Opening Day

 

I’m going to preface this by simply stating that I do not enjoy baseball. The pace is too slow. Very little action. I need the aggression of football or the back-and-forth speed of basketball. Despite that, though, I have an obligatory alliance to the NY Yankees. If I didn’t, my father and brothers might disown me, especially now that I not only live in Boston but in the Fenway neighborhood. Red Sox fans came at me in droves as I skirted past them–off of the sidewalk and into the standstill traffic–to slip into Marshall’s and look for new springtime shoes. I couldn’t help thinking of my father and my brothers and how disgusted they would be at the sight, and it made me laugh. Today was Opening Day at Fenway Park. Under blue skies and in 62-degree air, I walked by an exceeding number of red-dressed fans waiting in line outside the Yard House. I walked all the way down to Yawkey Way to immerse myself in the chaos, still giving zero shits about baseball or the Red Sox. The game had ended. The lack of drunk and disorderly conduct/violence/tears/general anger was evidence enough to me that they had won. I threw a dollar in the case of the teenage boy playing the saxophone; awkwardly held my phone high above the crowd at a street corner, by myself, to snap a couple of pictures; visibly grinned at the people shoving hot dogs down their throats, the kids sitting up on their fathers’ shoulders, and the vendors passing out season schedules and waving t-shirts. Atmosphere seemed to be everything to me today.

 

Baseball–I can take it or leave it–no, I can just leave it. It was the warm air, the cloudless sky, the team apparel, the crowds, the uselessness of traffic lights post-game, and the feeling that I felt as an outside observer. The energy in the city today was as if it were something I could cup in my hands, though it would slip and burst through the seams between my fingers. Opening Day turned into this sudden acknowledgement that I am still here. Of course I’ve always known it. Every morning I wake up and look outside my window to see the brick apartment buildings across the street and I know it. And then turn to look at my apartment, the entirety of which can be seen in one glance, and think that I kind of hate it but that it is mine and I have to start somewhere. It’s not easy to think I am in the right place at the right time. Sometimes it’s easier to think I am in the right place at the wrong time, but that troubles me, too.

Last night felt particularly troubling. It stirred in me for hours. Probably starting at the brain, traveling slowly but steadily toward my heart, which would pump it out to my extremities until my limbs were itchy and I thought that I could claw at my skin to make it stop. And then it just poured out of my eyes until I felt a little bit panicked by the onset of it all, how unprovoked this episode seemed to be. Bad days come just as often as the okay days and I still try to hold out for the good days. Today was a good day, accompanied–or perhaps caused–by this acute awareness of me being me in this place that I am in. And not only is it the right place, but it is also the right time. Now is always the right time. I cannot always be waiting.