The Many Thoughts of Wanda Kidd

This post may be hard for many of my sport-loving friends to hear.

While watching an episode of Leave it to Beaver this morning, I realized I was not over something that happened thirty-five years ago. In fact, when I could see how the storyline was going to unfold, it elicited such visceral feelings that I had to leave the room.

Their story went something like this.

Ward, the dad, found a baseball his uncle had given him as a child. It had the autographs of many famous baseball players, including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

He had someone build him a pedestal to put the ball on and place it on his desk. He explained to his sons the importance of the ball, but they did not appreciate its value.

At that moment, I turned to my husband and said, “I can tell where this is going and I cannot watch it.”  I left the room with a pain in the pit of my stomach I thought was long resolved. I knew that the boys would decide to take the priceless ball outside and play with it, and it would be destroyed, and there was nothing anyone could do to replace it or the memories.

I know that story because it is personal. For 90% of the painful things in my life, I have been pretty successful in reframing the outcome or at least making it into a good story. Still, this one is without redemption for me, and that reality frustrates my optimistic soul.

Ironically, part of this story has to do with the tragedy of my brother’s life and an automobile accident he was involved in while hitchhiking home on a cold and rainy night when he was seventeen. He was a brilliant, talented, and defiant young man for reasons that would take more than this writing to unravel. The result of the accident was partial paralysis and a traumatic head injury that shattered almost every possibility for him to utilize those God-given gifts. 

He struggled to finish high school and would never again play any of the sports in which he had always been so talented and proficient. Throughout his adult life, he maintained self-sufficiency through a parade of honest but menial jobs. 

However, he was so excited when he got a job at UNC, working in maintenance at Granville Towers. It was the upscale dorm where the basketball team lived. He made friends with many of the players as he did his job. He occasionally threw in names like Mike and James at family dinners, but they were more in passing than bragging.

One year, on my birthday, I came to my mom’s house to find Ricky sitting at her table waiting for me. In his hand was a basketball. It was Carolina blue and white, with writing all over it.

“Wanda, I have been waiting on you,” He said. “Look what I got for you.”

I was confused, because in all of my life, Ricky had never given me a gift. Oh, Mama bought presents for him to give us at Christmas, but he had never acknowledged my birthday, much less gotten me a gift.

His excitement was palpable. It seems that Michael Jordan sponsored a basketball camp each year at UNC, and during the camp, they would have an alumni game in which several of the players returned to play. Ricky had asked them if they would autograph a ball for his sister’s birthday, and they did. He foisted the ball at me and began to review the names on it: James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Michael Jordan, Coach Dean Smith, and many others. 

I did not know how to respond appropriately. I was so touched and honored by Ricky’s actions that the names on the ball were almost secondary, but I knew it was valuable. I now realize it was priceless.

I took the precious gift home and put it on our living room mantel. You know where this is going, don’t you? A week later, I kept a friend’s children for the day, and they required more supervision than I had even realized. It was chaos all day.

A couple of days later, I walked through the living room, looked up, and asked my children, “Where is Ricky’s basketball?” They looked everywhere but at me. “What are you not telling me?” I asked. Since they were not directly involved, and they assured me they tried to stop him, they began to tell me that my friend’s youngest boy, who was about seven, had climbed up on the chair next to the mantel, got it down, and took it outside to play with it. Because we lived on the side of a mountain with a river below and had previously lost a multitude of basketballs, I was not surprised at how the story unfolded. The ball had missed the basket, rolled down the drive, across the road, and headed toward the river. To add to the helplessness of the situation, it had rained very hard since the incident, so even if we found it, the names would be erased. We did look in ditches and across the road on the river bank but to no avail.

I don’t remember what happened next. There was no foreseeable way to redeem the situation. Punishing the boy was not my place, nor helpful to the problem. There was no way to replace the one-of-a-kind basketball, so keeping the truth from Ricky was my only recourse. I mean, how do you tell the person who has given you the most amazing gift he had ever offered anyone that a child in your care let the priceless present roll off a mountain?

Ricky has been gone for eight years now, and I do not think he ever knew, but the memory lingers in a place so deep in me that a 1958 sitcom triggered irrational pain decades later. I understand that this loss seems inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It’s just a basketball, but my reaction to this pain seems to say that it is not. Ricky had no worldly possessions, and I lost his most valuable one, even if he had gifted it to me. I grieve that. I have, however, come to understand that some things just can’t be fixed or reframed, but they must be acknowledged before being woven into your life’s story. So, this morning, I cried long overdue tears for the loss of the priceless basketball and my wounded brother.