I will begin right where I left off here, if you want to start at the beginning.
The third visit was a time when my father took me to a Minor League baseball game. I was about the right age but with the wrong person. He wanted to leave after a few innings and I wanted to stay and eat more popcorn and watch the game. I was 10 that summer and remember this very clearly also. We ended up staying for a bit longer and then leaving.
I went home with my very first “souvenir” baseball that they gave to all the kids that were there early (like we were). I was in my 3rd year of baseball by then and had this old, raggedy baseball glove that had been literally torn to shreds by the coaches dog, but he gave it me. That was my first glove. It was old and smelled like shoe leather with shoe laces strung where there once had been leather stitching.
I have more fond memories about that damned glove than I do of my father. The glove and I pretended together that we were stars in “the big leagues”. Every day after school, I would grab that glove and find someone to play catch with or just go out front of the house and play catch by myself, throwing the ball into air over and over again.
I once counted that I threw the ball in the air over 350 times! That was a big deal to me when I was ten. It is intriguing how certain things stay with me for so long. I felt like that glove was waiting for me to get home to play with it. Much like I bet my kids wait for me to get home today. They meet me at the door and run into my arms shouting Daddy’s home! Daddy’s home!
I didn’t have that as a kid. At ten, I was a latch key kid and my father never came home.
He also never watched any of my baseball games. I played baseball from the time I was seven until I was 22 and out of college. That is one hell of alot of games to miss and never watch your son play. That glove was, in a sense, more reliable than my father.
The glove was right there when ever I needed it; My father was not.
A few years passed and the fourth visit happened when I was twelve years old. Again, we went to pizza and we talked. At that time, it sure felt weird to try and catch up your father on the past few years of life that he missed.
Looking back at it, he had no clue about me. How could he? For the first twelve years of my life I probably spent less than 1 year with him in total, if that.
When we were talking I asked him for his phone number again and again he refused. Saying he didn’t have a phone. I was in gifted classes growing up and was beginning to feel confident enough to challenge adults on things I didn’t believe to be true or just didn’t understand fully. I challenged him on this to be sure. I remember saying, ” you mean to tell me that you don’t have a phone or a way that I can reach you at all??” He said, “no”. I pushed harder and said, “what if I want to see you in a couple of weeks or want you to watch my BMX races next weekend?” He said that, “he couldn’t do it.” He asked if I wanted to play pinball after that, so we played pinball for a long time. It must have been at least 30-45 mins, as back then it seemed like an eternity to me. When we were all out of quarters, we left and he dropped me off at home, with my mother asking him to come in, my father refusing and leaving.
That was the last time I spoke with my father. I found out when I was 28 that he had passed away 7 years earlier. My mom was the one “that broke the news”. When she told me, she expected me to be emotional and feel something. I didn’t really; except anger. I felt like he had left for good much like he left the first time, but I wasn’t looking out the window through the curtains. My mom found out where he was “layed to rest”. He was cremated and put into an earn at a cemetery a few hours away from where I was living at the time. I went to see it eventually when I had the gumption and confidence to “see” him for the last time. The earn was in a building with lots of windows and had nice benches. I was the only one in this place. I first cried and then screamed at the earn. I left an hour and a half later by saying, “you missed out on alot of fun” and “I forgive you”.
When driving home that day I stopped off at my mom’s house to check in and chat a bit. It was then I vowed that when I became a father, I would never lose touch with any of my children for as long as I lived. I cried with my mother that day.
More later. nighty night.
