The Garden and The Goalpost
On Father’s Day weekend this year, we made a trip to Illinois to celebrate my husband’s parents both turning 80 years old.
As I snapped a cell phone photo of my father-in-law, Tom, standing next to a tomato and squash garden he planted this summer, I heard these words in my head: “The Garden and The Goalpost.”
Just beyond the garden, pictured behind Tom is a white metal soccer goal that he built in the mid-1970’s. I know the story behind that old friend and why it still stands today. More than four decades later, it is now captured in the full circle father-son moment of my cell phone photograph...and now within this blog.
My husband, Craig, and his older brother Bart were both playing in youth soccer leagues as young boys. Tom thought it would be a good idea to build a soccer goal in the side yard for them to practice their soccer skills, so he enlisted the help of a welder friend to construct the metal goal. They anchored it into the ground with concrete.
It became a regular pastime for the brothers to not only practice their soccer skills, but they also began kicking footballs over the crossbar rail of the goal. As the boys grew older, the balls sailed farther into nearby yards, often landing in one of the neighbor’s tomato plant gardens. The neighbor never complained, although Craig remembers times of retrieving footballs covered in squashed tomatoes.
Though the brothers were close, they were also competitive. One day when Craig was around 10 or 11 years old and Bart was 14-15ish, their usual game of kicking the ball over the goal suddenly came to a permanent halt. As Craig recalls, “Bart got mad because I was kicking the ball farther than him. He said he was done and we never did it again.” As Bart recounts the story, “I just got tired of being out-kicked [by my little brother].”
Bart grew up to pursue a vocation as a pharmacist, while Craig’s tomato-plant-squashing kicks led to a college football scholarship at Notre Dame and 17 years of kicking footballs in the NFL. Each time we return to Illinois to visit Craig’s parents, the “goalpost” in the yard welcomes him back home. Tom says he doesn’t have the heart to take it down, having so many fond memories of Craig’s football career and how it all started in the side yard.
It’s one of my favorite stories to hear Craig tell when people ask him how he started kicking footballs. I view it as a tangible example of how the love of a parent can shape the future of a child. Having 3 children of our own still in the raising, Craig and I never know how a certain thing we say or do to affirm their interests or show our support might stick with them in a significant way. I hope and pray that we will have the same kind of meaningful and lasting influence in their lives.
For over 40 years now, Tom has been mowing the grass around that old monument to Craig’s football career. Only recently has he taken an interest in planting the little vegetable garden that now grows next to it during summer months — an interest that was inspired, ironically, by Craig.
As I snapped the photo of Tom standing by his little garden, framed by the goal he once built for his boys during their childhood years, I realized what a full circle moment this Father’s Day picture is. In his retirement years since football, Craig has accomplished a range of new “goals” from learning to play the piano, to building furniture, to...you guessed it...planting a vegetable garden!
Since building our farmhouse home several years ago on a little piece of Tennessee country land, our family has been enjoying the “fruits” of Craig’s new gardening interest sparked by a neighbor friend. Nowadays when we visit our parents, we bring Craig’s delicious homemade pickles, tomatoes, squash, and other garden goodies.
Goodies that are so good, they have inspired Tom to grow his own garden. And he found just the perfect spot for it: right next to the goalpost he built so many years ago.
From father to son...from son to father. Love full circle, in the garden and the goalpost.
"He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers." - Malachi 4:6
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” - Proverbs 22:6 (KJV)
Click HERE for Craig’s NFL retirement video, featuring more father & son moments during the span of Craig’s football career.