The Sunday Inning

Margaret stood in her kitchen, the smell of fresh spinach filling the air as she chopped greens from her garden. Her father had grown spinach in their backyard patch for fifty years, and now, at seventy-two, she understood the quiet satisfaction of nurturing something from seed to table.

On the television, the baseball game played softly—the same team her grandfather had listened to on radio, the same team her father had watched on their fuzzy black-and-white set. Baseball had been the thread connecting generations of men in her family, though Margaret had always been the one who truly understood the game's deliberate rhythm, its patience.

Barnaby, her golden retriever, nudged her elbow with his wet nose. He was the spitting image of the dog her brother had brought home when they were children—except that one, a scruffy terrier named Skipper, had chased every baseball that ever landed in their yard and never brought a single one back.

"You're no Skipper," she whispered, scratching behind his ears. Barnaby had never met a baseball he didn't ignore, which was probably just as well. Her knees wouldn't tolerate chasing down fly balls anymore.

Her grandson was coming for dinner tomorrow. She'd make the spinach dish her mother used to serve—the one Margaret had refused to eat as a child, the one she now craved. Funny how the things we resist in youth become the comforts of age.

She remembered her father's voice from the last season he'd watched baseball before his passing: "The game doesn't change, Magpie. Just the players. That's the secret to life—find what matters, hold onto it, let the rest come and go."

He'd been talking about baseball, but he could have meant spinach gardens, or dogs, or family dinners that stretched into sunset. The constancy of small, good things.

Margaret wiped her hands on her apron. Outside, the sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in soft pinks and golds. Barnaby trotted to the back door, waiting for his evening walk past the spinach beds.

"Come on, old friend," she said. "Time to tend the garden."