Father’s
Day is today but is traditionally celebrated around Tuesday morning when one of
the kids says, “Hey, wait…wasn’t Father’s Day Sunday? Happy day, Dad! Hey, can
I borrow 20 dollars?”
Mom’s
Day gets the pub, which is right since moms do the heavy lifting. But we dads
have feelings (sort of) too. And memories. Usually we can’t take a lot of
credit for the memories; it’s just that Fate puts us and our kids in the same
place at the right time.
Most
of us dads are sort of family misfits, fretting over the next oil change or
dying shrub or promotion or mortgage payment. So just to be included in the
occasional family fun and then to actually recognize it while it’s happening is
a blessing that makes us the luckiest people on the planet.
My
friend Scooter took his son, Hadley, age 6, to his first big-league game a few
Saturdays ago. Wise dad. Put himself in position to make a play. Headed to
Arlington for a Texas Rangers-Boston Red Sox game.
“All Hadley has been talking
about for weeks is that he wanted to get ‘a real baseball’ from ‘a real
stadium.’” Scooter said. “We were in section 249 in right field, so I knew
Prince Fielder or David Ortiz would be about the only two in the game who get
one out there to us. But Hadley and I went to our seats while the rest of our
gang went to get food and when Hadley got to his seat, right at his feet was an
official Major League baseball. Some might tell you it was a batting practice home
run that no one found or picked up before we arrived. I would say it was gift
from God to thrill a 6-year-old boy's heart.”
(A metaphorical home run and
the game hadn’t even started. Thank you, baseball gods!)
They dined on mini-helmets
filled with ice cream. Nice.
“There was a group of folks
sitting in front of us from West Texas,” Scooter said. “Three of them -- Cami,
Dustin and Blake -- befriended Hadley over the course of the game. They chatted
with him, high-fived him, laughed with him. They bought him cotton candy and a
giant foam cowboy hat. When he went to give them a hug in the top of the ninth,
I thought Cami was going to cry. It all warmed my heart as his dad.”
My son Casey was 5 when we
went to his first game, in that same ballpark but a hard-to-believe 20 years ago.
It went into extra innings when a fading Casey said he would stay if they’d let
him bat. I think Eddie Murray won it for the Orioles with a hit in the 11th,
but I remember the most important part: Casey slept in the hotel bed while I
watched that part on TV. Casey slept a winner’s sleep. A post-mini-helmet
ice-cream sleep.
I have a photograph on my
wall right now of my son only a few years after that game; it’s of him and then-Shreveport
Captain Jason Grilli at Fair Grounds Field. Now the park is closed and Casey is
in Chicago waiting tables and acting/performing and Grilli is in Chicago when
the Pittsburgh Pirates he pitches for play the Cubs. Funny: in my photo, Grilli
has braces.
Things change. Photos and
memories don’t. My boy moved to Chicago in August and sometimes I miss him so
badly my chest hurts. I think that’s normal; parenting, after all, ain’t for
sissies. I’m happy for Grilli, who caught a dream, and for Casey and others
like him, who are chasing one. And I’m happy for the dreams these boys
fulfilled for dads just by being sons.
Every boy’s age is a good age,
but when boys are little, pre-car-keys-borrowing age, there lives a kind of
father-son magic that can never quite be recaptured. If it could, it wouldn’t
be so special. The Scooters of the world are finding that out. I hope they keep
showing up for as many memories as they can.
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