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River Cats Win! 4-3

Me and mom at the ballpark tonight eating pungent hunky chunks of salty garlic glopped onto greasy parsley fries. “So delicious, but I can’t eat them all,” she says. “Who will share with me?”

 
 Al’s face puckers as he says she shouldn’t sleep with him tonight. Pinkie earnestly asks if Grandma will spend the night with us, then. You know she fervently hopes the answer is yes, but everyone just laughs.

We sip Coors Light from our silver cans and share a gigantic bag of pink and blue cotton candy. Pinkie sits on Grandma’s lap, helps her clap. Mom notices when the blue guy’s bat flies off and hits another of his own players. Pinkie remarks with wide-eyed amazement how fast the guy in white runs around the bases, just like that.

She finagles a mister out of Grandma on a trip to wash stickystuff from her hands. This is our first ballgame together, the sun is gone; it is not hot. We don’t need a mister, but that’s not the point. Anyway, we can use it tomorrow at the zoo.

Hours later, I sit on the red corduroy couch, legs outstretched, crossed, content,

satisfied.

I feel garlic fumes reverberating through my lungs, I taste it from the inside. Somehow I know this new garlic will linger inside both of us, between us, for a long, long time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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