Feb. 7: "The Cat's Blue Pajamas''

In my Public Speaking class we have another speech coming up on Monday. We are to give a speech based on a story from our childhood. What follows is a rough draft of what I came up with this morning:

When I was a little boy, there were many things I loved. I loved my mama and daddy. I loved my brothers and sister. I loved my dog, Buddy. I loved my bicycle.

But the one thing I loved most of all was baseball.

So this is a baseball story, but only to a point. Mostly, it is a story about my mama.

My dad grew up on farm and because he valued “elbow room’’ when he bought our little house, he bought the empty lot next to it, too, and it became the playground for the entire neighborhood. You might say it was a multi-use facility. Dad put up a basketball goal at one end of the lot, so we played basketball. We also played football, chase and any number of games we invented. But mostly, we played baseball, even though we never had enough kids to field a full team.

So that’s where I learned to play baseball, right there on that empty lot next to our house.

Because I was the youngest kid in the family, I watched with interest and envy as my older brothers began to play Little League baseball and dreamed of the day when I would get to put on a "real'' baseball uniform – white polyester baseball paints when leggings pulled up high over the calves, a brand new baseball cap and the T-Shirt jersey that bore the name of Palmer’s Big Star grocery store or Malone & Hyde Distributors or George Watson’s Sporting Goods, depending on the sponsor of the team I would wind up playing on.

That wonderful first summer of Little League arrived for me when I was 8. We played games on Wednesdays and Fridays, anywhere from 5:30-8 p.m.

I lived for those days. On the day of a game, I was in my full uniform before lunch, such was my anticipation.

Now, Mama worked at a garment factory and she usually got home around 4 o’clock. As soon as she hit the door, I was there to remind her of my game that night, since she was my transportation. My dad worked two jobs, so he rarely got the chance to see his boys play ball.

Now if you know anything at all about summers in the South, you know that the weather does not always cooperate with little boys’ plans.

Sometimes, I would find myself sitting in a chair lin the living room, ooking out the big picture window at the dark clouds that would build ominously on the horizon heralding the impending arrival one of those fierce summer thunderstorms that emptied the heavens and cancelled Little League games.

And my heart would sink.

“Mama?’ I would shout out to her as she was in the kitchen trying to get supper together for her hungry pack of kids. “Mama? Do you think it’s going to rain?’’

I guess there was some pleading tone in my voice that melted mama’s heart.

She would come into the room, dish towel in hand, and look for a moment out the big picture window.

“I don’t know, maybe,’’ she would say, gently. “But you do know that if there is enough blue in the sky to make a cat a pair of pajamas it won’t rain, don't you?’’

She would pat me on the head, and then return to the kitchen, having left me with a little glimmer of hope.

I would turn my attention back to the sky, but this time I wasn’t looking at those big, threatening gray clouds. I was looking for a little patch of blue, just enough to make a cat a pair of pajamas. And what I discovered was that though the sky was still full of those big, ominous gray clouds, somehow they didn’t seem quite so threatening.

Now, some days it worked. The big, dark clouds would roll off to the east and in another hour or so I would find myself happily chattering in the dugout with my teammates and racing out onto the diamond.

But it didn’t always work, of course. No, some days the clouds empty out in great floods and the game would be cancelled.

Even so, I always looked for that little patch of blue when the clouds began to build on game day.

Gosh. It’s been more than 40 years since those days. Mama and Daddy are gone. My brothers and my sister have kids who are all older than you all.

And I’ve gone from Mississippi to California to Arizona and now here I am, back in Mississippi.

And while I don’t play baseball anymore, I still watch the skies because the dark clouds still build menacingly on the horizon.

In the past few years, they have been building, great gathering storms that blot out the sun and threaten to snuff out sunny dreams. I’ve seen them from a prison cell and the unemployment line and now, back here in Mississippi.

But I have managed to survive and endure. I am not a bitter man, although the circumstances of my life certainly could have produced that effect.

I guess that's because I have always favored my mama. I have her brown eyes and her dimples. But I have also inherited something else from mama. I am an optimist because I am my mother’s child.

When I made the decision to return to school at the age of 51, a lot of people told me they admired my courage. But I don’t think it is a matter of courage at all.

It’s just that little boy who is trying to look past those dark clouds to find that little patch of blue.

Just enough to make a cat a pair of pajamas.

That's all I need.