Only a Game

I met John in 1986 in Downers Grove, Illinois. I was 57 years old. He was 68.

John loved baseball, especially his Chicago Cubs. We dated a few months when I had an emergency appendectomy. I woke up the next afternoon in searing pain where I had been cut open. John was sitting in the corner of my hospital room.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“A while”
He pulled up close to the bed.
“You rest,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

I hurt. I closed my eyes.

John whispered in my ear, “Do you mind if I watch the game?”

I nodded and drifted off into a narcotic-induced sleep.

I developed a staph infection and remained in the hospital for a week. John came every day and walked me around the corridor, me without even lipstick and straggly hair drooping, barely covered by the white hospital gown, John holding me with one arm while he pulled along the I.V. pole. That’s when I knew, “This man really loves me.”

After we married and moved to Albuquerque, on summer afternoons we sat in front of the television watching the Cubs. Even after the Cubs were eliminated from the playoffs, we waited until after the World Series to travel.

John also became enthusiastic about Albuquerque’s minor league team, the Dukes. We went to games, sitting in the bleachers behind left field. The loud speaker boomed, “Please stand for the national anthems.” John and I stood up, and a young lady sang, “Ohhhh. . . “

We were ready to join in, “Say can you see. . .”
Instead she sang, “Can. . . a . . .da”

That night our team played Calgary.

That was the first time I heard the beautiful Canadian national anthem: “Oh Canada, our home and native land.”

This week, hearing it at the Winter Olympics, watching all those brave young people, losers and winners, brought back memories of travels with John (an afternoon in the rose garden in one of Vancouver’s beautiful parks) and of his loyalty to his teams, even when they lost.