Nostalgia always strikes when you least expect it sometimes. Sometimes, just whiffing an old smell or seeing someone in a crowd that jogs your memory will send you back into the musty, stagnent archives of memories that helped make you the person you truly are. For me, I got struck last night as I came up with the bright idea of playing basketball outside at the park in the 40 degree weather. Also, the court lights were out, so, all I had to guide by was the overhead softball field lights. I'm not sure if it was the solitude, or the dim lighting but I started to mimic all the same shots and routines that my driveway hosted for the largest chunk of my life.
My basketball hoop, that sits perched on it's aged stem on the bank of my father's driveway. To even try and count the hours I spent playing games or two-on-two or HORSE with anyone who would give me the time of day would be impossible. Even before the house in Campville, that came from my parent's divorce, that basketball hoop had a spot in the backyard after it was given to me for my 7th or 8th birthday (sorry, the memory is faded). My dad showed me how to shoot, despite the fact I could barely heave a full-size ball far enough to NOT call it a layup. I make myself laugh as the court didn't even have pavement, but worn grass and a giant tree stump that was my favorite spot to shoot from.
Fast forwarding to the previous timeframe, during my teenage years I used to practice trick shots, free throws and of course, since Dad upgrade to the adjustable setting pole, we could DUNK like any superstar that wore Nike's from 1991-1995. I would even spend the first few snowfalls shoveling the driveway just so I could practice out there, layed up like an onion in sweatshirts and thermal underwear. Come to think of it, if that backboard had eyes and a soul, it would have seen me at my happiest with all my childhood friends, screaming for the ball and stretching our nights of play into prime-time groundings from our parents. It also would have seen me when I was isolated and distant... just looking for the immediate satisfaction of a ball going through a hoop that I had done a thousand times. Maybe it was the consistency and knowing that each time I did it, no matter how creative or difficult, it always ended with the same goal: the ball going through the rim.
As seasons pass and generations of siblings, neighborhood kids that grew up together, my sister's high school basketball career, the one-on-one games my dad punished me with to show me fundamentals and values... all these have come and gone. You see the hoop now, caroded and weathered from lack of attention and care. In a crying manner, streaks of rust run down the backboard from the screws that once supported a childhood. The fresh black paint on the pole has turned to a shade of grey that mirrors many a cloud that roamed overhead. It sits perched over the driveway, tired and beaten. The only means of light for years was a lamppost on our driveway corner that never had a bright enough bulb in it. Now that tarnished lamppost sits with missing panes of glass from reckless basketball games of old as it too rests next to the hoop; two retired veterens who speak of their hayday, starting every sentence with "Those were the days...".
Much the same way author Shel Silverstein wrote of "The Giving Tree" and how it spent its life helping a boy become a man who became an elder and eventually had only it's stump for him to rest his old body on. I never really considered how that hoop was there everyday for decades; watching me get on and off the bus, drive my first car, bring home tons of shit from college every year and watching me pull in the driveway on the rarest of occasions now.
So, as I shot in the dark at Cantiague Park last night, somewhere between here and yesteryear, I was rewinded to my own giving tree that will be waiting for me when I get home this Thanksgiving.
