I was too young and naive to consider how my mother felt back then...

#nana56b


Lines from the story

I lost my father when I was only five years
old.

My mother worked part-time at the
supermarket's meat counter, always coming
home late.

Her pay was low, her schedule irregular, and
she worked part-time even on Sundays and
holidays.

Living in a cramped apartment with my mother
and younger brother,
waiting for her while occasionally feeling the
loneliness of the night became our daily
routine.

Back then, I was a baseball kid.

An old, worn-out kid's glove still sits in my
room today.

That high-end glove from a famous brand

was one I'd insisted on getting bought for me.

Back then, I was just purely (without a care)
obsessed with chasing that white ball.

Even so, once a year, I'd get taken to the
civic stadium with my brother.

Sometimes we entered with complimentary tickets,
but my mother, who knew absolutely nothing about
baseball, must have been thinking something
profound when she bought tickets,

wasting two days' worth of part-time wages just
to take my brother and me to the municipal
stadium so often...

I was too young back then to even begin to grasp
it.

Watching my mother's back, which seemed much
smaller than I remembered from years ago,

as I thought about those childhood days, tears
began to fall.