Catch and Release

I am not a jock.

I do, however, know how to throw a ball.

I even know how to throw a football. Spiral and everything.

My dad taught me a long, long time ago.

Freshman year in college, I played on a co-ed intramural team. The rules required co-ed teams to field female quarterbacks, so I took my fair share of snaps. I had a blast.

My favorite memory is throwing a touchdown pass into the end zone, where it was caught in mid-air by my pal Neil (hi, Neil!).

My least favorite memory is the same exact play, because a split second after he caught the pass, Neil collided with two defenders, becoming the filling in a mid-air sandwich. He held onto the ball, and we scored, but I'm pretty sure he also cracked at least one rib. (Sorry, Neil!!)

A few years later, Zach and I started a co-ed touch-football game in Central Park. About a dozen of us played at 10AM on Sunday mornings and then went out for pizza. We even moved the game to Brooklyn when we decamped there a couple of years later. It was great fun, and I would play again in a heartbeat.

There were no huts, no hikes, no spirals, and no pigskins in the ICU today, but my dad and I did get to play catch.

For a couple of weeks now, he's been having trouble with his right arm. It's been swollen, off and on, to varying degrees. And one day he suddenly lost motor control of his hand and wrist. There are several theories as to why this may be, but no one has been overly concerned about it. The expectation is that everything should return to normal in due course.

Meanwhile, of course, it's been a major issue. My dad is right-handed, so writing has been out. And spelling out words by pointing to individual letters has been no mean feat. For this he's mostly had to use his left hand—until now his "bad" hand, weakened and stiffened by Parkinson's.

At one doctor's suggestion, I had bought my dad a couple of stress balls to help rehabilitate his right arm and build up the strength in his left one. He's supposed to squeeze them as often as possible throughout the day as a way to keep up the momentum between his infrequent physical-therapy sessions.

Unfortunately (albeit understandably), my dad hates rote physical exercise. Maybe it stems from basic training back in his Navy days. Maybe he had to do endless calisthenics in his high-school gym class. Whatever the reason, repetitive exercise is just not his thing.

And so the stress balls have been sitting around, except when I use them to relieve my stress.

Until today.

I tried to get my dad to toss one of them back and forth between his two hands in the hope of restoring some of the dexterity in his right hand, but he wouldn't go for it. Instead he tossed the ball to me, mainly as a joke.

But I tossed it right back. Gently, of course. I did not want to get thrown out of the ICU for roughhousing.

And just like that, we were playing a game of catch, bad left hand and all.

It didn't last long, but it was the first interlude of fun that I can recall having in that room in 31 long days.

Next time, we will have to get my mom in on the act.