relationships |

I love Opening Day. …It’s just a special day in our American culture. It’s weaved into the fabric of what we are, and I think it’s a great day. – Padres manager Bud Black

I’m not a poet so maybe I never understood TS Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland, when he says that April is the cruelest month. It has always been one of the liveliest months for me.

Yesterday was Opening Day in San Francisco. San Francisco is not a sports crazy town and I didn’t grow up in a family where baseball and professional sports were considered anything but one of the many choices of entertainment. That said, I cherished those days when I got to go see a baseball game, a football game, etc. Moreso, I really enjoyed sharing the time and history with those I love. I remember the many games I saw at Candlestick Park with my dad (mostly football games during the 49er dynasty). In fact I remember having to look through binoculars to see everything and that is how my dad noticed I needed glasses.

They say Football is America’s Passion and Baseball is America’s Pasttime. I don’t know if my dad knew that those moments he spent with me on those cold windy nights (at the ‘Stick) were making such an impression on me. They were times where I sat there with my dad and talked between pitches and your dad casually passed on his knowledge of baseball and life in general (along with the hot dog, peanuts, popcorn and watered down hot chocolate). I don’t remember what we talked about, but it was about laughing and cheering for a cause and just sitting next to each other shelling peanuts for 3 hours. Going to those games with my dad stopped in my teens as my dad spent more time working to pay for our education and to enjoy his time on the golf course. Maybe he didn’t enjoy it as a dad, or life did get that busy.

When I got older and San Francisco opened what is now called “AT&T Park” (formerly Pac Bell and SBC and more affectionately, “the Phone Booth”) , I bought a couple tickets and was able to share “Opening Day”. I think it was the 2 years I spent in Chicago where the nostalgia really started coming to me and made me not just love the game on the field but everything that surrounds it. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I had the chance to take my dad to Wrigley Field to watch the Cubs on a warm Summer day, share in a Giants victory, and help the Cubs fans drown their sorrow at Murphy’s Bleachers in a plastic cup of Old Style before showing my dad some of the better watering holes and blues clubs that Chicago had to offer. Although by this time I was well into my 20s, it was the first time I felt like I was able to relate to my dad on an adult to adult relationship. I was well free of his financial backing, we talked about my pending marriage, my future, our family, and of course baseball. It was the beginning of a new course in our relationship , the adult-adult rather than the parent-child relationship, and from there I knew that baseball was more than just a game for me.

I have to give credit to the minister who did my pre-marital testing with the recommendations for the adult-adult relationship suggestion. He was very adamant that my wife start establishing that relationship with her parents as he could see that it would be a harder struggle for them to “let go”. Truth is, that it is harder to gain that respect of a parent. 15 years later, my wife still goes through that struggle. Ironically, yesterday my wife was handed a book by a family friend who heard about my wife’s illness. It is amazing how the “sisterhood” finds each other. The book is called “The Middle Place”. more appropriately it talks about the sandwich generation we are in where we are now adults looking after our sick parents, our children and ourselves and the author comes to realize she is no longer her dad’s little girl as she deals with her diagnosis of breast cancer. My wife read the cover and said she wasn’t sure if she could read it and I offered to read it for her, but told her it is something she will have to read because she needs this example. Another example of an adult-adult relationship – and defintiely very relevant. I know my wife doesn’t want to listen to me about this subject so I’ll sit tight.

Back to the subject of Opening Day, since the park had opened in 2000 I have been able to share the festivities with some of the more important people in my life on a one-on one basis (My dad, my mom, my brother, my wife, my best friend, my daughter, and my son). There is nothing like it. The pomp and circumstance, the hopes, the memories, the patriotism can be quite overwhelming. So on this Opening Day, it was a little different as I missed it for the first time in 9 years, as I listened in my office. My office though is located only blocks from the ballpark so at lunch I wandered over, grabbed a hot dog and a soda and watched through the “Archways” in right field. A great feature of the park is that for FREE you can watch the game from behind the righfielder. It is the best way to catch a Big League Opening Day in this economy. I stared across the way between innings to where I shared so many memories with my dad and others I’ve attended games with. Its not just the Opening Days but the hundreds of other games and conversations.

The walk back to my office was one of solitude. I had gotten my fill (yes the Giants won), but more importantly I had taken the people I cared for ( not physically) to the game with me and I shared those conversations again. It hadn’t been my intention to reminisce, but it just happened in the moment. Perhaps it was the text I got on the way to the game from my mom about her friend, “Mrs. E”, who had passed. “Mrs. E” had her own connection to me with baseball. Back in high school she picked me, this gawky geeky kid to entertain her granddaughter who was visiting from Kansas. She told me not to do anything “romantic” and that the girl’s dad was the police chief in their small town. Well 9 innings later we were dating and I was scared sh–less about the midwestern Sheriff who was going to kill me for corrupting his daughter. Truth be told I think she corrupted me but I can’t remember. What I do remember though is telling her about the art of hitting a baseball and showing her the smooth swing of Will Clark as she grabbed and held my hand. Amazingly she got what I was saying, or at least she pretended to. From there I knew I had to marry a girl who could hang with me at a baseball game.

Yes baseball and life have a fabric that is woven tightly in the American hearts of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and friends. I grew up on baseball and baseball grew up in me. While a full-blown adult, I can still go to the game like a kid and imagine I’m there with my dad or sit with my son next to me and my daughter on my lap and teach them about how to appreciate the game of baseball (because it is about appreciating life as well).

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. ~Winston Churchill

As most runners know, there are times when you hit the proverbial “wall”. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter whether you are running one fast mile or 5 long ones, the wall is always there. Your body aches and screams for you to stop but it is your mind that powers you on.

In a way I have hit that wall in caring for my wife. That tough edge has been hard to keep up lately. I’m not giving up on her though. In fact her strength is coming back and I’ve been able to let my guard down a bit and that has allowed me to move on a little bit. i think she is showing me that strength again to let me know that I can go on too. She has now started going on and doing her own research online. It has relieved me from having to read some of the more tragic or difficult stories online. I used to go on Breastcancer.org to find answers but lately she has found a few good friends with the same physicians and they have encouraged her, helped her to mentally get stronger to face her fears, and she is spending more time talking to other women online.

She still is fragile though. I just got back from being away four days in Las Vegas at a convention. It was very difficult to be away from her and to leave her with no back-up. Our nightly calls were more about wondering if she was okay. It was also about telling my 9-year old son to watch out and take care of his mom. I’m hoping that I don’t scare him, but I see great maturity in him. I always have see it since he was little baby. He just had this “old sage soul” look about him. At the same time he still has the other issues that little boys have, not cleaning up, not lifting the toilet seat, and not slowing down around the house. All in all he’s a good kid though and I trust him immensely. My favorite moment (you’ll see the relevance below) is when he was 7 and as an advanced reader had picked up an encyclopedia to look up the word embryo, a word he had heard on Animal Planet. The next thing you know he is telling me that apes and humans are very simliar and that men have sperm and women have eggs, but they don’t lay them like chickens. My daughter (5 at the time) stood behind her brother with her arms crossed and looking at me as if to say, “Hey, what’s the big idea?” well let’s just say I don’t think I’ll ever have to have the bird and the bees talk with my chilldren ever. Hopefully that is a fatherly chore that I won’t miss.

It has been 5 weeks now since my wife’s latest surgery and I have had a hard time honestly looking at her scars and even at her chest. Tonight she wanted to start documenting and had me take a few photos of her reconstruction. I was a little nervous. It was the first chance for me to take a look. It is hard for me to look at my beautiful wife with her scars and say that they look great only because I know she is able to sense any hesitation or trepidation in my voice. It is still early and even she knows they aren’t quite ready to be looked at. She is going to need to get some revisions as the original scars haven’t healed straight. She will have a follow up appointment on March 23. It should be an hour procedure.

The hard part was that today the doctor called to make the appointment and our 9 year old son listened in on the other line when my wife was talking. He later told my wife that he had listened. He is really worried that his mother is going to have a third surgery and asked if she was going to be okay. Our daughter caught on and told us that she thought we got rid of “mommy’s lump”. We told them that just like we need to go to the doctor every year that mommy needs to go every month and that she was lucky that her doctors could spend so much time with her. Listening to her talk to the children I realized she is getting stronger. She doesn’t want them to worry. She is even telling me she will just need local anaesthesia for the final surgery. I would prefer general if it were me but she is game. She told me she knows she can “handle it” . I told her that I didn’t think it would be a good idea but she’s the strong one when it comes to blood and guts and told me I was getting soft and where was the guy who stripped her drains 4 months ago? We had a good chuckle.

All this means to me is that my wife is almost fully back and I couldn’t be happier. She’s taught me a lot about myself and our relationship over the past several months. It has been painful and although there are times we wanted to give up, but somehow we’ve built the strength from each other and kept moving and pushed through that wall. The aches and pains are still there but the goal line or finish line is still out there on the horizon.

Life goes on and we’re traveling down the road together. We’re helping each other out and making sure the other doesn’t give up and that we don’t give up on each other.

Tag Archives: relationships

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