Michael Koh is a terrific writer, and his gifts are on display in his series of humorous and poignant reflections from the College World Series called “The Omaha Diaries.” My family’s summer vacation was much closer to home, but our first night in Black Mountain, North Carolina, began with an adventure of the wrong kind — my daughter fell off a piece of playground equipment and banged her left arm on the ground. I feared it was broken.
Thankfully, the X-rays were negative. The friendly staff at the urgent care made her laugh, which was medicine for my anxiety. As the nurse fitted her with a sling, we made small talk. He knew I was from Chapel Hill and asked if I was a baseball fan. I enthusiastically expressed my hope for the Diamond Heels to win the national championship, and grinning widely, he pulled down the collar of his nursing scrub to reveal a maroon OKLAHOMA SOONERS written on the t-shirt!
I’m disappointed with the way the ball bounced in the final game. But Coach Forbes is right: Oklahoma is a “heck of a ball team.” It softened the sting just a bit to know that the kind nurse, who was there for my child, was surely celebrating, perhaps the lone Sooner in western North Carolina.
The best news for me is that, after only 48 hours, my girl was using her sling as a handbag to carry treasures she’d found along the little creek — a rock sparkling with flecks of mica, a black, sleek feather of a crow, and a split hickory nut revealing the shape of a heart in its dark hollow.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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