Sunday, August 1, 2010

#9 Finding Home

When I turned 12 I got boobs and softball became a thing of the past. We used to play at Rossford Ballfield. I can still close my eyes and smell the dirt and grass, feel the sun baking down on me, hear the sound of wooden bats (no aluminum bats for us). I took a lot of crap for getting boobs from the other girls until finally I was too embarrassed to continue playing. I resented their size even then.

One of the things on my booby recovery list - yunno the things I was gonna do after I had them made sportier - was to run the bases at Rossford Park until I collapsed in exhaustion. Maybe it was the idea of turning back the clock like Superman circling the Earth by circling those bases. Maybe it was just about purging those memories of embarrassment and self-loathing. It WAS about reclaiming a piece of me that I lost in the dust there.

So I was at Rossford Park today - pulling the last remaining letterbox there. (These were all dedicated to the happy memories I have of growing up in this Wonderbread hell). I was surprised to find the park closed, bleachers and backstops gone and the infields beginning to be overgrown with grass. So despite the 87 degree heat, it seemed this was now or never. So I put my camera, compass, car keys, papers in the grass under the old oak that used to shade the players benches there on ballfield #3 and I began loping over to where home plate should be. No bases or plates in evidence. But that wasn't going to stop me. My body would remember some 40 years later exactly where I needed to sweep to make those turns.

I stood at the non-existant plate and tapped my imaginary bat onto my shoes - just like the big leaguers. I half-crouched into my batting stance and sat back and waited for my pitch. When it came I swang away. My imaginary bat making good solid contact with the ball that vibrated just the way I remembered all the way up my arms. Off I ran toward first. Still all too aware of the bounce. I chugged onto second, then third then home - again and again and again. When I finished the Superman thing hadn't worked. I was still here in this now. Sweat dripping down my face, staining my T-shirt and shorts. Chest heaving.

I'm not sure where it happened, but somewhere in one of those circles, I let down my guard and let myself remember the joy of running those bases. Not remember it thru my adult eyes which might belittle it, but feel it just the way I remembered feeling it then - all the way down to my bones. Light as a bird. Free. Unselfconscious.

As I was walking away I noticed a sizeable stone a couple feet in front of where home plate should be. Something about it called to me. When I flipped it over I noticed a familiar sheen of white under the red clay dust. I brushed off the dirt to see what it was. On the underside of that 'rock,' beneath that layer of dirt was indeed a something familiar to me. Home plate. I stamped my shoe into the dirt and left it there. I had found what I had come for on this day. I had claimed a part of myself. I had indeed found my way home.

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