CURVEBALL
When I was twelve years old, my dad taught me to throw a curveball.
Sunday summer afternoons we would take our baseball mitts and an official
major-league baseball, slightly scuffed, and set up in the alley behind
our three-flat Chicago apartment building.
This time together, just the two of us, was unusual. My dad was
my hero, but a distant hero. I didn’t know him very well. He had
left me, my younger brother, mom and maternal grandfather to fight the Nazis
in 1942 when I was six. He didn’t return until 1945.
When he got back from Europe, he resumed his old job managing
a furniture store. He worked long hours so I didn’t spend a lot of time with him.
That’s why the curveball lessons were special. Now, as I write this over eight decades
later, long after my dad, mom, brother and grandfather are no longer on this planet;
I realize that those times in that narrow alley were the
closest I would ever be to my father. He would carefully show
me where to place my fingers on the seams of the ball, how to snap my
wrist to make the ball bend and break.
Best of all, we talked about many other things: His experiences in the war,
his life when he was my age, my friends and school,
how I felt when he was far away fighting Hitler. All kinds of private things.
I cherished those hours, but sadly the intimacy faded as I grew older.
My dad remained my hero, but unknowable, unapproachable.
Through some mysterious process that I’ll never understand,
I always knew that he loved me and that I loved him.
But those golden curveball moments returned only near the end of his life
when we again spoke of matters of the heart.