As I was working in my yard today, a long-time neighbor pulled up and jumped out of his truck. As you so often do when it has been a while, you start the conversation by asking about how is so and so and what are they doing now. As we were chit chatting, our neighbor told us that he had been up until recently been working as a coach for a girls’ softball team.
It was at that point that he had told us the story of how he as a kid he would play in “the desert” which was really an undeveloped half block of land that was right across the street from our home and how he would often throw rocks at the lights of the only building on the that side of the block. He had gone on to tell how one day my father had told him that he had a pretty good throwing arm and he ask them if he had ever considered playing little league baseball. It was at that point that my neighbor had gone on to share that the conversation they had that day was instrumental in changing the course of his life. Adding, that it was one of the main reasons he had decided to go into coaching softball. To as he said, to play it forward to the next generation of young people.
As a son, to hear someone else share such a story involving your Dad and by the way, he never spoke about it too any of us including my mom was so meaningful and also touching. It also wasn’t a big surprise to my mother saying only that your Dad did those kinds of things. It is perhaps more meaningful because my father will have been in heaven 15 years this week, and to know, that his life had made an impact beyond those in his family means that his memory and the things, he did in this life will keep on having an impact. The impact is like when someone throws a stone in still water and you see the many circles rippling out from the center. Our life always ripples out word touching many and who knows what impact my neighbor’s life will have on others and to know that it all started with a conversation my father had with one young neighbor.
Thoughts? E-mail: francisearly@francisearly.com
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