Mari Infante, quarterback extraordinaire.
The first day of the new year dawned on our city with a promising omen: The sun popped out just as we began our walk, with the dog in tow, toward East Rock Park.
Other folks must have noticed the lack of the usual cloud cover, too. Pedestrians swarmed the sidewalks, and the park teemed with families, pooches and little people holding hands of parents and grandparents.
It seemed something of a metaphor. As we so often think of a new year as a new start, a new promise, the evidence on this Jan. 1 seemed to confirm that idea.
For a moment, anyway, crises around the world, the attack on American democracy, and personal vexations had dissipated into the gentle winter air.
Everyone that Suzanne, little Lucca and I saw wished us a happy new year, and we did the same. What’s more, the park denizens did this with a smile. That is, I saw flashes of actual teeth.
I thought of the article a few years ago in a Conde Nast magazine that listed New Haven as one of the ten unfriendliest cities in America. I wished the author of that piece would show up in the park so I could say, “Unfriendly city? Well, fella, I’m gonna knock your block off.”
While walking down to the wooden bridge that spans the Mill River, I thought I might write an essay about the day, but needed something more in order to nail the point. As almost always happens when I have that instinct, something magical occurred.
We were sitting on a bench when we saw a small group of women and a young boy playing football. It wasn’t a real game, just fooling around. But there was a lot of action, and a satisfying amount of giggling and screaming.
One of the women showed off a pretty strong arm, launching passes that, if not quite employing the same form as the old Tom Brady, were nevertheless impressive.
Another, on the receiving end of one of the throws, ran with the ball, and then, mocking pro football’s showboats, did her version of an end-zone dance.
Of course, I had to stick my reporter’s nose into this informal but joyous event, as it recalled my boyhood pickup games. And I figured this might be the prompt I was waiting for to write something.
The three women were in a buoyant mood. Not only had they acquitted themselves well on the field, but they were anticipating a possibly jubilant evening event.
They showed me the evidence, unzipping their coats to reveal sweatshirts that in bold print indicated they were fans of their alma mater’s football team, the University of Texas Longhorns, or simply ‘horns, as in the bloody chant in the grandstand, “Hook ‘em, horns!”
Mari Infante, the one with obvious quarterback skills, had gone so far as fly from Austin in order to join her fellow alums to watch the game against the University of Washington, in which much was on the line. The winner would qualify for the NCAA championship match next Monday night in Houston.
The two other women in the group, Erica Edwards and Deb Vargas, are Yale professors who nevertheless appear to retain their loyalties to the ‘horns as opposed to, say, the local Bulldogs, who recently shocked the football world, or at least the fanatics who were paying attention, with a victory over a squad in from Cambridge that will go unnamed here.
I understood their passion for the ‘horns. I suffer from similar inclinations, but in my case it is the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Guardians, as they play on land once owned by Connecticut. (As the baseball manager Casey Stengel often said, “You could look it up.”) I, then, am expert at rooting for teams that almost always almost win.
So, several hours later, I watched the first period of the game the women were watching, though in the comfort of my own home, so that I could go to bed and not have to endure it all.
This morning, my cellphone indicated that their hopes were dashed in dramatic fashion, in the last few seconds, 37 – 31, as the final pass from the Texas quarterback was not as artful as any tossed by Mari Infante, and fell incomplete out of the end zone. Thus, the eyes of Texas had been blackened. I felt sorry for the trio and, for a moment, considered the idea of not writing any of this.
But then I looked up the rules of football. And discovered that in almost every case, one team wins and one team loses. Besides, as I had learned on a day of promise, as 2024 dawned, the season of life goes on.
Conde Nast magazine was wrong. Maybe their reporter just rubbed people the wrong way.
Ive found that while New Haveners can be New Englanders at first, kind of stand-off-ish until you break through their reserve, that they respond well to other people being friendly and nice.
Especially if you say hello and start the conversation first.
Or in the park.
Or on the Green.
Or at a farmers market.
Or at a festival or concert.
Or after a major snow, ice, flood, wind damage storm.
Or on the beach.
Or at the grocery store.
Or anywhere else that you open yourself up to conversation.
My most favorite memory of the kindness of New Haveners is my mother had a habit of leaving her ceramic coffee mug (before we had invented travel mugs) on top of the car as she buckled all her kids into the car, to inevitably roll off and crash on the pavement as we turned a corner or came to a stoplight. One time we made it all the way from Westville to the Air Rights garage just before the highway entrance ramp at a red light, when a woman frantically gestured to my mother to stop and roll her window down. As soon as she did, the woman reached up to the roof and handed down my mothers coffee mug, and said, we mustnt forget our coffee cups. My mother thanked her profusely and then we were on our way, having been given the gift of consideration from a fellow New Havener.
My whole life growing up here has been filled with stories and experiences of how lovely and kind we can be to each other, if we just go out of our way to do so.
Random acts of kindness and friendliness are rewarded by others in this town.