TAKE ME OUT OF THE BALL GAME

Recently I was watching a DVD from the series on Baseball by Ken Burns that covered the 1947 season and Jackie Robinson's crashing the color barrier in baseball and becoming a legend and American hero of both baseball and equality.

As I watched the presentation, there was a photo of Jackie and his son Jackie Jr. who was about 2 or 3 at the time. Dad looking at his son is very proud and happy, and the little boy is contented, sitting in Daddy’s arms.

Jackie and Rachel Robinson had three children: Jackie Jr., the oldest died in an automobile crash after time in the Army and in a drug rehab program at the age of 24. As I looked at the photo I just mentioned I couldn’t help but not understand how hard life can be. Here is a man, an American hero, a person who knew what is right and wrong and helped right the many wrongs committed on his race. Yet he suffered this tragedy along with his wife by his son’s death, and the struggle the boy had with drugs. I see so many families that have suffered from their children’s involvement with drugs and I mistakenly think: “How did that happen to those people!”

It happens, and parents are not to blame for their children’s indiscretions. They are no more to blame than God, teachers or clergy, yet we draw conclusions. Many of us are fortunate that our kids are not involved in drugs, or had the good sense to turn them away, and some of us are not so lucky, losing them.

I wonder how many of us had such high hopes when our children were born, when we looked at them for the first time, maybe held them, thinking: “What will you be? What will you bring? How proud I am of you!” Yet it is the initial moments that make love at first sight what it is. Then some many years later, something happens, and that baby you met for the first time is no longer a baby, maybe has one him or herself.

There are people who will never understand. I had my son dying in a hospital and was told that I had to move him to another hospital, This by someone who really didn’t know what was going on, that there was no hope anymore, yet making me feel like I was neglecting my child. Meanwhile I was exhausted from the traveling back and forth between my job, the hospital and home, meeting with doctors and clients and yes: family obligations, too.

I know a woman who lost her son to an overdose, I’m sure she is blamed, but she didn’t put the drugs in her son’s body, she just tried to support him, when he was up and when he was down.

I think that the ballgame gets tougher and is no fun when we meet the enemy and he is us, when we judge without empathy and very little reason. Some of us are very lucky if we have children who have never given us heartache, but most of us are on the other end of that equations, I myself, would like to take the bench and sit it out, rather than judge others. As a parent I know I did my best, as do all parents. I say this with confidence, because Jackie Robinson, a moral and courageous man suffered because of his child, and I know he did his best.

The next time I want to judge someone who has a child that goes astray, I will picture in my mind the photo of Jackie and Jackie Jr. or a mom, who silently weeps for her child, and the lost opportunities. It is ALWAYS someone’s child.