On football, art and the human performance of community

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Pee wee football season just ended here in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Anthony, or as we moms and dads sometimes call it: Husky Nation.

This year has been a tough one for us. We had great seasons -- our two fourth-grade teams even battled each other in the North Suburban Super Bowl -- but a week later, one of our fourth-grade football coaches, Coach Mark, died suddenly.

He wasn't just a coach. (Pee wee football coaches never are.) He was also dad to Troy, a fast 9-year-old quarterback with a huge smile. Less than 24 hours after his dad's death, Troy was at the end-of-season football banquet, surrounded by his coaches and teammates and their families. His fellow Huskies had somehow managed to all sign their names on a football they gave him, and then they hugged him in a crush of blue and white.

I'm not just a football mom. I'm also an artist, and — as a student of Taekwondo — an athlete (though I use the term loosely, lest I accidentally equate myself with the great Adrian Peterson). At times like these, during the loss of Coach Mark and heated arguments on new stadium funding, I just don't know where to point my values stick. I wish I could believe some hippie dippie metaphor about artists and athletes and parents all cavorting under a beautiful rainbow called "human performance," some kind of "bodies-in-motion" catch-all analogy. But I'm not naive. I know tax dollars only go so far, kids and art are expensive, and football is big business.

Still, I've never witnessed an outpouring of community love for child like that which was given to Troy by his Husky Nation. It reminded me very little of a football game, where someone is always defeated, and even less of a rock show or a gallery opening, where someone is often denied access. Instead, it reminded me of a friend's wedding I went to once. When the officiant asked, "Who here will help care for the souls of these people?" we all pushed our hands toward the couple and said, "We do."

That's not football or art. That's a group of individuals working for a common goal. That's a team.

Should we or shouldn't we do whatever it takes to keep the Vikings in Minnesota? I don't know. My oldest son, the nose-guard-slash-piano-composer, says, "The Vikings are the second-worst-valued team in the NFL." He can see Zygi Wilf's point as a businessman. My youngest son, the running-back-slash-comedic-actor, quickly tosses our artists' Legacy money to Zygi, crying, "Of course we should! It's our team!"

He doesn't see a system in which his stepdad, a creative writing professor at the state university where the Vikings hold training camp, earns one-14th the salary of, say, Vikings cornerback Chris Cook. He doesn't see that with Cook's arrest for domestic assault, the Vikings are now the most-arrested team in the NFL.

What he sees is his Husky Nation, buried deep in Vikings territory. He sees his friends and their parents taking care of each other. He sees his team.

And I see it too. Husky Nation is my football and parenting team. And as a body in motion, I stand behind the benefits and thrills of human performance. And yet I remain, always, an artist, which, if I may get hippie dippie on you, is another kind of human performance, with its own community gratefully subsidized by the fine people of Minnesota.

I am proud to say that none of these activities has resulted in my arrest.

And if I am to be a good teammate in all of my communities, then I suppose there is a general course of action for me around this stadium thing: Make some art about it, which is what I do; be healthy in my mind, body and spirit, which is what all athletes should do (and shame to those who don't); and pledge to care for our collective Minnesota soul, which I hope all of us will do.

My youngest son and I went to Coach Mark's visitation. Most of Husky Nation was there, as was Coach Mark's very still body, in its casket, wearing a Vikings jersey with Adrian Peterson's number on it. While Husky Nation's adults spoke kind words to Coach Mark's widow and each other, our children went out to the parking lot and played football.