Waiting For Superman: CV Stories, 26 March 2020
Throughout this extended period of isolation for Americans, this newsletter will be a daily look at what it is like to actually live through this moment, until this moment is over. It will feature brief opening remarks from me every day, but will mostly be stories from you about how this is affecting you, your family, your friends … your daily life. (The regular weekly newsletter will continue uninterrupted.) Email me your story at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.
As with every Thursday, I try to stay out of the way and just you all tell your stories. I’m running fewer ones this Thursday, if just because I need the break and I suspect you do too. I know many of these stories won’t be happy—it’s not a happy time—but I don’t want them to be misery porn either. They’re meant to be universal, helpful for us to wrap our arms around our own stories. This is something we are all literally going through together, even as our realities and circumstances may diverge. I want the stories to be of assistance. I do not want them to drag us down. I hope they are doing that.
That said, I got one about a family saying goodbye to a beloved family pet this week, and while it was good, dogs have been one of the few good things to come out of this—they are so giddy! they’ve never gotten more attention and love!—and I kinda don’t think anyone’s quite up for a dead dog story. So I stuck with these.
Oh, and I know some people had some trouble with the It’s Such a Beautiful Day link yesterday. It is free, but you do have to log in first. If you login, it gives you a 24-hour free window to watch it. I recommend once again that you take it.
These will be the last stories of the week. We’ll be back with the regular newsletter on Saturday, and more of your stories on Monday. Be safe.
Here are today’s stories. Send me yours at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.
From Kyle Brown:
When I was around 4 I learned how to read by staring intently at the Sports Section every morning and figuring out how to spell and say Oakland A’s players names in the box score. I would figure out the days of the week by the starting times of games, and learned to count on the rhythms of the seasons based on which sports were being played. I am one of those true believers who will watch just about anything competitive, but my true loves were always baseball and hockey. As soon as I had any sort of disposable income, I invested it all in season tickets for the Oakland A’s and the San Jose Sharks. My wedding was planned specifically so that it didn’t interrupt Opening Day baseball, or Stanley Cup Playoffs. I married a woman who was 100 percent on board for this. We spent the last three summers dragging toddlers to baseball games all over the country.
We have three kids (4, 2, 4 mo.) and the oldest one is now about the same age I was when I started obsessing over the paper. We’ve been taking them to games since they were born (sometimes too early afterward if I’m being honest.) All they’ve ever known (because I taught them naturally) is that days and weeks and months revolve around game times, tailgates, home runs and goals. Sundays in summer is a weekly family picnic at the ballpark. Before bath each night I let them watch Ken Burns’ Baseball with me if they’ve been good, and they now request “Can we watch old timey baseball?” at random hours of the day.
We haven’t been to a game since mid-February, as it didn’t appear safe to go anymore (the Sharks defied Santa Clara County and let people come to games after the county recommended they don't). Normally when I can’t go I give tickets to other friends and coworkers, but it felt wrong to tell someone else to take my place if I wouldn’t go myself. Opening Day is today and it hurts my soul that we won’t be tailgating at the Coliseum on Thursday. There is nothing that makes me happier than standing in the parking lot of that oft-abused concrete bowl and thinking of all the memories I made there as a kid and how my children get to do the same.
The rhythm of all of our lives is out of whack. I know “when does sports safely resume?” is about the furthest thing from important, but for us it’s how we’ve raised our children. It’s our family bonding time. The dumbest thing I keep thinking, is that my youngest son won’t get the same experience of family bonding that his siblings got. I know that’s really just me feeling deprived and won’t matter for him at all in the long run. (He’ll get the extra bond of having his entire family around him all the time for seemingly several months of his young life!)
As a lifelong A’s fan I’ve had to think several times about what it would be like if they moved away and what a hole it would put in my life and our family’s life. It feels cruel that my most dreaded scenario is playing out, just in a completely different form all together. I know that sports are supposed to be a distraction form "normal life" but what happens when normal life doesn't feel normal without them?
From Bob Berman:
My father-in-law passed away early this morning at his nursing home in Florida at the age of 95. My 93-year-old mother-in-law, his wife of 73 years, was not allowed to visit him the past 10 days because of restrictions put in place by the nursing home. None of his five children could get on a plane from New York and New Jersey to see him, and they now can’t fly down to comfort their mother.
My in-laws had made their own funeral arrangements years ago, including flying the body to New York to be buried in the family plot on Long Island. We learned this morning that the cemetery will bury him but they will not allow anyone to attend. I understand. But it sucks. A man with five children, 13 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren will not have any family at his funeral. A Marine who saw action on Tinian and Iwo Jima will have no flag on his casket. I know I shouldn’t be complaining when my family is healthy, but it just feels like we’re letting him down in some way.
One of my high school history teachers posted a note about the coronavirus-related death of one of his former students. He reminded us that he always taught us to “put a human face on history: Otherwise it becomes a bunch of meaningless dates, disjointed facts and forgettable names and places. The human face, and cause-and-effect relationship helps bring it alive.”
Also, an update from last week’s newsletter: Mike D. in North Carolina, the man who went into bypass surgery in the midst of all this (the one who told his surgeon on the operating table that “if something went South, and I don't make it, I want my last words to be ‘Fuck Donald Trump,’”) finally answered my emails checking in on him. He said: “Out of the hospital. Chilling at home. Don't really feel like texting or texting right now.” You know, I get that a lot. Glad you’re home, man.
Send me your stories at williamfleitch@yahoo.com. And please: Be safe, everyone.
Best,
Will