The Field of dreams?

I think baseball fields might be my one true comfort place in life. 

I grew up surrounded by the bright lights on warm summer evenings. Whether I was on the field playing Softball, or watching from the stands as my brother played. 

Every day of summer was spent outside with other siblings from my brother’s team. Every day I would wake up as the sun rose and would get ready to sit out in the blazing sun. I rarely watched the games but rather ran around to the playground or to the snack stand. We made up cheers or got through a game of truth or dare. 

After almost nine years, my brother would eventually transfer teams and I would have to make new friends. As I grew up, I stopped going to games. If I went, I sat and fully watched my brother play. 

I idolized my brother when I was little. I wanted to be just like him, so I started playing softball. I played for nine years before I quit the day before my freshman year tryouts. Every time I stepped out on that field, I felt a rush surge through my body. The only thing that has ever come close to that is the feeling of stepping up on stage before a theater performance. I loved the Friday night lights shining down as I stepped into the batter's box. The butterflies as I watched a girl steel and tried to throw them out. The pure shock when the ball went over the fence and my teammate's bodies smashed against mine because I just hit the winning run for the game. 

Then it was all over. 

I grew up on the fields. 

Now, as I drive past a baseball field, I smile. I can’t see a little league game playing out without wanting to stop and cheer them on. 

As I drive through an unknown neighborhood in Indiana, in a town that I have never seen in my life, a baseball field appears. I still smile. That field has no connection to my childhood, yet the idea of one, in itself, makes me smile. 

That was when I realized. I think baseball fields might be my one true comfort place. I will always feel at home there. 

I found peace when I stepped on the field. 

There were no worries out there. No teasing kids at school. No brother I had to compete with. No homework. Nothing. Just me and the field.

I grew up with dirt smeared all over my pants and hands. Black eye paint smeared down my face. 

It was where I felt safe in the world. Both on and off the field. 

When I went into high school, I started theater. The rush of stepping on stage was fulfilling and whole. I felt it radiate through my body. It was a feeling like no other. But I never felt at home on stage. I loved it, but nothing competed with the way a field felt beneath my feet. 

The smell of curling irons didn’t come close to competing with the smell of a fresh summer air with a hint of dirt. 

It’s weird though. 

I genuinely believe I love theater more than I ever loved softball. Yet, I feel far safer on a field than I will ever feel on a stage.

My childhood was shaped by the birthdays spent in the blazing sun during a tournament. The Fourth of July’s watching fireworks on the field directly after a game finished. The scrapped knees and dirty hands. 

When I look back, it isn’t about the game. 

I don’t feel safe on a field because of how much I love softball or baseball. But because that was my home as a kid. It was the place I spent equally as much time at as my actual home. 

When I was 12, my parents sold my childhood home and we moved away. At 18, my parents sold the house I spent my teenage years in. 

I don’t have a childhood home to hold those memories in. 

But no matter where I go. No matter how far from home I get. There will always be a baseball field. 

Baseball fields are my childhood home. 

And therefore, my one true comfort place.