Eight minutes
In my mother’s kitchen…
Lie the trappings of a single mom with two kids and not nearly enough time to utilize the kitchen as it was meant to be pre-divorce. She took the house while Glenn (dad) moved into a condo downtown with that tramp of a secretary. She used to cook. It used to be clean. She had a marble inlay for pastry, dough and biscuits, a Wolf range and an espresso machine. Now, she drinks instant coffee, the kids crack walnuts on the marble and the oven is a convenient storage place for more stuff she won’t have time to use. We help when we can but we think mom likes the controlled chaos that is her kitchen, spending as little time as possible in it while abusing the microwave for our meals. Our dogs get the floor, a cold hard tile able to break anything but plastic and perfect for licking. They nonchalantly perch just off the room waiting for the inevitable, knowing it’s only a matter of time before something falls, splashes or spills. Smart dogs.
Twelve minutes
The sound of the gate…
Echoed behind me as I left the garden. Its hinges barely hinged so it generally slapped easily against the chain link. It was a garden of rocks and weeds and junk and statues and driftwood, scrap metal and the random plastic animal living out the rest of its life peacefully in idle bliss. It had no order to it, no real life but served as a depository for his life, and the squeaky clang of the closing gate served as a timeless reminder that this area of his world was contained. Neatly within its boundaries, the gate kept most things from escaping and spreading down the sidewalk and into the street to overtake passersby and stalled cars. Because his garden was not growing anything, friends wondered why he called it that, but to him a garden was a metaphor for a peaceful place to just exist. There was a rickety metal chair he sat in under the seedless birdfeeder to smoke cigarettes (which he dumped in ever increasing abundance in Folgers cans littered around his chair) and think about empty spaces and the problem of hunger. His garden provided a respite from the dreariness of normalcy and as the gate sometimes swung open, that world, outside normal world would infiltrate his space and irritate him. His statues would sometimes appease him, all stoic and unflinching in even the direst of circumstances, but even they are starting to show the cracks of time and he wondered if anything was truly sacred.
Ten minutes
Things I’ll miss…
No matter how hard I try to anticipate the 90 mph fastball coming out of the mechanical pitching machine, I still can’t hit it. I see the ball fine as it goes down the ramp, into the clear chute, and onto the wheel and then WHAM---it’s by me and hitting the backstop. I foul off a few of them of course, but my appreciation for major leaguers (pitchers and hitters) has risen off the charts. Until you stand in against a known entity (the pitching machine) in a controlled environment (the batting cage) where you know when, where, and what kind of pitch is coming, and STILL can’t hit it, you have no idea how much talent it takes to be in the bigs. Imagine facing Tim Wakefield for six innings (knuckleballer), then flame throwing Carlos Zumaya of the Tigers who tops out at 101 mph, then CC Sabathia’s 88mph change up that snaps your wrists in two as you try to hold up. Then in the ninth, just try to put some wood on Mariano’s split fingered nastiness. Funny thing is, you might even get two of these guys in the same at bat! I’ll swing and miss at anything tossed to me if it’s thrown at a major league park, and I can stand in wearing spikes and an old school jersey.
