Rob and I sat on lawn chairs rolling ping pong balls one by one to the edge of the fire, waiting as they melted and then burst into flames. We had found a box of fluorescent orange balls tucked away on a shelf in the garage behind an old projector Mom had used when she taught middle school. It was enough for probably a good hour of entertainment. We had to laugh as we remembered the night Dad had demonstrated this trick for us. It seemed like a long time ago for both of us.
Rob had married his high school sweetheart, Mona, moved to upstate New York after medical school. He had built a successful private practice, counseling housewives, as he said, while either they or their husbands stumbled through the standard mid-life crisis. He seemed bored, I thought, and maybe going through a mid-life crisis of his own. His only child, Julie, had just left for college.
As for me, I had settled in Montreal, after marrying a gorgeous Canadian who taught in the Food Science department at NYU and who was also my instructor for Food History and Techniques of Regional Cuisines. After I graduated 2000, Pat left the university and we opened a restaurant in the shadow of Olympic Stadium, then the home of the Montreal Expos, called The Grand Slam. It was Pat’s dream and so it became mine. We served the standard baseball fare: hotdogs, burgers, milkshakes, and ice cream sundaes. In 2004, the Expos relocated to Washington and a year later Pat and I had to close shop. The end of Pat’s dream was also the end of our marriage. The divorce was final two months ago.
Rob rolled the last ball to the edge of our dying fire.
“Dad would have hated the funeral, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes.” I looked back to the house and saw the kitchen curtains move slightly. “Mom’s watching us. We better go in. She won’t sleep until we do.”
~Belinda is the star writer of this blog, at this point. Read the rest of her work at Upside Down Bee.
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