My niece, Tyler Glynn turns 22 today. Here are some memory snippets in her honor.

It’s my wedding reception. It’s a muggy Texas outdoor evening, and I’m dancing with my new wife. A little moppet of a girl, just able to walk, is “dancing” in a flowery toddler dress nearby. Everyone, including the bride and groom are watching her instead of us.

Michele and I are babysitting Tyler and her brother for the weekend at our appartment in Temple Texas. We’ve gotten the kids hopped up on pizza and jellybeans, or whatever you give kids when they’re four and six years old and Tyler is so overtired she refuses to go to sleep. She’s crying and writhing and just so loud and overtired, that she can’t giver herself the one thing she needs: rest.  and I lay down with her and hug her tight to keep her from getting out of bed, as she yells in my good ear, until she’s exhausted and falls asleep.

Her dad and I are driving somewhere. She is six-ish, and riding in the backseat/car seat. She’s singing All Star by smash mouth, and it’s not even on the radio. She just keeps sing-chanting “Hey now…Rockstar….You’re an All-Star….Go Play…” on loop. 

It’s a family reunion, and she’s a young highschooler. Me Jim Jordan and she have been doing a track/cross-country work-out of sprints. We’re all tired, and she’s so small, and so fast-like a whippet. She came late to the reunion from the funeral of a high school classmate. She’s grieving. And she’s exhausted, and she’s still so tough and so fast as she runs her sprints and cries from a mixed cocktail of pains. 

It’s Christmas 2018, and the Glynn family is together and she’s home from college. She has received  a beer pong set up as a “gag gift“ and her dad and she have set it up and to play. She’s been talking like an innocent about how she’s played once or twice but doesn’t really know how and her dad’s talking about how he hasn’t played in as long as she’s been alive. It looks to be a wonderful father-daughter bonding experience. 

She arcs her first toss into the cup like Michael Jordan at his NBA finals best and smirks. He gives her this little squint-eye of surprise. How proud should a dad be that his kid has mad beer-pong skills? He squares up and sinks his first shot, like the old pro. They’ve both been bald-faced liars for the last few minutes! The game is on, and two beer-pong  sharks have just recognized a kindred spirit.  Like sees like, father sees daughter, killer sees killer. The smile they give each other is nothing compared to the smile I have watching them.