Dear Los Angeles,<\/p>\n
We heard. We\u2019re so sorry. We\u2019ve been there \u2014 twice.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been reading your sentiments online. Half of you are mourning a maestro; the other half are muttering \u201cgood riddance.\u201d We never had your ambivalence. In Cleveland, we worship him.<\/p>\n
You had eight years and a title in a bubble. We had 11 years, a betrayal, a homecoming and a parade. I\u2019m not gloating. I\u2019m telling you the grief is survivable, and hope is damn near impossible to kill.<\/p>\n
I get it. You knew it was his MO to leave, but it still hurts. I know the stages: the resentment, the relief, the forgiveness \u2014 and the strange discovery that you don\u2019t find out what LeBron James meant to your city until he\u2019s gone. We burned jerseys in 2010. You\u2019ll probably just post on social media. Either way, it passes.<\/p>\n
Then, last weekend, came the viral photo: LeBron back in Akron with his old high school teammates \u2014 one of whom, Brandon Weems, now happens to work in the Cavaliers\u2019 front office. To you, that photo may have read as a jilting in progress. To us, it brought a familiar swell of hope. It\u2019s irrational to expect that maybe this time it will be different, and yet I do. I can\u2019t help myself.<\/p>\n
The poet Emily Dickinson wrote that hope is the thing with feathers, a small bird perched in the soul. Ours is 6-foot-9 and wears a size 15 shoe. I know there are more important things to worry about \u2014 democracy, the climate, your uncle\u2019s weak heart. And yet I\u2019m giddy to be distracted by the fact that LeBron has told the Lakers he won\u2019t be back, and that his agent, Rich Paul, another Clevelander, says Cleveland is in the running to become his new old home team.<\/p>\n
This would be LeBron\u2019s third stint with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and three is a magic number. Three is what you count to when you hold hands with your best friend and jump into icy water.<\/p>\n
My son Adam cautions me to temper my expectations: \u201cMom, figure that he\u2019ll go with the Warriors. Then you won\u2019t be disappointed if he doesn\u2019t come back to the Cavs.\u201d The only reason I got interested in LeBron in the first place is Adam. He was 14 in 2002 and talked me into the 45-minute drive to Akron to see a game he considered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Seventeen-year-old LeBron James was being described as a basketball phenom. \u201cMom, actual NBA players go to his games. Just to watch him play.\u201d This LeBron kid was \u201cgoing to be the biggest basketball deal in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
So we went. GPS was not on a screen in our car, and our flip phones weren\u2019t helpful, but we found our way to St. Vincent-St. Mary High School and watched LeBron lead his team to a 79-47 victory over the neighborhood high school team. The losing players, it seemed, could not have been more thrilled to be on a court with LeBron.<\/p>\n
Adam had to explain a lot about what was going on. He was more patient than I would have expected him to be, and some 24 years later, he\u2019s still my go-to source for explanations about the game and its players. But I caught the LeBron bug at that game (and the basketball bug along with it) and haven\u2019t lost it since.<\/p>\n
The teammates in that photo are the boys from that gym, grown now and still at his side. The man has a streak of loyalty \u2014 but only LeBron knows to whom it\u2019s owed and when it\u2019s the driving force behind his moves.<\/p>\n
While Adam might have a thing or two to teach me about basketball, I have something to teach him about hope. Los Angeles, you\u2019ll learn this too. Hope isn\u2019t something to suppress just because disappointment may be on the horizon. Hope is something to nurture and cherish. The dream of one more championship parade, on one of the dozen perfect-weather days Cleveland is allotted each year, lifts my spirits no matter how remote the possibility.<\/p>\n
Whether or not LeBron comes home, hope has already done its work. My ever-rational son, who cautioned me to brace for LeBron to choose the Warriors, texted me the other day: The insiders are calling Cleveland the team to beat.<\/p>\n
Adam and I are counting to three.<\/p>\n