Alone at the concrete picnic table, she drains the cup
of iced coffee she brought with her to the park. A gust of wind ruffles the
pages of her Bible while, pen in hand, she fights back against the unruly
breeze and writes in her journal.
She came to figure it out, she explains to the intrusive
black grackles who fly past. They couldn’t care less. Instead, their curious
squawks alert the others that she’s eaten all the donut herself—they’d have to
find scraps somewhere else.
“Figure it out.” Good luck, she thought. How
would she ever understand anything, she wondered? All the safe places where she’d
found refuge from prior heartaches had disappeared. Now what was she going to do? Across the park,
a steady “Crack!” interrupts her already fragmented concentration as a small
group of men gather for batting practice. Hand on her chin, she gazes off at
the steady line of fluorescent yellow softballs sailing past her peripheral
vision where each of them lands with a thud, the soft ground cushioning their
fall.
And she remembers.
What a painful word that one had become. “Remember.”
Remember how your heart skipped a beat the first time you watched him come
alive on a softball field, she muses? God, what an arm he had. If he threw it, it
had no choice but to reach the goal he had in mind. Crack of his bat, speed to
first base, round to home plate. Her teenage heart had melted watching his strong, young, athletic body compete at the sport they both loved. That’s when
she fell in love with him. Watching the quiet man on the field of her dreams
play ball.
Another “Crack!” brings her back to the present as one
man ends his turn and changes places with another. Their arrival
surprised her until she remembered she’d seen them here before. It was on those
other breezy mornings, she recalled, as the foggy memory of Sunday donuts eaten
at this same picnic table emerges in her mind’s eye. Side by side, they’d sat together
watching this same group of men practice their batting skills. She can’t help
it anymore. The tears come when they want to.
Weeping quietly, the pages of her two books flapping
in the obstinate breeze, she reaches for a Kleenex, her gaze falling to some
verses in the open Bible. “. . . you will be filled with sorrow, but know this.
Your sadness will turn into joy when you see me again!” And it’s echo—“You will
pass through a time of intense sorrow when I am taken from you, but you will
see me again!”
Sure, it was Jesus speaking, but God’s Spirit knows
how to speak all truth to wounded hearts. Hadn’t she heard it from his lips in
a dream just last week? “We’ll be together again.” Truth is truth.
A gust of wind blows her little pack of Kleenex to the ground, and she stands to retrieve it, the shape of her turquoise blue shirt moving beneath the covered shelter beside the makeshift ballfield. “Time to go,” she tells herself, gathering books and phone and purse.
Dropping her empty coffee cup into the trash, her sigh is lost in that of the spirited wind, and she walks across the asphalt to her truck. Lonely yearnings left behind, she steps up into the driver’s seat as the ball practice continues, unphased. Everything ends, she reminds herself, sooner or later. Beautiful love stories, and even softball practice. Non-plussed, two more grackles fly past her Tahoe, instincts focused on a distant snack. The sound of leather against hardwood punctuates the closing of her own door and she rolls up her window to shut out the wind as another softball soars across the wide expanse of green. Soon she’s out of earshot of the low voices emanating from the chatty friends playing ball.
“That was close,” the pitcher hollers. “Good thing
they left before that one ricocheted across their picnic table.”
“Yeah, good thing,” the catcher says.
“I’ve seen them here before, but it’s been a while.”
“Who?” the batter asks, his softball piling up with
dozens of others in the distance.
“The guy with the ballcap and the lady in the
turquoise shirt. They were sitting at that table a minute ago.”
With a quick glance at the empty shelter, the batter
nails another ball, sending it far into right field. “Good thing they left,” he agrees with a grunt, his energy focused on the connection between his bat and the ball. His
grounder lands hard, chasing away a hungry sparrow in the grass.
Waiting in her Tahoe at a stoplight, her phone whistles
suddenly. A text from their son in Kentucky.
“Today’s his first game,” it says in a joint message
to his mother and sister. A photo of a slender, blonde five-year-old fills her
screen. At that very moment, Iain McLeod, dressed in blue from his ballcap to the tip of his tennis shoes,
stands grinning at the camera in his miniature uniform, ready to take on t-ball
and make his grandfather proud. Staring at the photo, she remembers again. Another photo of another slender, towheaded boy, grinning at a long-ago camera from a ballfield.
What timing, she thinks, as the first tear rolls down
her face. Another sign from Rob. Maybe she’ll never figure anything out. But he lives on. She’ll see
him again. When the time is right. For now, she sees him in the face of her
little grandson playing his first game on the ballfield, as another McLeod steps
up to bat. Crack!
Timing. It’s everything.
