Free For One More Day by Mitch Albom Page A

her.
    "Things can be fixed," she said.
    September 8, 1967
    Dear Charley
    How do you like my typing! I've been practicing at work on Henrietta's typewriter. Pretty snazzy!
    I know you won't read this until after I have left. But in case I forgot because I was too excited by the whole idea of you being at college, I want to tell you something, I am so proud of you, Charley. You are the first person in our family to go to a university!
    Charley, be nice to the people there. Be nice to the teachers. Always them Mr. and Mrs., even though I hear now that college students call their teachers by their first names. I don't think that's right. And be nice to the girls you go out with. I know you don't want love life advice from me, but even if girls find you handsome, that is not a license to be mean. Be nice.
    And also get your sleep. Josie, who comes into the beauty parlor, says her son at college keeps falling asleep during his classes. Don't insult your teachers that way, Charley. Don't fall asleep. It's such a lucky thing you have, to be taught and to be learning and not have to be working in a shop somewhere.
    I love you every day.
    And now I will miss you every day. Love,
    Mom
    When Ghosts Return
    I USED TO DREAM about finding my father. I dreamed he moved to the next town over, and one day I would ride my bike to his house and knock on his door and he would tell me it was all just a big mistake.
    And the two of us would ride home together, me on the front, my dad pedaling hard behind, and my mother would run out the door and burst into happy tears.
    It's amazing the fantasies your mind can put together. The truth was, I didn't know where my father lived and I never did find out. I would go by his liquor store after school, but he was never there. His friend Marty was managing it now, and he told me my dad was full-time in the new place in CoUingswood. It was only an hour's drive away, but to a kid my age, it might as well have been on the moon. After a while, I stopped going past his store. I stopped fantasizing about us biking home together. I finished grade school, junior high, and high school with no contact from my old man.
    He was a ghost. But I still saw him.

    I saw him whenever I swung a bat or threw a ball, which is why I never gave up baseball, why I played through every spring and every summer on every team and in every league possible. I could picture my father at the plate, tipping my elbow, correcting my batting stance.
    I could hear him yelling, "Dig, dig, dig! " as I ran out a ground ball.
    A boy can always see his father on a baseball field. In my mind, it was just a matter of time before he showed up for real.
    So, year after year, I pulled on new team uniforms–red socks, gray pants, blue tops, yellow caps–and each one felt like I was dressing for a visit. I split my adolescence between the pulpy smell of books, which was my mother's passion, and the leathery smell of baseball gloves, which was my father's. My body sprouted into his frame, broad and strong shouldered, but two inches taller.
    And as I grew, I held on to the game like a raft in the bumpy sea, faithfully, through the chop.
    Until at last, it restored me to my father. As I always knew it would.
    HE REAPPEARED, AFTER an eight-year absence, at my first college game in the spring of 1968, sitting in the front row of seats just left of home plate, from which he could best study my form.
    I will never forget that day. It was a windy afternoon and the sky was a gunmetal color, threatening rain. I walked to the plate. I don't usually look at the seats, but for whatever reason, I did. And there he was. His hair was graying at the temples and his shoulders seemed smaller, his waist a bit wider, as if he had sunk down on himself, but otherwise, he looked the same. If he was uncomfortable, he didn't show it. I'm not sure I'd recognize my father's "uncomfortable" look, anyhow.
    He nodded at me. Everything seemed to freeze. Eight years. Eight whole years. I