Super Bowl Sunday

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. The table is black and gold. My clothes are black and gold. It’s bringing back so many good memories of growing up in Pittsburgh when the Steelers were always winning. It’s a funny thing about growing up in that era—all the sports teams were winners: Steelers, Pirates even the Penguins. I just thought that’s how it is when you live in a city—your teams win. Then I moved to other cities and realized how very spoiled I was by Pittsburgh.

Guests for dinner—pierogies, Chinese take-out, wings, Mexican, all football fan food. We’ll watch the game and the commercials and I will hope and hope for a Steeler win.

But in the background—a slight hum, a slight wafting of low grade fear. Tomorrow is oncologist again. Blood work and “Can you open your pants?” Our little joke that she wants to peek below his belt.

Flip a coin. Steelers kick off? Chemo again? Love—and football—in the time of cancer.

Sporting News

It’s been a good weekend. Lots and lots of sports and enough time to enjoy them together. This afternoon the Pittsburgh Steelers—my team. This evening The New York Giants—his team. And added to the mix major league baseball playoffs—his team the Yankees. It hasn’t been my team—The Pittsburgh Pirates-- in many years. But I love baseball enough to even watch the Yankees play.

While we watch we read the papers and talk and touch. We place bets that have mutual payoffs under the covers.

In the background of all of this there is family. A nephew will marry. A niece is pregnant. When do we visit his family and mine? Routines of being a couple form new layers and bonds. And still with all of this love and warmth I read the news of cancer research and the obituaries scanning for the words: colon cancer.

It’s still there. It never really recedes far. I watch his body and the calendar. We place bets on both.