Writer Rav Grewal-Kök’s son, No. 34, and his baseball journey group teammates.
(Courtesy of Rav Grewal-Kök )
I spent a latest Sunday in Norwalk, watching 12-year-olds play baseball on a subject nestled between a juvenile jail and two units of railway tracks. It was a sizzling, dry day. Any hint of a breeze carried the odor of diesel fumes from the economic zone over the tracks. Nonetheless, there was no place I’d moderately have been.
Associates of mine who don’t have youngsters, or who’ve youngsters who aren’t obsessive about sports activities, surprise at me. For a lot of the yr, I get up early on weekends to take my son from our house in Atwater Village to tournaments together with his journey group. We’ve pushed to Sylmar, West Covina, Jurupa Valley, Irvine, Ladera Ranch and San Diego. I’ve turned down invites to go on tenting journeys and weekends away in Vegas and New Orleans. Although I’ve a novel that simply got here out , I’m not occurring a e book tour. All this as a result of I don’t need to miss any of the motion on the sphere.
Because the seasons flip, I discover myself crammed with gratitude, as an alternative of remorse. It’s not solely that I’m pleased with my son for committing to a sport he loves. Neither is it the comfort of watching him develop stronger and extra assured whereas my very own physique ages and declines. I admire the hours my son and I (and sometimes my spouse, and typically our teenage daughter), spend driving to and from tournaments — hours once we discuss, and hearken to music and witness the sprawling, diversified lifetime of this area. And I’ve different, but extra private causes.
As a boy rising up in Hong Kong and western Canada, I knew the US from films and tv and a handful of books (Twain, Steinbeck, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”). I didn’t spend any important time on this nation till I went to varsity in Montreal, the place I used to be a sprinter on McGill’s observe group. Every year we traveled to meets in New York and New England. I seemed ahead to the street journeys to Syracuse College, Dartmouth, Harvard. Even within the depths of a northeastern winter, the indoor tracks had been heat and brilliant. I used to be interested in the power and optimism of the younger Individuals I competed towards. I preferred the best way they talked. In a approach, their language was calling me.
Again in Montreal I made a decision on an English main however spent much less time with Shakespeare than with American novels. I learn Faulkner and Hemingway after classes on the observe and within the weight room. I watched American films, listened to American music. Ultimately, I enrolled in an American regulation college, fell in love with and married an American lady, in time turned a citizen myself.
Baseball, essentially the most American sport, one I by no means performed as a baby, has given me a broader perspective on American life. I’ve spent so many nights and weekends with the identical group of journey group mother and father that they’ve change into a sort of prolonged household — a uncommon factor, on this atomized age, for a person in his 40s. I can yell as loudly as the following guardian, however I additionally like to face behind the bleachers or the foul netting and hearken to the others as they discuss and cheer. After I hear one in every of their pet phrases — “Be a wall, boys!”; “Present me one thing, Papa!”; “All people bangs, bang bang!” — a thrill runs via me. These males are talking a uniquely American language, one so contemporary and welcoming and humorous — so good, to my ear — that I can’t assist however undertake snippets of it as my very own.
Although the video games can mount to moments of excessive drama, there are languors too. When the motion slows, I discuss with the others. A ballpark, like a bar, isn’t the place to debate politics or faith. Besides that once you spend a lot time with the identical group of women and men, once you see them extra recurrently than your sister or mother and father or decades-long mates, you do.
My very own political beliefs put me on the left, within the American context. I’ve lived solely in blue cities on this nation. Most people I’ve met — legal professionals first, then, after I began to jot down, different writers and artists — have been liberals or leftists. Like attracts like. I’ve had mates who’ve recognized as socialists, anarchists and Greens, however within the 20 years since I graduated from regulation college, and earlier than my son joined his journey group, I don’t assume I ever befriended a Republican. I’m not alone. The information present that Individuals are segregating themselves by ideology as by no means earlier than.
That’s modified now for me. The mother and father on our group come from numerous backgrounds (Mexican, Korean, Armenian, Italian, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Turkish, German, my very own Punjabi) and work a spread of jobs (accountant, salesman, firefighter, mechanic, retail clerk, publicist, nonprofit director, county lawyer). They maintain a spread of political opinions. However all of them, together with those who’ve advised me they voted for President Trump, are beneficiant, partaking, dedicated to their households. They cheer for my son as they cheer for their very own. Whereas we now have our variations, we’re not strangers. It’s a easy lesson, even a infantile one. Maybe it’s proper that I realized it whereas watching youngsters play.
For individuals who share my politics, every single day because the inauguration has introduced dangerous information. In fact I’m fearful in regards to the future. However for all our failures as a nation, I’ve additionally seen that so many abnormal Individuals nonetheless worth decency and open-heartedness. Nobody is unreachable. I remind myself of that reality, and I do know it’s not but time to despair.
Rav Grewal-Kök’s tales have appeared within the Atlantic, Ploughshares, New England Overview and elsewhere. His first novel, “The Snares,” was printed April 1. ravgrewalkok.com
