The Orange Ball Glove

Margaret sat on her porch swing, watching seven-year-old Leo struggle with the rusty zipper of an old shoe box. Inside lay her treasure: a baseball glove that had turned the color of a sunset over forty years.

"It's orange," Leo observed, tilting his head.

Margaret smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "Not always, sweetheart. That's what happens to leather when it's held with love."

She'd received the glove in 1962, a birthday gift from her father who'd worked three jobs to give his only daughter something she never asked for but secretly wanted. Every summer evening, they'd played catch in their small backyard until the streetlights flickered on. Her father had played minor league baseball once, before an injury sent him home to open a hardware store.

"Can we play?" Leo asked, already pulling the glove onto his small hand.

Margaret's arthritis made catching difficult now, but she couldn't refuse him. They tossed a worn tennis ball back and forth, the game rhythm familiar as breathing. Leo missed, then caught, then missed again—his patience thinning with each error.

"I can't do this," he finally said, dropping the glove.

Margaret hobbled over and placed her gnarled hand over his smooth one. "The best things don't come easy. My father taught me that." She told Leo about the cable car rides to waterfront baseball games, the way her father would save his pennies for weeks to buy them each an orange soda after, how she'd once caught a foul ball that still sat on her dresser.

"Did you ever stop missing him?" Leo asked softly.

Margaret squeezed his hand. "The missing changes, is all. At first, it's sharp like broken glass. Then it becomes soft, like this old leather—something that's part of you."

Leo picked up the glove again, watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of—what else?—burnt orange and gold. He caught the next ball. Then the next.

"Like riding a bike," he grinned.

"Or like swinging a porch swing," Margaret said, pulling him close as the evening settled around them. "Some things, once learned, never really leave you."

They sat there as stars appeared one by one, the old glove resting between them like a bridge across time.