Featured Article:
Wayne Stocks‘s article – Divorce Through Their Eyes – The Baseball Game
It’s the bottom of the ninth. Full count, two outs and the bases are loaded. I could win the game with one accurate swing. The weight of the world is on my 10-year-old shoulders.
But standing there, staring into the pitcher’s eyes, I’m not thinking about the fact that I could win or lose a big game for my team. I’m too worried about after the game — and mom and dad sitting on opposite sides of the bleachers, their gaze cast down on me like white-hot spotlights.
When the game ends, win or lose, which parent will I go to first?
It might seem like a small-potatoes dilemma for a white suburban child of divorce. But awkward baseball games — and all the divorce politics that come with them — are some of my most vivid memories, mostly because they were the most stressful events of my young life. I mean, I could win a baseball game any time, but I had the emotional scarring and heart-breaking of two sets of parents to worry about.
Indeed, baseball games had so little to do with baseball, and so much to do with the divorce. It was as if two warring factions were meeting on the battlefield, and their tactics involved one-upping each other with better juice boxes at post-game snack time. My affection was the spoil of war.
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