Playing Catch as Marriage Therapy

Playing Catch as Marriage Therapy

By Shea Tuttle

When our world locked down in March of 2020, Drew and I were as stunned as most everyone else we knew. We were among the lucky ones—no lost jobs, no early sickness, supportive workplaces and the ability to work remotely. But we struggled, at home with our elementary-school-aged children, all of us always in each other’s space, nearly crippling anxieties looming beyond the front door.

For the first time, we started treating our backyard as another room in our house. We spent time—every day, lots of it—reading on blankets or playing ghosts in the graveyard or tossing a toy for the dog.

And in the evenings, especially on the hottest days, we’d play catch.

It started with Drew and our daughter, counting up consecutive catches—first twenty, later fifty, eventually the much-celebrated 100. Our son, three years younger than our daughter, would play occasionally, but usually bowed to the frustrations of the game and his inexperience. Sometimes I’d join in. And then, when the sheen of 100 wore off and our daughter looked to new games, Drew and I started counting.

The first time we managed a decent run without missing, we hit thirty-something. I joked with my daughter that I’d never match her record.

Catch was simple relief: something to focus on that was contained in our yard, our arms, the leather and laces of our gloves. Sometimes we counted catches, which required a focus rare to those scattered days. Sometimes we didn’t, talking instead or letting our minds wander, keeping an eye on the kids kicking the soccer ball and the dog’s eager bounding.

Drew has played catch for years, always stuffing gloves and baseballs into the back of our car when we head off for family reunions. “The back and forth!” he marvels, especially when we gather with my monologue-prone family. He loves the reciprocity of catch, the necessity of reading and reacting to each other, the focus even-split, never lingering too long. I’ve played from time to time, but I’m a slow creature by nature, happier curling into the corner of a couch with a book and a cup of tea. This translates to my anxieties in unfortunate ways: I internalize the flight and the fight; externally, I’m all freeze, a snail pulled into her shell. So catch in pandemic did this for me too: it stretched me out. I had to move, reach for the ball and stretch into the throw, releasing coiled energy into motion.

We hit 100.

To keep us focused, Drew would call out baseball references to match the count. At 42, “Jackie Robinson!”; “Roger Maris!” at 61; “O’s win the World Series!” or variations, at 66, 70, and 83; “Reds!” at 90. After 100, it got harder, so we’d quiet and concentrate, trying not to look too eager as milestone numbers approached.

We hit 200.

One afternoon, I finished a work Zoom feeling rattled. We went to the yard to throw the ball and talk about it. A few dozen catches in, it started to come into focus. Another afternoon, Drew seemed distant. “What’s on your mind?” I asked. He cited a conversation with a friend from the previous day. “It’s not sitting right with me,” he said. I suggested we go play catch and talk it through.

For a couple of months, our record stood at 217—our daughter wrote it on the side of the house in sidewalk chalk. The world started to open back up; our days once again peppered with trips to the grocery store, an occasional in-person meeting, walks to the bus stop to meet our masked children.

Drew and I don’t fight a whole lot, probably out of a combination of general compatibility and conflict avoidance. But a couple of weeks ago, we had an argument—one of the hard kind, one about our kids. In ways, we argue well: we rarely lapse into meanness; we don’t belittle. In ways, we don’t: we get caught up in semantics; we are stubborn, both of us; we strongly dislike being wrong; we wither at correction. We each convey a kind of toughness but are sensitive souls underneath.

So we argued. We semi-settled. We took a walk with our kids. When we got home, we played catch.

We threw and caught and counted. We threw wild throws and missed easy catches. We started the count again. And again.

And this is what we do. We throw badly until we find the rhythm, and then sometimes we throw badly some more. When we make a wild throw or miss an easy catch, we say “sorry” reflexively, almost like it doesn’t cost a thing.

Across the board, Drew is a more reliable catch partner than I am. But each of us is more reliable at catching than we are at throwing; many of the throws that call forth our easy apologies get caught anyway. Which means that, when we play catch, we stubborn partners get to save each other. And when the other saves us, we each get to experience a mercy that can elude us in the heat of argument.

We made a lot of bad throws that evening. Then we hit a stride. While our kids and the dog scrabbled for the soccer ball, we tried not to get too eager. My legs and arms started feeling strange and rubbery, like a word you’ve said aloud too many times. I threw a dozen balls Drew should’ve missed but didn’t. He threw a few I should’ve missed but didn’t. Then he threw one I should’ve caught but didn’t. A new record: 357.

We still moved gingerly around each other for another day or so, and later had a long, late-night talk to try to find some clarity and common ground. Catch didn’t fix the conflict any more than it fixed our burning country or the raging pandemic. But the back and forth, the back and forth—in all its incarnations—has mercifully covered a multitude of misses.

Shea Tuttle is the author of Exactly as You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers and co-editor of Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice. Her writing has appeared online at Bitch Media, Entropy, The Toast, Greater Good Magazine, and other outlets. She lives in Virginia with her family. You can follow her on Twitter @sheatuttle.

Amanda Miles is a portrait photographer based in Richmond, Virginia.