Terry is in his 30’s and is taken over by nostalgia

TERRY:

His name’s written in marker along the index-finger sling, faded.  Everything about it is faded and old.  From the leather, to the string, to the once bright-red Rawlings label.  Everything about him is faded too.  And us.  When I was very small we’d play Superman.  He’d lie on his back and hold me up in the air with his feet.  I would feel this surge of air all around me and it was like I was really flying.  In the glove my father gave me before I left for college I keep a baseball that’s frayed at the seams.  It’s the same ball Sam, my brother, and I would play catch with whenever we had the opportunity to throw the ball around under the orange tree that overshadows my window.  The same orange tree that my mother planted when she and our father first moved into the house.  Sam always stood in the same spot under that tree and I would scamper over to our neighbor’s giant avocado.  My father has forgotten my birthday three years running now.  I expect he will do it again today.  I’ve never forgotten his.  Though I have neglected to call.  I don’t know which of us is worse, but what I do know is this.  I caught the final out of the all state softball championship game with my father’s glove.  I hold my father’s glove and smile.  I haven’t talked to him in six months.  And Sam’s ashes rest in an urn decorated with tiny orange blossoms that’s seven feet from the door to my bedroom, which is overshadowed by the orange and avocado trees that I see less than a week of every year and will remember until I die.  And I have no one to play catch with anymore.