A year-long project dedicated to developing my skills as a writer of creative non-fiction. Each story here is one from the pages of my life.
July 31st
There is one day of every year that will always be bittersweet for me. It’s a day that evokes two very different, almost opposite feelings. It’s just after mid-summer, when the grass in the front yard begins changing from soft, velvet green to stiff, sun-bleached tan. It’s that time of the summer when petrichor rises as steam from the pavement, as thunderstorms roll in on the winds of change. It’s a day that brings both excitement and sorrow, joy and a little pain. The last day of July marks the anniversary of my hormone replacement therapy. It’s also the day my maternal great-grandmother passed away.
My great-grandmother was a saint, and I mean that in every sense of the word. She was strong, independent, caring, sympathetic, absent-minded, and definitely exhibited hoarding tendencies. She was moderately religious, and would send monthly care packages to nuns in Haiti. Her lapel always sparkled with a small, gilded angel pin. Her spine was curved, which gave her a slightly hunched posture underneath the cable knit sweaters and polyester jacket. When I was younger, she would sit in a big, leather wingback chair—the same chair that now sits in the corner of my apartment—and crochet toilet paper cozies, afghans, hand towels, pretty much anything she ever knew how to make. Her hearing wasn’t so great, so she wore headphones with a sound enhancer whenever she watched TV. To strangers, she was Mrs. Gorman. To friends, she was Winnie. To me, she was Nan.
Nan has never known me by my real name. By the time I came out as transgender, her health was declining rapidly. She had been moved to an assisted living community (read “nursing home without the nurses”) for her own health and safety, and I didn’t have many opportunities to visit her. There wasn’t much time for us to talk, let alone time for me to drop the gender bomb in her lap. So she didn’t know that I was preparing to start hormones. She didn’t know anything about me anymore, really.
The day I started hormones was an emotional roller coaster, even before I heard the news. It involved multiple trips to and from my doctor’s office, which happened to be about 30 miles away from where I was working that summer. I had to leave work, drive out there, drive back to work, and then drive back out to finally receive my first shot of testosterone. I was nervous and shaky with anticipation all day. After over a year of seeking HRT, I was finally getting my first shot. Finally. I even took a picture of the vial with my phone while waiting to see the doctor, and sent it to all of my friends. Once it was over, I was relieved, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. I called everyone under the sun on my way back to work, despite the laws against cell phone use while driving. I was beaming with utter elation.
After work, I went to a friend’s house. Everyone was there, and they hugged me and congratulated me. As we sat down to play Monopoly, my cell phone rang. It was Mom. She didn’t sound OK.
“What’s up?” I asked, unsure.
“I have some bad news,” she replied. ”Nanny died this afternoon.”
Her voice cracked slightly. We were never very emotional, and since Nan had been sick, it wasn’t exactly shocking that she had finally passed on. But still, we were a small family, and it just got a little smaller. Mom sniffled, which meant she was crying, and I was at a complete loss for words.
“How did it happen?” I finally asked. My morbid curiosity got the better of me, and I suddenly flashed back to my paternal grandmother’s death when I was 15 years old.
“Well, you know she was sick, but she stopped eating three days ago. By choice. Can you believe that?” There was a hint of astonished indignation in her voice.
“Yeah, well, you know she always did things her own way,” I answered, and I felt a tiny smile creep across my lips.
“Hah, yeah, that’s true,” Mom chuckled quietly.
As a rule, I don’t generally regret things in life. I’m a firm believer that our trials and tribulations shape the person we become, and my great-grandmother was a huge influence on that way of thinking. Any woman who can withstand the abuse she suffered as a child, the desperation of the Great Depression, work for 78 years, and still live an exemplary life of humility, gratitude, and generosity is a pillar of humanity. Her death marks the end of an era in my family and community. But it also marks the beginning of a new one. On the day she died, I started my journey to be the person I am today. I used to regret not telling her about wanting to transition, about not showing her the real me. Now, I only wish I had the chance to tell her how much she has affected my life, simply by living hers. Her strength and spirit have taught me that I should always do what’s right for me. And just as she decided when her life would end, I decided when mine would begin. Thanks, Nan.
Runway Lights
There’s an old road called New Highway back home. It’s riddled with shallow potholes and badly cracked tar fillings and it winds from Route 109 to Conklin Avenue. There’s nothing on New Highway except for the hot dog truck that sits on the shoulder at the Route 109 corner every day. I’ve used New Highway as a shortcut to work many times, because it cuts out six lights in the four miles from my house to Airport Plaza. The plaza was named because of the small, private airport that sits where a miniature city of factories produced airplanes in the fifties and sixties. During the day, the airport looks rather boring and plain, a field of rubber skid marks and faded blacktop sporadically sprinkled with patches of overgrown grass. The blue runway lights are on, but they are nothing spectacular. No, during the day, the airport is just as lackluster as the old road called New Highway that runs along its side.
At night, the airfield is transformed. What looked like an abandoned asphalt field in the harsh light of day turns into a black abyss of sparkling blue lights, stretching out in long rows for what seems like miles. The sky is tinted orange by the lights from the plaza parking field. If I were to look up at the sky above the runways, I would see the twinkling lights of planes circling and preparing to land. Everything around the airport is shrouded in the black of night because there are no lights on New Highway. It would confuse the pilots coming in to land. I’ve spent many hours of countless nights pulled over onto the gravel shoulder of New Highway, next to the fences separating the road from the runways. It’s easy to lose myself in the beauty of Republic Airport at night. It’s one of my most cherished places on Long Island.
I once brought a girlfriend there on a date. We had just eaten at the local diner, and I knew she would share my fascination and infatuation with the location. I pulled my Chevy Blazer onto the gravel, like I had done dozens of times before. I flicked off the headlights and shut off the engine, leaving the key turned enough to allow the radio to quietly serenade us. I looked over at her. Her head was turned, facing out the window—she was staring at the runways. She whispered under her breath, “It’s beautiful,” as she turned and looked at me. A slight smile graced the corners of her mouth, and her green eyes sparkled in the faint glow from the runway lights. My body began to act on its own, and my left hand found its way to her cheek. I leaned toward her and she leaned toward me, and as our lips met our eyes closed. She was soft and tender, even when her teeth nipped at my lower lip. I pulled away and we looked at each other for a brief moment, before I climbed into the backseat. She followed.
I had folded down the seats and spread out a sleeping bag over the coarse synthetic fabric that lined the cargo space. The flannel of the sleeping bag was smooth and comfortable, and we lay down next to each other. I put my left hand behind my head and she rested hers in the crook of my right shoulder. We lay there for a while, not speaking. My right arm was draped around her, and she played with my hand and fingers absentmindedly. After a while, she turned to look at me. I looked back. She sat up slowly and rolled carefully on top of me. She stared down into my eyes before lowering her lips to my neck. At first, it was kissing I felt. Each kiss gradually involved more teeth, more sucking, until she was biting at my collarbone and breathing heavily. She straddled my hips with her eyes closed, and a muffled moan escaped her as she adjusted herself on top of me. We had done this countless times before in the privacy of my bedroom, but never in an open place where we could be caught. The windows of my truck were tinted, but a police flashlight could easily penetrate the tint to reveal our bodies inside.
Her hips started slowly grinding against mine, her skirt hiding the secret within my pants. She knew it was there, and I could feel it as she rubbed against it through my jeans. I wanted to touch her, to put my hands on her body and feel her move, but it was a rule between us that I couldn’t. Not unless she put my hands on her. I bit my lower lip to hold back a moan, and she leaned down to kiss me. This one was different than before. It was more forceful, more passionate. She was becoming more confident. She dragged her hands from my shoulders to my belt, and slowly unbuckled it. I couldn’t resist temptation, and I moved to take off her shirt. Her hands, thin but strong, grabbed me by the wrists before I could take hold, and she put them above my head. “No,” she whispered. She let go, and slowly pulled off her shirt. Then she unbuttoned my jeans and I shimmied out of them as best I could. I didn’t want her to get off me. I didn’t want to lose that contact. It made my heart race; my cheeks blushed and I could feel my ears turn red with excitement. She lowered herself onto me, and the moan she attempted to suppress before came out full force. I turned my head away, wanting to savor the expression on her face, and I looked out at the lights of the runway. This place would never be the same again.
New Highway is hundreds of miles away now, and I rarely go back to the town where I grew up. But when I do, If I find myself there at night, I pull onto the gravel and sit for a few minutes. My mind often wanders back to that date that ended with us in the backseat of my now-sold Chevy, and it brings me to smile. The police caught us, though not on that night. It was later on, after our relationship had failed miserably and we were attempting to salvage what was left. But that night, in the darkness of the old road called New Highway, next to the blue lights of the airport runways, we were in teenage bliss.
The Last Time
My grandmother had been in and out of the hospital for years. She was a recovering alcoholic for nearly 30 years; a former smoker for about 10; she was diagnosed with diabetes at age 73 and lost her leg to the disease three years later. She was my father’s mother, and he would take me nearly every weekend to visit her at the various Long Island hospitals. Good Samaritan in West Babylon. Huntington Hospital in Huntington Station. Stony Brook out by the university. Eventually Uncle Brian moved her into St. Catherine’s nursing home, adjacent to the hospital with the same name, in Kings Park. I always hated the weekend visits to my grandmother’s various hospital rooms, mainly because of my intense fear and anxiety concerning hospitals. My father insisted on dragging me there, weekend after weekend, despite my panic attacks and trouble breathing, as well as the all-out fights we had about it. On March first of my freshman year in high school, the day before her 78th birthday, I visited my grandmother in the hospital for the last time.
The whole ride to the hospital I sat there quietly, watching the cars out the window and reliving my traumatic hospital experience in my head. I saw my four-year-old self fall through the window from the backyard into the basement. I felt the wetness of the blood as it seeped from the gash on my left arm. I smelled the burning rubber of my father’s tires as he peeled into the emergency room parking lot. The pressure in my chest grew heavier as I remembered being strapped down, the male nurse holding my head down, crushing my ear into the board. My heavy breathing increased when I remembered screaming for my mother and begging the nurses to stop hurting me. I could see her, barely, through my teary, squinting eyes, as the doctor stuck me over and over again with hypodermics filled with antibiotics and numbing agents. It was that overwhelming experience from which my fear of hospitals, needles, and claustrophobia were born. And it was the reason my chest tightened even more as my father turned into the parking lot of my grandmother’s hospital.
St. Catherine’s of Siena, it read, in green font on the yellowed, translucent plastic that served as an illuminated sign once the sun set. I looked up to the highest gable of the building and spied the gold-plated cross, perched on the roof. This was Gramma’s hospital. As he parked the car, I told my father I wasn’t going in. He got out, came around to my door, tore it open and pulled me out. It was the first time he laid a hand on me in six years. I was furious. I screamed at him, even with my shortness of breath, shaking with anxiety. I told him I wasn’t going in, that I didn’t care who was in there, I wasn’t going. Trying to come up with any reason not to go in, I yelled at him about my friend Maria who died the year before because of doctors’ mistakes; how she was without oxygen for twenty minutes before anyone did anything to help her; how she was brain-dead and had to be taken off life support. In my mind, hospitals killed people. He hadn’t known this until I told him that very moment. He looked exasperated. To this day, I still wonder if his persistence was a manifestation of his stubbornness or if he knew the bitter truth. Gramma was dying. This was our last chance to say goodbye.
We walked out of the elevator and down the hall toward Gramma’s room. As we passed the nurses behind their desk, I noticed three of them sitting and doing paperwork. Their eyes were empty, underlined by dark circles. Their mouths were drawn in tight, close-lipped frowns, and as one answered the phone, I heard the emptiness of emotion in her voice. They were robots, going through the motions of their daily lives. Walking past them, I remember wondering why they looked so tired. Their solemn, downtrodden faces seemed older than the names on their nametags suggested. It wasn’t until later that I realized what floor we were on. It wasn’t like the other floors of hospital rooms—this was where the sick came to die.
At the end of the hall I saw a doorway surrounded by familiar bodies. I recognized six of my uncles and Aunt Barbara. As we approached them, my father and Aunt Barbara hugged and exchanged a knowing look. They spoke quietly, but I tuned out their voices. Instead I looked around at everyone crowding the door. Uncle Brian, Uncle Paul, Uncle Joe, Uncle Danny, Uncle Bill, and Uncle Pete. Each of them was staring into the room through the doorway. My father grabbed me by the arm and carefully pushed his way through, using me as a makeshift battering ram. The first thing I saw was Aunt Karen, the oldest and one of my father’s two sisters, kneeling next to the bed. Her back was to us, and she held Gramma’s hand in hers. I could tell by the subdued sobs that she was crying. I was so confused. Then I saw Gramma.
She had lost patches of her red hair. What was left was matted down greasily with sweat. Her eyes were blank, sunken in, and staring; her mouth hung open and she gasped quietly for air. Most of her teeth were missing. The skin on her face was grey as ash and sagging. Her arms were by her sides, thin, shaky, and grey as her face. Her entire frame seemed to have shrunk since I had last seen her. My father pushed me forward and told me to go say hi. The hitch in his voice told me this wasn’t like our other visits. I could tell something was wrong. Cautiously I leaned forward and kissed her cheek. It was cold. The texture of her skin was rough, not like the soft, fleshy cheek I kissed at Christmas. As I pulled away I could see the desperation and pain in her dull blue eyes. She had lost forty pounds in three months. It was two-thirty in the afternoon.
By six o’clock, I’d watched every one of my uncles come in and leave the room, but Aunt Karen stayed by Gramma’s side. I’d learn later that Aunt Karen was the one closest with Gramma out of my father and his eleven siblings. She never left the room, not once in the three and a half hours I was there. I too stayed by Gramma’s side, though not as vigilant as Aunt Karen. I sat in the chair by Gramma’s bed, facing both of them. My cousins had come and gone. My father was off getting a drink somewhere. I was fifteen years old and watching this familiar yet unfamiliar creature suffer in despair. Familiar because she was my grandmother—the woman who yelled obscenities whenever an umpire made a bad call during a baseball game on TV. Unfamiliar because that part of her was gone now, lost under the suffering of a dying woman.
I sat there thinking of this, when Gramma seemed to have a sudden burst of energy. She lifted her head and waved her arm in front of her. Though she couldn’t speak, she managed to utter a name. “Mark…” Mark was the name of her son who died as a toddler. Aunt Karen asked Gramma questions, things like, “Are you seeing Baby Mark?” and “He’s waving to you?” Gramma managed to nod her head enough to answer. Aunt Karen cried harder, and told Gramma, “It’s okay. Go with him. He needs you now.” Gramma laid her head back down on the pillow. Her breathing slowed and became shallow. Then it stopped altogether. I watched her body go limp, and Aunt Karen kissed her hand. I had never heard a grown woman sound so much like a lost little girl. She sobbed, “Mommy? Mommy?” Uncle Danny walked in, shut my grandmother’s eyes, then walked out to get the nurse. It was six-thirteen.
Her head was turned slightly toward me, her greyish-blue lips parted as her last breath escaped her fluid-filled lungs. What color was left in her cheeks drained away until she was pasty white. One of her broken teeth was snagged on her lower lip, and it stuck out a little. That image is forever burned in my memory, like a branding iron on a head of cattle. I’ll never forget the face of death. As I sat there, listening to Aunt Karen gag with sobs, I couldn’t cry. Gramma and I weren’t close at all. I had no right to cry. I had no right to even be there. This was such an intimate moment, and who was I to sit there and observe without even shedding a tear?
Two days later, I stood in front of my grandmother’s casket. I stared at the beautified version of what I saw lying in that hospital bed. She was so thin. My younger cousin Casey tugged on my shirtsleeve, which meant she had a question, so I squatted down to listen.
“Is that really Gramma in there?” She whispered. She was only six, she didn’t understand.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It doesn’t look like Gramma. It looks fake.”
I lied.
“No kiddo. It’s not really Gramma. Gramma’s in heaven with Baby Mark. Do you know Baby Mark?” She nodded. We had all seen his picture before. Gramma kept it next to her bed on her nightstand.
“Well she’s with him. And I want you to listen to me very carefully now, okay?” Again she nodded. This time I spoke the truth.
“Gramma was a very special person. She loved you for who you are, and she loved you very much. You see those pictures over there?” I pointed to the corkboard next to the casket, where pictures of my grandmother had been pinned up by friends and family. “That’s how you should remember Gramma.”
She smiled at me and went off to find my uncle. She hadn’t taken two steps from me before I started crying. I realized in that moment that, even though my grandmother and I were never close, and even though I despised visiting her in the hospital, I still loved her as much as she unconditionally loved me. I was overwhelmed by guilt and anger for all those times I fought with my father about visiting her. But then I remembered three things: First, I remembered watching baseball and hockey games with her, and the ridiculous stream of profanity that came with every bad call or penalty. Then I remembered she once thanked me for being the only one, out of her 52 grandchildren, to visit for no reason. And then, I remembered that I was the only one, out of all her grandchildren, to stay with her until the end. The only one. When she looked around for the last time, she saw Aunt Karen and she saw me. Her closest daughter and grandchild. That must count for something.
Mom
Every mother has a favorite story about her son or daughter. My mother tells hers whenever I bring a guest home for dinner. I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard it, but I know she keeps the photograph on the bookshelf. She says she’ll never forget it, and she tells it with the brightest smile on her face.
It was a hot July day and we were moving into the house. I was about two or three years old, something my mother and I can never agree on, but nonetheless I was very young. My mother and father were busy moving furniture and boxes with the help of my uncle. Once again, there is usually a disagreement on which uncle, but we agree it’s irrelevant and so we let it go. I was left to entertain myself under the cautious but not hawk-like eye of my mother. She’ll say she must’ve been distracted, but I toddled off somewhere off on my own. After a short while, she noticed I was missing. She called my name, but I didn’t answer. She walked from the front steps to the driveway, and by the garage, she saw a sock. She walked to the corner of the house where she found another sock. Around the corner, she found a pair of shorts. A few steps further she found a shirt. At the open gate to the backyard, she found a pair of underwear. Confused, she went into the backyard and, “sure enough,” there I was. At this point, my mother has retrieved the picture from the bookshelf and placed it in the hands of my guest. She describes the photo, saying she found me sitting in the half-empty kiddy pool, completely naked, except for a blow-up life ring around my waist. Then she looks at me and in her Long Island accent she says, “You may have been just a baby, but you knew not to go swimming without that life ring!”
Sometimes when my mother tells the story, I can just barely hear a tinge of nostalgia in her voice. It’s almost as if she wishes I could be the kid in that photograph forever. That way, she would always know I’m safe, that nothing is wrong and all is right with the world. Maybe that’s every mother’s wish. But maybe we as children never really grow out of that. My mother is still the one I turn to when things get tough. And she still looks for me when I get lost in my own world. So maybe I haven’t changed. Maybe I still am her baby, in that photograph she so proudly adores.
Mark Country Summers
When I was a kid, my mom worked year-round. We were a small family of two and she was our sole source of income. She was a teacher in a school for students with behavioral problems, and, like most teachers, she worked from September to June. The difference between her and my public school teachers was that she also worked from the end of the school year until the second week in August—which meant she still worked when I was out of school. I don’t remember what exactly she did for me before she found a summer camp, but the summer after first grade she started sending me to day camp.
Mark Country Day in Bayshore was the camp she decided on for me. Founded in 1962, it operated as a school during the academic year and a day camp during the summer. It had two pools, playgrounds, basketball courts, baseball diamonds, outdoor volleyball courts, a stage, soccer field, hockey rink, and an area set up with picnic tables for lunch. The classrooms were converted into rooms for computers, leathercraft, music, nature, arts and crafts, and the nurse’s station. There was also a gym, which housed the locker rooms and the video room in its basement, where we watched Baby’s Day Out when it rained. It was a child’s heaven from sun up to early evening, five days a week.
Camp never seemed to change over the summers I spent there. After the first few days of the season, the fragile blades of grass struggling to replace last summer’s failed growth would be violently trampled into oblivion by the countless soccer games on the main field. The entire field would become one long stretch of gritty dirt, dust, and mud, littered sporadically with the rogue wrappers of yesterday’s ice cream novelty snacks. Behind the hockey rink, where the two baseball diamonds met at center field, there was always a group lying on the scratchy, bleached towels stolen from the poolhouse during swimming instruction. By mid-day the sun would be directly overhead, beating down through the muggy air, and sweat would trickle down my back under my already-soaked T-shirt. There was the relief of seeing “Computers” on the activities list for the day, and the overwhelming reassurance that came with the prospect of sitting in an air-conditioned room for forty minutes.
There were tons of activities to look forward to, and different ones every day. Each group had swimming instruction twice throughout the day. Dance was scheduled two or three times a week. At least three sports were played each day. We played with Legos, did gymnastics, and had playground time after lunch. In my all my summers there, no activity ever excited me more than arts and crafts. As a camper, I liked it more than the other activities because I could make things for my mom. At the end of the day I could proudly walk up to her, covered in the dirt and grime from the day’s adventures, and hold up the baby food jar covered in sticky, colored tissue paper. Or the sloppy collage of pictures cut out of old magazines.
More than the activity itself, I loved the arts and crafts room. Some of my fondest camp memories are in that room. There was the time my counselor made a girl in my group laugh so hard she was given the nickname “Sarah Giggles.” It was where I learned to make hemp friendship bracelets, like the one my mom bought on a vacation in Florida once. It was where I sang “Stand By Me” with my favorite camper, who we nicknamed Pancake, my last summer there.
As a counselor, I found the room both intriguing and comforting. The first step through the door was like stepping into a cave, although there were two sets of windows. The acrid stench of slightly melted wax crayons and diluted craft glue hung the air, circulated by the rickety pivot fan in the corner. As my eyes adjusted from the harsh sunlight to the dim fluorescent, the familiar salmon-pink paint covering the walls would make the corners of my mouth twitch in an amused grin. The tables became unique mosaics of paint, glitter and ink by mid-summer. Surrounding each were seven or eight little blue chairs, the perfect size for anyone under age five. The battered radio, tuned to a classic rock station, serenaded “Don’t Stop Believing” or “Brown Eyed Girl” through its fuzzy speakers. Beth, the arts and crafts specialist, would hum along as she scuffed about in her worn flip flops, setting up the group’s project for that day. As she moved, the thin layer of grit on the floor would resound underfoot, and make a satisfying combination of scrape and crunch.
The camp closed down after my first summer back from college. I went to visit the owner, and she let me walk around one last time. My first and last stop was the arts and crafts room. The Pepto-Bismol walls were painted a dull shade of blue, and I find it amusing that the new color reflected my disappointment when I saw it. The crayon smell had dissipated, the radio was gone, and the room was piled nearly to the ceiling with stacks of tables, chairs, and furniture from various other rooms. But when I walked in the very last time and shut my eyes, it all came rushing back to me. And I could swear I heard that old radio belting, telling me to hold on to that feeling.
#1
I step out of the dugout with my thirty three-inch, twenty three-ounce Easton bat slung over my shoulder. It’s my favorite bat, not only for its specs, but because it’s black, green, and silver paint matches my uniform—the green, gold, and white that represent our high school. The dirt crunches quietly under my dusty cleats as I stride up to home plate. There’s a soft breeze over the field and it whistles through the ear holes of my helmet as I turn my head to scout the pitcher. It barely drowns out the cheers of the parents and friends in the bleachers behind me. My right foot digs in slightly as I step into the batter’s box.
The instincts I’ve developed over my thirteen years of playing are telling me to hold back on the first pitch, use it to time the pitcher, feel her out. My heart starts to pound in my chest as the pitcher begins to wind up and start her pitch. I can see my heartbeat behind my eyes, hear it in my ears, feel it in my throat. Her arm swings in a windmill and her glove thwacks against her thigh as she releases the ball at her waist. When the ball leaves her hand, the world becomes a slow motion movie moment. The breeze dies, the spectators go silent, and the twelve-inch neon yellow ball seems to float lazily toward me. Time begins to blur and suddenly I am no longer a sixteen-year-old high school sophomore and starting right fielder for the Lindenhurst High School Junior Varsity softball team. I have transformed into a little kid standing in front of my Little League coach, learning the proper technique for exemplary batting.
Coach was a stereotypically Italian-American man with a long salt and peppery ponytail. He always wore black shorts and a black t-shirt with his Reebok tennis shoes to all of our practices. His facial hair always intrigued me, because he had a very trimmed handlebar moustache and soul patch. And he was always insanely tan, even during the softball clinic in the winter. The first time I saw him I remember thinking he had very muscular calves, just like my father—a lifelong softball player. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he towered over all of us. It was a little intimidating, but his friendly disposition always made up for it.
For batting practice, we always went to the middle school gymnasium. The strange orange-tinted lights always glowed and buzzed softly overhead, the same lights that would come to symbolize every gymnasium of my public education. The old wooden plank floors echoed with every step as we did our warm-ups, and our sneakers would squeak if we dragged our feet while running a quick lap around the basketball boundary line. Coach would hand out the yellow plastic whiffle ball bats and line us up in rows of five. Then he would take his place in front of us. He had a series of steps to his method of teaching. He would always ask us the same question every time we practiced:
“What’s the most important thing about batting?”
Our answers were always the same. We would shout out things like “Keep your eye on the ball!” or “Follow through!” Coach would always shake his head with a slight smile.
“No, no, no. The most important thing about batting is your swing. You can’t hit the ball if you can’t swing, right?”
Then the actual lesson would begin.
Coach always told us to stand with our feet “shoulder-width apart.” My seven-year-old mind knew exactly what he was talking about, but my ears always heard “shouldered with a part.” I didn’t realize what he was actually saying until I was about twelve years old, when I finally understood what “shoulder-width apart” actually meant. I knew what I was supposed to do because he always demonstrated along with the instruction. I once tried to explain the process to my mother, and I distinctly remember saying my version of what I heard, and she didn’t bother to correct me.
After each of us was in the proper footing, Coach would move on to the next step. He told us to bend our knees slightly, to not be stiff but not to squat. Our weight should be evenly distributed on both feet, and we should keep our backs straight and not hunch. During practice this would all be fine, but there were definitely some of my teammates who forgot this part of our lesson. They would stand at the plate with their bodies at an awkwardly hunched angle, some would crouch down real low, and some would stand completely erect. I noticed that these were the players who rarely had a decent hit during our games, and it certainly reinforced Coach’s lesson. I always knew that I wanted to be a hitter.
The next part of the lesson was about our arms and hands. Coach would tell us to “line up” our knuckles, holding the bat gently in out hands. He always told us to imagine we were cradling an egg in our hands as we held the bat, to not squeeze the grip. He sometimes commented on the fact that someone’s knuckles were turning white from their vice grip on the plastic bats, and we laughed. I was confused about the knuckles at first, and Coach always had to help me with it. I was always lining up the knuckles on my hand instead of the ones on my fingers. He would come over to me and straighten them out every time. Then he would tell us that our arms should be at right angles, and everyone would get confused. We were still in elementary school and most of us had just begun learning about right angles. He told us they should look like Ls and then we always understood. Our arms were always to be held towards our back arm, in order to have more power behind our swings. I always paid the most attention whenever this detail was mentioned.
The position of a batter’s head is an important piece of the proper batting stance. A batter’s head must be turned to face the pitcher, in order to see the ball as it approaches home plate. Coach always told us to touch our chin to our shoulder. Not only did it help us keep our arms back, but it also provided the best way of explaining how exactly to turn our heads toward the pitcher. Thinking about it now, how else do you explain to a bunch of little kids that they need to turn their heads enough to see a ball coming at them? If our heads weren’t turned enough, we wouldn’t be able to see the ball, and if we tried to turn too much, our bodies would be out of alignment and our swings would suffer. Touching our chins to our shoulders was the best way to explain exactly how much to turn our heads.
My favorite part of the lesson was the step and the hip snap. It was another part of the lesson where Coach mentioned power and so it snagged my attention every time. He would tell us to lift our front foot slightly and take a baby step toward the pitcher. This was intended to start our forward motion, which would lead to the second part of the “power” movement. After the baby step forward with our front foot, Coach would tell us to “explode” with our hips. By this, he was telling us to snap our hips a full ninety degrees toward the pitcher. He always commented that girls get their power from their hips. I used to wonder why, but now I find it rather amusing as well as annoying, because of the sexual implications of his comment. This was another part of the forward motion that would lead to a more powerful swing, and I was all for the hip snapping, as long as it meant I could be a power hitter. I had been told for years that my size was nearly ideal for power-hitting.
After the hip snap comes the three motions of the swing. The first is the “knob.” The “knob” is the first movement of a good swing in which the arms straighten, sticking out the knob at the bottom of the bat. The second movement was the “chop,” which mimicked the swinging motion of a lumberjack chopping at a tree with an axe. The third motion was the “follow through,” which was the swinging of the bat from the “chop” stage to the completed swing. When done in slow motion I always thought it looked rather ridiculous. After doing it faster, however, it made more sense. It was a break down of the most effective method of swinging. Coach always demonstrated it slowly, and then sped up to show us how it would look in actuality. I never quite understood why the breakdown was necessary until much later in my softball “career.” It always had a significant impact on my swing.
This lesson runs through my mind in the two seconds before the ball smacks into the catcher’s glove behind me. I hear the umpire yell, “Striiiiike!” and I know for sure that I have come back to the present. I know the pitcher’s speed now, and I can time each step precisely. The world is back on the normal speed, and I can hear my parents cheering from their chairs beside the bleachers. Coach is nearby, watching his daughter who is already on base, and the pitcher is beginning her wind up again. I remember the pieces of the lesson that will have the biggest effect on my swing, and as that neon ball comes sailing toward me, I take that baby step and snap my hips. I let my arms swing hard and I can feel the soft contact as the ball hits the “sweet spot” on my favorite bat. That ugly colored ball sails off to the outfield as I tear out of the batter’s box. I can already tell it’s passed over their heads, and I can see them running after it as it rolls further and further into the fenceless outfield. But I’m not watching. My head is down, my legs are pounding the dirt, and I’m smiling through my concentration. I know I’ve just hit the winning homerun.
