go heels

Yes, it’s been years, it feels, since I wrote here. Nice to do it again. Like visiting an old friend, which is, in fact, what I’m doing.

Our alma mater, where I got my BA and Kathleen got her Master’s, is the national basketball champion as of Monday night. North Carolina is legendary in the annals of basketball insanity. Every year, in Chapel Hill or in a nearby city where a more evil, Blue Devilish team lives, someone gets burned by a bonfire set in the throes of post-victory glee. So much so that “Don’t step in any fires” is a flippant but well-considered piece of post-game advice (along the lines of “Don’t eat yellow snow”).
The last time UNC won the championship, I was a junior in college. I was miserably sick with a cold, and the game was the first time I had left the bed in two days. I was supposed to go to the Smith Center to watch the game with three old friends from high school, but I felt so lousy, I talked them into coming to my apartment afterward instead. After the win, my favorite cousin (also a UNC student) phoned, and my friends never showed up – they got lost and drove around for hours.
How times have changed. I’ve completely lost touch with one of those friends, another is married with kids, and the other one is also married now – to me.
The only thing that hasn’t changed is that Monday night, the first person I called was my favorite cousin. He was in the Smith Center, watching the game with his old college roommate. Stranger to return, however briefly, to this collegiate time warp than it was to contemplate the differences.

Although Carolina has an alumni association in Denver, it won’t be the same there. Steve said, “Do you know how many people here are talking about basketball here? None!” Indeed, the only stories about colleges I read in the Denver papers are academic controversies. Academics? In college? Feh.

I am excited to report that we now have a forwarding address. Our house is lovely, with brick-exposed walls in the living room, a renovated kitchen, a loft office and bedroom, shade trees, and all the rest. I feel like we stole Kathleen’s house, grew it by double, and moved it 2,000 miles west.
We will be smack in Denver, not in a suburb thirty miles away as we are now. We will be within a mile of the kids’ school, Whole Foods, two other grocery stores, two independent pharmacies, three independent bookstores, an art-house video store … the list goes on and on. The kids’ school has a planetarium and Montessori-style education. There are bike trails that start nearby and run all the way to the mountains. We plan to get Vespas. I’m already in touch with a business contact, trying to lay the groundwork to get some bread rolling into this fantastic house. I’m floating. Twelve more days.

And as such, the goodbyes have started. This weekend was my birthday and also the birthday of my daughters’ best friend. She also is herself the daughter of my widowed friend, the one I hate to leave. So in an effort for all of us to celebrate and shake off our sadness, we had an old-fashioned slumber party complete with pizza, videos and bunny slippers (and wine after the kids were in bed). We stayed up until way past our bedtime. And when it was time to leave in the morning, nobody cried, at least not until we were on the road.