Catch

 

If you knew my father at all, you knew that he LOVED sports, specifically baseball, more specifically that seemingly forsaken team on Chicago's North side. While playing catch with my father as a child (a request he never denied me), dad would toss pop flys high into the air and yell out that a catch, which he would refer to as "a can of corn," would certainly guarantee a Cubs' win in the World Series that year. I would race forward, backward, sideways, eyes never diverting from that white, scuffed ball sailing high above the trees. And I will assure there were plenty of catches and shouts of "Cubs Win! Cubs Win! Holy Cow!" But of course, you know the rest of the story. 

A day after we buried my father, I crawled into a blanket and hid myself in my basement, closing my eyes, and hoping to erase, at least temporarily, any memory of the last several weeks, wishing that my dad was at home, comfortable in his favorite blue recliner, eyes fixated on a game at the Friendly Confines, emphatically stating, "It isn't over until the Fat Lady sings," rather than lying underneath the ground in a wood box across the river from me.  But I couldn't. So instead I did what was really more appropriate, more honoring to my father's memory (though he also really enjoyed a good nap). While the three other children slept, I grabbed my eldest son and got out the ball and glove for a game of catch. With each thump of the ball into the leather glove, tears began to quietly trickle down my face and I began to tell my son again the story of how when I was a little girl, Grandpa and I would play catch.