This week for my giveaway, I just couldn’t stay away from the all-fall, Apple Brown Butter Bourbon Brioche (say that 5 times fast!) I mentioned last week.  I have made it several times now and I can say, humbly and all, that it is spectacular.  It definitely is my fall cup of tea, whether served warm, toasted, frenched, or just plain.

What made this week’s giveaway decidedly more raucous and youthful than a sedate stroll in the cool autumn air, however, was my delivery in the stands at the local high school water polo game.  I mentioned before that my nephew is playing water polo for the first time this year. and we went to our first match this week.  I carefully wrapped and packed my loaf up in a basket to take to the game.  My son eyed me suspiciously.   “Who are you giving it away to?”  I am sad to report my reply of, “We’ll see.” did not comfort him at all.  He is definitely approaching (arrived!) teenage embarrassment for all things mom, and probably especially my penchant for approaching strangers and friends with loaves of baked bread.  I sort of wonder what he will think about it when he is grown, if he will ever see it as I mean it to be, or if it will simply remain one of the little idiosyncrasies of “mom.”  Nevertheless, I carry on because as much as I love my son and his tender emotions, I have a mission.  Thou shalt love through bread!

At the game and in the stands I had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to an old friend and his family.  I hadn’t really spoken to him in months and months, so it was with pleasure and glee that I handed over a loaf of bread to him and his family and watched as his youngest dug right in.  And let me talk about my friend and his family.  This family consists of three outstanding children being raised by parents who don’t just care deeply for them, but also the community they belong to.  Volunteerism?  On steroids.  While each parent holds down a high-pressure, high-level job, they both take time to devote endless hours each week to coaching kids, believing firmly that participating in sports makes not just great athletes, but great humans.  They see the good it does, so do they just coach the teams their kids are on?  Nope, they coach teams their kids aren’t on.  As in, multiple teams per sport each year.

If anyone who knows me has ever heard me say, “there are only two things you can control, attitude and effort,” you now know where I learned it.  I am not quite sure if that is the family motto in their house, but I love its guiding principal–show up, work hard, and be positive.  And they are and they do, over and over.  They are out there doing the decidedly unglamorous work of organizing the games, the referees,  the volunteers, they are maintaining fields, maintaining relationships with these kids, and in the business of building better citizens.  They are investing their finite resource of time into children, teaching them many valuable lessons, and ultimately that people matter, that they matter.  In short, they are heroes to the kids they have coached and shaped for years.  Who could be a better role model for kids than that?  Three cheers for the coaches!