I need a day off from the world, so you’re getting something uselessly sentimental. It’s about life and despotism. Loss and resistance. It’s about why, despite everything, we keep fighting.
1. Baseball
I started taking my oldest son, Flash, to the ballpark when he was 1. We lived a couple miles from a Single-A team and so, when the weather was good and his nap schedule allowed, I’d throw him in the backpack and take him to a game. In those early years what he liked most about baseball was the permission to stomp and clap and make a lot of noise. We would show up somewhere around the third inning and then leave when he got bored.1 Sometimes we’d be there for an hour. Sometimes we’d be there for ten minutes.
When he was 4, we stayed to the end of a game for the first time. As the players left the field, Flash was confused. “Baseball is over?” he asked plaintively. I was confused, too, until I realized that from his perspective, baseball was like the ocean: It was always there. We’d show up for games and baseball was happening. We’d leave games and baseball was happening. It had never occurred to him that baseball was a finite event. A thing with a beginning and an end.
I think about that a lot these days.
When Flash was 5, we started playing catch in the front yard.