Ballpark App…Could Stand for Appetizer

Nancy and Sarah decided this past week that if we were going to make the Rockville trek again, we were going to try to squeeze in something fun.  We got tickets to a baseball game in Baltimore.  It’s definitely one of my happy places. 

To make the purchase, Nancy downloaded the MLB Ballpark App.  This led to some exploration last night while I was trying to write.  I should mention a few things about Nancy.  One, she has always enjoyed going to games, but for her and for Sarah the baseball is the atmosphere, while food is the main attraction.  Two, Nancy is petite, so the important part about the food is not the quantity, but the novelty.  Three, for Nancy, planning has always given her great pleasure.  It’s both her vocation and her avocation.  In this case, the Ballpark app allowed her two pleasures in one:  She could plan where to eat and what to eat, and then, I hope, she could actually eat.

As I sat at my laptop last night, attempting to concentrate, Nancy and Sarah sat on their beds plotting their dining experiences. “Ooh.  Deddle’s Mini Donuts, that sounds delicious…available at all Saturday games.  Where is it?”

“Section 84, perfect! We’re in section 85.”

“But do we start with that, or end with that?”

Slight pause while they contemplated.  Failing in my attempt to concentrate, I reminded them of Boog’s Barbecue behind the right field flag court. 

“Right, we should probably get that right away before we head to our seats.”

“Oh, Sarah, Fuku Chicken has impossible nuggets and waffle fries.”

“Yeah, I saw that, but Section 49 and 332.  Kind of out of the way, we might not be able to get to some of the other spots.”

At this point, I inserted the ear buds and cranked up the ‘Deep Focus’ tracks on my laptop.  I was not going to get any writing done.  

By the time I finished, it was 11:00 p.m. and they were both asleep, visions of hot dogs and mini donuts dancing in their heads.  I hope their dreams come true…and that the Orioles win.

My Father’s Years in Review

Particularly in March, I find that my life lacks order and routine.  I’m a little like that off-balance sprinter who’s at the end of a race and finds himself stumbling toward the tape, just hoping that his momentum can carry him past the line before he careens to the track, embarrassing himself…and skinning his knees and palms in the process.  

This year moreso.

That’s why one of the things I found at my mom’s apartment just seemed so very alien to me.  It was a small collection of papers that my father had created over the course of a decade, basically the decade of his fifties.  The papers, about five by eight inches in dimension, somehow manage to encapsulate an entire year.  A year of people and events, from the most local to the most global. 

Ever since I attained some level of consciousness and memory, I can recall my father carrying a little date book that he received each year for Christmas from his mother in Sweden.  The books were referred to as  a “fickdagbok,” which translates to a pocket diary.  These books fit my father perfectly.  They were palm-sized portable.  They were organized by day.  There wasn’t much room for elaboration.  They had maps.  

A few years back, I came into possession of both my father’s and my mother’s fickdagboken. 

I was happy to have these pocket-sized records of their lives.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out what to do with them.  They sat in a box, small, but overwhelming.  With so much information in less-than-slice-of-life form.  They were more like crumbs, or morsels that I didn’t know how to reassemble into even a slice of a pie.  

Then this weekend, I stumbled on these summaries.  They would not fit the definition of a slice of life.  There contain few details.  They are void of emotion, dialogue, sensory detail, or reflection.  Yet somehow, they capture a year  and my father in all of their crazy organized randomness.  

Here is what 1991 looked like for my father:

First, there’s the organization system, and the order.  He starts with visitors who spent the night or nights at the house.  That tracks.  He lived to see friends and family.  I love the label “Others chez nous.”  French was his fourth language, but it must’ve just been the most economical way to list those other visitors who preferred hotels or were just passing through.  Health is a mercifully short category that year that he and my mom turned 60.  I notice that there are more teeth cleanings than colds…and that the colds immediately followed the visit to my sister’s family in Wilmington.  It’s a good thing they weren’t visiting them in late July, when in the space of one week we have my niece’s scarlet fever, my brother-in-law’s kidney stone, and my nephew’s impetigo.  Yikes!

It’s in that “Events” column that I can see my father’s clinical personality and the craziness of our existence compressed into a mere list of equally-weighted phenomena.  In one inch of space on the paper, the events go like this:

• Start of Gulf War
• Gabriel and Mia engaged
• Land war in Kuwait begun
• Phone call from Tinka Goodall
• Nancy laparoscopy
• Cease fire
• Carpets cleaned.  

I’m not sure if all Americans responded in the same way to the news of the cease fire.  In fairness, neither did my parents.  They apparently drove to North Carolina, played with their grandchildren, caught colds, visited their doctors, and THEN had their carpets cleaned.  

There’s so much more I could inspect and dissect, surmise and unpack, but it’s late.  I need to check on the news in the Middle East…and our carpets.