My catcher's mit

“It’s the best day of my life” said my eight year-old yesterday afternoon as we got home from school. She had just been chosen for tag rugby, the first ever indication (merest hint) in her life that she might, just might, be half-way good at ball games. A ballet natural, a swimming enthusiast, a cycling and skootering fanatic, she has never had much confidence with fast flying balls. I put this down to my own similar inadequacy hence lack of encouragement and practice in ball games. A little slow on the maternal uptake here, I am only just beginning to see that they might matter. Hugely.

Mention ‘balls’ and before I can type the second apostrophe around the word, there are blogs bashing the back of my brain, crying to be let in – the green and white cricket on the green blog, the ridiculous bottoms up fumbling in the hedge for the lost ball blog. None of them I am going to write today because as well as having a splendid game of tag rugby to watch with Baby Houdini scouring the perimeter of the field for hemlock and yew berries to suck, I also have my neighbour’s three children to watch after school into the evening whilst their mother takes their dad to the hospital and back; and then a huge homework project to supervise and cakes to burn for the school cake stall whilst I run upstairs and chip away tediously at the last two bits my patient editor is waiting for; and then when the clocks in America say I may, my lovely deaf mother to ring and shout at slowly. And all those balls in the air this day are enough to catch.

But the thing my palm is itching for, the thing that, if it stuck, I’d tuck to my chest and fold my shoulders over tackling tomorrow to preserve, is that look she tossed my way. Perched on the teetering edge of her seat, her body bursting with buoyancy -- “…the best day of my life.” Oh to be so sure that this one moment you’re living is the one you love, before the game’s begun or won or anybody’s even pinned your tags on. Just the possibility enough. That’s the look she tossed. Thank God I had my catcher’s mit on.