As another baseball season begins I am reminded to enjoy every moment. It will fly by and before you know it I will be right back where I was last year, crying over spilled sunflower seeds and missing home plate. ***
August 7, 2017
I’m homesick.
I miss my seeing my boy behind home plate, crossing home plate, throwing down to home plate.
I know some may find it ridiculous. I’m surprised myself. As I unpack from our trip this morning I am fighting tears as I take baseball uniforms to the laundry for the last time this year. I feel emotional putting away nail polish. Yes, nail polish. If your son is a catcher you know what I mean. I won’t paint his nails on his right hand anymore so the pitcher can read the sign easier. He’s worn out another pair of baseball cleats so those will go away, too, and soon I’ll stop cleaning sunflower seeds out of the lint trap in the dryer.
It isn’t the end of anything, but a season. Certainly not the end of baseball for him because he’ll play every chance he gets, but it is time for a break. He needs it, whether he wants it or not. It’s time for another sport and other activities, but there will be winter training and pick up games and whiffle ball. There is always baseball, in some form or another.
I’m not sad because he’s sad. He isn’t. I’m sad because for the last six months I was witness to his heart on his sleeve and in his glove. I saw joy on his face and a bounce in his step as he walked to the plate and every time he took the field or threw a pitch. My heart laughed when he and his pitcher, his buddy, put three up and three down with nasty change ups the coaches didn’t even know were coming because they let him call the inning on his own.
And I loved every second of it.
I loved it because he was at home on the field with his friends, his coaches, and his first love – baseball.
So today, I’m a little weepy and a little homesick and that’s ok.
Because they don’t call it home plate for nothing.
***
“You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”
Jim Bouton
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