Hitting

Clare came by last night for dinner.  With football starting, her husband is a coach in season, which means he’s pretty much gone from sunup to past sundown.  Go, Bluejays.

Next week, my daughter goes in for surgery to repair a torn labrum in her right shoulder; that’s the wages of sports for you.  Recovery time is expected to be six months max, or as Clare put it, “I can start hitting again in February.”  Rather than wait till then, we went to Stella’s for one last round.  With one swing-and-a-miss in 120 pitches, daughter and father had a good time.

I love the batting cages for all the sounds—the ball hitting the backstop (in someone else’s cage); the ball ricocheting off a metal post; the ball hitting the wood canopy over the pitching machines.  Nearly two decades of my life have been filled with such sweet noise, which is to say most of Clare’s life has been marked by it as well.  So, now we pause for things to heal.

And to hold onto the memory of that line drive Clare hit on pitch 120.