My son Lem is in The Grove today. He has taken his four year old Allie to her first Ole Miss game. I can just imagine how excited she is since he has alternated Amazing Grace with the Ole Miss Fight Song as evening lullabies her entire life. She can raise her arms and cheer “Hotty Toddy,” and she will tell you that her favorite football team is the Ole Miss Rebels, but it has all been as real as Cinderella or Elmo until today. Today it becomes real.
I texted Lem while ago to please be sure to take notes and to just imagine this whole spectacle through her little four-year-old eyes. I am sure even Disney World would not excite her more at the moment. She is finally getting to see the place her dad so loves, meet his college friends, and see something that she has heard stories about her entire life (all four years of it J). She has lived in Washington, D.C. , Denver, Colorado, and racked up more frequent flyer miles than most adults I know, but this is her first trip to Oxford. So far, she shares her dad’s opinion that it is just the best place she has ever been.
There are a lot of times we look forward to something, or imagine something and really want something – and when we get it, it leaves us empty and disappointed. I don’t think Allie is going to be disappointed in anything today. Her father will make sure Oxford and Ole Miss and the Grove are everything he has told her they are. You get the point. We all have a Father like that. Sometimes we forget it.
