An Open Letter to the Texas Rangers About My Grandfather

Dear Texas Rangers,

My grandfather is sick. He is also ninety years old, and when your heart fails at ninety, your options are severely curtailed. This will be his last World Series. It could, possibly, be your first.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have to say that he doesn’t cheer for you, and that, in all honesty, he probably has a pretty limited interest in your team. He is from New England, and his team (our team) is the Red Sox. He watched them for eighty four years without a World Series win, and you have to respect that, regardless of your team affiliation.

As it is with many other people, many of my memories of my grandfather are about baseball. His story about seeing Babe Ruth play at Fenway, and how he was unimpressed (In his defense, the Babe did fall over backwards and miss a pop fly. No one can be a legend all the time.) How, when a player was batting poorly, he “couldn’t even hit his weight”. The night that we watched Clay Bucholtz throw his no-hitter, and how every time my grandmother started to say the forbidden words “no-hitter”, he would shush her. “Ruth, you’ll put the whitewash on it.” I wish I had the words for that night; I wish I could explain that how, for the rest of my life, when I think about baseball, I’ll see my grandfather’s face, honestly believing that what an old lady says in her living room will somehow change the outcome of a game (a game!) being played a hundred miles away.

I shushed her too. I believed.

Part of the reason I’m telling you all this is for me – so far, the only way I’ve been able to get a handle on grieving for this man is to think about baseball games. Otherwise, it’s just too big. The other, bigger part of the reason is to ask a favor. We’re all Red Sox fans – him, me, and my mother, the biggest fan of the three of us - and there is a flip side to cheering for the Sox.

Please, win on Friday. Win on Saturday, and win on Sunday, and win as many times as it goddamn takes, because I can’t deal with the idea that the last World Series he watches could have the Yankees in it. I know it’s small, I know it’s petty, I know Yankees fans have grandfathers, too, but, like I said in the beginning of my letter, options are lacking right now, and this is the only thing I could come up with. I really need you to win.

Best to Cliff Lee,

Emily

What seems to be the problem, officer?

People who don't like poetry have never taken their roommate to an emergency psych ward in Queens, come home to find they've locked themselves out of their bedrooms, and watched the sun rise from the couch in the living room and wondered if maybe this had happened to someone else, and if they have something useful to say about. People who do like poetry (and are also me) root their Robert Lowell out of the bookcase as soon the landlord jimmies the lock open and find that there have been a lot of useful things said about emergencies, psych wards, and sunrise from the couch of one's own home.

Two nights ago, my roommate told her ex she was going to kill herself and the police came to my house to get her. Twice. The first time they came, she wasn't there, and we talked about Jeopardy. The second time they came, it was two in the morning, and there were six of them, plus two firefighters, plus an ambulance, plus a gurney in the hallway of my building. A nice police officer put his hand on my arm and told me that I had to get shoes on my roommate, because if she wouldn't come willingly, they were going to cuff her and take her in by force. Normally, I'm opposed to armed strangers coming into my home and removing its residents by force. That night, I asked for five minutes to help her get dressed.

Because I am still myself in even the most challenging situations, I locked the door to my room when the police arrived. This action was concieved in the same spirit of most of my decisions - last minute panic. What, exactly, I thought I was going to do to get back into my bedroom when the police departed did not figure into my decision making process.

We rode to the hospital in the back of the ambulance. I was not carsick. I handed my roomate many, many tissues; this is my preferred technique for ministering to the sick, especially in situations when I cannot offer them a drink or a snack. We got to the hospital, an orderly took away her shoes, put her purse in a locker, and told me to leave. I took a cab home, couldn't get into my room, and watching Top Gear and the sunrise until I fell asleep in my clothes. I thought about calling into work, but the idea of not going into the office because I had locked all of my clean pants in a room I couldn't access proved to be too much for me.

She has since come home. We watched the dog show and ate Thai food. I don't know what she's going to do in terms of treatment - events of the day have led me to think that tonight might involve another ambulance ride. I am wiped out and indecisive. I have no idea what to do; if I should move out (tonight!), help take care of her (no man is an island!), or drink myself into unhelpfulness and go to bed (probable winner! mostly kidding! mostly!).

Shockingly, I've decided the best thing to do is write all this down. I forgot that I enjoyed this, and that there was a better place to be pithy than Facebook. Welcome back, me. Christ, I'm tired.