I’ve never been a sports fan. As a kid, I was lean, athletic, and I loved running around with friends and tossing the baseball or the frisbee with my uncle, Alan, but organized sports never held my interest. In high school, I ran cross country and track and I cheered along with my friends at football and basketball games, mainly because I knew the players. In college, while my roommates watched the game, I played guitar or listened to CDs, constantly jarred by the eruptions of gang noise bursting from the other room.
When my wife, AJ, first visited my apartment during our early dating days, I carefully displayed my interests: Some fancy cookbooks; a nice stereo with the Sparks album Kimono My House on the turntable. I don’t remember the specific comment AJ made on her first quick tour of my solo one-bedroom, but it was something brief and direct, like, “No sports?”
“No sports,” I replied, trying not to sound too proud. Nowhere in my apartment would my future wife see a poster of a person with a ball, or a picture of me with my college friends at the homecoming game. This turned out to be a plus for AJ, who later told me that her last boyfriend had his friends over every Sunday to watch football. For several hours, they’d yell, moan, high five, and sometimes jump out of their seats depending upon what happened on their screen. AJ, who wasn’t interested, coped by putting her amazing cooking skills to work and providing the group with a steady stream of cheesy nachos.
“I love nachos,” I replied, “just not sports.”
During the pandemic, we spent summer 2020 in Los Angeles and Palm Springs. AJ, who recently pivoted from publishing to financial planning, lamented not playing golf like many in her field. So, I got her golf lessons for her birthday. What started as a fun experiment became an obsession. AJ now has a goal to play golf 100 times this year, recently played at St. Andrews in Scotland, and often golfs around Brooklyn and Queens or practices at Chelsea Piers. She even has an Instagram dedicated to her golf adventures. Sometimes she’ll blast through the door and shout, “I made some new friends today!” Other times, she’ll lumber in with a bag of clubs weighing down her strong, slender frame, and complain about the terrible game she just played.
AJ brings the same intensity and commitment to golf that she brings to editing, podcasting, writing, cooking, financial planning, and the many other things she’s so great at, and I’m excited by how much she loves both playing and watching the game. The first time I heard a loud “Noooo!” I ran into the room, expecting to see a pile of blood-covered plates on the floor. Instead, I saw my wife’s neck extended toward the television, a bowl of popcorn in one hand and a can of Spindrift in the other, as she stared at a screen that I thought was paused. It wasn’t, the golfer was apparently just thinking really hard.
Though it hasn’t become a group activity yet, I might soon find myself behind the kitchen counter placing a dollop of sour cream on a pile of cheese-covered chips. I’ll carefully balance the plates as I walk them to AJ and her crew, acutely aware that at any second, a bad putt could cause the room to explode, and me to drop the nachos.
I’m thrilled to have a feature in Forbes about my new podcast, Identified, where the writer and I discussed music, work, and why I started a podcast about family.
This week’s guest on Identified is Lisa Lucas, who brought an amazing comfort and ease to some difficult topics. We didn’t even get into the common element that brought us together in the first place: Jazz dads. To be continued.
Before our conversation for Identified, Geoff Rickly warned me that his family story wasn’t especially exciting. Turns out that’s not true at all. We get into his ancestor who fought in the Civil war, another who burned down a town, and of course, Geoff’s band, Thursday. *This episode includes my first ever documented drummer joke.
Eleven episodes of Identified are live now. Episode one is with Karen Ayers, a living descendant of the man who enslaved my paternal ancestors. After that, it’s a rapidly growing list of musicians, comedians, authors and friends talking about family. A new episode will drop every Thursday for the foreseeable future. Identified is available on all major podcast platforms, 100% free and ad-free. You can watch short video clips on YouTube and Instagram.
I hope you’ll give Identified a listen and share it with others who might enjoy it.
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My memoir is called My Life in the Sunshine. You can order it here, or listen to the audiobook on Spotify.
I hope to see you somewhere soon. Upcoming events are always listed here.
Nabil Ayers / Brooklyn