Suburban Salute to the Little Girls of Summer
I know about elbows. Woke up with one buried in my neck, like some ancient Indian tool, a piece of sharpened bone. Alive, this elbow, yet an instrument of death.
“Happy Father’s Day,” the little girl says.
“Your elbow?” I ask.
“Sorry,” she says.
Across the bed, someone is rubbing an ankle. It’s my wife. Turned her ankle at the softball party the night before. The only sober one in the bunch, and she steps in the one hole in Pete and Linda’s otherwise perfect yard. There’s a lesson there if you look.
“Is it bruised?” my wife asks, draping her pretty leg across my pretty face.
“Looks fine to me,” I say.
The boy enters the room scratching--up under his T-shirt, in the hard-to-reach places. It’s what some guys do instead of showering. Scratch.
“My friend Jeff broke his nose,” the boy announces.
“How?”
“Playing basketball with Caswell,” the boy explains.
“He’s all elbows, Caswell,” I say.
“He is,” agrees the boy.
Welcome to Father’s Day, which begins with an elbow to my throat, then a discussion of cocktail party injuries and assorted broken bones. Fatherhood. What a thing to celebrate.
“Buy you breakfast?” my wife offers.
“Maybe later,” I say.
“Then it won’t be breakfast,” she says.
“Later,” I say anyway.
Later, because last night we saluted the end of the little girl’s softball season with a feast of gossip, our suburb’s favorite food, and some slushy beverage that tasted like Ethanol.
Three parts mix, one part tequila, a splash of triple sec. Lime if you have it. Soon, everyone was happy.
“She’s seeing someone,” our hostess says in the kitchen, speaking of a mutual friend.
“Who?”
“Gary set them up. I don’t think you know him.”
Out on the patio, they’re talking about teenagers. We all agree we love our teenagers. No matter what.
“Something happens in their heads,” says one mother.
“Nothing happens in their heads,” insists another.
Then the pause.
“Hormones,” someone finally says, and everyone nods and takes another long sip.
In the pool, the softball team splashes around, the girls of summer, rinsing the infield dust from between their toes and soothing their sunburned necks.
“Marco!”
“Polo!”
“Marco!”
“Polo!”
Like a chain saw, this game. Been punishing parents for generations.
“Marco!”
“Polo!”
So the parents slurp their icy drinks and make small talk. I try to make large talk, but it seldom works. In the suburbs, smaller is better.
“What are you guys doing this summer?” someone asks.
“This, mostly,” I say.
“When’s your renovation going to be done?” someone else asks.
The question I dread. At every cocktail party, there’s some question you dread. This is my question.
Ask me anything. Ask me about my recent physical or my sputtering career. Ask me why Moises Alou can’t scrape up a base hit or how Enron gamed California’s energy system. But please, don’t bring up my lingering, hellish house renovation.
“Hey Coach, when’s it going to be done?” I hear again, and eight friends lean forward in their patio chairs.
“2010,” I finally say, and they laugh as if I’m joking.
Yes, that’s our target, which is obviously very optimistic. We won’t have tile picked out till at least 2008. By the time we pick a paint, it’ll be 2011. Crown moldings? Add two years.
By the time our renovation is done, my wife will have remarried three times. A cup of coffee will cost 20 bucks. Melissa Gilbert will be governor.
But I’m probably being optimistic. “Maybe 2012,” I say, and they still think I’m kidding.
Over at the grill, my friend Craig is firing up some burgers. He’s one of those guys who can clean the grill, add ice to the beer tub, tell four stories simultaneously, and still look like a guy who’s ready for prom.
Meanwhile, I’m looking like a guy who’s been dragged by tractors across a chicken farm. Coach Bill, my softball accomplice, notices this and suggests we get on with our usual softball party presentation.
Like most comedy teams, we huddle briefly and without result. I miss comedy teams. I can’t think of a single current comedy team, other than Bill and me. And we only appear in backyards like yours.
“This year, let’s do the Smothers Brothers,” I suggest.
“Again?”
“You can be Dickie,” I say.
“I was Dickie last year,” he says.
And we give out the awards, first thanking all the parents, which takes about an hour, then saluting the players, the Blue Bombing Patriot Babes. I could tell you some stories of our season, but there isn’t time. Suffice to say that everyone did well and tried really, really hard. One little girl broke her nose and another broke her left hand but played two games before realizing it.
No one was arrested and no one tested positive for anything, including most of the parents. Even when we lost, the fans and the media were pretty supportive.
“We tip our caps to all of you, for all the support and all that you do,” says Coach Bill in a funny little poem he made up just for tonight.
In the kitchen, later, we spend two hours saying goodbye.
“My husband keeps hugging people,” complains Coach Lorraine as she struggles to pull him out the door.
“Hormones,” I say, then offer her a hug that smells of hamburger smoke and sunscreen. It’s a good hug, warm as the coming summer.
“Goodbye, Coach Bill,” a little girl says.
“Goodbye, Coach Chris,” says another.
Goodbye, you girls of summer. Too soon, as always.
Chris Erskine’s column is published Wednesdays. He can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
