to have been told in your soft young voice so soon
after meeting you: "I love you."  And I felt the mystery
of being that you, of being a you and being
loved, and what I was, instantly, was someone
who could be told "I love you" by someone like you.
I was, in that moment, new; you were 19; I was 22;
you were impulsive; I was there in front of you, with a future
that hadn't yet been burned for fuel; I had energy;
you had beauty; and your eyes were a pale blue,
and they backed what you said with all they hadn't seen,
and they were the least ambitious eyes I'd known,
the least calculating, and when you spoke and when
they shone, perhaps you saw the feeling you caused.
Perhaps you saw too that the feeling would stay.

--------

My Monday was all about the end of the holidays. We took Maddy to work, we dropped Daniel off at Dulles to fly to Seattle (which had snow on the ground when he landed, and he bought himself a new monitor with Chanukah money so he is happy), we drove Adam to College Park, took him food shopping, and brought him to his apartment, where he and his roommate Arturo are both staying for break so he can work in the lab, we picked Maddy up from work.

In between these car trips, we watched the important parts of the Cotton, Rose, and Sugar Bowls, one of which was won by the team for which I was rooting, one of which was almost won by the team for which I was rooting, and one of which isn't over but I don't really love either team so I'm not paying all that much attention. I also folded lots of laundry, uploaded holiday week photos, and ate too much leftover holiday candy -- resolutions are useless till my birthday junk is gone!


Daniel and Katniss


Adam and Daisy


Daniel and Effie


Adam, Christine, and Cinnamon