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During last July’s 5.8 earthquake, 3-year-old Bronwyn told her 1-year-old sister, “We’re going for a wiggle.” READ MORE
Fatherhood
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Three weeks after I bought my 4-year-old son a plastic batting tee, we went out to the back yard together and he knit his brows and threw me a thoughtful look, as if he had a rather serious business proposition to make. “Daddy,” he said. “Can you pitch it to me like in the game?” Well, I thought, what the heck. “OK,” I said. “You can try.” And I took about five steps back and fed him a little underhand toss. And he blasted the thing just past my left ear and off of our cinderblock wall. And then he laughed. At me, I think. By the next afternoon, just after he’d launched one clear over the wall and we’d had to ring the bell of our unsociable next-door neighbor, I began delivering overhand pitches from a full windup. (Disclosure and safety alert: In the interest of keeping us both alive and un-maimed, we were using a hard-foam bat and a hard-foam ball.) Before each pitch, my son would set himself up in his best Vladi Guerrero stance, and stare me down, and, time after time, no matter how errant my throw, he’d make contact. “Nice and smooth,” I’d say, pretending that I was actually coaching and therefore was in some way responsible for his nice, smooth swing. The other night I got a call from my old friend Joe, whose son recently had his first birthday. Joe told me that his boy always wants mom dad is sort of a pinch hitter, or maybe a middle reliever. I told him to wait a couple years, till the kid starts swinging a bat. Dad’s day, I told him, would come. Then I started bragging about that ball my boy hit into the neighbors’ inflatable porta-pool. What I didn’t tell Joe, but probably ought to have told him, was that the most gratifying moments are those when my son swings and misses and stoically sets himself up for the next swing. I was a temperamental athlete as a kid; unraveling and dissipating the anger was the biggest challenge of my childhood. My son’s workmanlike approach, his pleasure in the process, gives me hope that he won’t have to fight the same battles. I suppose I’ll have to wait a few years to find out. In the meantime, I’ll keep driving home from work oddly excited excited like a kid at the prospect of opening the door and having my boy run to me, bat already in hand and a question already on his lips: “Daddy, can you play baseball with me?” You bet I can. I’ve been waiting all my life. Greg Blake Miller writes from Las Vegas. |
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