Static
A Creative Nonfiction Essay by Sarah Crowne
Hey Readers!
Part of being a writer is constantly facing rejection. The following essay, STATIC, has received great feedback from editors, but still, has unfortunatley been rejected at least three times. In the spirt of not giving up, I decided to publish it myself on A Busy Lady. I hope you enjoy!
In the meantime - I’ll be sending two posts this week: this one, and a brand new “The Write Life” later this week. Thank you to all those who voted! I can’t wait to share with you which historic writer got the most votes!
Also - A Busy Lady is going to be taking a pause soon to focus on writing my next novel, and to work on finalizing the release of my first novel, All These Threads of Time. I’ll also be filling my cup (I may be called A Busy Lady, but I know the importance of taking a rest-even if it doesn’t sound like it lol!) I will not be posting the week of June 16th or the week of July 7th.
I hope you enjoy the essay.
Till Next Time,
Sarah
AKA A Busy Lady
Static
By Sarah Crowne
My father sits in the driver's seat of his yellow Plymouth TC3, the car door left open ajar to let in the air. It’s ninety degrees on this July afternoon in 1986. I play hopscotch, minus a hopscotch board on the cracked pavement while my dad adjusts the radio. He’s trying to listen to the Red Sox game, but so far, all he’s getting is static. He curses at the radio as he slams his hand on the dashboard. After messing with the dial for a full ten minutes, he strikes gold. The announcer’s voice fills my father’s car, explaining every play on the field. It makes no sense to me. I wish he’d shut it off. It’s Saturday, after all. Since my parents separated, Saturday is the only day I see him.
Baseball has never been my thing. Especially when I’m eight and convinced that baseball is the demise of my parent’s failed marriage.
I was one of two girls on the little league team my dad coached, and I cried before every practice. I didn’t like it because I wasn’t any good at hitting. Even when the ball sat on the t-ball stand, I’d miss. “Foul ball” were the only terms I understood. I hated that people sat on benches, watching me fail. When I finally hit the ball, I had no idea what to do next. Everyone would yell, “Run!” as I stood, shocked that I’d hit it at all.
My brother, on the other hand, was very good. That is, of course until he broke his leg sliding into third base. My dad continued the game instead of taking him to the hospital right away, something that upset my mother. My brother didn’t play again and my father left home a few months after.
That’s why on that hot July afternoon in 1986, I wished the static would come back, flood his game. I had no such luck. Instead, the announcer got louder, my father more focused. He yelled at the radio when something happened he didn’t like and cheered when something happened that he did.
There are the stories we remember, the ones we tell ourselves, and then there is the truth. I know that now. It’s only when you grow up and look back that you see your parents for who they were: human beings.
Baseball had nothing to do with it. Not the way I thought, anyway.
My father was a simple and complicated man. He loved a good knock-knock joke and to make up eccentric stories to entertain me. My early childhood with him is filled with memories of long nature walks, games of Parcheesi, and summer afternoons at the lake. He’d play school with me for hours, sit through a Pee Wee Herman movie without complaining and always bought me that new Barbie doll, Bangles tape, or those hot pink plastic dangling earrings I so desperately needed on our Saturday ventures.
He also lived in a one-room apartment where he’d stack a hundred bars of unwrapped Ivory soap on his nightstand and would stand guard by the shared community bathroom whenever I had to pee. There are drug addicts and everything in this place, he’d say. I didn’t know what a drug addict was, just that President Reagan said to Just Say No to drugs. I wondered why my father didn’t just say no to this new living arrangement.
He didn’t stay there long. Soon, he moved into a camp trailer up the street on his parent’s land. We could only go to their house when they left for Florida each winter. To this day, I don’t know why. Those were the best days though, because he’d cook me boiled hotdogs and canned beans. I marveled at the fact my father could cook.
I stopped visiting him when I was ten. My grandmother told me it was killing my mom, and I didn’t love her if I saw him. I believed her.
There were years of nothing but static.
Then, the volume turned up. I was hostile, I was angry. I don’t love you, never did, I told him in the peanut butter aisle when I was seventeen and ran into him at the grocery store. You don’t even know me.
Sometimes, we hurt those we love the most.
My father never flinched. He never gave up. He just kept trying. Trying to get his life together. Trying to be my dad.
I let him back into my life when my nephew was born. I didn’t want my nephew to grow up saying “Why does auntie never talk to grandpa?” at family cookouts.
My father and I got a second chance. There would be more stories, more Parcheesi and Saturday matinees. This time, with my nephews and my children.
There would be more baseball games, too.
“Well, if baseball doesn’t work out, he can always become a bug scientist,” I’d joke as my five-year-old son spent more time looking at the grass than paying attention to the game. He’d plop himself down, inspecting the ground for bugs. The coaches would yell, “Stand up!” which he’d do, until he plopped back down again when they weren’t looking.
My father laughed.
“He’ll get it someday,” he’d say. “He’s still young.”
He was right.
We all get it eventually. When we grow up.
A year before my father died, he told me a story about his childhood. It was the only story he ever told me about when he was a kid. We never spoke about the past. We always kept focused on the present moment when we were together.
At the time, I’d failed my Bar exam by one point. It was tragic for me at the time. Law was a second career for me. I’d risked everything for my law degree. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment over my in-laws’ garage with my husband and two kids. My husband had been in an accident and was out of work. I was in law school debt and the JD would mean nothing without passing the Bar.
My father’s story was about baseball. He was so terrible at it when he was a boy, the kids made endless fun of him. He couldn’t hit the ball. He didn’t make the team. He wanted nothing more than to play, but no one would play with him. So, for an entire summer, after finishing his chores, he spent countless hours throwing his baseball up against the outside garage brick wall, catching the ball in his mitt as it bounced off. All you really need to do is practice catching, my father said, seemingly excusing his own father for not being there to pitch the ball to him. The hours I spent throwing that ball. My father’s voice trailed off as if he were going into a dream, reimagining those moments.
Of course, he made the team the next year.
You never give up, he told me.
What he didn’t tell me was that not only did he make the Little League team that next year, but that he eventually got drafted to play for the LA Dodgers.
Unfortunately, Vietnam drafted him too.
He lost baseball and instead gained a purple heart and memories he couldn’t put to rest.
Somehow, knowing this now makes his one-room apartment with the community bathroom and his camper in the woods make sense.
I think a lot about my father catching that ball in his mitt as a child practicing alone. Listening to the baseball game on his radio as an adult, cursing the static.
We don’t always understand the pause. The times in our lives where things just are. When they don’t work out the way we want. When we’re caught in the in-between of our past and our future, struggling to make sense of both. The static pauses us, forces us to turn within. We want to move forward but can’t. Instead, we’re stuck in the hissing echo of everything that made us who we are, everything we wish could have been. It’s these moments that define us. The moments we’re forced to reconsider our truths and to see things as they are.
I took my father’s advice. I didn’t give up. I’m a stronger person for it. I’m no longer afraid of people watching me fail and when I hit that home run, I don’t question the swing of my bat.
Instead, I think of my dad, bouncing that ball off his garage wall. Showing up even when I didn’t want to see him. Not giving up on the game, me, or himself.
After all, every batter makes his way home. And every station filled with static eventually plays music.
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Wonderful ! Good luck with your book! I loved your story.