Letter to James – Seven in a Row 1.26.25

James,

This past weekend your grandmother Gizzy and I had the pleasure of hosting you for the first time for an entire weekend at our Lake House.  It was nothing short of magical and included lots of basketball, adventures, and cherished moments filled with laughter and joy that created a bit of nostalgia for me. It was a weekend that I will always treasure.

The tone for the weekend was set on Friday afternoon as you and I played basketball on the small basketball hoop upstairs in our large loft space that overlooks the lake – perfect for a 4-year-old.  Your enthusiasm for the game was contagious. It is already obvious that you ARE A COACH’S SON.  So, we spent at least an hour just shooting hoops.  Having worked up an appetite, we had one of your and my favorites, smoked salmon, for dinner. Afterwards, we cuddled up on the couch to watch the animated show “Bluey.” The evening concluded with a quiet and comforting routine of reading books aloud, which included the Peter Rabbit series. You and Gizzy decided to have a sleepover in the two beds in the loft while I slept downstairs alone.

Saturday dawned with the promise of more adventures with you yelling down from the loft, “Papa J, are you awake yet?”  So, we began the day by making pancakes for breakfast. You eagerly helped stir the batter, and when it was time to cook, you made sure that your pancakes had chips of dark chocolate sprinkled in. The pancake breakfast brought back memories of raising our three sons on Crandall Court with many Saturdays in our house filled with boys waiting for Mr. Franklin’s “famous pancakes”.  I am sure my pancakes were no better than the pancakes that their parents made, but it became a “thing” on our street.  And I must admit that I would secretly savor remarks like the following from our neighbors, “What do you put into your pancakes that make our kids go crazy for them?”  I would tell them “nothing special”.  James, it was not the pancakes. It was the environment that your grandmother created in our house.  All children were welcome and were treated like our own.  What made Crandall Court so special was that other parents on the street created the same environment in their own homes.

After breakfast, we played with puzzles before moving on to playing with toy castles and ships – the same ones that your dad and uncles had played with as children! The nostalgia of seeing you enjoy the same cherished toys as your dad and his brothers was very present. Lunchtime brought grilled cheese sandwiches – a special treat prepared by Gizzy. She spreads mayonnaise on the bread before grilling, a little trick that made the sandwiches taste extra delicious.

In the afternoon, we embarked on a hike with our dog, Emmy Lou. We hiked 2.5 miles together, exploring three trails – which we named Bridge Trail, Connecting Trail and Ball Trail – the last one so named because of a ball I hide in the crook of one of the trees that I use to play toss with Emmy. You were a trooper.  You loved taking small detours in the woods and stomping the snow that was still on the ground. Your curiosity led us to look for animal tracks. And Emmy Lou’s playful antics during the walk and ball tossing added to the fun. We returned home happy but a little tired.  I was impressed that a 4-year-old could walk 2.5 miles without ever once complaining about being tired.  So, you are a born hiker, which is something I am sure we will do together in the years to come.  And someday we may even hike the West Highland Trail in Scotland, the Rheinsteig in Germany or the Camino in Spain.

After the hike, it did not take you long to recover – so much energy!  So, the theme of basketball returned with playing more basketball upstairs and going down to the theatre room to watch the Boston College/UNC basketball game. As a fan you were conflicted because you know that your dad and I love UNC basketball, but you also like Boston College because you spent the first four years of your life living in Boston.  And you made a point to tell me that you “like both teams and wanted both to win”.  I pointed out that in basketball there are no ties.  You finally decided that you would root for Boston College because you were born there.  James, that is a very fine reason. But as the game went into overtime, you could not handle the stress and asked if we could stop watching it and go back upstairs to play even more basketball! And like a good grandfather, I reluctantly left and dutifully followed you back upstairs for more playtime. I did check my phone later and found out that UNC had won. But I kept that to myself. Like all 4-year olds, you had moved on.

After dinner, we watched the animated movie “How to Train Your Dragon,” a movie with some scary parts for a 4-year-old.  But you did well by walking around the theatre room to use up some of your nervous energy and peeking through the chairs to watch some of the more intense parts of the movie.  Your uncle Jack would do the exact same thing when he was your age!   The night ended with you falling asleep as I read out loud to you. You fell asleep so fast.  After you AND Gizzy fell asleep, I continued to read “Velveteen Rabbit.” And as I sat in bed with you, listening to your heavy breathing, I continued reading out loud this timeless tale of love and magic.  At the end, when the love between the boy and the stuffed rabbit makes the rabbit real, I cried.  But they were tears of contentment and joy.  Wow, what a way to end a most spectacular day filled with adventure, magic, love and joy. 

However, the highlight of the weekend for me occurred Sunday morning with another round of basketball.  James, you did something that I still cannot believe happened – but it did.  Anyone who has played a sport knows that if you play that sport long enough, you will sometimes enter into a “zone” where everything seems to come together – literally like magic.  The author of the book “Boys in the Boat” calls it “flow.”  James, you entered the zone with flow Sunday morning. 

You started making shots from the corner, which on our “court” upstairs was about 10 feet from the basket.  You had previously never made more than two in a row from anywhere on the court.  But you made three in a row from that corner spot. I was amazed.  You then retrieved the ball and ran around some more.  You went back to that same spot and drained another shot – four in a row!  I stood there transfixed. But then you made 5, 6 and then 7 in a row! I had my phone with me and as most of my friends will say, I am almost always ready to take a photo with my phone. But I was so into the moment, I did not even think about taking a photo to save this moment for posterity.  That was how dumbstruck I was.

You finally missed your eighth shot. The only thing I can compare it to was watching Stephen Curry single handedly beat France in the Gold Medal Basketball game during the 2024 Olympics in Paris by sinking multiple long distance jump shots at the end of the game. If for no other reason than seeing you make seven shots in a row, I wanted to write this letter to you so that you nor I would ever forget that moment.  Another truly amazing thing about that moment was that it did not register with you what you had just done!  Again, you had moved on! And as I write this, I am still shaking my head at how unbelievable it was.

Later that day when your dad arrived, I relayed the event to him.  Your dad coaches the Monticello High School basketball team.  As I told him the story, I could tell he was having trouble processing it. I truly believe that I will see you do something similar some day when you play high school basketball.  And you might even be playing for your dad! 

Later that afternoon we took your basketball game outdoors to the driveway where I had lowered the basket to a level that a four-year-old – with some practice – could manage to shoot a small ball into.  So, your dad and I fed you bounce passes as you learned to “cut to the basket” for layups. Playing basketball in the driveway with you and your dad was fun and again nostalgic. I do hope to have many more of those times together playing basketball in the driveway in the years to come – just like I did with your dad and his brothers so many years ago. 

Love,

Papa J