Skip to main content

Take me out to the ball game

Irritation flows through her veins. She reads something peaceful in hopes that she can blow the stink off, as Great-Aunt Julia used to say. It doesn't work. She takes a walk. She takes a shower afterward. She's still irritated. No, she's no longer irritated, she's downright mad. She wants to drop-kick something.

She doesn't though. She makes lunch, she washes the dishes, she takes the gingerbread boy to the doctor's, she reads books to him.

After dinner, the gingerbread boys beg to play baseball.

She takes the whiffle ball in hand and steps up to the pitcher's mound--an uneven spot in the driveway, formerly marked by a chalk circle. She tosses the ball, again and again, as little arms discover the joy of bat connecting with ball.

And, then, only then, does the stink blow away, thrown with the whiffle ball, and hit far into the outfield.

Comments

  1. AmeliaJuly 22, 2010 at 11:19 PM

    This was so long ago, I wonder if you even remember what you were mad about. I love that you found your peace through your children though. That happens to me sometimes too, and it's in those times that I realize God already gave me everything I needed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ginger JohnsonJuly 27, 2010 at 10:56 AM

    Heh. Yeah, I still remember what I was mad about. But it all turned out ok in the end, so it doesn't really matter.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Sky is Everywhere Contest!

I first heard Jandy Nelson read an excerpt from The Sky is Everywhere during her graduate reading at Vermont College of Fine Arts. The words absolutely sizzled from her lips, and I couldn't wait to read the whole thing. Unfortunately, I had to wait until the publishing world caught up. When I read the finished book, I started it over and read it again. Then I bought a copy to give to my sister. (Yes, I GAVE it to my sister.) Now, thanks to a pay-it-forward contest, I am soon to have my very own copy and give away yet another copy. Casey McCormick began a pay-it-forward book contest for The Sky is Everywhere in an effort to spread the love, and to generate new sales for a talented author. Her contest inspired other contests, one of which was sponsored by Melissa Writes Fiction , and I won that contest. Yippee! So, to make good on my promise, here is my own pay-it-forward contest. Please read the rules below, because this contest is a bit different. The most important condi...
5 comments
Read more

The Greening

Sadness spreads like a sower scattering seeds. The seeds find fertile ground in her and land there, burrowing into her skin, into the deep down places where they sprout, nurtured unwittingly by blood and bone. Shoots spread forth growing both inward and outward, and she wonders if she will ever be able to root them all out. It is like pulling at a dandelion only to have stem detach from root and downy fluff fly off, enabling dozens more dandelions to take root. There is no cause for the sadness; it just is, like cold in winter, like leaves in fall, like rain in April. It sits there, within her, growing bigger each day, a pregnancy gone horribly wrong, and she feels the shame of it. But a breeze blows by, bringing different seeds, renegade seeds, hopeful seeds. They sprout in the midst of all the sadness; they choke it out. When she looks out the window today, she realizes that the world around her is greening. She decides that she will too. She will choose joy.
3 comments
Read more

I Think I'm a Grown-Up Now

I'm reposting something I wrote on my personal blog two years ago. I can laugh about it now that I don't feel the need to visit the guidance counselor's office anymore. The answer to my question was so obvious--had been obvious for years if I had taken the time to see--but apparently I had my blinders on. Or my rose-colored glasses. Or my peril-detecting sunglasses. One of them, at any rate. ***** Mid-Life Crisis The question of what I want to be when I grow up is plaguing me again. Sometimes I think I want to be like Mrs. Murray in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle---a brilliant scientist with a lab in the barn, cooking stew over a bunsen burner. But then I feel too old to go in that direction, not smart enough to be able to pick up and retain that scientific knowledge quickly enough, and not balanced enough to do it all gracefully. Inevitably, I would poison my family with an accidental slip of something into the stew. So I'm back to wondering what I hav...
4 comments
Read more