I'd been planning to go on a 3 day adventure today--The first 2 days biking about 100km to Lake Atitlan, and the 3rd day climbing the San Pedro Volcano. I was excited to visit several of my Peace Corps friends en route. Alas, as I was streaming NPR this morning I heard there was a hurricane off the coast of Nicaragua--I looked outside and saw a steady rain falling, which is supposed to last the entire week. The bike trip will have to wait for another weekend and I have the rainy day blues. Bummer.

I watched the 6th game of the World Series last night. Roberto invited me to his house and we watched the game with Spanish commentary. The Yankees beat the Phillies with 4 of the same players I had seen them beat the Braves with my Dad and Eric, also in game 6, at the old Yankee stadium 13 years ago. I used to be a big Yankees fan, but in the last 10 years I have moved on to other interests and largely forgot about baseball. Nonetheless, watching the game last night brought back a flood of memories and nostalgia. I flashed back to lazy afternoons at Yankee Stadium with Eric, sneaking into more expensive seats and causing all sorts of mischief.(Seeing Rudy Giuliani on TV made me remember the time we snuck into seats that turned out to be owned by the Republican National Party, and played it cool when Mayor Giuliani and his entourage came and sat in the same row only 10 seats down--I got his autograph on a ball I had caught earlier in the game.) I also flashed back to many late October nights watching post-season Yankees games in the living room of my mom's house in Connecticut. Games would often run into extra innings, and despite it being a school night Mom could never get us to go to bed before the game was over. Eric and I would struggle to keep our eyes open, sometimes until as late as 1 in the morning, and show up exhausted to school the next morning, smiling brightly despite the sleep deprivation and constant hostility of Red Sox fans. And last but not least, I flashed back to watching the Yanks with Gramma at her house in Darien. As the crickets chirped and fireflies began to break the late summer dusk outside, we'd be glued to the game. Gramma would tell us stories about watching the Yankees win when she was a kid. Seeing the Yanks win always put her in a good mood.

Seeing the Yankees win last night was bittersweet. I enjoyed seeing them win again--mainly because of the old memories it brought up to the surface. Nonetheless, seeing the game, the aging stars from the 90s, also made me realize how much my own life has changed and how much I've lost just in the last year. It also made me home sick. The old Yankee stadium-- the house that Ruth built, where Eric and I used to go to games while visiting my Dad in New York, was demolished just a year ago. Mom's condo at River Run, where we'd stay up late watching playoff games, was sold just a few months ago after she got re-married. Most sadly, though, a year ago this month-- while I was in Colombia learning to paraglide, ecstatic after having just received my invitation from the Peace Corps to come to Guatemala after a really tough year-- I learned that my Gramma's house had caught fire and was seriously damaged. While Gramma miraculously made it out of the fire unhurt, and we all initially assumed the house would be repaired quickly, it was not to be. Gramma died about 4 months ago due to complications from a broken hip, right as the house she'd lived in for the last 25 years was about to be demolished, and I have to wonder whether she would have had the strength to keep going if she hadn't been through so much upheaval in her life in the previous months. It's a shame she wasn't here to see the game last night; it would have made her very happy.

Watching baseball when I was young, I relished in the simple pleasures of seeing my team win (which happened a lot in the late 90s). Watching the game last night, I saw baseball from a different perspective, even as a metaphor for life in ways-- the countless individual plays and moments adding up to great victories and defeats; the arbitrary silliness but also genuine fun of rooting for your group (ie team) based on nothing more substantial than the fact that they play in the city where you're from; the increasing role of big corporate money in controlling outcomes (the Yankees have by far the highest payroll in baseball). Mostly, however, I saw last nights game as a reminder of both the continuous and ephemeral aspects of life.