So many tears

Sometime last week--feels like last year--I came to the point where I'd heard them so often I could narrate MSNBC's story lines before they aired. I could but won't fall into a litany. I don't have to. If you think on your feet at all, you can return quickly--some outrageous utterance by the man who would be king, hurricane coming up on Florida, Kamala trying to woo white men. 

I don't watch TV much, but when you spend your weeks in a hospital, once the  visitors are gone, there's not much to do but find the remote and back peddle through the channels, hoping for the best. Shebang! I stumble on Joe Kinsella (Kevin Costner) just outside of Terrance Mann's (James Earl Jones) apartment. It's Field of Dreams, of course, right there on the untouchable hospital TV, and I'm in. Haven't see it in  years, but for land's sake I'm in Iowa. Wouldn't miss it.

Rolls along nicely--haven't forgotten Kinsella's darlin' little wife, nor the blessed moment when, once again, all those woolen suits steppin' out of the rows like a some ghostly team for a season opener. 

What I'm remembering as we so merrily roll along is that people claimed Field of Dreams was a man's show because it's about fathers and sons, someone said it's about fathers and sons.

And then the last scene comes up, Kinsella/Costner out there on the magical diamond, when one last player walks up--his estranged old man. Takes him and us a while to recognize him, then bang! they talk. Well, even if they don't talk, something big and huge for the heavyweight dreamer happens when they're together. Something's fixed.

My eyes feel like the back rollers on my mother's old washing machine, turning out tears like wash water. I'm bawling like a baby is what I'm saying because the last of my visitors left hours ago, I got no roommate, and who's going to see me anyway?--when just like that, the room lights go on, and in come a couple of sturdy, tattooed nurses for some fool ritual. They could care less that the prof-guy in 504 is a blubbering baby. I repent, but they're thrilled--and so am I. 

I get to feeling that my instant tears are some manifestation of my being alone for so long, and the condition--whatever it is--that makes it impossible for me to move once I sit down. The whole madness colors my days and ruins my nights, so much so a Danny Thomas hospital commercial just wipes me out--you know where that big-chested dad says how there's nothing worse than watching your own little kids suffer?--all I got to do is see the guy.

But it wasn't some baseball dream or some blessed dad praying for a kid with a plague. Last night it was something altogether different. Barb called. Our granddaughter Jocelyn had the baby we've all been looking forward to. "You're a great grandpa," Barbara said. She could just as well as said, "You're king." Wouldn't have come out any different.

I bawled. Three nurses came by to perform their ritual humiliations, and I could not have cared less. Ducts stayed open to flood. They too were thrilled.

So our daughter's daughter had a daughter. That makes me Great-Grandpa. 

Couldn't be happier.

Where'd I put those Kleenex?