Before we start, check the locks and the windows. Make sure the dog has water. Set the coffee maker for tomorrow morning. Pack your gym bag.
Now ask yourself why you’re still awake.
While you’re sitting here, I want you to remember what you wanted to be when you were six. Not what you became. What you wanted. Hold that in your head.
Now imagine meeting him tonight.
At forty years old I know exactly how many grams of protein I need to see my abs. I have no idea how many friends I have. One seventy-five protein. Two sixty-five carbs. Sixty fat. Give or take, depending on whether the ice cream wins. It wins more than it should.
I was six when I decided I was going to play baseball.
Not the way adults want things. Adults want things with exit strategies and certainty. I wanted to play baseball the way you believed in things. Not hoped. Not maybe. Was. No version of the future existed where my name wasn't stitched across my back in a packed stadium. I was six. I didn't know yet that some things you want that hard are already gone.
Slept with the glove beside my pillow. Got it after helping dad mow the lawn in the spring. Cheap thing, stiff as cardboard, came in a box at Kmart with a ball included because no serious player bought their equipment at Kmart but my dad said baseball wasn’t serious and it was all I earned. Thumb wrapped in black tape where I’d ripped the seam during a pickup game. Wrapped it myself because I was convinced dad would kill me if I told him I ruined it. The tape collected dirt and smelled funky.
I didn’t care. It was mine.
Every afternoon I stood twenty feet from the garage door and threw until my arm hurt and then threw some more until the ball broke through the net. Metal booming loud enough that dogs barked two streets over. My father would come outside. Tell me to stop. Tell me to quit dreaming. Tell me life didn’t work that way. Tell me to find something useful to do.
Then he’d go back inside.
I’d wait five minutes. Throw another ball.
One evening I missed.
Ball sailed wide and punched straight through the kitchen window. Glass on the floor. My mother screamed once and then stopped. The whole house just went quiet.
My mother never said a thing after that.
That night my father took me outside. No yelling. No lecture. No belt. Just the two of us in the dark with a baseball between us.
Here son. He threw it. It sailed wide. I had to reach and I missed it.
He watched the ball roll into the grass.
See son. That’s why baseball isn’t serious.
Went inside.
I grabbed the baseball and threw it against the garage door. It bounced back like it always did. This time I picked it up, sat on driveway and tore it apart. Picked at the seam until the leather peeled back. Underneath . Hundreds of tiny threads. Red and white, wound tight, layer after layer. I unwound them slowly. Counted every yard.
372 yards.
Can’t tell you anything good that happened in the last twenty years of my life but the driveway and him walking back inside. The ball in the grass. How I stood.
Still got that.
Every detail. Every degree of temperature. Thirty-four years and it hasn’t moved an inch. 372 yards of thread inside a baseball.
Still got that too.
9:53 p.m. Standing in my kitchen portioning chicken and rice into glass containers. Dog on the bully stick. Water bowl full. Gym bag packed. NoBulls on top because I know what I’m wearing before I know what I’m thinking. Clothes on the chair. Deadbolt engaged. Windows locked. Coffee maker loaded. Garmin Fenix 6 Pro charging on the counter, alarm set for 4:45 because the phone’s just a thousand dollar distraction if I let it get the best of me.
Everything exactly where it belongs.
Every book said so. Every coach. Every NCO. Every man with a jawline and a podcast. Build routines. Build habits. Build structure. Successful people do the boring things every day.
Gets you out of bed when you don’t want to get up. Through boot camp. Through the failed businesses. Through heartbreak. Through funerals. Through mornings when the only thing waiting is another morning.
Give a lost kid enough discipline and he’ll survive almost anything but nobody ever tells you what happens after you survive when you don’t want to live.
1990. Driveway. Ball in the grass. 1995. Locker combination. Never forgot it. 1999. First time arrested for alcohol poisoning. 2002. Became a Marine. 2004. Best friend blown up. 2005-2008. Played James Bond. 2009-2011. Deployed. Left the Marines. 2011-2013. Deployed again. Got engaged. 2013-2016. Marriage. Kid. Wasn’t a boy. 2016-2018. Business took off. Wife left. Life said fuck you. 2019-2023. Nothing good really happened.
2026. Four containers. Labels forward. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday.
372 yards.
Give a lost kid enough discipline and he’ll survive almost anything.
That’s the problem.
He survived.
I open the refrigerator. Four containers. Eggs. Three tubs of Greek yogurt. Egg whites. Three pounds of ground beef, 96/4. Cholula. Fairlife. Fruit.
Nothing has changed.
I close the door. Check the lock. Deadbolt secure. Check the windows. Closed.
The apartment is quiet.
I used to leave the TV on.
I don’t anymore.
I’m standing in my kitchen and I’m six years old at the same time. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work but it’s always how it works. Never just where you are. You’re everywhere you’ve ever been at once. 1990 and 2004 and 2026 running parallel underneath a man staring at four containers.
Did we make it?
I don’t answer.
Dog nudges me harder. Tail doing that full body wiggly thing boxers do. She walks down the hall. Stops at my daughter’s room. Looks back at me.
Traitor.
I follow her.
Empty room. Sort of messy, but the creative kind. Toys scattered. Half-drawn pictures. Little collections of things she likes. Then this photo on the dresser. My daughter holding a letter M. Biting it with our old dog. Another photo of us from earlier days. She’s got that look. That look kids get when they’ve been waiting too long for something they’re not sure is coming.
I know that look. I grew up in that look.
I pick up the photo. She’s got my eyes. My stubbornness. That refusal to surrender an inch. I used to think that was confidence. Maybe she’s got more from me than I wanted.
You got muscles. Six years old. Talking to a garage door.
They’re overrated.
No they aren’t.
Yes they are.
No.
He didn’t know any better. Neither did I. He had an excuse.
I follow the dog back to the kitchen.
The kid is waiting there. Looking at the containers. The coffee maker. The gym bag. The folded clothes. The emptiness.
Why do you have so many rules?
He opens the refrigerator. Stands there the way I stand there. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday. 175 grams. 265 carbs. 60 fat. Closes it.
Looks at the photo on the door.
Are we in trouble?
I pet the dog and she wiggles to her bed. She’s got the baseball. Cover half off. Underneath . Threads. Red and white. Layer after layer. She looks up at me. Goes back to work.
372 yards.
I don’t stop her.
The core rolls across the floor. Stops at my foot.
Small. Rubber. Smaller than I thought.
I pick it up and sit down on the cold floor.
Don’t open the refrigerator. Just sit there. Holding the center of it.
Finally.
Interesting to consider all the people that believe they want what they think you have. Not cognizant of the price of admission, the cost of passage, paying the rent of existance.
Had to read it again. You're going to make my cry damn you.