The Last Step

The year was 1946 and Carolyn was the new kid in my fourth-grade class. In a word, she was different. Not in looks, however, as with soft blue eyes, long brown locks, and dimples that pulsed with her vibrant smile she was certainly cute enough. No, the difference was her mature demeanor, including an aura of self-assurance in her speech as well as her actions.

Looking back on those juvenile days I see these characteristics as admirable. At the time I simply read them as snooty. And I wasn't alone with this feeling. Other girls in the class avoided her, and, likewise, if any of the other boys found her of interest, it was a well-kept secret. In step with the others, then, I ignored her. So why Carolyn selected me as the target of her attention and frequent affection is something I'm still unable to explain. The start of this particular school year was the first after the close of WWII. Dad had returned home safely from his service in the Navy, and I found my interests had shifted. Gone was the thrill of building model airplanes used in my pretend games of bombing Japan and Germany. There were more important things now. Bob Feller had also returned from his service for America and was now pitching for the Cleveland Indians. When I learned this, I settled in on the goal of being a big leaguer just like him. I figured it would be easy, as my recent birthday gift from Mom and Dad had been a baseball mitt. On top of that I had enough change saved from my yard mowing jobs to buy a baseball. I was all set except for one problem. Our row house neighborhood didn't have enough room to practice. Staying after school and using the far corner of the playground alongside Meadow Lawn Cemetery seemed to be my only option. But how could I practice pitching without a catcher?

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The solution was to invent one by using bailing twine to tie the mitt to the trunk of an oak tree towering above the monkey bars and the cemetery's first row of headstones. With the mitt secured at the proper height, I stood atop a pile of dirt I'd scooped up for a pitcher's mound and then hurled the baseball at my make-believe catcher. This first practice session generated a lot of exercise, as most pitches missed the tree entirely. This resulted in more time spent shagging after the errant baseball than pitching. During class the following morning, Carolyn dropped a note onto my desk as she walked to the blackboard to showoff her knowledge of our previous day's homework. While Mrs. Maxwell and the rest of the class watched Carolyn apply intelligent loops and swirls to the blackboard with a chunk of yellow chalk, I read the note.

Dear Bobby, I watched you yesterday, and I can assure you I'm a better catcher than that old tree. I reread the note. A girl? Catch a baseball? Not likely. Also troubling was that the note was written in red ink and had a dozen hand-drawn hearts around the border. Worse yet she had signed the note with, "Forever yours, Carolyn."

I wasn't looking for any girl trouble so I skipped my practice session after school and hurried home to show the note to Mom. I figured she'd laugh, but she only grinned and sat me down for a little talk, the kind I later came to know as having to do with "The Birds and the Bees." I gave Mom my full attention, even nodding respectfully at times, but none of it made any sense. A crush? Wasn't that what happened when I stomped on a bug? If so, I sure didn't want Carolyn stomping on me. During roll call in class the following day I passed a note to Carolyn. No red ink; no Dear Carolyn; no Forever yours, Bobby. Just two words printed with my freshly sharpened pencil. "Oh, yeah?" That afternoon Carolyn was waiting for me under the oak tree at the corner of the playground. I tried to explain how to use the mitt but she just took it from me and slid her hand into it as if she'd been doing this all her life. And she caught everything I threw at her, including my best imitation of Bob Feller's fastball. She was awesome. Maybe living with her crush wouldn't be so bad after all. In retrospect it's clear the time spent together this day changed my feelings about Carolyn, but of far greater importance the event also represented the first of two steps that sealed a lifelong friendship. The second step was Carolyn's unwavering attention to me the following year after I contracted polio. And while I faired better than most with the disease, reaching the big leagues with a brace on one leg was now out of the question. "Baseball's just a game," she said time and again as she helped me with my homework. And, nag as she was, she soon had my grades soaring higher than I had ever believed possible. Amazingly, her mentoring never waned, as each year was the same, right through graduating high school. During these school years we were often the subject of teasing, including crude drawings on the schoolhouse walls saying, "Bobby loves Carolyn," or vice versa, depending on who penned the graffiti. And, truth be known, we did share a love for each other, but this love was not the love associated with a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. No. In my eyes our relationship held a plateau much higher than mere friendship. We were Best Buddies. As such we were companions for many activities, but during high school she dated others and I did the same. Ironically, due to the fickle nature of young love, we were both free to be together for the senior prom. It was our first real date. Those early weeks after graduation, however, held a high level of anxiety for me, not a little of which was worry over what life now held in store. On the other hand, and quite true to her nature, Carolyn had no such worry. As the organized perfectionist she'd been for as long as I had known her, she knew exactly where she was headed in life. That fall Carolyn left our hometown to attend an all-girls school in Vermont, while I quickly accepted a job with a firm in California dabbling with a new contraption called a computer. Despite the distance now separating us, our communication with one another stayed as frequent as the notes we had long passed in class during our school years. About midterm in her senior year at college, I used some vacation time to fly back east to attend Carolyn's wedding. A few months later I returned with presents and well wishes when she gave birth to her daughter, Carla. Four decades raced by, a time that saw marriage, children, and divorce enter and leave my life, much as it had with Carolyn's. Then, a few months before our 50th class reunion, Carolyn wrote with the news that she would soon return to our hometown. Was this to be a visit or a permanent move? She didn't explain but now into retirement I was free to do either, and the thought of us together triggered a desire that had been thwarted for too long. I picked up the phone and placed a call to Carolyn. Just as it always had, the sound of her voice put dance to the hair at the base of my neck. Then, after an exchange of pleasantries, I mustered the nerve to say, "Carolyn, I believe it's about time for us to be together?" During the long pause before she spoke, my mind's eye could see her dimples pulsing with her smile just as they had the first time she favored me with her attention. Finally, in reply to my question, she said, "In my heart, Bobby, we've never been apart." My euphoria soared when she assured me she would be back in our hometown by the time of our class reunion. It would be our second real date. As I planned it we would talk of kids and grandkids and of how our lives might have turned out if we had not parted after graduation. But of far greater importance, before that special evening was over, I would ask Carolyn to marry me. It was not to be. A few weeks later I received a personal letter from Carla informing me of her mother's death after a long battle with cancer, a condition Carolyn had chosen not to reveal during any of our recent conversations. A package arriving with the letter contained every note, card, and letter I had written to Carolyn along with the corsage I gave her at the senior prom. And beneath it all, nestled in the worn pocket of a kid's baseball mitt, was a delicate white envelope with a note from Carolyn.

Dear Bobby, When these words reach you I will have taken the final step on the road we've known as life. But don't despair. Over the years our steps have taken us many places but the last step takes us to Heaven, a place where we'll never be apart. Forever yours, Carolyn

I abandoned all thought of moving back to our hometown, but I did return to visit Carolyn's final resting place, a lovely spot on a grassy knoll just a soft toss from the sprawling oak where she entered my heart on a warm, summer afternoon so many, many years ago. During this time at home I also attended our class reunion, an event now devoid of gaiety for me when I realized how few remained from those carefree days of our youth. Back then reaching life's horizon seemed as impossible as trying to catch a mirage dancing above an endless country road. As such we raced on, believing life was infinite. Too late we learned it was not.