Few things make me reflect on love, life, or emotions. Blah. I have always seen myself as emotionally tougher than that… not a stone wall per se, but maybe a big rubber one. It is not something that I have sought as much as gained in my life, lending to the fact that at some level I am a product of my environment. I have unwillingly seen the blood and guts of this society through my vocation and in response have built a defense to it. Human nature. A instantaneous, emotional detachment, when needed, in response to a traumatic event and a denial of self to feel anything more than the urge to do what needs to be done.. maybe even laugh it off later. Almost as if a fortress was built around my soul, not by my own hand, but by the actions of others which I had witnessed.

Its actually comforting. Being able to block out the pain is a good thing one would think. However I have learned this week that you cannot pick and choose what is filtered out. The pain can teach you things about yourself giving you an eye opening emotional enema. Believe me, it stinks just as much as the non-emotional kind.

What has become a annual event, we packed up our bags and headed to my family’s lake house for the week of July4th with Terrie’s 2 sisters (Jamie, Erin) and brother (Micah) in tow. Jamie and her husband (Raphael) have three kids around my girl’s ages, so the screaming and yelling was non-stop. They woke early every day and crashed hard every night. It was nice to see them so active, as the summer had been pretty slow around our house. Most days so far  have been spent inside and this was a much needed vacation for all of us.

We made the decision to travel a few miles away to Helen, Ga where we could walk around the ‘Alpine City’ and go tubing down the Chattahoochee River.  On the way to Helen I stopped by CVS and bought a $100 digital camera. I figured i would get a few zip-lock bags to keep the water off it and snap a few pictures of the tubing trip.

The Chattahoochee river is a stream really. On average it is 2 feet deep. The water was low for some reason this year and we actually spent most of our time scraping the bottom of the riverbed. It was not 20 minutes into a little adventure before the first disaster struck.  As I was trying to dislodge myself from the bed of rocks covered by 3 inches of water I heard the unmistakable bubble of a air leak in my tube.  To my surprise, the cheap $3 tube which was comparable to the thickness of Saran-wrap had burst. I was left sitting in the middle of a cold stream with a deflated doughnut around me. This was gonna suck.

Fortunately we were able to shuffle the kids around and I was again travelling at the slowest rate possible, downstream. Which at this point was feeling more like a task rather than a enjoyable afternoon. Chloe and Cosey had tubes with a bottom so they would not fall through or potentially get wet at all. Chloe of course had a life preserver on her which came in handy at one point when she leaned to far over the tube and tumbled out. Again, with the shallow water it was not cause for concern, but definitely made for a chuckle. Well, SHE was not laughing.. but I was.

Cosey had her tube strapped to mine so that she would stay close. Being 8 years old, and independent as ever, she felt that this tether was a suppression of her individual rights as a woman and was demanding  for 20 minutes for me to remove it or she would sue.  I glanced at the slow stream ahead and told her that she could detach the strap for a few minutes, however when the stream became more rough she would have to come back. She agreed and was happily floating a few feet away from me gloating in her feminist battle which had been won.

Leaning back with a smile and the sun on her face she enjoyed her new freedom, only to be thwarted by gravity. She had leaned back a little two far and had consequently dumped herslef out of the tube and into the cold water. She stood up and whimpered, with her bottom lip stuck out as far as possible.  I laughed my ass off. She then proclaimed, through the sniffles, that she wanted to be strapped back to my tube again. Ahhh.. this day was starting to look up again.

I grabbed a rock to stop my motion and told her to come downstream to me so I could reattach the tether. She began walking, pushing  the tube toward me. Only being 20 or so feet away she thought it would probably be quicker to just walk to me. I pulled the newly purchased digital camera out of the bag and started taking pictures of her as she approached, watching her push the tube through the screen and snapping a occasional shot here and there. That is when she disappeared.   I looked up from the camera (still taking pictures) and wondered where she went. The tube was still in the middle of the stream and I assumed that she had tripped over a rock and fallen behind the tube. I snapped another picture in hopes of catching her coming up from the cold water with a humorous expression on her face. She resurfaced, but the situation was entirely different. I suddenly became aware that she was not standing anymore… apparently the stream had dropped from 2 feet deep to 10, and she had just walked right off the drop. Her arms were flailing and she was gasping for air. The time it took for me to get my fat butt out of the tube, and start swimming upstream seemed too long. I was only 10-15 feet away, but I suddenly realized that I could not reach the bottom either, and I had to swim against the current to get to her. She bobbed and choked awhile before I would pull her up. All the while my eyes were fixed on her as I pushed my way toward her. The image of my daughter, basically drowning right in front of me, was being burned into my memory.

I reached her and pushed her head up out of the water. She grabbed and clawed my head as i swam us over to the edge of the drop where we could sit. She took a deep breath and started wailing, still attached to my neck. I don’t blame her one bit, it was traumatic for both of us. Like children do, she was over it within a day or two, however i still lay awake at night recalling those images burned into the back of my skull meanwhile second guessing my parental choices at the time. Thinking about “what-ifs” is never healthy or fun. Mostly I am just thankful that she is still here, yapping at me while I am trying to write this post, without pause, 3 inches from my ear. The best distraction ever.

“Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.” 
Leo Durocher (1906 – 1991)

Cosey was running up to me looking like she was going to burst open with excitement. You see, I had come home half-way through work because I had forgotten something, which was nothing new. Forgetting things has now become a regular part of my daily ritual. I can’t seem to make it for at least a few hours without a lapse in thought, forgetting my wallet,  neglecting to pay a bill,  or even stop and eat something. I am not sure if it is some sort of early onset of mid-life altziehmers, or just the fact that at any given time of the day I am doing 100 things at once and just happen to forget a few things here and there. Either way, it gets annoying quick, and I seem to be spending more time trying to remember what I had forgotten. Where was I?… oh yes, Cosey.

Cosey ran up to me, not just with the regular smile on her face, but a blistering, “oh my gosh I can’t hold it in anymore” look like she had either just won the lottery or something good had happened at school. She finally blurted it out in words faster than her mouth could form… “I WON! I WON DADDY!”   I was contemplating what a 8 year old could actually win, and started to wish it actually WAS the lottery when she handed me a packet of papers. Cosey, (following along her maternal genetic line) has always done well in school, creating a layers of A+ homework assignments tacked to the fridge. Judging from the packet of papers she had handed me she was being rewarded for Most Improved in her reading skills with a ticket to a local minor league baseball game. At this game she was to be recognized, with other students from the county school system immediately before the game, and allowed to go onto the field for a bit.

Now I was getting excited. The opportunity to pull my oldest away from the barbies and pink frilly dresses was one in a million. I might be able to convert her over to the tom-boy look I had been trying to achieve for years now. This was my chance. A few weeks later the day had come for the baseball game, I had just come back from a mountain bike ride which was cut short so that i could attend the baseball game with her. I was not gonna miss this. Cosey was already dressed and ready for out outing, complete with a baseball hat and camo pants… both of them the color pink. I was not going to let this get me down as i knew the conversion was going to be a long process. She will be trying out for the high school football team and beating up cheerleaders soon enough. It was just gonna take time.

We arrived at the ball field early and were ushered into what can only be described as a juvenile delinquent holding area. A young lady who was obviously in charge of the 100 or so kids who were screaming, fighting and otherwise acting like monkeys, walked up to me and told me that i could just go ahead and have a seat in the stadium and she would make sure Cosey was ok until the presentation. I almost laughed in her face. By no means was she in any position to take control, responsibility or action with any of the  children who were there already, and I had serious concerns for her mental state if she actually was serious. I elected to stay with Cosey and the hoard of squealing pigs until the last minute when they were escorted to the side of the field.

Right before the game, an announcer, who obviously just wanted to get on with the game, introduced the Hamilton County School Most Achieved Students with the lackluster tone of someone explaining the Holocaust to a tourist at Auschwitz. Cosey walked onto the field scanning the 1000’s of people in the crowd obviously looking for me. She had no clue it was a impossible task, but it made me proud that out of all those people she just wanted to see me.

We went to the concession stand and ordered 2 hotdogs, 2 drinks, and some popcorn and then found our seats. For some reason we were surrounded by die-hard baseball fans, who were decked out with team jerseys and gloves to catch any and all foul balls. The men looked at me suspiciously, probably wondering how i managed to get my daughter to come to such a manly sport.. once they saw the pink camo pants and hat Cosey was wearing I think they snickered a bit and ignored me.

 We were finishing the last of the popcorn in the 2nd inning when the local team connected with a fast ball and hit it over the left field wall. Home run. Everyone in our section jumped to their feet and began screaming as two runners were crossing home plate. I pulled Cosey up and began clapping myself, showing her how exciting this game could be.  After the fanfare faded, she asked me what had happened and I spent a few minutes proudly explaining the rules of baseball to her and the point/out/strike system. She nodded in understanding and I could not help but to sit back and smile.  This feeling was not meant to last long. The next minute a batter hit a ground ball to the infield. Cosey jumped up and yelled “HOME RUN!”.. the people around me just stared.  I sat her down and tried to explain the rules again, but she just wanted to show the boy next to her her pink hat, which I now think said “Princess”.. After awhile she was on the ground gathering everyone’s spilled popcorn so that she could make a princess crown with string.

I gave up with a smile. She may not be the tom-boy I wanted, but she sure made me proud. We lasted 3 innings before we left the park and went to a local shop for ice cream… with pink sprinkles.

  ”If it weren’t for baseball, many kids wouldn’t know what a millionaire looked like.”
Phyllis Diller