older boys would invite me into a game or until they gave up and went home. Basketball, like a good book, gave me a place to be alone without the lacerating wounds of loneliness as an accompaniment.
I mark the year in Orlando as the happiest of my childhood. It is no accident that my father was away, spending that year on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. It was a year spent fishing in a city dimpled with abundant lakes, or smelling the spiced air of my Uncle Russâs ferneries, climbing the trees of his pond-fed orchards to peel grapefruits, big as my head, with a pocketknife. Aunt Helen and Uncle Russ had a houseful of boys so an open door visitation of cousins spilled in and out of our house and theirs. We lived in a rodent-infested place on Livingston Street (with a baseball bat, I killed two rats perched on my brother Jimâs crib), barely a mile from my cousinsâ house on North Hyer Street. It was the year I fell in love with the girl next door, Barbara Ellis, caught my first bass, became a patrol boy, and finished third in the county fifth-grade spelling bee by reversing the position of the inner
s
and
t
in the word âtaste.â That word still taunts me whenever I hear it. Each day, in season, I would go out and harvest an avocado lying under a tree, bringing the best one back to my mother as she sat on the front porch reading the
Orlando Sentinel
. With my pocketknife I would carve glistening, pale green crescents of the fruit and hand them to her. Mom would salt and pepper each slice, anoint them with the juice of lemons grown in the same yard, and moan with pleasure when she popped each morsel in her mouth. My mother was thirty-one that year, a knockout, and often men would wolf-whistle at her. Mom would wink at me as though she and I were conspirators who knew things the uninitiated could never know.
In November I made the fifth-grade basketball team, and in our first game the sixth grade stomped us and teased us so mercilessly that one of my teammates wept. A week later in a rematch on the same outdoor court, we lost by eight, clearly outclassed by the older boys. But in our third and final game, something happened to my little band of fifth graders that contained all the elements and seeds which go into the creation of magic in sport. There was a strange coming together when Gregory Rubichaud, the largest of the fifth graders, took me by the shoulders, stared into my eyes, and said, âWe can beat these guys, Pat. You, me, and Billy Sullivan. We can beat âem.â I felt something change deep inside me.
In a hard-fought game, the fifth grade of St. James School beat the haughty sixth graders by one point. I scored the layup that won the game and felt the glorious rush of teammates trying to hug me all at once, the first taste of the ecstasy of victory, of prevailing over a better opponent.
After the game, I sprinted the mile to Livingston Street, the length of that tree-lined street, to that house, to the arms of that pretty woman who loved avocados. Bursting through the back door, I ran straight up to her, breathless and heaving, and said, âMom! Mom! We beat the sixth grade. We really did. No one thought we could, Mom, no one! I was the high scorer. The high scorer. Youâve got to write Dad.â
Before she could respond, I burst into tears of joy and threw myself into her arms.
My parents wrote to each other every day. That night when my younger brothers and sisters had been put to bed, I oversaw the writing of Momâs letter to Dad. I made sure that she emphasized the underdog role of my small-boned fifth-grade team and yes, the sixth-grade boys had been like a race of mean-spirited, taunting giants to me. With great care, I told Mom where I had scored each one of my points including the first foul shot I ever made. âNine points, Mom. No one on either team scored that many. I was the high scorer.â
âYouâve told me that a hundred times,
I mark the year in Orlando as the happiest of my childhood. It is no accident that my father was away, spending that year on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. It was a year spent fishing in a city dimpled with abundant lakes, or smelling the spiced air of my Uncle Russâs ferneries, climbing the trees of his pond-fed orchards to peel grapefruits, big as my head, with a pocketknife. Aunt Helen and Uncle Russ had a houseful of boys so an open door visitation of cousins spilled in and out of our house and theirs. We lived in a rodent-infested place on Livingston Street (with a baseball bat, I killed two rats perched on my brother Jimâs crib), barely a mile from my cousinsâ house on North Hyer Street. It was the year I fell in love with the girl next door, Barbara Ellis, caught my first bass, became a patrol boy, and finished third in the county fifth-grade spelling bee by reversing the position of the inner
s
and
t
in the word âtaste.â That word still taunts me whenever I hear it. Each day, in season, I would go out and harvest an avocado lying under a tree, bringing the best one back to my mother as she sat on the front porch reading the
Orlando Sentinel
. With my pocketknife I would carve glistening, pale green crescents of the fruit and hand them to her. Mom would salt and pepper each slice, anoint them with the juice of lemons grown in the same yard, and moan with pleasure when she popped each morsel in her mouth. My mother was thirty-one that year, a knockout, and often men would wolf-whistle at her. Mom would wink at me as though she and I were conspirators who knew things the uninitiated could never know.
In November I made the fifth-grade basketball team, and in our first game the sixth grade stomped us and teased us so mercilessly that one of my teammates wept. A week later in a rematch on the same outdoor court, we lost by eight, clearly outclassed by the older boys. But in our third and final game, something happened to my little band of fifth graders that contained all the elements and seeds which go into the creation of magic in sport. There was a strange coming together when Gregory Rubichaud, the largest of the fifth graders, took me by the shoulders, stared into my eyes, and said, âWe can beat these guys, Pat. You, me, and Billy Sullivan. We can beat âem.â I felt something change deep inside me.
In a hard-fought game, the fifth grade of St. James School beat the haughty sixth graders by one point. I scored the layup that won the game and felt the glorious rush of teammates trying to hug me all at once, the first taste of the ecstasy of victory, of prevailing over a better opponent.
After the game, I sprinted the mile to Livingston Street, the length of that tree-lined street, to that house, to the arms of that pretty woman who loved avocados. Bursting through the back door, I ran straight up to her, breathless and heaving, and said, âMom! Mom! We beat the sixth grade. We really did. No one thought we could, Mom, no one! I was the high scorer. The high scorer. Youâve got to write Dad.â
Before she could respond, I burst into tears of joy and threw myself into her arms.
My parents wrote to each other every day. That night when my younger brothers and sisters had been put to bed, I oversaw the writing of Momâs letter to Dad. I made sure that she emphasized the underdog role of my small-boned fifth-grade team and yes, the sixth-grade boys had been like a race of mean-spirited, taunting giants to me. With great care, I told Mom where I had scored each one of my points including the first foul shot I ever made. âNine points, Mom. No one on either team scored that many. I was the high scorer.â
âYouâve told me that a hundred times,
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