Field of Dreams

A tiny little boy in his Yankee cap, perched on the battered wood in the dugout waves to me, and I realize he is my boy. He has the flushed cheeks of an Irishman, and his hat is a bit askew. He has the nonchalance of a real ball player, and for just a moment, I am left breathless. A boy who only yesterday was struggling with his first steps, is now the beginnings of a tiny man, and I am a surreptitious observer behind a fence. I watch him joke with his friends, his effervescent grin spreading light throughout the dugout, his foot on the bench only slightly too small for the cleat it inhabits. I want to tell him I love him, but it will embarrass him, so I turn my head to damper the urge.

There are a thousand boys in the fields tonight. Some reluctantly, there to satisfy their father's need for vicariousness. Aging dads, with rounded paunches creeping over their belts, their caps hiding thinning hair and grey are holding clipboards and calling for the Mikeys, the Lukes, the Nicks to gather. Some boys are there because their older brothers, now legends in their own minds, have left footprints that need to be filled. And others are there because they believe they will someday be Derek Jeter, beloved and hated equally, but nevertheless a wonder.

My son is there because his mother believes in the simple life that baseball once epitomized. The lazy summers of apple pies and playing in the park till dusk. A time when our world seemed a little easier, or when children were allowed to believe in its ease.

I remember my own teenage years, perched at the edge of a hard metal seat in the score booth, watching a game with so much anticipation, I could taste it. Hearing cracks of bats at all the fields, lit by searingly bright lights, knowing that behind every bat crack was a girlfriend, a mother, whose heart had grown in pride.

When I watch Field of Dreams, I still cry inconsolably when Doc Graham makes the decision to leave, once again, his baseball dreams behind. So many of these little boys on this field today will someday stuff their old caps and worn mitts into boxes in the attic, and make their own metaphorical step over that invisible line. The line into an adulthood fraught with responsibility, and gravity. Their tanned arms and sunkissed noses will pale as they study in college, and later sit at their desks. And when they are home on the weekends, they will always find themselves just a little bit amazed at how very perfectly the baseball fits into the palms of their hands, as they toss it back and forth with their sons in the yard.

But for now, these little boys are bursting with possibilities, and dreams. Their summers are still endless, their apple pies still cooling on the windowsill, their mitts still not broken in.

I wiggle myself into a tiny spot to watch as the evening begins, my eyes glued on the little number 6, who is doing a little dance in the field. I am again hit with that urge, and I have to quietly murmur to myself that I love him, because if it isn't uttered, I will burst. I think Derek Jeter's mom probably does the same, and this thought makes me grin. I get to be Lucas' mom. Which in and of itself, is a field of dreams.