I go to a baseball game. And later, I get married.

"Mama loved to watch baseball. Of course, we lived right there at Blakely Field."

It was Saturday, July 8th, and we were watching a Mariner's baseball game at Safeco Field in Seattle, where my mother now lives with my stepfather. My brother and his family are there, too. It was my brother's season tickets that had gotten the four of us in.

I had gone to Seattle because my mother had fallen ill and had had to be hospitalized. It had sounded serious and, in fact, was, and I had flown to Seattle to be with her. But by the time I had gotten there, my mother had cajoled, harassed, and mostly humored the medical staff into letting her out. She doesn't like hospitals, her condition had improved markedly, and she had wanted to spend the time with me.

Blakely Field is in Welch, West Virginia. It sits in a a kind of bowl--there's a hillside behind the field that's lined with narrow streets and modest houses. My mother's family had lived in one of those--or half of one--it was a duplex--and from there had watched baseball played at Blakely Field. I found an old picture of Blakely Field on the internet.



I don't think you can see where my mother's house was from this picture--it was further up the hill and to the left.

In the memory of my mother's family, Welch is a big town. It's true that Welch was a quantum leap from War, which itself was a quantum leap from Newhall. As the country had come out of the Great Depression, my mother's family had moved from Newhall to War to Welch, their fortunes improving as the country's had.

But in actuality, Welch is a small town. As of July, 2004, its population was estimated at about 2,400. It's smaller than it used to be, but I don't believe it ever held many more than 5,000 people. Last Saturday night Safeco Field wasn't completely filled, but there was a pretty good crowd. Safeco Field holds 48,000 people. About 20 Welches.

"Who played there, Mom?"



"Minor league teams. And teams from the counties. I remember McDowell County played Mercer County. Mama used to follow baseball. The teams in the big cities, too."



I've been on that hillside behind Blakely Field. You could sense it, how the people had watched the games from there. The same confrontations between pitchers and batters. The same exhilaration when a ball flew off a bat, or when there was a close call. You could feel the excitement that it had generated on that hillside.



Baseball is a great game. I hope Maia acquires a taste for it, too.

I had planned to stay in Seattle at least a week, but I left early. Kristina had cried Thursday night (my first night in Seattle) and Maia had cried Friday night, so I moved up the return flight to Sunday. My mother understood. I had never been away overnight from Maia and hadn't been away overnight from Kristina for several years.

At home on Sunday night, Maia announced, "I'm going to marry my Daddy." The children have been marrying each other at preschool. "But I'm already married to Mommy," I said, but this did not discourage her.

Maia had been given two strands of beads at the July 4th block party, and she put those on me. Then she hung on old carnation lei from my head, sort of like a veil, and waved a dry erase pen in front of me. Then she made me exchange positions with her. She put those things on herself and had me wave the pen in front of her. That completed the ceremony, though I didn't wave the pen quite right the first time and had to be shown how to do it.



I wouldn't believe any of this stuff, except that I was there when it happened. Little girls are just magical.

Women are magical, as I think about it. From my grandmother, to my mother, to Kristina and Maia.

John, Monday, July 10, 2006