Immortality
4.
What do you do when life reveals itself as the opposite of immortality? The dream of living forever falls away and you’re left in the mortal position shown here. A former number 1 draft pick edging into the marginal wanderings of the journeyman lunges with his front foot but holds his hands back. Is it just me or does he seemed to be fooled, guessing again? He might watch the pitch go by, perhaps for a mocking strike, or he might flick at it with his wrists, no power, no significant connection ensuing, no sweet momentary ceasing of the guessing and second-guessing of the little grasping mind, the babble inhabiting our finite days.
Some mirages of promise shimmer on the back of this card, a .321 batting average in one partial season, a .346 mark in another. At the bottom, just below the respectable .286 lifetime average and the contrastingly tepid power numbers (just 9 home runs in over a thousand at-bats, a .367 slugging percentage), there’s one line of text in the place where career highlights might have gone: “Terry and his wife are the parents of one son.”
My own life turned three and a half years ago with the birth of my first son. This is the spot where you might expect to hear a testimonial about how my life has turned for the better with his arrival and the arrival of his brother three years later, how their presence has imbued my days with more meaning and purpose. This is true, certainly, but there’s also this: since I became a parent I’ve lost any touch I ever had at anything. You name it: friendship, civility, washing the dishes. The cupboard is full of plates smeared with soap and bits of food. On my desk is a list of people to thank that I’ve had so long I no longer remember what I was supposed to thank them for, and another list of writing ideas that I’ve had so long I no longer remember what each list entry means.
My days? I rush, fume, mope, guess, worry, lunge, repeat. More generally, I imagine my imperfections filtering down to my kids. It’s inevitable, their pure swing sure to be marred in my care. I also see that I’m here for them and that at some point I won’t be. When I wasn’t here for anyone in particular, it was easier to imagine this just sort of continuing the way it always had indefinitely, immortality some kind of endless narrative digression.
For a long time, during my former life of unending digression, I often dreamed of statues. Win the World Series, I said, just once. Just win it once and there will be statues in celebration forever. I don’t know why this held such an appeal for me. My life of perpetual digression was not without suffering, and I suppose dreaming of some permanent victory served as a kind of salve.
It happened. The journeyman shown here led the way, and it was all I could have ever asked for, but then life went on. He won another World Series, but somehow even that helped break the spell of immortality, or contributed to it breaking, along with his departure after a historically severe collapse the year my first son arrived. Now he’s elsewhere, a mortal, a guy on my list to thank if I ever get around to it.
Cardboard Gods 
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