March of Madness

Published: March 18, 2013  ~   1
By Laura Edwards

I’m a North Carolina native. Most of us harbor an unwavering devotion to one of two major state universities located in the Research Triangle – the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and North Carolina State University (NC State).

Laura's graduation day

I earned my degree in English from UNC. I love the school for the fabulous education I received – something no one can ever take away from me. I love it for its particular shade of blue. I love it for the bell tower that watches over South Road and the football stadium. I love it for the pink azaleas that ring the Old Well each spring. I love it for the Forest Theatre, where a group of upperclassmen blindfolded me and walked me through an honor fraternity’s initiation ceremony after dark. I love it for the basketball team (I even loved them when they went 8-20). I love it for the frozen yogurt and NY pizza on Franklin Street, the town’s main drag. I love it for my favorite spot on campus – a sidewalk between the Wilson and Undergraduate Libraries that, three seasons out of the year, is shaded by a small tree. In the fall, that tree’s leaves turn a brilliant shade of gold, and in the late afternoon, the sunlight shines down and hits those leaves, and the glow lights up the entire world. And most of all, I love it for the friends I will have for a lifetime.

I spent the second semester of my freshman year at NC State. I love the school for its wonderful people, who rolled out their Wolfpack red carpet for me in my time of greatest need. I love it for the grassy hill behind the humanities building where I ate lunch on most sunny days. I love it for the memories of tailgating with my family of NC State grads and going to Carter-Finley Stadium for football games. I love it for Mr. and Mrs. Wuf – with deepest apologies to my alma mater, they’re cooler mascots than Rameses the ram. I love it for the week I spent playing as a scrappy point guard at the late Kay Yow’s basketball day camp in the sweltering but tradition-laden Reynolds Coliseum and making memories with my late grandmother each night after the gym lights went out. I love it for the great week I spent at the school’s soccer camp with my best friends and teammates from my high school years. I love it for the men’s basketball teams of my childhood – I wanted to marry the point guard, Chris Corchiani, and idolized the cheerleaders. I love it for memories of watching those games with my dad, an alum. I love it for the creative writing class I took on its campus – my first as a college student – where I had a teacher who believed in me and helped me build the confidence I needed to hold onto my lifelong dream.

I wish my little sister, Taylor, had a chance to go to college. I’d give anything to see her in Carolina blue, Wolfpack red, or any color her heart desired. I wish she had that luxury. I realized too late that my stints on both campuses were just that – luxuries. I’ve learned the hard way – by watching my sister’s decline since she was diagnosed with infantile Batten disease nearly seven years ago – that dreams cannot always be earned.

People sometimes ask me why I continue my March of Madness. They say that I should just enjoy the time we have left.

But if I quit – if we all quit – kids like Taylor will never walk the path I walked or live the dreams I lived.

They’ll always lose.

And so I keep on playing this crazy game. Call it fear, call it courage, call it faith…call it whatever you want. But I believe.

The whistle hasn’t blown. I’ll play till I can’t play anymore.

Root Beer and Rameses

Published: February 16, 2011  ~   0
By Laura Edwards

Yesterday marked the 12th Valentine’s Day my husband and I have shared.  We’re renovating our kitchen and hate going out on Valentine’s, so he brought home a takeout feast from one of my favorite Italian restaurants and gave me a nice card.  I gave him a card and…root beer.  Four glass bottles of Stewart’s root beer, actually.

Twelve years ago, we were high school juniors and best friends.  Often, on the days that I didn’t have soccer practice right after school, we’d watch movies, play basketball on the elementary school’s blacktop court or walk up to the grocery store, buy a four-pack of Stewart’s root beer and drain all four on the sidewalk outside. We had a blast; it was the best fun $3.99 could buy.  I was dating someone else at the time.  Nevertheless, through all those empty glass bottles, I glimpsed the future and knew that I would marry John.

All it takes to make a happy memory is two people and time.

Something else special happened that year: my little sister was born.  And before she could crawl, she taught me that lesson all over again.  One of the first times I held her, she wrapped her tiny hand around my pinky finger and didn’t let go, even after she drifted to sleep.  When she first started talking, she couldn’t say my name, instead calling me ‘Rar-Rar.’  Later, as a toddler, she often marched around the house chanting this phrase at the top of her lungs.  Halfway through my senior year, T celebrated her second Christmas.  I’d gotten accepted to Carolina a month earlier over the Thanksgiving holiday, and waiting for me under the tree that Christmas morning was a stuffed version of Rameses, the UNC mascot, which played the Carolina fight song when you squeezed its hoof/paw/whatever you call a fuzzy ram’s foot.  Well, Taylor adopted Fuzzy Rameses as her frequent dance partner, and suddenly, ‘Rar-Rar’ replaced ‘ Rah rah Carolina’ in the song’s lyrics.

I left for college eight months later.  A few weeks into my freshman year, I got an email from my mom – or so I thought.  When I opened it, I discovered that it was actually from T.

‘Dear Rar Rar,’ it said. ‘I wanted to send you a message too!  Here goes!  (insert two lines’ worth of randomly assorted letters of the alphabet here).’  I printed the email and stuck it to the corkboard on the wall in my dorm room.  I moved every year that I was in school, and that corkboard got tossed into cardboard boxes and car trunks many a time.  But when I packed the corkboard a few days before graduation, there was the email, a little worse for the wear but still capable of making me smile. Nearly seven years have passed since my graduation day, and I still have that email.

These days, I can’t hold T quite the way I used to, because she weighs almost as much as I do.  Fuzzy Rameses lives on the bed in my guest room – the room I decorated with my sister in mind but that she has never slept in.  Rameses’ batteries are long dead, but he’s got a home under my roof for as long as he wants.  And T hasn’t called me Rar Rar regularly in a long time.  When she talks – which isn’t as often lately – she calls me Laura.  But one thing hasn’t changed.

A few weeks ago, I watched T on a Saturday night so my parents could go to a party.  After dinner, we watched one of her girly girl movies.  Her favorite chair isn’t big enough for both of us, so I sat on the floor in front of it and leaned back against her pretzeled legs.  Ten minutes in, she found my pinky.