Team Aley! WOOO WOOO~!

We're starting a get healthy initiative at school and it involves forming teams and recording data, mostly around exercise. The four of us affectionately known to ourselves as the "Lunch Bunch" have rallied to the cause and chosen a name that honors our default team captain (I think he was just outnumbered during the vote we took when he went to the bathroom....) In honor of that I have created a Team Aley logo! Voila!

My lunch bunch is a special group of people. T. is the father of two adolescents, and a wizard at all things techy. He takes gnarled and discarded hunks of trees and crafts them into the most amazing and utilitarian things. P. is a person whose heart is strong and deeply loyal. She grew up in West Virginia as a Jew which must have been on some level a cultural roller coaster! And both aspects of her life enrich and define her gifts to others. M. is our "Cheerio" (cheerleader) coach and architect. With three grown kids: one still in college, one just into her first job, and one her husband and local High School coach, she is the quintessential mom. And there's me, of course, gay and single and silly and in love with all of them. I'd like to think that the feelings are myooch.

And that's the thing about friends. You can be what you want, you can share what you will, you can develop trust and understanding and even tender affections, but it never ever ceases to be a source of discovery, or increased trust, and of deepening personhood. Because alone we are pretty much useless. It is only in the context of others that we find our true definition.