On Opening Days and Closing Days

Rites of spring, Jackie Robinson, and remembering Dan

Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: Life and death and renewal and the light that carries on.

If you haven’t yet, please subscribe to Suppertime! I promise to feed you only once a week, and never after midnight.

---

Course 1

A Word of Gratitude: Polish Pierogis

The following was something I wrote and published four years ago this week, after my father-in-law died of Covid on March 11, 2020. Some of you may have read it already. The whole thing was a tragedy in so many ways that it’s been hard for me to reconcile even now. I have a lot of thoughts about the whole ordeal, which I’ll maybe save for another year. But I’m acutely aware of how much I’ve missed since then, how much my boys have missed, how much my wife has missed, and how much my mother-in-law has missed. All have been strong in their own ways, especially my mother-in-law, who has still managed to live a full life with friends and family, something I’m not sure I could ever do.

As with any death, I still miss what could have been. Mostly because I felt like I was just getting to know him, and I felt like there was a lot to learn. There’s this feeling of something that was right there at your fingertips, a rich part of life that was about to turn fully ripe, that was– snap, gone– just like that. A golden harvest snatched away by the scourge of disease. I don’t think a word exists for it. It’s like a dream, but in reverse. You wake up and it’s all real. And it leaves such a big hole.

But he had a great life, and I think it should still be remembered. So this is my way of remembering it. And for that, I’m am grateful.

My Dad, Dan

A year ago today, my son Rye’s 4th birthday party was canceled on account of the new coronavirus, the first of a cascading series of closures and booked blankness in every area of our lives. Like the entire world, that inconvenience was supposed to be the most tragic part of our lives, which was to say, not tragic at all. A small bump in the road with two weeks of quarantine. I mean, pandemics just ain’t our thing.

Of course, we all know what happened afterwards. And while we’re still crawling out, this year was going to be Rye’s redemption. We aligned his birthday with a vacation to my in-laws, who live in Florida. After all, you can’t go wrong with long days at the pool and beach, and plenty of hugs (and ice cream) from Mom Mom and Boppa.

As he always does without question or debate, my father-in-law paid for all our flights, booked a fishing charter for my first ocean fishing trip, and got excited about our visit on all of our FaceTime calls. It was going to be a wonderful time spent with family, especially at the tail-end of our winter in Baltimore.

We were still sure it was going to be an amazing time when my father-in-law contracted COVID in the middle of January. After all, we’ve known scores of people who have had the virus and recovered within a week or so.

I wasn’t sure it was going to be a good time when he was admitted to the ICU after 10 days with a fever and fatigue. On one call, he told me: “Yep, I don’t think we’re going on that fishing trip.” It was still a month and a half away. The tone of it didn’t jibe with his usually optimistic and outgoing personality. But whatever, even if we had to sit and talk for the weekend, it’d still be fine.

I knew it was going to be a different time together when he was eventually put on a ventilator two weeks later. Even so, he seemed to be progressing well enough that maybe he’d be out of the hospital by the time we arrived. And if he was still in the hospital over on Amelia Island, at least he was still here.

Another two weeks passed and I knew it was going to be a different occasion altogether when the COVID in his lungs wouldn’t rest, and neither could he.

I just never thought it would be a time without him, until it was.

One of six boys who lost his own father at a young age, Dan Raspa embodied all the qualities of a hard-working Baltimore kid. He traded his youth for responsibility, bearing much of the burden of his father’s absence, helping taking care of his own brothers and mother. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he was laying the groundwork for his rock-steady presence when he would become a father himself.

As a husband, friend, and father, he excelled without comparison.

As a husband, he remained faithfully married for 48 years, always providing, always caring, always being the second half that any spouse would dream of having. He was strong when he needed to be, but was willing to meet halfway and admit his own weaknesses. His life was modeled after the love and temperance of his savior, Jesus Christ. The love he cultivated in those he encountered was what we all hope to find.

As a friend, he created communities where there were none. He was steadfast and loyal, fun and gregarious. Always down for a good time, always good for when someone was down. He was a leader in his church and led others to find faith. When others were in darkness, he brought light. Both in his contagious smile, his joking demeanor, and his generosity in all things, from finances to time.

As a father, there’s not much to say because I see it every day in the amazing person to whom I’m married. He’s what we all wish to be.

I know this firsthand because of his initial disapproval of my relationship with his only daughter, the brightest diamond of his life. I don’t think I quite fit the mold of what they had in mind for their daughter, and at the time, I resented it. After all, I loved her more than anything and we broke up, partly/mostly because of her parents’ disapproval. But they were right. I wasn’t ready to marry their daughter, and I wasn’t a good fit at the time.

To be honest, when we got back together four years later, I wasn’t much better (possibly worse) in terms of having my life together, but I think he somehow knew I would become the man I needed to be. And I wanted to be that man, even if I wasn’t yet.

Even after we were married, it took me a long time to warm up, because in many ways I still didn’t think I wasn’t good enough. But he always treated me like his third son — the rest was on me to accept his grace. Over time, the ice that I held onto slowly began to melt.

After retiring, he and my mother-in-law moved to Florida. And though our time together was less frequent, the quality of time increased. Over the last three years, I began to grow closer, and I looked forward more and more to coming down and spending time with them. Not for the beaches, the warm ocean breeze, and the excellent golf (though they were all great bonuses), but for the time spent with my father-in-law. Maybe it was because I was a new father, and I knew this man could teach a master class on raising strong and beautiful kids. After all, I married one of them.

I felt like things were just beginning. I had so many things to ask, to know, and to learn. I feel like I was finally able to build the frame of this house, one that we could share, but the skylights and windows and furniture were just waiting to come in. I don’t want the dust to settle on the unfinished beams.

I miss so much, but especially his laugh, his cooking breakfast in the morning, the way he settled into a pile of steamed crabs on a warm October day. I loved his interactions with my boys, how he could wrap them up with his big Polish-Italian mitts almost so you couldn’t even see them. And when we said goodbye, I’ve never had a person hug me as tight as he did.

When we knew the end was coming, it was the first beautiful day of spring in Baltimore. Our front door was wide open, no screen door. We basically put out a welcome mat for the flies and the ants.

Kimi was upstairs, having just gotten a phone call from her brother, while I was outside playing a game with our boys. Because our “backyard” is a cement parking lot, the game involved hiding tennis balls under traffic cones and tiring the kids out by having them run all over the place to find them. Consider it a Baltimore Easter egg hunt.

After a few rounds of this, Jonas spotted a blue rubber ball somewhere among the overgrown weeds in the parking lot, a lost dog play toy. I announced to the boys that this was officially the lucky ball, the super magic ball for whoever found it.

They sat on the front stoop of our house and closed their eyes as I hid all the balls under the cones. After they were all hidden, I counted down. They readied, they set, and they went.

As they were tipping over cones, screaming with delight looking for the one ball to rule them all, Kimi came downstairs, sobbing. It wasn’t the end just yet, but it was, even if it was coming tomorrow.

I held Kimi in the doorway of our rowhome, the dividing line from the inside where we spent most of our dark, COVID winter, to the outside — the sun coming back to us and spring bursting at the seams in anticipation of its bloom.

Rye came running up to us.

As a 4-year-old, everything about him was full of life. His eyes held the raw honey of innocence, still in its hive. I could see the light behind him, in him, coming out of him. His Boppa was in there, in so many years of so much love built up, before his own DNA existed, before his heart could even harness it. All dammed up and held in his little body, just waiting to go out into the world and change so much of it.

In his hand was that one blue rubber super magic ball.

“Daddy, daddy, I found it! I found the blue one!” he said, with more joy than could be gathered in a thousand adult years. “Am I the luckiest? Am I?

Am I the luckiest??”

Yeah buddy, you are. We all are.

Course 2

Appetizer: Oreo Birthday Cake

My favorite kid (technically tied for first) turned 9 this past week. Halfway to being an adult. I have all kinds of feelings about it, many of which I’ll probably save for a later post. But he is such a light on the darkest of days, not afraid to say “I love you so much” at any given moment and giving me the hugest hug around my waist. For so long, he was just a kid, but recently I’ve been seeing the things that will begin to bridge the gap out of this life and into his next.

As with any kids, there are moments of incredible humour that are unmatched by anything I’ve ever seen on SNL or golden-era Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey at his best.

For instance, this past week, my kids were playing soccer at their after care program. I was there to pick them up, but since it was a nice day, I stood there for a half hour just watching the chaotic mess. The goals were “that whole end of the field” and the out of bounds seemed totally arbitrary. Out of my earshot, name calling abounded.

I stay out of this stuff completely, though it drives me crazy to no end that they can switch out goalies at will, or do free kicks whenever the mood strikes. From the sidelines (or the middle of the field, it turns out), I could see Rye mediating between his teammates, telling them to not let the cheating get to them. At one point, he had enough and came over to me visibly frustrated and said, in a tone of voice that was thoroughly genuine and pure in its anger:

“Hunter keeps calling me the b-word for no reason, I feel like Jackie Robinson out there!”

Me, after making my best Jim-Halpert-looking-at-the-camera-after-a-Michael-Scott-remark” look and trying not to die laughing in a situation that he perceived as intensely serious: “Yeah, I don’t think it’s quite like that.”

“Well it’s like when people in the stands kept yelling swear words at him when he was up to bat, he’s doing the same thing to me when I’m playing!”

The middle of a rag-tag game of soccer isn’t a time to hand down the intricacies of racial barriers within and beyond baseball, so I paused the conversation and told him to just not let it bother him and get out there and beat him with your game. The offending kid was terrible at soccer, so it was an easy task.

But really, folks, you can’t get that kind of entertainment anywhere else in the world.

You also can’t get that kind of love, and meaning out of life, from anywhere else in the world. He thinks I’m his world, for now, anyway. But really he’s mine, and he’ll never know how much he’s changed my life for the better.

“I love you” is such a weak phrase to cover all the ways in which I love him. But I’ll keep saying it as much as he says it to me, and show him in all of the rest.

Course 3

The Main: Magnolias and Buttercups

I used to think my favorite day of the year was Opening Day of baseball. Christmas is great and Independence Day warms my pyro heart, but nothing hits like the crack of a bat under a blue sky. My favorite sport, back again for 162 games, a season that spans seasons. It’s as if springtime was stored up, then released onto the green outfield with its manicured lines, the legions of fans prepping for the worst sunburn of the year, the general buzz in the stadium that had everything to do with baseball and nothing do it with it. After a long winter, we’re back, baby.

However, I realized last week, that the Opening Day of baseball is not my favorite day of the year. Instead, it’s Opening Day of Baltimore.

Opening Day of Baltimore is a magical event. It’s a floating day on the calendar that can be predicted, but never fully guaranteed. Here are the parameters: it must occur in March, the temperature must hit 70 degrees, and the sun must be shining. Calendars be damned, it is the first real day of spring.

This year, it happened on a Tuesday. I regrettably drove into work that day, dropping my kids off at school along the way. Things were already shaping up to be nice with temperature in the low 50s. By the time I was finished with work, we had done it: the 70F-degree barrier had been broken. Cue the symphony. Awaken all life. Spring has returned to us and it’s time to celebrate.

There’s no grand announcement, there’s no drunk revelers wearing kitschy “kiss me I’m Irish” clothing, no prognosticating groundhogs to tell you how much time is left. The world will tell you that spring is here, organically.

This year, the first sign was a bodega owner sitting in a plastic deck chair out on the sidewalk. Walking further along, a woman exiting the front door of her row home, smiling and saying hello. Another woman sitting on her stoop, smoking a cigarette. Which probably would’ve happened on any given day, but it seemed like she was doing it with purpose. She made it through one more winter.

We have friends who, for a time, had moved to Baltimore from Texas. During their first spring in the city, I remember them saying, “What we love about Baltimore is that as soon as there’s one warm day, everyone just goes outside. They’re just everywhere.”

He’s right. It feels like the synapses of the city are connecting again. People are friendlier. Movement is everywhere, from kids playing baseball to people walking just for the sake of walking to neighbors cleaning up their sidewalks. Windows are open, and though I’ll never pay for a seven-day Audible trial now matter how many NPR podcasts try and convince me, through the screens I’m able to hear quick previews of “Life Inside a Baltimore Row Home.” There’s enough cyclists on the streets that you feel like maybe you could actually win the war against the food delivery mopeds. A false hope is hope nonetheless.

When I arrived at school to pick my kids up, they were in the park playing soccer with other kids from their after care program. It was an absolute mess of a game with kids ranging from first to fifth grade and seemingly no rules and a lot of complaining. But I swear there was more energy than I’ve seen in some time. I swear that the sun on a spring day does that. Since the clocks went forward just a couple days before, that first pulse of spring seemed to pause in the air, suspending the sun so we could all be underneath its umbrella for just a bit longer. An extra hour of recess for everyone who behaved through the winter.

After we got home, I went on a run. It was more of everything I described, just everywhere. It was the best run I’ve had in some time. The sheer amount of people outside felt like I was in a pop-up census count, as if the city’s population were growing again (which it is, by the way).

I realized afterwards that this really is my favorite day of the year. The rebirth of everything, the return of life.

Opening day, and the home team wins every time.

Course 4

Dessert: A Repast of the Past Week

This week was incredibly busy with my son turning 9 and all the celebrating that comes with that. We had a true city birthday party, hitting up Dave & Busters before all the kids and some parents piled into our row home for Chick-fil-A and birthday cake, then headed into the parking lot for a good game of soccer. It was a great day.

Also was able to grab lunch with my uncle at Ekiben on Thursday, whom I haven’t seen in years. My aunt was getting surgery at Johns Hopkins for pancreatic cancer, but all went as well as it could have been, for which I’m thankful. It was good to see family even in unfortunate circumstances.

Not even gonna lie, that whole time change wiped me out. I feel like I’m finally back in alignment, but it took a whole good week to get there.

Other things I wrote this week:

• Asics Gel-Cumulus 27: Compact Car for the Daily Commute // Shoe Review for Believe in the Run

• Satisfy TheRocker: First Look // Product overview of new trail shoe from Satisfy

• Tracksmith Eliot Racer: First Look // First thoughts on the all-new race day shoe from Tracksmith

• Puma x Saysky SS25 Collab // Gear roundup and look at this excellent partnership between Puma and Saysky. I have a bunch of the pieces from the collection, and they’re all pretty great.

I also contribute to The Drop, a weekly email from Believe in the Run, where I round up running news and stories in a generally sarcastic (and sometimes heartfelt) manner. You can subscribe here.

I’m also the co-host of The Drop running podcast, one of the top running podcasts in the country, where we mostly talk about things other than running that thousands of people seem to find entertaining. We took off a week for the first time in over 300 episodes, but you can listen to past episodes here.

Ingredients List

🎵 : “Sonido Cósmico” by Hermanos Gutiérrez // I can’t tell if I love their music because they look like the coolest dudes I’ve ever seen, or if I actually love their music. But sometimes I’ll get on a kick where they’re all I listen to all day long. And it’s perfect, especially for writing.

📖 : “North Woods” by Daniel Mason // This is one of those books that dominated reading lists for the past couple years and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It spent almost two months in my Maryland Digital Library queue before it finally arrived last week. I’m only a quarter of the way through, but so far so great. Feels much like a more cohesive and not quite as dense cousin of The Overstory. Love it so far, though.

🎬 : “Late Night With the Devil” // I’ve loved David Dastmalchian ever since his short appearance in The Dark Knight and his role in Prisoners. In this movie plays his part as a struggling ‘70s talk show host perfectly, so kudos to him. As for the plot, there’s a bunch of demon possession and heads doing things heads shouldn’t do in this movie, but I didn’t find it that scary. Good messaging on morals and entertainment, and the acting was especially on point, but horror-wise it was fun but not terribly frightening or disturbing. Still an enjoyable movie with a runtime under 90 minutes.

As for Severance, I’m fully convinced that we’re just living in a parallel timeline and this is Lost: The Redux. I am telling you that these writers have no idea what they’re doing or where this is going, especially knowing that half of this season was interrupted by the writer’s strike. It’s all just a bunch of red herrings and fluff meant to fuel the most bizarre Reddit fan theories and I fully believe everyone will hate the ending, whatever it is. If you haven’t lived through Lost, you have no idea, but you soon will. I hope I’m wrong, but the past few episodes are giving major hatch and Locke vibes, and I’m not falling for that again.

END OF MENU

Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.

---