The Catching Machine

So, I’m kind of a dork when it comes to American sports, but my friend showed me her softball glove last night. It was her grandfathers glove, and as I took the glove from her, it felt heavy in my hands.

Light brown from wear and tear, the glove looked rugged and resolute. I opened it up and ran my fingers along the inside of it. I wondered how many games this glove had seen, how many great catches it had enabled. How maybe, My friends’ grandfather passed it on to his children as he taught them to catch and pitch. Maybe there had been sunday afternoons, the sun shining brightly where a father had passed on legacy to a child. 

There was some kind of security in the glove, some attachment to it. Maybe “The catching machine” is called that, not because its stopped umpteen grounders or gripped and snatched hurtling balls right out of the atmosphere, but because over the span of three generations, it has caught a glimpse of love and affection and bonds between father and child. 

Family

Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts. ~Author Unknown

Have you ever noticed that all families have those quirky elements within them? They either have this peculiar habit or have this crazy phrase that for some strange reason they wanna keep saying over and over again like it was the Lord’s prayer?

When my dad was my age, he would eat nothing but rice and sugar. He would add heaps of sugar to his meal and claim it was the most delicious thing ever. Not to mention one of my grand aunts who would wake everyone up just to ask them if they were sleeping.

That’s one of the great things about family. No matter how quirky or crazy you are, it’s still a tiny niche in the big bad world that’s made just for you. It’s like a puzzle piece that fits. Family can be such a simple yet profound concept that it is hard to put it into words. They share a love that goes beyond human understanding. A sense of belonging, comfort, care and acceptance can be so important in a person’s life and most often defines the person they become.

My dad, mom, me and my dog make up my family. And yes, animals can be human too.

Families remind me of fungus. Now I bet you’re thinking I’m the quirky crazy one in my family, and you’re probably justified in thinking so. Coming back to my theory, I believe that families grow, then, little pieces break off and form new families. Just like fungus.

It hurts to see families torn from the very purpose that they were designed for. They stem from a human longing of wanting to be loved, a need for companionship and a necessity to share our lives with people around us. When relationships with family go sour, and those basic emotional rights are taken away from us, I think we become less than human.

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” ~Erma Bombeck