Vol. 119 - Having a Catch

On forgotten memories that last a lifetime

When I was a kid, maybe eight or nine years old, I went to a local baseball diamond with my father. We brought mitts and a ball and had a catch, as dads and kids do. My old man also brought a stopwatch and timed my speed and agility, with my dad clocking me from home to first and then to each subsequent base.

It wasn't that I was a baseball player. In fact, though I played a ton of sandlot ball as a kid, I never played organized baseball. Rather, it was just something fun to do, father and son.

Looking back on it, it was one of the afternoons from my childhood that I'll never forget. I don't know why it stands out and, over the years, I've tried to sort it out the reason why as best I can. There was nothing extra special about that afternoon. It wasn't like the time my dad scored Super Bowl tickets for us or the morning we rented jet skis on the bay that abutted our town. By all accounts, that afternoon on the baseball diamond was completely unassuming. But for some reason, it was one of the best days I can remember being a son to my father.

I wonder now which moments like that my kids won't ever forget. For me, when my babies are grown and I look back at their childhoods, it'll no doubt be the big stuff: the trips to France or London or New York City. It'll be wrapping presents for them the night before Christmas or the first time my son and I were in back-to-back heats in a BMX race. It’ll be their first appearance on stage or some injury that scared us at the time but one we’ll look back on fondly (like the night my son and I spent in the emergency room after he split his head open on our fireplace and he kept telling whoever would listen that I glued his head closed… which I didn’t… exactly).

I’ll remember the big things because adulthood happens on a big scale. Childhood, however, is infinitely smaller. Which is perhaps I so vividly remember an otherwise benign day from my eighth or ninth year.

I recently reminded my father of that afternoon on the baseball diamond. He couldn't remember it. I wasn't upset. It would have been ridiculous of me to expect him to remember a specific instance of his taking me out to play ball, which was something he did all the time.

But I wonder if there are those moments that I've completely forgotten or will completely forget with my kids. And I wonder if I’m overlooking some moment that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. After all, it’s their own history that’s being written. My childhood is long gone (despite the action figures and comic books littering my office).

It’s easiest to presume that such a moment will have something to do with bikes. After all, my son and I ride together more than we do just about anything else. We mountain bike and ride around town. We even race BMX together. Hopefully, when he’s thirty or forty or fifty, my son will fondly recall his big, lumbering old man climbing on a tiny BMX bike for no other reason than to spend time together.

But maybe it’ll be something more innocuous, something that, like my father, I won’t even remember. Maybe the moment that will stick with my son forever won’t be that first time we raced in back-to-back heats. Maybe it will be a trip to the bike shop to buy him new tubes or some chain lube; something pedestrian. Some everyday task. Something wholly forgettable, at least, for an adult.