I remember…or my early years in baseball

In some ways I’m perfectly suited to tell this story, being the middle child I'm right between my siblings. Almost exactly in the middle of the 5 years between them.   Actually, as I understand it, Candace, my younger sister almost never was. She was an unexpected pregnancy. I always took this to mean that my parents felt they had attained perfection when they had me.  Why bother with a third child?  It never occurred to me that a few years of raising Tim and I would make anyone not want to have anymore kids.  Either way, Candace was unexpected, and having now had an unexpected child of my own, I know that there’s a huge and important difference between unexpected and unwanted.

I wish I could talk about all my memories of my earliest years, unfortunately my earliest memory comes from when I was about 5.  Even then I can’t be entirely sure if they are true memories or imbedded memories from stories I’ve heard or pictures I’ve seen.  I tend to remember those early days in snippets.  Flashes of moments that jump from scene to scene.  Almost always in random order, and usually leaving me asking the question, “what was significant about that moment that made it stick in my brain?”  Why, for example, do I remember lining up, taking turns to jump in and out of a kiddie pool or why, out of all the other possible options, do I remember stacking wood in the garage?

Then I’ll see my mom, dressed up like an umpire, jokingly officiating our street baseball game and I can appreciate that one.  My mom has a great sense of humour and didn’t mind looking a little foolish to make us laugh.  Then my mind flips to the next scene that focuses on those street baseball games.  We played them with a tennis ball on our cul-de-sac, the bases made up of the unchanging landmarks on our street.  The manhole that was and will always be home plate.  The light pole that was next to the RX7 (that we were unfairly accused of scratching) that was 1^st base.  The big green electrical box was third, and if you made it that far, you could sit on it and rest, but it was usually so hot from the sun that you would burn your legs if you tried.  I don’t remember what 2^nd base was, except that it was far longer of a run than it should have been.  I remember the day that I first crushed a tennis ball over the house across the street, signifying a home run.  It was also the house that we fired bottle rockets from at passing cars until we had the misfortune to fire at my dad’s car, and that put an end to that in a hurry.

I remember when the fading light made it too hard to see, and we switched to hide and go seek in the dark…Epic hide and seek, where we’d dress in black and hide in plain sight, lying still in the shadows while the person who was “it” would walk right by you.  The real object of the game was to wait until just the right moment and say “HEY!” and scare the person half to death. I remember discovering that the quickest way to count to a hundred was to count to 10, ten times… one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten… one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten… one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten…which would lead other kids to accuse you of cheating.

I remember getting older and being too old for that sort of thing, even though I didn’t REALLY feel too old for it and secretly wished that I wasn’t.

I remember riding my big wheel around that same cul-de-sac while the neighbours all had a corn roast.  I also remember that one of the saddest days of my life was when I outgrew my big wheel. 

I remember our backyard, possibly the greatest tobogganing hill that a young boy could hope for, working in the snow until it was practically ice and then jumping six of my closest friends.

That was winter.  In summer, the backyard stretched into the acres of unoccupied forest that was the realm of the tree fort wars, which for the most part involved walking through the woods and finding “swords” that were better than the ones we were carrying. 

I’ve also carried some residual guilt from the time we crossed the river, which for years had been a natural boundary, but a fallen tree from a recent storm had opened up new lands to conquer.  That day, or one shortly after was the day of the great fish massacre.  We discovered a spawning stream.  There were five of us, and hundreds of them, but we didn’t lose a single man that day.  We did, however, invent “fish baseball.  I think the guilt has less to do with countless dead fish, and more to do with the fact that when we got back home and I told my mom about it, she made Tim and his friends make the long walk back to go and bury the fish, while I stayed home because I was too young to go back out.

I remember the sting of loneliness and crying in the basement because Tim wouldn’t let me play with him and his friends because I was too young…I don’t think these two experiences were related though.

I remember sneaking out after midnight with Tim and his friend…and getting caught.  I remember sneaking out after midnight and not getting caught.  I also remember sneaking out after midnight and getting chased by a maniac and realizing why mom and dad didn’t want us out so late.

As I ramble on, I realize that most of these memories involve Tim, that’s probably because I always looked up to him…literally and figuratively.  Perhaps like most little brothers I wanted him to see me as worthy.  I remember what it felt like the time, after hitting our softball team’s winning home run, Tim led the charge to have the team lift me up on their shoulders.  Something that had never happened before or since.

I have memories of Candace of course.  Back to street baseball, I remember running inside to tattle that Candace had said the “F” word.  I remember feeling guilty as she had her mouth washed out with soap…especially because years before, Tim and I had taught her that word by repeatedly telling her to say the word “truck,” knowing that her speech impediment made her replace the “tr” with an “F”.

I remember sneaking out of the house and playing “nicky-nicky nine doors.”  She wasn’t fast enough to get away, but I remember being so impressed with my little sister as she lied to the owner of the house, telling him that she had been baby-sitting a special needs boy that liked to ring people’s doorbells, and had run away.  She then proceeded to call out the imaginary boys name as she walked away.  I sat in the shadows in awe, knowing that I could have never pulled it off. 

I remember her laughing.  A full-on belly laugh.  Laughing so hard that she couldn’t breathe, as we played with marbles on the kitchen floor. 

I remember the year that all three of us played on the same baseball team.  And although we never managed to win the championship, we all loved playing together. 

I’m surprised about how many of these memories are about baseball, but I think it makes sense.  We would play, dad would coach and teach us how to coach, and mom would cheer us on from the stands, wrapped in a sleeping bag to keep warm.  When I think of that scene, I feel a sense of contentment.  A feeling of joy, like in that moment, everything was right in the world. 

I remember a few years ago, telling my father-in-law that I would love to raise my family in the town that I grew up in, because I couldn’t imagine anyone having a happier childhood than I had.