Just so happened to sit on a folding chair set up directly beneath the basket on the north end of the court last week at church (we’re worshipping in a gym), and I couldn’t help thinking that rim looked twenty feet off the floor—way, way up there.

I hadn’t looked at a basketball rim from the floor beneath for a long, long time, and it seemed, well, impossible that one night a thousand years ago at a gym in Orange City, Iowa, during layups before a game with our rivals, a game I knew we’d lose, I was still cranked enough to get up off the floor high enough to stuff the basketball. (Don’t smudge a dream please.)

Anyway, last Sunday I sat right beneath the basket. Thick black bands were up around my calf to keep a brace in place beneath my left foot, a mulish limb which simply no longer cooperates when my body expects it to, even when asked politely. I don’t walk well, not well at all, although the brace keeps my limp from being advertised. It doesn’t help that I could not imagine myself shooting a basketball or rebounding or moving downcourt on a fast break–no matter, that rim looked way beyond hope. Did they raise it somehow? How did I miss that?  

I spent years playing ball, best years of my kidhood, and even later, even in college, when the baseball coach told me I looked like a catcher. I did. Well, I do. I stopped playing ball–slo-pitch–when I was almost sixty, even though I rarely ran bases because I hit more big fat pitches out of the park than any of my kid teammates. It was just plain time. 

Two days ago, I walked into the indoor athletic field on my way to a workout designed for this new lameness, and I watched a softball coach hitting grounders to a couple of infielders. The odd, tinny sound of the bat on the ball was nothing at all like it was years ago; but I stopped, stood and watched, wishing, just wishing that the coach would see the hunger on the mug of the old bald guy with the brace, and offer me the bat. I’d have given anything for fifteen minutes of fungoes.

It would be impossible for me to tally the hours I spent on a basketball court—then add in a baseball diamond, football field, discus ring. We’re talking, ridiculously, about most of my young life. 

All of that and more, I’m feeling since Sunday worship beneath the hoop. Then a sweet ex-student of mine sends me an old newspaper photo from my teaching days in Wisconsin. That’s me in the sweaty Calvin College t-shirt–and no, I didn’t go there. That’s another story.

I was on that team, so I remember we won the Monroe (WI) City Basketball League Championship, winter of ‘71. We were a tough bunch; that square man in the middle knew how to muscle the ball into the basket. He wasn’t quick, wasn’t graceful, but get the ball into him in the paint and he bulled in to score.

For a long time, I had a little individual trophy–we must have each got one. I think it’s gone now, tossed out finally in one of our attempts to slim down, and, yes, I remember the picture too–and well. It was in the Monroe Times, a daily, and I loved it being there, not necessarily because I was so proud of our win, but because–I can hardly believe I’m admitting this–because even though I, honestly, was loved by my students and wasn’t without friends—look at the picture—on weekends I was often unbearably lonely. Listen to this: I remember the picture because I actually hoped that maybe, just maybe, some Calvin grad would see it there in the Times, someone of the tribe I would never have admitted to be mine just then, shot full of rebellion I was, early 70s. I’d have loved to hear from someone who had a notion of who this fella “Calvin” was. I was just dreaming that maybe someone like that might see the picture, recognize the t-shirt, and hazard a call. Didn’t necessarily have to be a female, but that’d be okay too.

I love remembering those two years I spent alone in Wisconsin, love it because I loved my students, one of whom sent me that picture on Facebook when she happened to see it in a display at a birthday party for the guy who’d get the ball in the paint and somehow muscle it in. That birthday party was at a bar in town, she told me—hey, it’s Wisconsin. Place was packed, she wrote.

The picture was great, sent to me by a woman (I still think of her as a kid—she’s 72!), who had to rank among the absolute worst writers in the junior class at Blackhawk High. She hasn’t learned much since—believe me. Back then, she could care less. I don’t think she’s changed.

But a couple of Christmases ago, she sent me an audio of her soloing—“O Holy Night,” I believe it was, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Gratiot, WI. Good Lord, I didn’t know she could sing. I didn’t even know she was Catholic. But that solo, her voice, put me on the road to Bethlehem. 

Beneath that basket last Sunday morning, I was only slightly wistful, not really nostalgic. I don’t care if we’re in the middle of March Madness, some eras of my life are so far behind me today they emerge in mist when I stumble on over-posed black-and-white photos. Believe me, last Sunday morning I wasn’t thinking of dribbling out to half court, turning around, taking off for the bucket, planting my left foot and slamming the ball home. Not really.

Well, maybe once.

I’d settle instead for a morning in the old English classroom, same kids—many of them now already passed away. No lecture, no assignment from me, no test—just me sitting up on the desk, no big black brace around my leg and maybe some more hair on my head, all of those kids—even those who are gone—right there in their same old chairs. Just a morning would be fine, just talking, talking and joking, and a little wisdom all around.

Then we might go down to the gym, where the rims aren’t so terribly high. Shoot some hoops.