My colleague Stephen Wilder sent me a still photo of the opening shot of this video the other day. “I realize it might be a bit of a stretch,” he said, “but I see an angel here.” Well, looking at the first few seconds of the video, I do too. It shows the football field on the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, and I see more angels than the one Stephen did.
My younger daughter will be a college freshman this spring semester, and Covid made her final decision about where to accept extra complicated. For years, Evie has heard my stories of attending Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where football was the crux of our social life and the tailgate parties started early and continued after the games.
The student section of Tiger Stadium was THE place to be, and I recreated the atmosphere best I could for both my girls when we watched the Tigers (and my beloved New Orleans Saints!) play on TV in New York. I love football for sure, but the Golden Band From Tigerland brings the LSU games to a whole new level. Nothing lifts me like a marching band! (I’ve watched Beyonce’s concert documentary, Homecoming, too many times to count.)
Evie’s big sister wanted nothing to do with “a football school in the South,” and went to Oberlin College in Ohio. We didn’t have Covid to worry about back then. Evie looked hard at FSU, but in the end chose to stay closer to home in New York.
I’ll send her off with angels to watch over her and pray for angels to guide all our college-bound kids, whether they’ll be working remotely or on limited campuses or taking a gap year. My prayer is for this life-stage challenge to make them stronger young people than they might have been.
