Third Base

I hated the snow, which fell on the small town of Barrie -- stupid Canada and its snow.  No wonder some Americans think we live in igloos.  Half the time the snow banks were over my head when I was six.  I’d pray to God asking him to bring spring sooner.  The prayer was a childish and selfish wish, but I’d like to think I was praying for mom too.  She loved the spring and hated winter even more than me. She hated the cold miserable days, where all you could do was sit at the table with a hot chocolate and look out the window.  Mom and I would sit at the table and try to burn holes in the snow through the dining room window, with our brown eyes, until the green grass came back.  1

By late February we had succeeded in vaporizing the snow, and soon we could go to Mac Morison Park, again.  Springtime was the best. Sometimes she would take me to the park so I could play in the playground, other times we would go to watch the women play softball.2

Mom loved playing softball.  She used to play in the Women’s Minor Softball League before I was born and she tried to make me love the game, when I was young.  She would say to me, “There’s nothing like that moment when you pick up that grounder and throw it to first base.  The whole play is dependent on the speed and accuracy of the third base player.  All eyes are on that ball and the player’s art as you, the third base player, seize the ball like a falcon catching a rolling mouse in its path.  In one motion your arm is a catapult sending the ball to first with deadly accuracy.  Sometimes you don’t even notice the runner until the ball gets to first.  You’re so determined to see the ball through all the way, and when you beat the runner there’s always a nod, a smile and a pitch from first in reply.  You catch it and after a wink to first, you turn and send the ball to second base.  These are the unspoken words of baseball.  You aren’t just playing a game with the girls.  You’re family.”  The way mom would go on about softball captivated me.  Listening to mom’s stories was like listening to fairy tales that didn’t need princes or princesses or dragons, but her stories carried all the weight of a real adventure.  Stories like these allowed a daughter to realise how beautiful her mother was.  I realised how human she could be and how gracefully she danced in these “Tales of Softball.”  My mother didn’t even have to wear a dress or make up to look pretty.  I saw my mother in that third base player as she wiped the sweat from her brow smearing fresh dirt across her forehead.  She tugged at the front of her cap and got ready for the next play.  My mother was a Titan.  The base player’s vision focused on the ball as my mother’s fixation on the game.3

For every action mom would provide commentary on the player’s thoughts and decisions.  I could see my mother in this youthful woman racing after the ball and throwing it with a perfect arm.  At third base a player was more than a team member playing a position.  This was a job and a way of life.4

Later, when we got back from watching the game, my mother would pull out the pictures of herself when she used to play and, weeping, sit in the armchair.  She had lost that life.  Sometimes when she was in a wicked mood or her team lost she looked at me, as I watched television from the couch, and said, “Judy, I could be out there with those girls playing right now if it hadn’t been for me having you.  We might have even won today.  Getting pregnant ruined my life.  Having you made me fat and lose my energy.  I’m too fat now.  I’ll never play baseball again.”5

When I was young I didn’t know how to object to her accusations.  Besides, she had me convinced I was the burden that ruined her life.  My mother blamed me for her obesity, but she didn’t bother trying to do anything for herself.  If she had tried to exercise, instead of wallowing in self-pity, maybe dad wouldn’t have left.  He couldn’t stand her depressive mood swings.  He tried to get her help, but she refused and got worse.  I don’t blame dad for leaving her for the other woman.  I would’ve left her too, but my mother was too crafty.  She found ways of keeping me.  My mother said she cared about practical things like looking after me and working, but she was a liar.  She really needed me for financial support, from the government.  Dad didn’t want to take the divorce to court because he knew how easily he could ruin her, so he let her keep me.  I think he always believed that a divorce was bad enough for his daughter to go through, and I was grateful he understood that.6

Mom worked at Tim Horton’s and she said she loved the job.  She would tell everyone she knew how she loved her life with me and that she liked how everything had worked out.  She was a lying witch. Sure, she was always good to the customers, but she thought people in general were stupid and lazy, especially those who came through the drive-thru.  I hid in my room every night when she got home because she would bicker endlessly about how stupid people were and how lousy her life was.  Then she’d complain, “You know what the worst part is, Judy?  After preparing food for people all day I still have to come home and cook for you because no one else will.  At least your father is gone.  That’s one less mouth to feed.”  She didn’t always say this out loud.  But, if I made eye contact with her furious black eyes, they would stab me in rage, since we both knew what those eyes were thinking.  If it hadn’t been for me, she could be playing baseball.  The only life she ever knew and truly loved.7

Mother once told me her eyes were brown like her slowly greying-brown hair, but that was before I was born.  It was hard to believe those endless pits were once brown like mine.  She made me fear her, so that I would keep quiet and never challenge her.  I was always too afraid, and I still loved my mother.  People will judge me for not standing up for myself, but they don’t know my mother.  They don’t understand how she sacrificed her life for me.8

My mother never said she hated me.  She did much worse; she never told me she loved me.  Some kids just say that, but never in my life has my mother said she loved me.  Believe me, I’d remember if she had.  But, she said and did enough to tell me how she felt about me and that was enough for her.9

Once she got too old to look after herself I personally escorted her to Good Manor Retirement Centre.  I couldn’t stand her any more.  No one in the family could.  She had become even more stubborn and critical in her old age.  The last time I saw her was ten years ago, the day I admitted her into Good Manner, and that episode didn’t go well.  She expected me to look after her in retribution for all the years of her life she wasted on me.  I tried to tell her this was the best way I could look after her.  She wouldn’t hear me and the banshee screeched at me, cursing the fiend she bore, and struck me for the first time in her life.  I didn’t know what to do, so I left.  My mother had never hit me before and I didn’t want anything to do with the beast that wanted to tear me apart, so I kept away.  She wasn’t my problem any longer.  She belonged to Good Manner.10

Mom hit me.  I still can’t believe she hit me, even now, and I didn’t want to come back to this place, yet I really did.  I dreaded seeing her now, but I should see my mother.  It has been ten years.  I needed to make peace with my mother.11

One of the nurses led me to her room. When I walked in and saw her lying there I stopped at the foot of the bed.  The nurse moved toward my mother to wake her, but I put my hand on the nurse’s shoulder and shook my head.  The nurse nodded and gestured that she would wait outside the door, just in case.12

My mother was sleeping.  I never saw her sleeping.  But there she was, Sleeping Beauty.  I almost thought she was smiling, but she never let me see her smile.  She looked so relaxed.  I saw her grey hair turning brown again.  I could picture a baseball cap on her head and a glove on her right hand.  There was an extra white blanket folded in a heap at the foot of the bed.  She was standing at third base.  I smiled and then I turned around and left.13