Id played for the Star Supers, a little league team named after a local sponsor (Star Supermarket), when I was a boy in Latham, New York. My fielding was unquestionably atrocious, and Id swing at anything exhibiting the faintest tendency toward motility. So inevitably, due to the entirely idiomatic Law of Averages, upon the occasion of one of those hopelessly blind swats, a ferocious crack echoed out across the park, and I took it as a very compelling cue to sprint as though pursued by a terror dog...which I did. As I rounded third and headed home, I became aware that the ball hadnt actually left the park. It had just driven itself so straight and so deep into a gap between two outfielders that they were still scrambling to reach it. When I returned home, from whence was born this frenzied journey, the coach (his name has long been lost to me) made note of my expression and reported to my mother that I was grinning from ear to ear, big news to a woman who was in process of rearing a very serious, seldom smiling boy. I remember not liking the expression grinning from ear to ear, because the image of it taken literally was much too macabre. But, I did love the sunny, easy way it felt and the general shape of it in the muscles of my face. And as I have grown, Ive noticed that it has been demanded of me more and more (mainly as pertains to cameras which people seem to think can only register an image of the human face in a smile, else the subjects turn out exposed with a blank where a face should be - headless and pointless). It has been demanded. And I cannot give it. This is because its not really mine to give. Its something I get. Its a rare gift that, when all the correct elements are aligned, existence grants you. And, if you remain open to it - and it may as well be withheld from you unless you are - there are few things more satisfying. An honest smile cannot be willed. Its got a life all its own, and it takes its gentle charge across your features slowly but determinately in the same way a summer day grows hot rather than arriving hot from the jump. And though I cant command it, I know when its there by the feeling of that little-league-line-drive-in-the-park-home-run shape in the muscles of my face. Early this Sunday morning, while traveling east on 103rd Street, I saw a home that reminded my face back into that shape. Nothing particularly extraordinary to report about it architecturally. Its just that I saw it and somehow felt deeply happy about it. And I thought of that day in Latham when I rounded third and came home, and it occurred to me just then on 103rd Street, that I hadnt really hit a home run: I had taken a home run. I had built a home run moment by moment with every footfall. The ball was always in play, and hence the danger of failure was continually present. It was never a forgone conclusion. I worked for it in the face of that danger whether I knew it at the time or not. And looking back at that building, I imagined that maybe the people inside had taken their home, built their home, worked for it in much the same way - by running wildly and freely forward despite the ever-lurking danger of domestic ruin, and grinning ear to ear upon rounding third and returning home at the end of each day. And I realized: thats the kind of home I want to build with my family, the kind that makes people smile honestly and inexplicably when they happen to pass by it. And it has taken me all of Sunday to articulate what happened in the space of those few seconds.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 06:14:33 +0000
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