Team

An athlete can spot an athlete, and the day I met Lisa I knew that she was one. In fact, I knew she was a basketball player. She carried herself like a point guard. A leader, a pressure player, I inferred. So while she hardly touched a ball in the four years of college that followed, that initial impression persisted.

When I think of Lisa's college experience I remember someone who was fighting some demons, doing some real soul searching. That, and our silly antics and shenanigans.

By about Junior year she seemed to have pulled herself out of something. She returned to campus with a shaved head, a gesture of solidarity to a friend from camp.

Then Adam arrived. Here's where life seemed to get wonderfully, extraordinarily better. She was one of my first friends to wed. They were married in an intimate chapel on the cape, by Adam's own father. All around them, loved ones shed tears of joy.

Then Grace came. With the child came this very state.

So while we gathered to walk and run for Team Elizabeth, to raise money for cancer research in honor of Lisa and so many others, I've written here about her, not It.

As Lisa walked ahead of the enormous group of friends who had come together in her support, I realized that it's truly the gift of a point guard to instinctively move a team forward in the face of the unknown.