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Rex gave me a toothless smile and got into position, clutching the bat. I tossed the ball and…clunk.
“I hit it,” he said. “What do I do now?”
“Run to the base.”
We hadn’t actually gotten as far as establishing where the bases were, so Rex just ran in a big circle.
“Home run!” he cried.
My smile was genuine as I watched him jump up and down, celebrating his victory.
“Let’s see if I can get two in a row,” he suggested.
“Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead,” I said. “How about we work on that pitching arm. Let’s have a catch.”
Rex agreed and I gave him my glove. I’d had it since I was a kid and it was nice and broken in. It was a little big on him, but I could tell he liked using it. I threw him the ball and he missed, but by a little less this time.
“Thank you for taking me here today,” Rex said.
“You’re welcome.”
“I know you didn’t want to.”
“Of course I wanted to. I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to.”
“But you told my mom that you couldn’t take me,” Rex reminded me. “You said you would at the kitchen table that night that you came over for dinner. But then my mom said that you changed your mind.”
I sighed. “I know. And I’m sorry about that.”
“Why did you change your mind?”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t have a good answer to this question. Not one that I thought a six-year-old would understand, anyway.
“I just… I got overwhelmed,” I told him.
“By baseball?”
“No, not the baseball part. Just… I don’t know that you’d understand.”
Rex smirked. “I’m smart for my age.”
“I know you are.”
“And I hate when adults talk about me like I’m not smart enough to understand what’s going on,” he stated, firmly. “It’s been going on all week. My mom and dad are arguing about me. But they won’t tell me why.”
“That’s got to be frustrating.”
I threw the ball again. Rex missed. He picked it up and threw it back anyway.
“So tell me why you didn’t want to play with me,” he continued.
I took a deep breath. Time to man up. “I… this is hard to say… but when I was your age, I used to play ball like this with my dad. And my dad was… a really great dad.”
“Okay.”
“And I started feeling like, if we went to the park and played ball, that I was trying to act like… a dad. And I wasn’t ready for that yet.”
“So it was symbolic? The baseball?”
