The Lightning Catcher

From my porch rocker, I've been watching seven-year-old Tommy practice his pitching in the backyard. He doesn't know I'm watching—that's our little game. I'm his secret admirer, his silent fan club, his personal spy from the window. At his age, I did the same thing, throwing a baseball against the old barn wall until my arm ached and my grandmother called me in for supper.

The afternoon sky has that peculiar yellowish tint I've come to recognize after eight decades of summers. Storm coming. Lightning flickers in the distance, that silent warning before thunder rolls across the valley like bowling balls in heaven's alley. I remember my father teaching me to count the seconds between flash and boom—one one-thousand, two one-thousand—to measure how far away the storm was. Some things stick with you.

Tommy's grandfather—my late husband, Henry—taught our boy the same trick. Henry, who played semipro baseball in his twenties, who could still throw a perfect spiral at sixty, whose hands told stories of every ball he'd ever caught. The arthritis took that from him eventually, but never his spirit. He'd sit right here in this very rocker, watching our children play, calling out encouragement between sips of lemonade.

I should call Tommy inside, but I wait one moment longer. He throws with such concentration, such pure joy, reminding me that some things are timeless. The thunder rumbles closer now, insistent. Finally, I step onto the porch.

"Tommy! Storm's coming!"

He looks up, grinning, and runs toward the house with his glove still on his left hand—just like his grandfather used to do. We sit together on the swing as the rain begins, and I tell him about the lightning-counting game his grandfather taught me, about the summer days when I was a little girl spying on the neighborhood boys playing baseball, dreaming of the day I'd be allowed to join them.

"You know," he says, all serious blue eyes, "Grandpa Henry told me you were the best baseball player in the family."

I laugh, surprised and touched by the legacy. Some secrets carry forward, generation to generation, like a well-thrown ball perfectly caught.

Outside, the lightning illuminates the whole valley in a flash, and for a moment, I see them all—the fathers and mothers, the children and grandchildren, all of us playing our parts in this long, beautiful game called family.