Today our 10 month-old-son did something rather extraordinary. I plopped a tennis ball in his lap and he grabbed it and flung it back at me. It was one of those dad-son moments that one hears about and I can’t tell you how excited I was. Images of years to come – playing catch with this boy floated through my mind. I thought back on my own dad and I in our backyard, tossing a ball back and forth.
There is truly something iconic about playing catch with one’s father and then one’s kid(s). It’s somehow ingrained in us. Ralph LaRossa does a good job at dissecting why this game of catch is so important to us. He speculates it is a result of the glorification of baseball and suburbanization – both taking place in the Mid-Twentieth Century. I think the game of catch is a symbolic form of communication between fathers and kids. There’s a rhythm to the gesture. It’s a connective action. A tangible link between generations.
Whatever it is, it feels good to have Jamie joining in on this long, iconic tradition and I certainly plan to include footage of fathers and their kids tossing together in the film.
