like winning in the last 40 seconds

"I miss you."

I miss you too, Mom.

(That we say all the time.)

"Are you happy?"

.. That's a new one.


On September 13th, the Gophers will be playing Montana State.

Montana State.

Daddy just got offered a job in Montana. In Bozeman. The place that showed me the meaning of soul-worming. It was my mom who said it, actually.

"You know, there's some people and some places that just dig their way deep into your soul."

Bozeman is one of those places. The wacky neighbors, the mountains

My first love.

The place just grabbed us both - my mom and I. And now my family may go back? It's funny that the very afternoon of the next big game is so close to the day daddy's new job would begin.

But will it be the same?

The thing about that soulful place is that it has eaten parts of us alive. It breaks my heart to remember most days. The pages of my junior high diary read like a Nicholas Sparks novel - only less eloquent and much more humiliating.

But the raw, soul-wrenching emotion? It was never like that in Texas. And Minnesota is different now that I'm older. A young soul - like mine was in Bozeman - takes to things so much differently.

I'm an old soul

It feels so kooky and obnoxiously philosophical to put it like that. But things that go as deep as Bozeman tend to do that to you. And my mom's soul must be even older.

I cried all of Christmas Day last year.

"I know why you cry," she said. "You're just like me."

Just like her.

"You don't like change. It doesn't feel right. It's not right - Christmas in a hotel."

She was nothing short of spot-on. We both know that stuff shouldn't matter. That being with your family should make Christmas a happy holiday.

But she wasn't with the rest of her family.

Was it too much to ask for a home and a tree and maybe some snow?

In Texas it is.

Photographing a Big Ten football game is terrifying.

How can turf be at once squishy and scratchy? It's unnatural. And the light? artificial. And the crowd? distracting.

But I have the best job in the world.

And the best friends in the world. Because even though my pictures were shit, Sarah's still proud. And Charlie and Rolly and Sam.

Sarah called me her "little world class photog."

world class.

photog.

hers.

The change did bring me Sarah.

And Bozeman will be back the 13th.

Will I feel it in the air the players expel from their lungs? In the scent that hangs from their skin? If my family goes back, will it be ok?


Yes, mom, I am happy.

Blissfully and divinely