Super Bowl Sunday

Super Bowl Sunday.   Yeahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!! Or not.

Fifty years of this final showdown of the season’s best. I remember when it began, and my father watched it on TV. Football was a constant in our house, as my Dad had been a professional player when I was little, and he never lost the love of the game.

I don’t understand the game, never bothered to learn, maybe because I never had a son who played. Not that that’s a good reason, I still don’t understand what ‘icing’ is in hockey, and goodness knows I went to my share of hockey games with my son.

(It may be some deep seated issue, back to the fact I was a girl and not the more desired male child. But that’s a whole other issue and being the boy, I understand, was not necessarily the easier way).

Fate is a strange thing. You probably wonder how I went from Super Bowl to the wonders of fate. I was thinking about football, and my Dad’s career. Once signed with the Cleveland Browns, he was traded to the Buffalo Bills. From there he moved from the NFL to the CFL…the Canadian Football League. He ended his career there, with the Toronto Argonauts.

I once took advantage of the free weekend on Ancestry.com, and looked up my father. I discovered the NFL Draft, listing him to go to the Green Bay Packers. I never knew about this, and thought it odd because Green Bay had always been one of his favorite teams. The timing was such that he obviously made the decision to move to the CFL instead of to Michigan.

When I was reminded of this today I’m left to question what went into making a decision like that, to move the family (then only the two girls, the son born after, in Canada) not only further from its roots, but to another country.

Football at that time did not pay the mega bucks it does today. Players needed a second career, something for the off season, and for when they retired from the game. Fate again. My father worked very successfully in the insurance business, his entire time spent with the same company. He never made specific use of that college degree he earned before entering the world of professional sports.

So many decisions in life, paths taken, or paths untraveled. I wish my father was still around, so I could ask him about all of this. Just my curiosity. It was the way, back then, that parents never talked about adult stuff like that with their children.

So much information about our roots is lost with each generation. Things unknown, or kept secret and/or forgotten. What I wouldn’t give to sit down over a cup of coffee with my parents, and the chance to ask the questions that will, unfortunately, be forever unanswered.

Maybe this is why I try to share the family stories with my kids and grandchildren, enough has been lost already.