Mom's Last Ball Game

Flipping to the Orioles turned into an inside-the-retirement-park home run

- Marc Peyser

MY MOTHER STOPPED talking a couple of months ago, and it was something of a shock. Mom was a legendary kibitzer. In the days before cellphones, she had a princess landline installed on the wall of her bathroom so that even. Mother Nature couldn't interrupt a conversation. 

Need an opinion-or not? She had one either way. When she entered assisted living five years ago, her stories about her three husbands, her acquaintanceships with various U.S. senators while working on Capitol Hill, and her days as a tap-dancing grandma-captivated the aides. They spent their breaks in her room, laughing and lapping up the received wisdom.

To fill her now-silent days, my sister and I would turn on show tunes or the TV, but she ignored them, just like she mostly ignored us and stared at the wall, looking somehow both vacant and angry. And then, one day, I flipped past the Baltimore Orioles-Tampa Bay Rays game on TV. It was as if I had pointed the remote at her and pushed the unmute button. She turned away from the wall. She watched. And then she started to cheer: "

Oh."

"Good."

"Nice!"