A Memoir by Susie Aybar
Before baseball season, my dad brought home a list of Yankees and Mets games and let me pick tickets for a few of them. They were a perk of his corporate job, one of the few my father ever used. I always chose the Mets tickets. It was the mid/late-80’s, the glorious era of Dwight Gooden, Keith Hernandez, and the infamous error by Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series. Time wasn’t something my father had a lot of, but each ticket promised his attention for a whole evening.
My father worked endless hours in New York City, regularly traveling to Europe, Asia, and Africa during my teenage years. It was still a time when you were as faithful to your company as you were to your family. He worked for the same pharmaceutical company for 30 years in Quebec where he was raised, then in New Jersey where I was born, and finally, in New York where I grew up. He commuted, leaving the house at 6 am and returning at 9pm.
He didn’t take sick days or more than a week or two of vacation each year. When he was home, he seemed tired, which I’m sure he might’ve been, or like there was always something else to do, which I’m sure there was. Mow the lawn. Pay the bills. Wash the car. He could be gruff and short on patience. If I left the lights on in the kitchen I would hear about it. If I talked on the phone for a long time, he’d remind me to “Say your piece and get off!”
He would throw me a baseball while he grilled porkchops or shoot a few baskets in the driveway. When I got older, he got busier, and our communication frayed. If he got mad at me, he might be leaving on a trip for Asia and not coming home for weeks, so our disagreement would hang suspended in the back of my head, like a test that was coming up. But it was more like an equation I could never figure out. Our anger would dissolve over time, but never be resolved.
I was my father’s third and last girl. I happened to love sports. Did he ever wish I were a boy or that things were different? Did I become a baseball fan to connect with him in some way? Even though he wasn’t a diehard fan himself, baseball was a portal between our worlds.
My obsession with baseball intensified when my middle sister left for college when I was 13. My sisters were five and nine years older than me, so we hadn’t had much in common during those years, but I still missed the house filled with their friends and their noise. The bickering, teasing, and laughing. My parents were preoccupied with their aging parents and work. Sometimes I felt like they hardly noticed me.
I watched as many Mets games as I could on tv and couldn’t wait for the games in person.
We’d meet my dad at the train station, he’d change out of his pinstriped suit into his jeans, and we’d drive to Shea Stadium at rush hour. The seats were right next to first base. We ate hot dogs, I’d have soda, and my father would have a beer. I brought my glove, always ready to retrieve a ball. We talked about the game. I don’t remember the conversations, but the games got us through those awkward years. It was a place where there was no nagging, no distance, no gruffness. My dad always wanted to leave before the crowds did, but he would stay until the end because I asked him to.
Now, my father is 84. I’ve been fortunate to know him for 20 years since he retired. He will still make me turn out lights and his impatience can still flare, but I couldn’t have imagined the version of him who asks me about my cats fighting and my son’s doctor appointment. My father has spent many afternoons on playing fields watching my sons play soccer or baseball. When our family is away on vacation, he’ll come by our house, check our leaky fridge and play with our animals while the pet sitter is at her day job.
A year and a half ago, my father became very ill after an intestinal surgery. During that time, I sat in the hospital, watching his face become drawn and his skin wrinkly from being unable to eat, his mind fuzzy and hungry. He was hooked up to the wall, with a nasogastric tube suctioning acid out of his stomach. Walking the hospital hall became a Herculean task, even with the assistance of a walker and a companion.
I tried not to think of the things we might not do again, telling myself you never know when something will be a last anyway. After his illness, going to a baseball game seemed ridiculous. Just him eating a full meal became a goal and then eventually, going to a restaurant down the street. It would be months before he felt better.
“How long has it been since we went to a game?” my dad asked me a few weeks ago when he came to the Mets game with my family.
“I don’t know, maybe before the pandemic?” I said.
I had stressed about getting him to the game, his walk through the stadium, the stairs to our seats, but he was fine now, bragging how he’d walked over 14,000 steps dealing with a plumbing issue that week. When he went to the bathroom with my husband, I screenshot their tickets so they could get back to the seats. There are no tickets to hold anymore. I tried not to think about this time, maybe being one of the last games and focused on getting my dad the hot dog he wanted.
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Susie Aybar has an MFA from Manhattanville College. Her prose can be found in Literary Mama, Tiny Molecules, and Honeyguide Literary Magazine and is upcoming in Door is Jar Literary Magazine. Her poetry has appeared in ONE ART, The San Pedro River Review, Medical Literary Messenger, and others. You can connect with her at susieaybar.com.