I needed this

The sunset tonight was pink for twenty seconds, and then it dissolved into orange and blue. I know because I was outside — paying attention for once — my old softball glove on one hand and one of those pitted practice softballs in the other, readying to hurl it toward my brother, who was intent on hitting it over the bales of hay far behind me and into the pasture.

He never did hit it that far, but he did manage to get it stuck underneath the rusty old white car sitting beside the shed on my grandmother’s property. It took four of us — me, Evan, and the nephews — hunting for that damn ball for ten minutes before it turned up. I can’t believe no one got bitten by a snake.

I have successfully consumed three different types of meat today — four if you count hot dogs as a type of meat all their own — and I’m pretty sure the combination of meat and running around like a moron, trying to relive my glory days as a softball player, has rendered me very nearly immobile. I can hardly move. I’m doing the old-lady groan every time I get up. Everyone kept warning me: “You better scoot up; you’re not as young as you used to be!” But I threw caution to the wind and hurled that ball from amazing distances of twenty — no, twenty-two! — feet.

All the aches in the world are worth it.