I’ve been listening to country music lately.
For the last six years, country music was the soundtrack of my summer. It signaled baseball fields and long backroad drives and humidity and fireflies. I usually had my pick of at least 5 stations, as country was the local genre-of-choice nearly everywhere Kels played and coached baseball.
This summer has looked so very different. It’s our first summer “out of the game.” It’s our first summer with vacations in July and weekends spent in the sand and had there been a wedding this summer, Kels could have gone (our wedding was the first wedding he ever attended because baseball players work nearly every day of the summer).
And yet recently, when I’ve scanned the radio, I’ve stopped on [the one station in LA of] country music. And my heart feels full from our time in baseball. So very grateful.
For the great exploration of new cities and of small towns. For the adventure of living out of a bag. For the long solo road-trips. For the people we met. For the friends we made. For the lessons we learned: mostly, that we are all so very different and also, that we are so very the same. And I’m realizing that I can be grateful for the past, and, simultaneously, so very grateful for my present.
My drives look a lot different these days- winding through the city rather than along rolling green hills. I’m learning a lot about the beauty of “and.”
Our time in baseball was a wonderful, rich adventure (that I wouldn’t trade for the world) and our life in Los Angeles in a wonderful, rich adventure (that I wouldn’t trade for the world).
Our time in baseball was often challenging, sometimes lonely, and always unpredictable, and
our life in Los Angeles is often challenging, sometimes lonely, and, well, life is a bit more predictable, but the toddler certainly isn’t .
Our time in baseball was eye-opening, as we stretched and grew in innumerable ways, and
our life in Los Angeles is eye-opening, as we continue to stretch and grow in innumerable ways.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, the grass is green – and brown – where we stand (and where we’ve stood, and where we have yet to stand).
Seasons change, circumstances change, people change, jobs change, locations change, and this dynamic of life goes on.
For we know that most things in life are a Jackson Pollock of good and bad/ of natural and challenging/ of “keep me here” and of “let’s go”/ of long sunny days and of mosquitoes.
The world wants us to believe that when we’ve found the perfect [person, job, city, home, circumstance] we’ll have only peace – just the good, the natural, the “stay like this forever” – but we know that flowers cannot come without the rain, nor winter without the freeze and just the same, no season in life is perfectly perfect as perfect can be. But peace? It is here- a deep breath in the middle of the messy. A ray of sunlight through the clouds. A flower through the sidewalk. A choice of gratitude for the road that’s brought us here and for the trail we’re forging.
And so as the weather turns from summer to fall, we can look forward to new beginnings with a thankful sense of and. For whatever the change in life is- whether it is baseball or a new career, a shifting season in the family – a new union, a new life, toddlers underfoot, teenagers at the table, or an empty nest —, a new city, a new home, a new sense of self; we can appreciate the fullness of the season past and celebrate the changing leaves of the present. We need not hold too tight to the summer sun, nor cling to the crisp air of fall- for we can celebrate the beauty of both, in their time.
For life is different, now, but, as we know, it is also, in so many ways, the same.
And therein lies the beauty of “and.”
So when I stop scanning the radio to listen to country music, I remember the baseball chapter of our story. And sometimes- I itch for a road trip along rolling green hills, for new small towns, and nights in the stands. And then, I glance out the window to the place we are right now- to beach dates and dinners together and a home we can unpack – and the itch has passed. The truth is, I don’t miss a life on the road, and I am so grateful for the happy memories of summers past.
And as the guitar comes through my speakers, I feel baseball in my bones and I see it in our review mirror, and I keep my gaze straight ahead- to the wonderful adventure unfolding in front of me. Because this season, right now, it’s so good and it’s so fast and I don’t want to miss any of it.
