One is All

Tea: Mandarin Orange with Honey

Music: Mike and the Mechanics, "The Living Years"

Time: Evening.

This post was going to be about the most excellent bounty of football (the real kind, not the pointy-ended sort) I've gotten to see lately, between Major League Soccer, World Cup qualifiers and Euro 2008.

But within the last two days, my inbox has contained news of (a) my only surviving uncle's diagnosis of lung cancer and (b) the death of a cousin's husband from a heart attack -- at age 52.

It's Father's Day, and his children are without him. Meanwhile, my uncle's three children and their families are spending the day -- and will spend many to come -- praying the surgeons were able to get all of the tumor.

Relationships with fathers are complicated things. Some fathers are unworthy of the name. I've heard stories to freeze (or boil) the blood. Most, I like to think, do the best they can.

Mine has been gone for almost a decade. Suddenly, I miss him as though he had passed yesterday.

He would have loved all of this football, too.