Our son Theo has been playing baseball for the last three years and it has been so much fun to watch him improve in skill and grow in confidence as he connects with the ball more often, runs more swiftly from base to base, and throws the ball further across the field. We’re still waiting for him to catch the ball, but we still have plenty to cheer about, and we can get pretty loud and crazy on a Saturday afternoon at the park. The kids’ teams are based on Major League teams, and for the last two years Theo has been on the Los Angeles Dodgers. I know I’m his mother, but I have to say I’ve found the mini Dodgers’ games much more exciting and emotional than many of the real ones. The real games drag on for hours, the food is awful and it takes forever to get out of the stadium parking lot. The kids’ games are done in an hour, we can bring our own food and drink and we’re on our way home in a matter of minutes when the game’s done. Luckily, because he’s a mini Dodger, he gets to wear his uniform when we go to real Dodgers games. He has two shirts now, so I asked him to give one away and today I thought of the perfect little guy to pass it along to.

When we were living in our rental house last year, we were just around the corner from the local Starbucks, David’s favorite coffee shop. David has become a regular there, and so has Cat, a beautiful, creative woman who spends time there writing, drawing and occasionally hanging out with her darling little son Noah. I don’t spend much time at Starbucks but just after the fire when we’d moved into the rental house and had no internet, I went there for wi-fi and got to know Cat too. She has a background in philosophy, loves art and literature and is active in our local community hoping to convert the neighborhood into a little Montmartre. With her charm, smarts and talent, she may well do it. There were a few days last fall when we still lived in that neighborhood when I would look out of our front window and catch sight of Cat and Noah sitting on the grass by the side of the road enjoying a little picnic surrounded by piles of leaves. Watching her reading picture books to her little son, who was learning to talk and still had a little waddle in his walk, reminded me of the sweet Mommy Days I took once a week to spend similar quality time with Theo when he was in preschool. Each phase in our children’s lives has different joys and challenges, and though I have such fond memories of my little Theo, I love watching him learn how to navigate this world with more and more sophistication. I asked David to give her Theo’s Dodger shirt when he saw her there today. I don’t think it will fit Noah just yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long before she’s watching him hit his first single and she too is screaming like a banshee from the stands as he runs for first base.