Every year, in late—too late—spring, a small, crested bird called an ash-throated flycatcher lays several eggs in a nest that sits permanently in the eaves above our front porch. The chicks hatch when the weather is still mild, they begin to grow, and then the heat hits. One by one the birds fall from the nest, and one by one they die. We call the wildlife department for advice, we give the birds water from an eyedropper, we climb a ladder and put them back into the nest and they fall out again. This year, as every year, we hope for better. The birds seem hardier, their mother more attentive. It's half past 5 on a Friday evening when my cat darts into the house and drops a chick onto the afternoon paper.
"Daddy, look!" says my 3-year-old son.
I pick up the bird and carry it outside and bury it at the foot of the sumac tree. I say a few words that are probably too saccharine but are also probably as true as anything else one can say about death. Then, because I can't think of anything else, I turn to my son and say:
"Hey, do you want to go to a baseball game?"
"Sure," says my son.
My wife is at work. When my wife works evenings, my son and I tend to stick around the house, as if to venture out past 5 without Mommy is to leap into the jaws of some horrible, ferocious ... cat. Now I've proposed heading clear across town to Cashman Field in 110-degree heat, and my son rather likes the idea (it's either that or dig up the bird). I hesitate. I'm still under the influence of the sight of that bird in my cat's mouth, a sight that is entirely natural but not entirely natural to me. It occurs to me that I've gone completely soft and must take my son to a baseball game immediately.
We arrive during the top of the second, when the temperature has dropped to 105. In the bottom of the third, Joe Thurston of the Las Vegas 51s tries to score from second on a teammate's short single to right. The throw beats him by about eight feet. He jogs nonchalantly to the catcher, swats the ball out of his hand, and scores. I cheer. My son cheers. "I've never seen that before!" I tell him. Neither has he.
"Can I play baseball someday like the guys?" he asks.
"Yes," I say. "You can."
On the way home I take a wrong turn. We drive all the way down Maryland Parkway, past Sunrise Hospital, where my father has worked since I was 18 months old, past the wing of the hospital where my son was born, past my childhood home, where the springtime winds blew baby birds from the eaves and we tried our best to save them.