i had no plans for the weekend. this was the first completely open weekend i have had for quite a long time. the thought of it frightened me. no distractions. just me. alone. in my motherless house. living my motherless life.
don't get me wrong. i am not walking around all of the time feeling morose. but the void is omnipresent...the "motherless" thing. the best analogy i can use to describe it will only ring true for seat belt wearers. i'm a seat belt wearer. i put on my seatbelt every time i get in my car. i am securely fastened in before i take the car out of park. i put on seatbelts in taxis (especially in taxis). on maybe a few occasions in the past 10 years, i have moved my car without fastening my seatbelt. it happens so rarely i could count those instances on one hand and have a finger or two left over. the few times i have driven without a seatbelt, i have felt almost as if i were loose in the car. untethered. unanchored.
that is how i now feel in the world. loose, lost, unanchored. i'm not sullen, but i am not secure. so i try to distract myself. i try to keep moving.
this weekend, aside from saturday morning brunch with magee, i had nothing planned.
i cannot postpone the inevitable. i'm going to have to feel it. i'm going to have to feel what it is like to be still, in my own home, without her.
by saturday afternoon, i had already had enough stillness. but i decided if i could tough it out through the night, that i should get a treat. something that would make me happy.
so i decided i deserved some baseball.
i bought two tickets to see the giants play the yankees on sunday afternoon. on the website, i couldn't select particular seats, i just clicked "best available" and bought two.
baseball makes me happy. it reminds me of better, simpler times. like when my first love, marty, would pick me up in his rusted out mustang and drive me up to baltimore to see the orioles play in the old memorial stadium. the carpet on the front passenger side was gone, so he cut up carpet remnants and covered the floor for me. we always stalled out on the same hill. we had nosebleed seats and the same vendor would come running up to the top of the stadium yelling "cold beer." we were young and we were in love and we were happy.
it reminds me of the summer that my best friend, lee, and i made it our mission to meet cal ripken, jr. we'd go to mall appearances or make road trips to timonium to see if we could find him at one of his rumoured haunts.
i knew all of the orioles' stats. al bumbry was the shortest, cal was the tallest. eddie murray was my favorite.
magee and i met at giants stadium on sunday. they weren't kidding when they said "best available." i put my cold beer down on top of the giants dugout. the weather was beautiful. the game was good. (especially when derek jeter was up forever during one inning or when we got to see roger clemens pitch to barry bonds.) and there were sooo many bases stolen.
it was an entertaining game.
and there was no crying.
