Naps, Baseball Games, and other Acts of Healing

I took two naps yesterday, and if I’m being honest, as soon as I write this blog, I’m going to hit the sack again. The first step in my summer of healing is apparently sleeping several times a day.

Hey don’t blame me-I’m just trying to listen to what my body tells me.

I did do a few things. I went to a meeting for an event I’m hosting. I took a walk with Jaimie. I wanted to do two laps around the track, but she thought it was best to only do one. She had that, “Don’t question me” look in her eyes, so one lap it was.

Then after my second nap, my dad and I went to the baseball game. I texted my mom and my sister to see if they wanted to go. They couldn’t however, so it was just the two of us. We arrived in separate cars and entered through different sides of the stadium. This has to be have been the 500th minor league baseball game we have attended just the two of us. Yet it was probably the first one in almost 25 years.

Minor league baseball were our summers when I was a kid. Seeing the Greenville Braves play out at Memorial Stadium. All the way down Pleasantburg Road. Take a left at the Bilo, hold your nose past the paper mill, and there you were.

Tickets couldn’t have been more than five dollars. I think if you showed up after the fourth inning they just opened the gates and let people walk right in. We watched game after game and player after player and here we were, two grown men, at the game again.

Time has taken its toll. My dad’s hair is gray now. Areas of my head are too. Tickets are $10 each. There’s no stench of the paper mill. And the stadium is surround by million dollar condos.

It was a pretty good game. The Drive scored in each of the first six innings. The Hickory Crawdads mounted a rally before I wound up having to leave. I had still had chemo the day before, I wanted to conserve as much energy as a possibly can.

The meeting I had gone to earlier in the day was for National Cancer Survivors Day. It’s June 2nd, and I’ve been asked to host an event in the park. The theme is, “Because of cancer I________________.” We are supposed to focus on the positive effects that cancer has had on your life or your outlook. When I heard the topic I rolled my eyes. I’m currently not in the, “Look on the bright side” phase of my healing journey. But... if it were not for the c word, I would not live in Greenville. I surely would have had a million different things going on, and there is little chance I would have found a couple of hours to sit outside and try to guess the price of beer with my dad, as the sun was setting on a beautiful May evening. Just like we had done so many times before, way too long ago.