The old ball field’s chain-link batting cage rose into the sky, and James stood for a moment, lost in the past, seeing the children of days gone by playing games, running and shouting. Proud fathers stood behind the fence, cheering the kids. He stared, his mind swamping the plea he’d just uttered to the God he’d lost.

A kaleidoscope rushed through his memory, his mother, sitting beside him in church, listening to the preacher. He and the neighbor boy, riding a too-big bike. Watching football on their old black and white TV. Christmases, playing hockey, all of his childhood in this small town crashed through his brain. He suddenly found himself transported to the middle of the hockey rink, lost in the past as if he’d traveled down a road and not remembered the last few miles. He replayed the days when he’d been happy just to be with his dad, when his mother had bought them cowboy hats and they’d all climbed on the tractor, Mom holding his baby sister as Dad had furrowed the rows.

And then there was the day his mother died…the minister’s quiet words, his father’s withdrawal, his sister’s tears. His own soundless cry to heaven, wanting to know why. James couldn’t go there just yet. He jerked back to the present.

Breathing in crisp winter air, he focused on the other relocated relics of his childhood, and barely gave a thought to the neatly folded black shirt he’d left on the hardwood pew—or the thin white clergy tab that had defined so much of him.

~*~

James strong-armed the steering wheel of his old pickup as wind buffeted the rusted blue steel. Windshield wipers worked double-time to keep snow flurries off the glass. Through the rearview mirror, he glanced back at the church heritage site. Ice and snow seemed to have frozen everything in history. Like the preserved buildings, his childhood triumphs on the Little League diamond, football field, hockey rink, stood motionless in his mind, just cold sculptures of joys he would never feel again.

The sun cut through the clouds offering a sliver of golden light; a possibility that this confusion, depression—whatever it was James was feeling—was only a temporary state. The timing of the show of light wasn’t lost on him, and a slight twinge at the corners of his mouth almost made his lips turn upward. God certainly did move in mysterious ways—or at least, James’d think so if he wasn’t convinced God was on vacation.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. Sunlight glinted off bleachers that lined the football field, bringing with it more memories. He’d loved playing sports. Didn’t matter which. Baseball. Football. Hockey. He was good at them all and had the constant support of the town and his family. Superman in a world with no kryptonite.

The mental image of his father whooping and hollering, proud as any man or father could be pierced James with a double-edged blade. They’d been close then, before James had done whatever he’d done to rile his dad and create the divide between them that had dominated the last forty years. James cherished those memories of his father’s love; but now those same remembrances ate him up inside. “Strained” was a sugar-coated description of a relationship as shattered as the one James now shared with his Heavenly Father.