THIRTY-ONE
Sports over boys. Sarah, far left. Coach Chuck Heath, center.On p. 31 of Going Rogue Sarah is still discussing sports, as she has been for several pages. She now introduces another theme too: boys!
She says:
"One night at the dinner table, Dad noticed some ink marks on my hand.
" 'What's that?' he asked.
"I quickly put my hand under the table. 'Nothin'.'
" 'Looked like somebody's name to me.'
"I didn't say anything, just stared down at my spaghetti.
" 'You have a choice between boys and sports,' Dad said sternly. 'You're at the age where I start losing my good athletes because they start liking boys. You can't have both.'
"I stood up, walked to the sink, and washed the kid's initials off my hand. Some might see that as the wrong way to set parameters. But for me, it was fine to have these high expectations made clear."
As with so many seemingly simple passages in this magnificent tour de force that is her Going Rogue, multiple threads and lines of thought come crowding into my brain, each one clamoring and crying for attention and pride of place!! Let me just set down, quickly and succinctly, some of these reflections. Please forgive and indulge me if they will come in a somewhat haphazard and random fashion.
Ah, how much easier it would be if I could talk to you guys about her book with the flaming sword of the living and spoken word. Writing can be slow, and I am not a good nor a fast typist. I could talk to you guys for hours and hours and days upon days about this marvelous book!!!!
Notice that Sarah, free spirit though she is, was willing to accept her dad's wisdom, the fruit of his life experiences. She didn't talk back to him; she didn't run out of the room; she acknowledged the truth of his wise counsel, and washed the name from her hand and from her heart!!
Notice too what I may term the vital and living symbiosis and dynamic between Sarah's book and her ongoing life. What do I mean by this high-falutin' language? Something like this.
This passage, while it is very serious, is also very funny. Millions, when they first read these words last year, chuckled, I am sure, as they pictured Sarah saying "Nothin'," and then getting up to wash away the name from her hand. However, the passage means even more since the famous incident when the media rebuked her for having notes for an interview/speech written on her hand. She, in a move and maneuver of sheer political genius, turned their blades of attack right back into their own entrails!!
She now mocks and laughs at the press, while delighting those who love her (us), by writing notes on her hand all the time. Heck, yours truly even followed her example in San Diego when I wrote notes (two names) on my hand for the talk I gave at the first C4P meet-up :-) !!! The point is that, since the publication of GR, the incident in this passage has gained even more significance.
Another way to put it is that Sarah continues to write Going Rogue, in a certain sense, even today: Her daily acts of courage, of charity, of humor, of laughter, of joy in combat, of political savvy and sagacity, both add "pages" to the book, and shed further light on passages and pages already written.
Sarah is truly the daughter of the One she loves and follows: The LIVING WORD of God!!! Going Rogue is a living and vital thing, an ongoing work, not a dead and static thing confined and caught between its two covers, because Sarah herself is so ALIVE!!!!
Let me add, as a parenthesis, that I may contrast Sarah's vital opus with so much of the DEAD DRIVEL I have had to read in the academic world over the span and space of so many years. Their works are dead and lifeless even before the ink is dry on them; Sarah's work lives right at this very moment, as you guys read these words, and it will live for generations unto generations.
I must wrap this up, so let me just make a few more obvious observations.
Chuck Heath's firm and wise counsel, and his daughter's adherence to it, kept her involved in sports, with all of the wonderful effects that flowed from athletics for both her body and for her spirit; it led to her finding her TRUE LOVE, TODD, the wonderful guy who came into her life at just the right moment; and, I think, the memory of her washing the name from her hand probably fixed this practice in Sarah's mind, so that she now replicates and repeats it in a practice that, the more it confounds and infuriates the Left, the more it endears her to us, and commends her to our hearts, to our prayers...to our love!!!
WE WRITE THE NAME "SARAH" ON OUR HANDS, YEA VERILY, ON OUR HANDS AND ON OUR HEARTS FOREVER!!!!
