Spring Rituals Revisited

Our family spent this weekend helping my father clean my parents' garage. Garage cleaning is one of those Midwestern spring rituals that typically means swapping out snow blowers for lawn mowers and sweeping out a fall and winter's worth of fluttered-in debris.

However, my parents needed to empty their garage for an upcoming construction project. So this weekend we deep cleaned their garage – and went quite deep, in fact. We uncovered relics from previous decades of life. Previous realizations of life.

When Dad found our family's hammock (circa 1970s) – i.e., the family of my childhood - he sent me off with the box of pieces to see if everything was still there. It was. Thankfully, I easily remembered how to assemble the parts. Yay! Celebrate!

Today's celebration was particularly sweet because it spanned generations. I watched my father and my son take turns relaxing in the hammock of my childhood and adolescence. Timeless. Truly timeless. Time suspended in time, even.

(Note: Yes, I know I use the wrong verb in this vlog - twice even. It should be "lie" on "lay." *sigh*)

Hammock Time


Long before the weather was appropriate for hammocks, however, something else had already occurred: Coach Bowden (aka, my dad) had sorted through baseball and softball bats to see if it was time to add a new selection to each team's bat bag.

Today, when dad began sorting bats, I began to remember.

You can live 2:00 of the memories I have for life.

Now that my youngest son has experienced a bit as well, perhaps he has lifetime memories as well. By the way, the mathematics he uses at the end of the clip are correct. It has been that many years since I began using my purple wonder. (Too bad my batting average was never as wonderful.)

Any claim of athleticism I might have I owe to my father. Had he not been a coach, I likely would not have been an athlete. I played softball because he loved to coach; because I had a dad who could teach me how to play, I played. (Fortunately, didn't stink up the diamond, either.)

Bat Selection

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Garage cleaning. Thanks for a day of dusting off memories.