空間的旅行者-我是人，我反核

When Ghosts Return

I used to dream about finding my father. I dreamed he moved to the next town over, and one day I would ride my bike to his house and knock on his door and he would tell me it was all just a big mistake. And the two of us would ride home together, me on the front, my dad pedaling hard behind, and my mother would run out the door and burst into happy tears.

It’s amazing the fantasies your mind can put together. The truth was, I didn’t know where my father lived and I never did found out. I would go by his liquor store after school, but he was never there. His friend Marty was managing it now, and he told me my dad was full-time in the new place in Collingswood. It was only an hour’s drive away, but to a kid my age, it might as well have been on the moon. After a while, I stopped going past his store. I stopped fantasizing about us biking home together. I finished grade school, junior high school, and high school with no contact from my old man.

He was a ghost.

But I still saw him.

I saw him whenever I swung a bat or threw a ball, which is why I never gave up baseball, why I played through every spring and every summer on every team and in every league possible. I could picture my father at the plate, tipping my elbow, correcting my batting stance. I could hear him yelling, “Dig, dig, dig!” as I ran out a ground ball.

A boy can always see his father on a baseball field. In my mind, it was just a matter of time before he showed up for real.

So, year after year, I pulled on new team uniforms – red socks, gray pants, blue tops, yellow caps – and each one felt like I was dressing for a visit. I split my adolescence between the pulpy smell of books, which was my mother’s passion, and the leathery smell of baseball gloves, which was my father’s. My body sprouted into his frame, broad and strong-shouldered, but two inchese taller.

And as I grew, I held on to the game like a raft in the bumpy sea, faithfully, through the chop. 

Until at last, it restored me to my father.

As I always knew it would.

-       From ‘for one more day’ by ‘Mitch Albom’