I am disinterested to the point of annoyance with baseball. I loved Bull Durham, have never mustered up the interest to watch Field of Dreams, and have avoided other movies to do with the sport, let alone attend live games. I know others feel the same way about football and soccer, while I have some mild interest and knowledge of football, and quite a bit more for soccer.
At any rate, baseball is not even a mild interest of mine. But this is a lovely piece, and I read it with a smile on my face. You almost make me nostalgic for a game I never played, never watched, and never liked.
I guess it could've been anything that's handed down in a family: woodworking, fly-fishing, knitting, a love of Dickens, fixing a car, gardening.
But it is the particulars of baseball that remain as memories, not the generic impression of parent-child. The memories seem to catch in the lattice of detail.
And also - to be cliche but it's true - the smell of the greasepaint. Each color in its own plain cardboard tube. The big one for the white face. The grey wig, and especially the clown shoes. The clown shoes were size 8 (underneath the oversized front), so they fit me around 7th grade, and I wore them to school.
My dad even considering registering his clown face. In England they do it on a pricked and sucked-out egg-shell. You paint the trademarked design of your clownface on the egg and they keep it in a collection which goes back centuries.
::nods:: Scent is a powerful evoker of memory. You never forget the scent of greasepaint.
I have hymn-singing from both parents, in church, around the house, in the car. Dad in his always-sharp, nasal tenor (he did love gospel and bluegrass) and Mom in her wavery soprano. I have my mom's gimlet eye on me from the choir loft during Sunday sermons, and the smell of wet wool, Old Spice and Dentyne as I snugged into the circle of Dad's arm on the hard pew.
What I passed on was singing in the car--only instead of hymns it was Jan&Dean and the Beach Boys. StE's voice changed in the one week we spent at the lake. He was singing the high parts on Little Old Lady from Pasadena and In My Room on the way up to the lake, and couldn't hit a note on the way back. He and his kids sang in the car, too. And the little guy is pitch-perfect.
I'm sorry for reading this so much later than it was posted, but I couldn't just run my eyes through it and skim, I needed to actually read it, you know?
And, even knowing absolutely nothing, not the very first thing, about baseball (or circuses, for that matters), it was a lovely piece to read, and such a beautiful tribute to your father.
Part of it, I think, was the whole concept of passing something loved and fun and good, from one generation on to another and then another. But, in my eyes, it wasn't just that. It wasn't just the passage of the love through time, but also the actual essence of the thing you, generations of you, came to love.
And if I managed to follow that love and even get the sense of it, without understanding any of the actual terms and names and references, then I guess you did a really good job in writing.
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At any rate, baseball is not even a mild interest of mine. But this is a lovely piece, and I read it with a smile on my face. You almost make me nostalgic for a game I never played, never watched, and never liked.
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I guess it could've been anything that's handed down in a family: woodworking, fly-fishing, knitting, a love of Dickens, fixing a car, gardening.
But it is the particulars of baseball that remain as memories, not the generic impression of parent-child. The memories seem to catch in the lattice of detail.
And also - to be cliche but it's true - the smell of the greasepaint. Each color in its own plain cardboard tube. The big one for the white face. The grey wig, and especially the clown shoes. The clown shoes were size 8 (underneath the oversized front), so they fit me around 7th grade, and I wore them to school.
My dad even considering registering his clown face. In England they do it on a pricked and sucked-out egg-shell. You paint the trademarked design of your clownface on the egg and they keep it in a collection which goes back centuries.
Reply
I have hymn-singing from both parents, in church, around the house, in the car. Dad in his always-sharp, nasal tenor (he did love gospel and bluegrass) and Mom in her wavery soprano. I have my mom's gimlet eye on me from the choir loft during Sunday sermons, and the smell of wet wool, Old Spice and Dentyne as I snugged into the circle of Dad's arm on the hard pew.
What I passed on was singing in the car--only instead of hymns it was Jan&Dean and the Beach Boys. StE's voice changed in the one week we spent at the lake. He was singing the high parts on Little Old Lady from Pasadena and In My Room on the way up to the lake, and couldn't hit a note on the way back. He and his kids sang in the car, too. And the little guy is pitch-perfect.
Reply
And, even knowing absolutely nothing, not the very first thing, about baseball (or circuses, for that matters), it was a lovely piece to read, and such a beautiful tribute to your father.
Part of it, I think, was the whole concept of passing something loved and fun and good, from one generation on to another and then another. But, in my eyes, it wasn't just that. It wasn't just the passage of the love through time, but also the actual essence of the thing you, generations of you, came to love.
And if I managed to follow that love and even get the sense of it, without understanding any of the actual terms and names and references, then I guess you did a really good job in writing.
Thank you for sharing it.
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