We are the only members of our family who don’t live in the Greater Boston area.  We moved to the Bay Area almost 15 years ago and many temperate winters later, we find our roots have shifted West, although we still carry our childhood city in our deep hearts’ core.  We feel a certain, misguided smugness when people talk about Thoreau and Longfellow, Emerson, and Alcott.  We have been known to bring out our accents as charmingly creepy party tricks.  We lament the lack of decent clam chowder in our lives.

And so we brought our four year old son Beckett to his first Red Sox game recently.  Not in the shadow of the Green Monster, where our families took us, but here in the Bay Area, against the Oakland A’s.  We prepared for the occasion well in advance—teaching Beckett who the starting pitcher would be (Josh Beckett, it turns out, in a delightful but confusing serendipity).  He knew the names of the entire starting lineup, and had taught himself the batting stances of many of them.  We talked about the season, the stakes, and the meaning of the stats. We felt proud.  Proud of his interest.  Of his ability to hit one over the fence–of our small backyard…but still…it’s a fence.  Proud that we were teaching him what mattered about the team we grew up with, and about the city we loved but left.

So there we were, warm in the Oakland sun and wrapped in the buzz of the thousands, one of us amped up on cotton candy, the other two amped up on him.  Three older boys—wordly, fully grown, massive: eight years old—towered behind us.  They stood with the crowd and shouted to the batters. Advised the pitchers with such insightful tips as ‘he cannot sa-wing!!!’.  Roared ‘Yoooouuuuuuk!’ at just the right moment.  Beckett was hooked. He looked at us, mustered his courage and that ragingly infectious grin that defines who he is, and said “Mommy, I want to do that too.”  Our battered and broken and vindicated and ever-faithful Red Sox hearts swelled with pride.  Our son, cheering the team.  With the big boys.

So he scrambled up his chair, wiped the stickiest bits of cotton candy from his mouth (and nose, and eyebrows), and cupped his hands around his mouth.  The Sox fans all around us—who had been enjoying this tiny new addition to the fan family for several innings—paused their conversations and turned our way to hear his first cheer.

And the world stopped for a second.   Because here’s what he shouted, at the top of his lungs.  Clear as a bell, and with unabashed joy and absolute and utter commitment:

“I love you Mommy!!!”

“I love you Daddy!!!”

“I love you Red Sox!!!”

This four year old person, in three seconds, and without plan or awareness, revealed for us what we hadn’t seen: that we had been talking about all the wrong things.  That we had been talking about players and games and scores and stats, when what in fact matters so deeply is not, in fact, the team itself.  What matters is the way shared passions, handed down generationally, can hold families together, despite time and distance.  What matters is finding ways to release and preserve that absolute and ebullient glee that makes Beckett, well, Beckett, and that ties us each to each.  What matters is the moments that happen alongside the game—not in the game.  What a gift to have gotten that day.  And what a small but magical person, to have given it to us.  Maybe Beckett will be a Red Sox fan.  God-willing, he won’t be a Yankees fan.   But whatever—and whoever—he turns out to be, we know that he will find other, different, beloved passions of his own, and that his eyes will open ours, all along the way.

–Alle Aufderhaar