When America's favorite past time is used as a parent-child bonding experience, its powers typically extend to fathers and sons. Maybe fathers and daughters as well, but mostly, I think (and I'm stereotyping here as well as using way too many commas for one sentence), it's a father-son thing. Not in my family. For me, watching baseball is strictly a mother-daughter activity.
My mother's love of baseball goes way back. She used to be a die-hard Dodgers fan. In the early phase of my parents' courtship, my dad would suffer through hours of Dodger games, detesting the activity but enjoying the company. Then the Dodgers went on strike (something about demanding higher wages...I'm not really in the know on this one) and my mom became disenchanted with the sport. Thus, I grew up exposed to football fandom instead. That one never really stuck.
I'm not sure how this happened, but my mom fell in love with baseball again right around the same time I was falling in love with it for the first time. [See my post on the Giants]. When I came home from school for the summer, we really got the fever (baseball, not Bieber. just to clarify). Whenever the Giants played, we were watching. Or listening. Or trying to find the scores online while on vacation.
Mom taught me the rules, suffered my questions, corrected me when my "coaching" of the TV was a little off. Thus, some of my favorite memories from this summer are watching baseball with her. During night games, late in the 7th or 8th inning, after my dad and my sister have gone to bed, my mom and I can be found telling at the TV in unison, calling out, "you have got to be freaking kidding me!" with identical intonation and inflections.
The boys of summer have given my mom and I one more thing that we share, one more common trait to add to the long list of reasons why I have earned and proudly wear the nickname "Laurie Junior."
Is this post corny? Yeah, but honestly, which of my posts aren't? I love my mom and I love baseball. And I am very much okay with that.
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