Doesn't Fit At All Like A Glove

Twenty years later and the glove is still too big for anybody under six feet tall. Finding this photograph speaks volumes itself. Placed carefully in the special family photo album that I was given for Christmas three years ago. To commemorate, or dare I say, validate the “family” part of my upbringing. The every other weekend brown eyed outsider, arriving in accordance to visitation schedules and court ordered decree. I stare at this picture with the same disdain that the 10-year -old girl in ribbons, crushed velvet dress, and sagging crotch tights stares at her more than too large baseball glove. But such is life, accepting gifts and trying my best to hide my contempt with Cheshire cat grins for the sake of a photograph. Thanks Dad. I never used the glove. I preferred my Don Mattingly glove that I had used in the past. I remember my father telling me that I would “grow into it” but with him being 5’8 and my mother 5’4 I still don’t see how that would happen. In my family we are known for our small ears and even smaller hands. My father, on the other hand, is known for being a thoughtless prick. Once again all of these truths ring true. This baseball glove is so large that I could thwart global warming, swear off plastic bags, and use this glove for all of my produce shopping. The best part is that my dad informed me that he got it at the B.J’s or any one of those wholesale job lots...you know specifically made famous for their assistance in finding the most sentimental of gifts.
The worst part is that he hated that I played softball. He would do anything to make me miss out on my games. All in the name of “his weekend,” i.e. to infuriate my mother. I missed all star games; only to watch my apple juice smelling brother and other assorted 3-year-olds swing plastic bats at a tee, like blind frankensteins. I was always on the periphery and I was always just there waiting for time to go by. So it’s only the perfectly timed waltz of irony that I was bestowed with a gift that I must wait to grow into. Like waiting for my boobs to develop, beauty to appear, or that prince everyone babbled about…like waiting for my father to finally think of someone else; besides himself. And as I stare at the girl with the long brown hair held back with a lopsided ribbon tied at the top. Her eyelids weighed with disgust. I stare with her into the glove bed, still clueless as to whom the branded stamped signature belongs to (Kevin McReynolds). I feel the space that no fingers will ever fill. I smell leather almost as strong as the lack of proportion of finger to grooved inlet. I feel the worthlessness of a gift that never fit.
What surprises me most of all is that I can tell you exactly where this never used gloves hides out in my home. Because on the top shelf of the coat closet in my all grown up apartment of my own, under the tennis rackets, atop the brown sewing fabric sits my glove that still doesn’t fit.