Go Dodgers

My Mother and I are talking about taking a 10-day walking trip. “We have to do it next year,” she tells me like we’re running out of time. But of course we are, even though I can’t imagine my tomboy of a mother any different than I know her today.

“Look for me on T.V. this afternoon,” she says. “1:00, behind first base at the Dodger game.” She’ll be there, mitt in hand like she is every game, and I hope the cameras pan to her because you won’t see a happier person in that stadium; surrounded by my sister’s and their husbands, in the middle of the day, a Dodger Dog in her hand. I think it’s an important game too because if they win, bla bla bla, my Mom won’t come up for the Ellen Bass poetry workshop that I’m producing, but if they lose, bla bla bla, she will come up.

“Do you hate me?” she asks when she reveals her choice of the Dodgers over poetry and Ellen Bass. “Hate you?” I say over the phone, “I love you because you know what makes you happy, you know what you want and that life is too short.”

“Do you really understand that?” she says, “that life is short?”

“Well, of course I think I’m going to live forever,” I tell her as I multi-task like a mad woman, making coffee for the morning writing class, applying lipstick and sending an email all while I hold the phone to my ear. “But it was seeing Dad at the end,” I tell her, my throat thick. “All the things he regretted, what he hadn’t done.”

“Like learn to love?” she says and goes silent.

“Like learn to love,” I say. This was something my Dad told us at the end, that he hadn’t learned to love.

“I’m going to look for you behind first base,” I tell her. “Go Dodgers Mom, go Dodgers.”