It's mid March which can only mean one thing...no, no not March Madness, or Easter or Spring......BASEBALL season is creeping up on us! Time to gear up for hot dogs, beer, and above all, my Anaheim Angels; I dare not say Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim because I just think that's plain wrong but that's a whole different tangent.
I grew up watching my older brother play baseball and when the interest of the sport sparked within myself, it was time for me to sign up for softball. I started playing when I was about 9 years old and played until I was about 17 when I finally hung up the cleats and glove. There was nothing like traveling every weekend in cold weather, hot weather and just playing from sun up until sun down. I met a handful of life-long friends playing the sport of softball and I can't imagine what my life would have been like without the sport, without the adventure, without the experience and without the friendships. It was definitely one of the first loves of my life and boy did my parents know how much I loved to play, which meant if I ever got in trouble....it was the one thing they took away from me by requesting the coach to bench me. (This happened until the phone came along which became another love of my life and my parents quickly realized that was far more difficult for me to live without so they learned to take that away from me instead.)
I've always enjoyed the smell of the dirt on the field, the horrible food at the snack bar, the sound of chatter and cheering and to this day I still enjoy the friendships that I made along the way:
I love watching the college softball world series and remembering what's it like to have so much passion for the game. I still have so much love for the sport baseball and softball. Some find it quite slow and boring, but with one swing of the bat, one bad pitch that rolls by the catcher, one terrible throw to first base .... the game can change. And as slow as it may be sometimes, it can definitely change in the blink of an eye.
I'm 100% an Angels girl, always will be through thick and thin. I watched them struggle for years and then rise to the top in 2002. I was there for all the championship games and every world series game, including game 7 when they clenched the title. Probably one of the best experiences of my life to say the least! This year should be another exciting and hopeful year for our boys in red .... got a nice preview with some of my softball girls this past weekend in Tempe, Arizona where we enjoyed a little fun in the sun at Spring Training. The boys aren't looking too bad so hopefully they will take us all the way again this year, 10 years after our last championship. I'd say we are due :o).
So with my tickets in hand, my Angels team gear pressed and clean and ready to wear, I look forward to baseball season (very impatiently I might add)....LIGHT UP THAT HALO!
Yesterday I sat in traffic while my mind wandered....and it wandered unknowingly to a moment in my life that I thought I had moved past. A moment that I remembered feeling so hopeful about yet it turned out to be anything but hope would entail. I kept trying to shake the memories from my mind because I swore that it was something I wouldn't revisit, something that I had grown stronger over, something that wasn't worthy of my time.....yet here that moment was: soaking up my time.
I started to realize how badly the surroundings reminded me of a moment in time when I was so happy, so hopeful and so blissful. I looked around wondering how a simple freeway, or a landmark on the side of the road, or the time of day caused my mind to be filled with something that I have been desperately trying to forget. And while I have driven this route quite frequently over the course of the past 12 months, that routes impact on me changed about half way through the year when someone came into my life and made me believe in things that I thought I would never believe in again. I felt things I never imagined I would feel again, I smiled like I had never smiled before and I felt the tides change.
Things didn't stay this way for too long, although long enough to apparently stick with me almost a year later....my smile faded, my eyes saddened, the hope I had was lost and my beliefs reverted back to what they were. I'll never fully understand what this experience was meant to do for me...I've gone over it countless number of times in my mind as I sit at work, as I lay in bed, as I drive by myself. The answers haven't come easy and I think I'll always wonder what could have been, but as I sat in traffic on that same freeway, passing those same landmarks, at the same time of day .... those same things I experienced when I was happier than I had ever been, smiling bigger than I ever had, believed in things I had lost hope in.....my mind wandered back to those moments .... my mind wandered to that place that at one time made me feel everything again. At that moment I felt everything all over again, even in the absence of the person who made me feel those things.....I felt them all over again and I caught myself smiling.
When the moment faded into the back of my mind and I snapped back to reality....I got my answer I had been looking for. That mind travel I had just experienced made me realize that I can and do still believe.
......it reminded me of what it felt like to believe and to be hopeful and that perhaps that never fully goes away......sometimes we just need a reminder.
