This is my first Father’s Day without my own father who passed away last August at 90. I think of him everyday. While I can’t call him, it is not hard for me to remember him. I see him hitting a home run in a company picnic softball game when I was a little boy. He ran around the bases as fast I’d ever seen him run as the outfielders chased after the ball and tried to relay it home before he crossed the plate to his side’s cheers. I see and a thousand other moments as clearly as I see him drinking a cool glass of water in his bed in the memory care place where he spent the last two months of his life, and where he sat with my daughter looking through a book of old pictures of his youth.
This morning my daughter asked me what I wanted to do today for Father’s Day, and I said I wanted to hit softballs, shoot some hoop and go the grocery store to get food for dinner. “As you wish,” she said, using a line from The Princess Bride I have often said to her over the years in answer to her requests.
We went to a school field near our house where the fence is only 180 feet from home plate. She hit first, setting the softballs up on a tee and then driving them out to me in center field, where I managed to catch a few that came near me. My days of running and diving after balls are no more. When it was my turn to hit, I drove the seventh ball deep over the fence. I flipped my bat in the air and said I was done. She hit another couple of buckets then, crashing a few rockets off the fence. Next time we hit I will bring a net and pitch to her. It’s too dangerous for me without one. I don’t have the reflexes to duck out of the way of hard liners she sometimes hits right back at me.
After softball we drove to a park that had a basketball court and shot some baskets. She didn’t play spring softball this year to focus on basketball. Her high school team, which she co-captains, has won the state championship three years in a row, each year moving up a division.
We played a game called around the world, where you shoot from different places on the court starting with short shots and ending with three point shots. If you miss, you get a chance for another shot if you want, but if you miss that one, you have to go back to the beginning, which happened to me several times. She beat me easily, swishing her last shots from the right corner, then the top of the key, then the left corner. No contest.
We shot for a bit more, ending when I swished one from beyond the three-point line. “With that one, I’m done,” I said.
Last, we went to Stew Leonard’s, which is a big grocery store on the turnpike known for its meats, seafood, baked goods and fresh fruits and vegetables. We bought a package of steak burgers there, along with hamburger buns, potato chips, shrimp and cannolis that we will have for Father’s Day dinner.
We had good conversation on our drive, talking about music, politics, friends and about old times. We went by Chucky E Cheese’s, my daughter remembered how there used to be a Radio Shack next to it when she was little. I would often pull into the parking lot and say I needed to get batteries at Radio Shack, and we’d walk by Chuck E. Cheese, and then as soon as I’d put my hand on the door to Radio Shack, I’d say, “Oh never mind, how about we go to Chucky E. Cheese,” where we’d share a pizza and play arcade games, winning tickets to get prizes like magic tricks, rubber snakes, and funny stickers.
On the way home I asked her if she knew how to use the iPhone app where you could tell what a plant is if you take a picture of it. I am growing raspberries in our front yard and there are these giant plants growing in the middle of the raspberry bushes and I can’t tell if they are raspberry bushes or an invasive weed. They look like they are coming out of the same roots as the raspberry vines that are bearing fruit, but there is no fruit on them yet and their leaves are a darker green. She googled how to do it and when we got home, she took a picture of the plant and confirmed it was a raspberry plant. That made me glad. Last year, my plants were small and the animals got the few berries they bore before I could get them, but this year the patch is huge and several of the plants have lots of immature berries growing, hundreds of them. I can’t wait for them to turn red and ripen.
My daughter and wife are in the kitchen now cooking the burgers and shrimp and laughing. I’m sitting in the bedroom writing this.
In a few minutes I am going to join them.
Here’s a picture my daughter texted me today of the two of us when she was young.
I have worked two jobs for many years, but am glad I always made time for my family, as my father always made time for us.
Happy Father’s Day.