As a therapist, I’ve been in the business of change for a long time and have learned to distrust the quick turn, the sudden conversion. It is too good to be true, and you know how that usually turns out.
The actor goes on a racist rant and suddenly is moved to meet with civil rights leaders to make the world a better place? The prospective bride or groom suddenly turns in the religion of their youth for a more convenient one so they can get on with the ceremony? I smell expediency.
Instead, I believe in slow, grinding change, the kind that takes place when rivers wear down rocks. The kind that has finally happened to me.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, a non-Irish, non-Catholic only child. I didn’t meet the profile. I needed some way to belong. When friends began to veer even further away from me into movie magazines and home permanents, I found my niche. I became a White Sox fan.
I chose Luis Aparicio as my hero, number 11. I bought a white sweatshirt and painstakingly sewed his name and number on the back using bias tape, and wore it to every game I could talk my mother into attending, always with several friends in tow.
We would wait outside the fence after the games, angling for autographs. One winter, I subscribed to the St. Louis Sporting News, and scoured every issue for news of Little Looie and his teammates. I had it bad.
And then came the 1959 season and the pennant. I was in heaven. I spent all my babysitting money on a transistor radio with an earphone that would allow me to hear every minute of every game.
Our defeat at the hands of the hated Dodgers took a lot out of me. I hung in for the next few years, but then the waves of adolescence took my attention to other matters and I virtually stopped reading the sports page, a fallen-away fan.
Once I embarked on a mixed marriage with a life-long Cubs fan, I didn’t do much to hold up my end of the debate. I was a little puzzled at the vehemence of my new relatives’ feelings on the matter, but was sure they’d feel better once they racked up a pennant of their own, which was bound to happen soon.
In the meantime, I watched the occasional game and developed a lasting affection for the endless optimism and lack of bitterness in Cub nation. No matter how painfully disappointed the fans were by the end of the season, every spring they came back for more, year after year. Their glass remained half-full.
And that’s all I noticed until last week, when I was watching the Cubs-Sox game on ESPN with my never-wavering husband. In fact, he noticed it before I did.
“You’re rooting for the Cubs?” he said.
“Oh, I guess I am,” I said. “Wow.”
Now, that is real change – when it sneaks up and surprises you, when it descends on you without being summoned. Sorry, Sox, I’ve gone over the fence.
CBH 6/08
