“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” ― Kurt Vonnegut Sleepy eyes droop shut and the backseat melts into dream. We are in the car on the way to his baseball game and Charlie is toast. Done. Out like a light. The nervousness of that rises up in me like fast floodwater surging but I hit it with a bat made of sunshine and it fades back down. The possibilities that exist within the realm of all possibility when deciding if a 7-year-old ought to have a nap on the 40 minute ride to a ballgame, they’re just too many for me to deal with right now.
It’s funny you say Charlie won’t remember his hits in a couple of days. I only played one year of Pony League nearly 50 years ago and I only had 3 hits and I remember every single one of them: I also remember one of my most embarrassing moments ever, which occurred on a football field, and how my dad explained afterward, while I still had tears in my eyes, what went wrong and how the coaches should never have put me in a position to make such a big mistake. But you know when you’re 12 years old and a punt bounces off your ass and the other team recovers it for a touchdown, there’s gonna be some tears...and some new assignments on the punt team...just like your dad said there should be.
Beautiful. Americana. Small town life. Our lives. Day to day. Moment to moment. I still lament that life is not the Disney-fied Americana of Johnny Appleseed, rolling fields that stretch across a technicolor country from sea to shining sea, as were were told. Purple mountains majesty across the fruited plain. I still remember singing that every morning in kindergarten, which was a looooong time ago, brother. A legitimate lifetime ago. What the hell were “purple mountains majesty”? What the hell were “fruited plains”? They were America. Or at least the America they thought we should believe existed. And as a five year old that shit did exist. In my mind. In my endlessly wired heart. It was out there. They said it was. And one time, when I drove across Pennsylvania from Long Island to take my daughter to visit Carnegie Mellon, where she did not attend, I saw those rolling hills I remembered from some school book pages through at five or six. Rolling hills. Fruited plains. Maybe they all did exist. I just had never witnessed them. The American truth. The American lie. Who knows. They had to get those ideas from somewhere. Everything matters. I wrote a song about that once. Every decision we make, every choice, every right turn verse a left turn. Every time we choose to speak when we could just as easily keen our big traps shut. It all matters. Butterfly effect. And as I crossed over into the land of 60 I have become as sure as I am about anything that, in equal, measure, nothing matters. None of it. We’re born. We live. We die. We do tons of shit in between. And none of that shit, ultimately, effects the outcome; the inevitable. Perhaps the cause, but not the finality. What does remain are the moments, the ballgames, the drives, the anecdotes we pass along. The jokes. There is a joke my father — who enjoyed a good joke — told me one morning as we drove to the Cub Scouts’ fishing outing one day in the spring of 1969/70 that not only still makes me laugh out loud, but that my kids now know as well as their mother’s maiden name, and have passed along to their friends and, will likely, tell their own children; it’s a piece of family apocryphalia. “Mr. Rab-bit is here with the shit.” Lol! My son, my youngest, will be 25 in two months. He’s engaged and his hair is already thinning at a faster rate than mine did and we still have a catch whenever we can. We’ve been playing catch for twenty years. Along the side of the house before his mother and I divorced, and then at the high school, where we still throw the ball. I’ve never said “I can’t right now”, or “maybe later”. Why? I’ve joked that I’d have 10,000 catches and the one time I said “no” would be all he’d remember, but that’s not it. Do I enjoy it? Of course. But it’s more than that. We’re creating this legacy between us. We talk. Movies. Music. The Mets. Family. We build. We share. We live. This is all that matters. The moment. All that ever matters. The moment. It’s all we have. Or have ever had. You have now. You had then and you recall it and build upon it; mythologize it. And you hope to have the next moment, the next million moments, but you don’t know if some jackass on their phone or trying to avoid a pothole on the Long Island Expressway is going to cease all your future moments. But you have now. You have your son sleeping in the back seat. And a warm bottle of Diet Coke. And a bald eagle soaring overhead. And he may remember that batting slump, but his memory of it will never be as painful as your memory of it. “Oh man, when I was seven and playing little league I couldn’t hit for shit,” he’ll tell girlfriend some night as they sit in some burger palace on a fifth date. A self-deprecating smile on his face that will score him big points with his ladylove. For myself, and I think I’ve said this before, I wanted my kids to do well in their chosen extracurricular activities because I remembered how it felt not to. It wasn’t for me. It was for them. In their moment. Because I also knew that you do get over that shit. Because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter.
And with that I’d guess I’ve overstayed my welcome. Lol!
Yeah, so I'm a few weeks behind reading this. But I read it just now. I've got kids about the same age as yours - two girls, 8 and 10 - and this essay hits on a lot of the stuff that rumbles around when thinking of them, how to be a good parent, what will matter to them in the long run. Always striking when I recognize some half-baked notion from my head fully formed in someone else's writing - it's a good buzz. Oh, and the eagles. For whatever reason, I've been seeing a lot of them lately. One flying over Jersey Turnpike this spring, a few along the Hudson River too. Makes me feel like we're on the comeback.
It’s funny you say Charlie won’t remember his hits in a couple of days. I only played one year of Pony League nearly 50 years ago and I only had 3 hits and I remember every single one of them: I also remember one of my most embarrassing moments ever, which occurred on a football field, and how my dad explained afterward, while I still had tears in my eyes, what went wrong and how the coaches should never have put me in a position to make such a big mistake. But you know when you’re 12 years old and a punt bounces off your ass and the other team recovers it for a touchdown, there’s gonna be some tears...and some new assignments on the punt team...just like your dad said there should be.
Your kids are so lucky to have a father who shows his love the way you do. These essays are going to be like gold to them when they are older.
Beautiful. Americana. Small town life. Our lives. Day to day. Moment to moment. I still lament that life is not the Disney-fied Americana of Johnny Appleseed, rolling fields that stretch across a technicolor country from sea to shining sea, as were were told. Purple mountains majesty across the fruited plain. I still remember singing that every morning in kindergarten, which was a looooong time ago, brother. A legitimate lifetime ago. What the hell were “purple mountains majesty”? What the hell were “fruited plains”? They were America. Or at least the America they thought we should believe existed. And as a five year old that shit did exist. In my mind. In my endlessly wired heart. It was out there. They said it was. And one time, when I drove across Pennsylvania from Long Island to take my daughter to visit Carnegie Mellon, where she did not attend, I saw those rolling hills I remembered from some school book pages through at five or six. Rolling hills. Fruited plains. Maybe they all did exist. I just had never witnessed them. The American truth. The American lie. Who knows. They had to get those ideas from somewhere. Everything matters. I wrote a song about that once. Every decision we make, every choice, every right turn verse a left turn. Every time we choose to speak when we could just as easily keen our big traps shut. It all matters. Butterfly effect. And as I crossed over into the land of 60 I have become as sure as I am about anything that, in equal, measure, nothing matters. None of it. We’re born. We live. We die. We do tons of shit in between. And none of that shit, ultimately, effects the outcome; the inevitable. Perhaps the cause, but not the finality. What does remain are the moments, the ballgames, the drives, the anecdotes we pass along. The jokes. There is a joke my father — who enjoyed a good joke — told me one morning as we drove to the Cub Scouts’ fishing outing one day in the spring of 1969/70 that not only still makes me laugh out loud, but that my kids now know as well as their mother’s maiden name, and have passed along to their friends and, will likely, tell their own children; it’s a piece of family apocryphalia. “Mr. Rab-bit is here with the shit.” Lol! My son, my youngest, will be 25 in two months. He’s engaged and his hair is already thinning at a faster rate than mine did and we still have a catch whenever we can. We’ve been playing catch for twenty years. Along the side of the house before his mother and I divorced, and then at the high school, where we still throw the ball. I’ve never said “I can’t right now”, or “maybe later”. Why? I’ve joked that I’d have 10,000 catches and the one time I said “no” would be all he’d remember, but that’s not it. Do I enjoy it? Of course. But it’s more than that. We’re creating this legacy between us. We talk. Movies. Music. The Mets. Family. We build. We share. We live. This is all that matters. The moment. All that ever matters. The moment. It’s all we have. Or have ever had. You have now. You had then and you recall it and build upon it; mythologize it. And you hope to have the next moment, the next million moments, but you don’t know if some jackass on their phone or trying to avoid a pothole on the Long Island Expressway is going to cease all your future moments. But you have now. You have your son sleeping in the back seat. And a warm bottle of Diet Coke. And a bald eagle soaring overhead. And he may remember that batting slump, but his memory of it will never be as painful as your memory of it. “Oh man, when I was seven and playing little league I couldn’t hit for shit,” he’ll tell girlfriend some night as they sit in some burger palace on a fifth date. A self-deprecating smile on his face that will score him big points with his ladylove. For myself, and I think I’ve said this before, I wanted my kids to do well in their chosen extracurricular activities because I remembered how it felt not to. It wasn’t for me. It was for them. In their moment. Because I also knew that you do get over that shit. Because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter.
And with that I’d guess I’ve overstayed my welcome. Lol!
It's a magical, terrifying time. And you're gonna remember it always. And so is your boy.
This is a great read my friend. I thank you.
Yeah, so I'm a few weeks behind reading this. But I read it just now. I've got kids about the same age as yours - two girls, 8 and 10 - and this essay hits on a lot of the stuff that rumbles around when thinking of them, how to be a good parent, what will matter to them in the long run. Always striking when I recognize some half-baked notion from my head fully formed in someone else's writing - it's a good buzz. Oh, and the eagles. For whatever reason, I've been seeing a lot of them lately. One flying over Jersey Turnpike this spring, a few along the Hudson River too. Makes me feel like we're on the comeback.