For The Love Of The Game

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The faces of my mom and dad flashed onto the screen. Their hair started different colors, but now both shared a faded grey. Their faces wrinkled slowly over time, but since they left, since they were taken from us, they aged more in a year than in their entire lifetime.

It left a bitter taste on my tongue to see them there. As I was growing up, I only met my grandma through a computer screen. Her background always was a badly painted cement wall. It was jarring to see my mom and dad now be the ones in front of that backdrop.

"Mis niños hermosos como estan?!" my mom asked.

"We are doing well, Mom, you know, same old," I said.

"Is everything okay? You are calling us earlier than usual, mi hija." My mom's cheery words juxtaposed with my dad's uncomfortable demeanor. His lips permanently were glued downwards, pulled down further by his sagging cheeks. And his eyes, the image of a black hole — cold and lonely in outer space.

"Mikey really wanted to tell you about his first day of school." I gave him a big kiss on his messy hair for emphasis.

"Yahhh, Mom, guess what?! I made so many new friends in school. There was Mika, Jessi, Tate, and Daisy." He rambled on, almost jumping out of my hands and into the monitor.

My mother smiled, but her eyes remained still. "That's wonderful, mi hijo."

Her attempt to match his enthusiasm was admirable. With every passing day, the separation took a bigger toll on her. My dad, apparently, no longer tried to hide it. With his crossed arms and anger in his black eyes, he wanted the world to drown in his unhappiness.

"Yeah! And Tate's mom invited us all to a family play date. So I told her I'd have to ask if you would be back by next week," he said, utterly oblivious to the situation.

A blanket of awkward silence draped over the room. Jay looked at me, light-lipped. His gaze asked, 'What do we do?'

My mom's lower lip trembled. Her mouth opened, but all her words caught in her throat. Her wrinkled hands tightened and nails dug into her skin as she tried to force her mouth to open.

My dad's jaw tensed at my mom's watering eyes. He finally spoke. "Mi hijo, you know it's not that simple." His hand made circular patterns on my mom's back, soothing the pressure on her shoulders.

"B...but Riley told me that she was gonna talk to this guy lawyer a.an...and that you would be able to come home after that."

I knew how dangerous false hope was, so why did I constantly try to give it to my brothers? Clearly, even after a year, Mikey still didn't understand the complexity of the situation. "Mikey," I said, "next time, why don't you tell them your big sister will take you to the playdate?"

"But their moms and dads will be there. Why can't my mom and dad be there for me?" His eyes searched mine for the logic to this madness.

There was no way I could provide him with that. I had trouble wrapping my own head around it. Twenty-three years, two degrees, and complex understanding of discrete math did nothing in helping.

"Don't you want to hang out with your big sis? I promise you we will have so much fun!" I tried to breathe some excitement back into this conversation, but my fake joy sounded like nails scratching against a blackboard.

"I guess." He retracted into my arms, becoming smaller than he was.

We continued to talk about more common pleasantries. About if we had eaten and such. But the previous topic loomed over the entire conversation like a dark cloud. The longer the conversation lasted, the more I felt my heart tighten.