It's been 12 days since my Green Bay Packers (I can authoritively say "my" because I am a Packers Shareholder) won Super Bowl XLV in North Texas and every time I look at one of the 176 pictures I took, my ticket preserved forever with a 4x6 snapshot of my family at Cowboys Stadium in a frame with green and gold matting, or the pin that came with my ticket lanyard which states "I WAS THERE", like Tim Layden's tribute piece in Sports Illustrated reads, I too believe that Aaron Rodger's 26 yard pass traveled a far greater distance.
For me and my family, it traveled back to the early 1980s with a picture of my parents in the parking lot at Lambeau Field, my mother sporting a number 10 Lynn Dickey jersey (which hung in her closet for decades) and a green and gold cowboy hat. It traveled to a pre-season game I watched alone in the old Foxboro Stadium when the Packers played the Patriots my senior year of college in Boston, MA and none of my college friends would go with me. It traveled back to December 20, 2009 in Heinz Field where my family watched Ben Roethlisberger march down the field in under two minutes and steal a snowy, road victory certain to be ours. That pass traveled over my Wisconsin family's history of Packers wins and losses, glory and heartbreak, 60 degree games in December (against the Bears) and minus 4 degree games (against the Lions), surprise at receiving Packers stock for Christmas, and elation with the Super Bowl XXXI victory.
Two years ago when Green Bay lost the NFC Championship to the New York Giants, my father off-handedly commented, "If they had won, we would have gone to the game." Within minutes of the end of the Chicago Bears game on January 23, 2011 (my parent's 40th wedding anniversary) my sister and I simultaneously phoned home and our dad made good on his off-hand comment: we were going to Super Bowl XLV. Went came, we saw, we won and we brought the Lombardi trophy home.
That 26 yard pass covered a lot of ground, a lot of time, a lot of memories, and a lot of love: within a family and it's hometown team.
