Da

I had a conversation with our after school program coordinator a few evenings back, where we talked about a great many things, including baseball. We commiserated with each other about the percipitous fall from the top the Oakland A's had experienced over the past month. He told me that he had thought about going out to a game to root the team on, but it was his wife's turn for a night out. "I've learned, or I did as a new parent, not to refer to these evenings as 'babysitting.'" He went on to relate an experience he once had at a convenience store, when the cashier made note of his child. He shrugged and chuckled, saying the word: babysitting.
"Is this your daughter?" asked the cashier, taking a certain shaming tone.
"Well," he realized his mistake but it was too late.
"Then you are not babysitting," she let everyone in her line know. "You are just doing your job. It's what you're supposed to do."
This gentleman, whose job it was to look after one hundred kids at our school five days a week after their daytime teachers had begun their commute back to their civilian lives, still felt a little sheepish about this interaction. I told him that I could relate, having made my own reckoning with child care and caring for my own child.
It was the next day that I spoke with him again, this time on a more professional note: He was resigning because his daughter was very ill. Just six years old, she had taken a turn for the worse, and all the care that she had been getting since she had spent the first year of her life in neonatal intensive care was not enough. He was quitting his job so that he could be there for his daughter. It was a life decision that he was making. It was a father's decision. He wasn't going to be babysitting.
He cried a little while he told me about the choice he was making. I felt the tears well up in my own eyes. I thought about how far away those concerns about baseball were. Miles away. Years ago. There is no crying in baseball. But there is in fatherhood.