I Am Mine | Chicago, Part V

Final Volume - PART V

Through this written reflection on Chicago, I’ve thought about a subconscious connection to a place, how a place can feel like home, whether you’ve ever lived there or not. A place where your soul feels at rest, with a subtle assurance, granted by nostalgia, that this is where I’m supposed to be.

I’ve thought about what draws us together. The quantum nature of two things, separated by time and place, moving as one object. How voices of family we’ve never known speak to us when we cross the thresholds of those places. When our ticket scan grants us entry to those sacred spaces.

Tallahassee, for our family, is such a place.

The air carries a scent particular to the panhandle. Distant salt air, pine needles crushed underfoot, summer’s heat pressing rain-soaked clay that clings to your shoes. Spring is alive with blooming azaleas. Evening arrives with a softened, golden light that filters through moss hanging in long gray veils.

One of my earliest memories is an evening at my great-grandmother’s house on Belle Vue Way, just north of Doak Campbell. It was a Georgian-style home, white and columned, with manicured gardens on five acres. From the front porch, you could see the Doak itself. On this night, it was pitch black, and as we sat under the flickering gas porch lamp, the sound came, cheers from the stadium, carried across the distance as a single voice. Let’s suppose it was one of those great home-game moments in the 1984 season when Florida State beat Miami 38–3. The Nole faithful in chorus. One sonic wave. A rising pressure in the blood. My great-grandfather might have said something. So could’ve my grandfather and my dad. I sat with the men, that much I remember.

The words are lost to time.

Before I even understood sport, I understood belonging. Our Seminole legacy adopted me on that porch, long before I ever set foot in the stadium.

Our family is bound to this place, tied to the Seminoles and to the university. My grandfather enrolled with the first class of veterans when the school shifted from a women’s college toward the university it is today. My father worked at the original Bill’s Bookstore across from the fountain. My mother wore Kappa Delta letters; my dad wore Sigma Chi. They arrived knowing no one, met beneath live oaks, fell in love, setting our family story in motion, on the same streets my sons walk to games each week.

Growing up, once per year, Dad would get a fraternity brother’s tickets. These were the same seats Hays and JR sat in during their first few games. Those seats were rarely used, so for us it was always Miami, Florida, or Clemson, occasionally Auburn or another SEC team.

When we approached Tallahassee, we’d turn on the radio and hear Gene Deckerhoff and Vic Prinzi set the stage. Those Noles were in the top five annually. Competing for national championships was our birthright, it seemed.

On fall Saturdays, you could trace his voice across the map. It floated out of bait shops in Apalachicola, spilled from porch speakers in Monticello, and filled pickup trucks on dirt roads threading through Decatur County. His voice baptized the game. Listeners scattered across the region felt gathered into one congregation. His calls a sacrament, carrying emotion like gospel, unvarnished and holy. He made you believe the Seminoles were strong enough to shoulder fate. Deckerhoff became the soundtrack of autumn and, eventually, of our adolescence.

Even though Christian and I didn’t know each other in Albany, she had season tickets in the nineties as well. Could Christian and I have attended the same games? Were we both in the Doak for Charlie Ward’s 1993 win over Miami, or the 1994 “Choke at Doak” when FSU stormed back from 28 down to tie Florida? Could we be bound by what we experienced, aligned before we even knew one another? A quantum connection rising as the smoke from Osceola’s spear. Could we have brushed past one another that night, never imagining that our sons would one day raise their voices here, in the same light, on the same bleachers?

Early on, Hays and JR adopted Florida State as their team. Attending Seminole football games became their favorite thing to do, so in the early days of the Norvell era, we bought them season tickets. We’ve held those tickets for five seasons now. Each Saturday, Hays and JR would drive to Tallahassee to see the Noles. When Hays went off to school, JR would take a friend, his sister, and his mother. Many times, he’d go by himself.

This place. The traditions. The timelessness. Both boys, leaving on Saturdays, walk into the college experience of their grandparents, the adolescent exuberance of their parents, and the long line of others older and unknown, but who make their presence felt through the fall winds, in the flags, in a favorable spot, in the comfort that follows missed opportunities.

Unconquered.

In ways my sons can’t yet see, their bloodline runs through that university. Perhaps that is why they bleed garnet, because those before them did. Revells and Hunnicutts loved the Noles, and that love carried forward. On those afternoons when they drive into Tallahassee and ease down Pensacola Street, they walk with their ancestors, step for step.

-

I used to live and die with the Noles. Through Wide Rights and almosts and Games of the Century. None were bigger, though, than Florida State and Notre Dame in 1993.

Under a grey Indiana sky, the Game of the Century kicked off at 1:30 in the afternoon. Number one Notre Dame, number two Florida State, both undefeated, everything on the line in mid-November. College Gameday was on hand for its first on-campus broadcast.

Seven seconds in, Kevin McDougal returned the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown. Notre Dame 7, Florida State 0, and the showdown already felt mythic.

The Seminoles answered with a 13-play drive. Then Notre Dame scored. Then Charlie Ward found Matt Frier for a touchdown. Back and forth, the lead changing hands, the afternoon light fading, both defenses exhausted, both offenses still moving.

By the fourth quarter, Notre Dame led 24-17. Florida State tied it. Then Jeff Burris returned an interception 37 yards for a touchdown. Notre Dame 31, Florida State 24, with 10:44 left.

Ward got the ball back at his own 21 with 3:17 remaining. He hit Kevin Knox for 11 yards, then 15 more. Found Warrick Dunn out of the backfield for 12. The Seminoles moved methodically, Ward hitting tight windows, the fast break offense executing, the clock bleeding. First down at the 20. Then the 14. Timeout with 1:09 left.

First down: incomplete to Kez McCorvey in the end zone.

Second down: Ward scrambled, got hit, and fell forward three yards to the 11.

Third down: incomplete again, looking for McCorvey.

Fourth down: Ward took the snap in shotgun. McCorvey ran a skinny post from the left. Ward set his feet and threw toward the front corner of the end zone, high enough to clear the linebacker, low enough that McCorvey could catch it if he got there.

The ball traveled 15 yards through the South Bend air and landed incomplete on the grass.

The stadium exploded.

Notre Dame 31, Florida State 24.

The Irish faithful were jubilant. The Seminole faithful were crushed by another almostwith a loaded roster. Ward walked off having thrown for 297 yards, having done everything right except complete the one throw that mattered most.

November 13, 1993. The Seminoles were 10-1. Perfect season gone. National championship hopes now resting on a Notre Dame loss.

I was dejected.

The season was over.

Except it wasn’t.

One week later, Notre Dame traveled to Boston College. The Irish were 10-0, ranked number one, playing a 9-2 Boston College team. This was supposed to be a formality. But, Boston College led 38-17 in the third quarter. Notre Dame came back, scored 22 straight to take a 39-38 lead with 1:09 left. Then Boston College drove down the field. David Gordon lined up for a 41-yard field goal as time expired. The ball rose into the Massachusetts afternoon, grey sky, November light just like South Bend one week earlier, and sailed through. Boston College 41, Notre Dame 39.

The door Florida State thought had closed swung open.

Two weeks later, we played Miami in the Orange Bowl, now ranked number seven, carrying four national championships in nine years and a roster loaded with future NFL players. Ray Lewis at linebacker, the Canes fierce and dominant. The buildup called it “the greatest collection of football talent ever assembled on one field.“ Twenty-six players from these two teams would get drafted into the NFL.

Florida State won 28-10. Miami gained 250 total yards. The Seminoles’ defense—the same unit that gave up 31 to Notre Dame—held Miami to one touchdown. Ward threw for 259 yards and three touchdowns. The Seminoles played like a team that had spent two weeks thinking about an incomplete pass.

On December 11, Charlie Ward won the Heisman Trophy. The first Florida State player ever to claim it.

The Orange Bowl on New Year’s night matched number one Florida State against number two Nebraska for the national championship. Nebraska was 11-0, three-point favorites. The game kicked off at 8:00 PM. Florida State won 18-16 on a last-second field goal after Nebraska got a controversial pass interference call with one second left. Bobby Bowden, 64, finally won his national championship.

The 1993 season ended 12-1. National champions. The loss at Notre Dame was the lone blip on a legendary season.

-

In 2023, the Noles ran the table but were excluded from the four-team playoff. The Jordan Travis era, he of resurgent Seminole leadership, ended with an annihilation at the hands of Georgia. Still, all indications were that the program was on the rise, back to where it was in the peak-Bowden era.

For Christmas 2023, in addition to renewing the season tickets, we thought it would be fun to start a tradition of traveling to an away game. To get seats with the Nole Nation and go cheer on the team as it returned to national prominence. We bought four tickets to see FSU travel to play Notre Dame in South Bend.

-

We arrived at O’Hare on a Friday afternoon and took the Blue Line CTA into town, disembarking at the same Clark/Lake Station I’d visited a few months before. The sky was cold and grey, just like I remembered that afternoon in 1993. We checked into the AC Hotel downtown, then headed for dinner at Gibson’s Steakhouse.

Gibson’s sits on Rush Street in the Gold Coast, which means it’s in the middle of everything that makes Chicago feel like Chicago, in that particular old-money, new-money, no-money-just-credit-cards kind of American vibe. The place opened in 1989, though it looks like it’s been there since Sinatra was still singing and Capone was still raging, all dark wood and white tablecloths and that particular kind of lighting that makes everyone look like they’re closing a deal or celebrating having closed one.

The steaks are dry-aged and massive, arriving on plates with clarified butter. The bourbon was poured over an ice block in a highball, with a twist of lemon rind. The place hums with rhythmic energy that charges on its own current.

Gibson’s was loud. Packed. But we secured a table and sat down for a meal. Each of us was excited to be together, to see the Noles in such a cathedral, even though the season hadn’t gone as we wanted. We broke bread, ordered appetizers, and took in a meal with the young boys whose tiny hands barely wrapped around our fingers, those little guys we held when they weighed less than ten pounds. Now we sat across the table from adults. Another temporal space where Christian and I commune with the various versions of ourselves from across the years, sitting at the table with us.

We walked back to the hotel through the chilly fall wind, taking in the lights and sights, catching a glimpse of Lake Michigan to our left.

-

The temperature settled in the low 40s under a grey sky, the same grey that hung over South Bend on November 13, 1993, the same cold that makes your breath visible and your hands seek pockets. The trees had turned autumnal art—maples and oaks wearing yellows and browns and burnt oranges in combinations that looked accidental until you realized nature doesn’t do accidents, only variations on themes it’s been perfecting since before there was a Notre Dame or a football or a reason to gather 77,000 people in northern Indiana to watch young men collide.

We started at the Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore, a commercial temple of institutional pride where you can buy everything from Summa Theologica to infant onesies with the interlocking ND. The place opened in 2009, all limestone and glass, modern but built to look like it’s been there forever, which is the Notre Dame way of honoring what came before while believing what comes after is just a continuation of the same eternal beat.

From there we walked between the Mendoza College of Business and the Joyce Center, and suddenly the stadium revealed itself between the buildings like a cathedral in ancient Europe.

Notre Dame Stadium.

Built in 1930. Designed in collaboration with Knute Rockne himself, who wanted something permanent, something that would outlast him and did. Horseshoe configuration. Brick facade that’s been there 94 years through Depression and war and integration and every cultural shift America’s endured, and the brick looks exactly the same. This is the most important, timeless stadium in college football. Notre Dame Stadium sits at the gravitational center of college football’s mythology. Everything radiates from here. The Four Horsemen rode here. Rockne died but the stadium stayed. Joe Montana led fourth-quarter comebacks here. Rudy made his tackle here. The Rocket returned kicks here.

The tailgaters spread across the parking lots in organized clusters. Families who’d been doing this for generations. RVs with Fighting Irish flags snapping in the wind. Grills smoking with brats and burgers, the smell mixing with autumn and cold and anticipation.

We walked to the library lawn. Touchdown Jesus.

The mosaic covers the south facade of the Hesburgh Library—134 feet tall, 68 feet wide, 7,000 square feet of stone depicting Christ the Teacher with his arms raised in a gesture that looks exactly like a referee signaling touchdown. The mosaic contains 81 different types of granite from 16 countries. The university calls it “The Word of Life.” Everyone else calls it Touchdown Jesus.

We walked to the Golden Dome. The Main Building’s dome rises 187 feet, topped with a 19-foot statue of Mary covered in real gold leaf. The statue has been overseeing Notre Dame since 1882, gleaming over the Indiana flatlands, visible for miles. Beneath it the Main Building houses administration and history of 182 years of Catholic education, and every student who walks through understands they’re part of something that predates them and will continue after they’re gone.

In front of the Main Building, the bagpipers appeared in formation. The Band of the Fighting Irish Pipe and Drums, established in 1979 but playing music that predates uniforms and goal posts and every modern thing. They marched across the lawn in their kilts and knee socks, their sound cutting through the cold, that touching wail of the pipes that sounds like celebration and grief compressed into notes, like every Irish funeral and wedding happening simultaneously.

The boys left to see the Seminoles arrive, players filing off in suits and headphones, young men carrying everyone’s Saturday on their shoulders, along with the rock breaking hammer.

Christian and I stayed on the library lawn. We didn’t know the Glee Club performance was a huge deal. Didn’t know it was a 75-year tradition dating to 1948. Didn’t know students camped out to get close to the front. But the Glee Club took their positions, 60 young men and began to sing. Then they called the alumni up, and generations of men moved to the stage—some in their twenties, some in their eighties, all having sung these same songs in this same spot across fifty years of Saturdays.

The Alma Mater first. “Notre Dame, Our Mother, tender, strong and true...” The voices carried across the lawn, across the decades, across every class that had stood where we stood and sung what we were hearing. Then the Victory March. “Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame...“ Everyone is singing now, thousands of people who know every word.

We entered through Rockne Gate, who never stopped being the standard against which every coach since has been measured. Through the gate and into the concourse and up the ramp and suddenly there it was: the field, the stands filling, the stadium.

The House that Rudy built. The House that Rockne built. Where Ara walked the sidelines. The House where Touchdown Jesus watches and the bagpipes wail and the Glee Club sings and 75 years of Saturdays have accumulated into something that feels less like a venue and more like a promise.

The sky stayed grey, then turned black into the night. The temperature held in the 40s.

-

Florida State came to Notre Dame Stadium 1-9, the worst season in program history since 1974. One year earlier they’d gone 13-0, then the roster imploded through the transfer portal. By November 2024, the Seminoles had one win: California, 14-9.

Notre Dame was 10-1, ranked number six, playing for playoff positioning.

Notre Dame Stadium filled to 77,622. The Irish drove 75 yards on the opening possession and scored. 7-0. The rout began. Florida State went three-and-out. Then three-and-out again. The Seminoles couldn’t block, couldn’t protect their quarterback, couldn’t complete passes.

Notre Dame led 10-0 after the first quarter. Then 17-0. Then 24-0. By halftime: 31-0. The second half became an exercise in running clock. Final score: 52-3. Florida State gained 210 total yards, converted 2 of 14 third downs, and managed one garbage-time field goal.

Thirty-one years earlier on the same field, both teams were undefeated and ranked in the top two. Charlie Ward threw for 297 yards. The game came down to fourth and goal with 1:09 left. The incomplete pass. The 31-24 final that somehow opened the door to a national championship.

Mike Norvell stood on the sideline watching his team get demolished in the same stadium where Bobby Bowden’s team lost, but still prevailed to win it all. The comparison was cruel. The 1993 game lives in Seminole history. The 2024 game lives in Nole infamy, a 1-9 team getting beaten by 49 points.

The stadium looked the same. The temperature was the same. The grey sky pressed down the same way. Everything was the same except Florida State wasn’t good anymore, and Notre Dame was.

-

We left after the third quarter, the game long decided, and listened to the Notre Dame broadcasters as we drove the rugged interstate back to Chicago through misting rain on a cold night. We talked, joked even. What had we just seen? What else can you do when the program has descended to such levels?

The next day the boys had tickets to the Bears game at Soldier Field. Christian and I bowed out, hitting an oyster bar before walking to sit by the river, the familiar Chicago River flowing away from Lake Michigan.

We talked about the boys. What kind of men they’re becoming. How they’re caught between adolescence and adulthood, that particular age where they’re too old to be children and too young to be finished, still forming, still figuring out who they are when we’re not watching.

We do that more now that we’re this age. Reflect. We’re confronted with a layered life we’ve built together. Close to 25 years now, we’ve been together more than we’ve been apart. Our lives are one. We’re each other’s homes. Our history is our shared history, such that we’re able to evaluate life’s milestones from various perspectives, seeing them not just as they are but as they were and as they might become.

We know they may not appreciate these trips until they’re older. We know our influence directly will wane over the coming years. Children grow, parents recede, and the things you tried to teach them either took root or didn’t, and you won’t know which until much later.

We wonder aloud what they think of us. What they’ll remember of us. What they’ve learned from us. Do we annoy them? What kind of beacon will these trips send across the years when they’re our age and we’re gone or old or just different versions of ourselves we can’t imagine yet?

After the Bears game we met up at the river to hear about it. They’re excited, talking about plays and moments and the particular electricity of being in Soldier Field even for a mediocre Bears team. We listen. We’re together.

After relaxing at the hotel, we head to dinner at Shaw’s Crab House on Hubbard Street, of course. I was here two months ago, sitting at a different table, a different version of myself. But I’m back now, and I’m the same. Such as we are across time, different and unchanged, moving forward while circling back.

We’re seated in the main dining room, the four of us at a table. The setting is perfect, as is the emotion. Perfect in the way that makes you grateful you’re here, in this place, with these people. We eat and talk and laugh, the conversation moving from the Bears game to Florida State’s catastrophic season to college plans to school to their friends and to nothing in particular, just the kind of talk that’s not performative or forced, such fleeting moments in parenthood.

We order dessert even though we’re full because that’s what you do when you don’t want the night to end yet. The desserts arrive and we share them, spoons in hand, crossing the table, everyone tasting everything, a sacred familial communion. We’re laughing now about something. I don’t remember what, it doesn’t matter, the table is alive. This is what you hope for when you plan these trips. This. The table. The meal. The laughter. The boys being themselves and us being ourselves and all of us being together.

I look at Christian across the table, and she’s smiling, watching the boys, and I know she’s thinking what I am.

For in Chicago, I am mine. I’ve always been mine here. In 2004 when we sat on the banks of Lake Michigan, to 2018 when we took our first trip as a family of 6, to PJ at the United Center,, two months ago when I sat alone at Shaw’s, to tonight when I sit with my family and watch my sons becoming men.

Chicago is where the various versions of myself exist simultaneously, where past and present occupy the same space, where I can see who I was and who I am, and maybe glimpse who I’m becoming.

And because of this, I am mine everywhere. Virtue holds. The identity is solidified. What I find here in Chicago, I carry with me when I leave. All of it creates a familiar, comforting pattern.

We walk back to the hotel through the Chicago night. The city hums around us. The boys walk ahead, talking. Christian walks beside me.

The straight lines of life return as circles. I look to the right, to the darkness of Lake Michigan. I then think how our circles stretch forward into lines, deep into the dark horizon we can’t yet see.

Small Steps Create Big Shifts

Confidence doesn’t always arrive with a bold entrance. Sometimes, it builds quietly, step by step, as we show up for ourselves day after day. It grows when we choose to try, even when we’re unsure of the outcome. Every time you take action despite self-doubt, you reinforce the belief that you’re capable. Confidence isn’t about having all the answers — it’s about trusting that you can figure it out along the way.

The key to making things happen isn’t waiting for the perfect moment; it’s starting with what you have, where you are. Big goals can feel overwhelming when viewed all at once, but momentum builds through small, consistent action. Whether you’re working toward a personal milestone or a professional dream, progress comes from showing up — not perfectly, but persistently. Action creates clarity, and over time, those steps forward add up to something real.

You don’t need to be fearless to reach your goals, you just need to be willing. Willing to try, willing to learn, and willing to believe that you’re capable of more than you know. The road may not always be smooth, but growth rarely is. What matters most is that you keep going, keep learning, and keep believing in the version of yourself you’re becoming.

Turn Intention Into Action

Confidence doesn’t always arrive with a bold entrance. Sometimes, it builds quietly, step by step, as we show up for ourselves day after day. It grows when we choose to try, even when we’re unsure of the outcome. Every time you take action despite self-doubt, you reinforce the belief that you’re capable. Confidence isn’t about having all the answers — it’s about trusting that you can figure it out along the way.

The key to making things happen isn’t waiting for the perfect moment; it’s starting with what you have, where you are. Big goals can feel overwhelming when viewed all at once, but momentum builds through small, consistent action. Whether you’re working toward a personal milestone or a professional dream, progress comes from showing up — not perfectly, but persistently. Action creates clarity, and over time, those steps forward add up to something real.

You don’t need to be fearless to reach your goals, you just need to be willing. Willing to try, willing to learn, and willing to believe that you’re capable of more than you know. The road may not always be smooth, but growth rarely is. What matters most is that you keep going, keep learning, and keep believing in the version of yourself you’re becoming.

Make Room for Growth

Confidence doesn’t always arrive with a bold entrance. Sometimes, it builds quietly, step by step, as we show up for ourselves day after day. It grows when we choose to try, even when we’re unsure of the outcome. Every time you take action despite self-doubt, you reinforce the belief that you’re capable. Confidence isn’t about having all the answers — it’s about trusting that you can figure it out along the way.

The key to making things happen isn’t waiting for the perfect moment; it’s starting with what you have, where you are. Big goals can feel overwhelming when viewed all at once, but momentum builds through small, consistent action. Whether you’re working toward a personal milestone or a professional dream, progress comes from showing up — not perfectly, but persistently. Action creates clarity, and over time, those steps forward add up to something real.

You don’t need to be fearless to reach your goals, you just need to be willing. Willing to try, willing to learn, and willing to believe that you’re capable of more than you know. The road may not always be smooth, but growth rarely is. What matters most is that you keep going, keep learning, and keep believing in the version of yourself you’re becoming.