THE FLEETING FOUR YEARS

I remember when you first started at Vets and the fields around the school were high with sorghum as they had been for decades along Military Highway. Across the street were the golf links with their thick green fairways as the club's owner had seemingly limitless water from the Rio Grande that ran along the course's southernmost perimeter.

Since you had followed in the footsteps of your step-brother, you had stroked a ball with plastic clubs from the time you could walk. From the number of youth tournaments you had won, I knew that you would have game after four years of high school competition, but you were stubborn in your insistence that you intended to play football.

And for four years you gave football your all, those brief moments of exultation well worth the concussions, the scarred eye brows, the pulled hamstrings and the knee and ankle injuries. You were a Marine ready to go over the top directly into the enemy's line of fire at the coach's command. There wasn't one encounter during your successful career that I wasn't sitting on the edge of my seat.

The sorghum fields are gone, replaced by subdivisions of brick homes. You are into your 19th year, which qualifies you as a man. You would literally be going over the top if you were an Ukrainian or Russian soldier.

Please don't join the military. I worried enough about you taking hit after hit; sometimes you barely staggered to your feet. Please don't put me through the anguish of worrying you might be killed or maimed. You are too handsome to have your body reduced to a pool of blood and pile of skin and bones.

You have made the right choice in going to Texas State. I hope you will be able to keep your eyes in their sockets surrounded by so many blond-hair cuties. (I know that our border beauties will always hold a special place in your heart.)

Major in classical guitar and Spanish. You will have two tangible skills that will bring you an intellectual satisfaction. And believe it or not, you will discover many open doors because your future employers will immediately recognize your depth of character.

I don't know anything about the future except for the inevitable, but I know about the past and I know that I will never see you again racing like a gazelle across the gridiron sward. How did your exciting exploits become such a fleeting memory in an existence that spins faster and faster every 24 hours? Reality is cruel: It teases you and then it crushes you.

You and your teammates who battled so valiantly together have now gone your separate ways. You will meet them by chance in a club or a convenience store and you will recall those innocent and joyful days when you were one. But those days are gone forever.

Forever!