Memories of the Past.....

On Sunday marked the last Mets game that Shea Stadium will ever host. It didn't dawn on me at that moment as to the magnitude of this event. I watched all of the post-game with old Mets players being announced on the field and Piazza and Tom Seaver walking all the way to center field and leaving which signified the end.

As I sat there and watched this unfold, I started to think back to what this stadium truly meant to me. Yes, it was sad to think that the Mets will no longer call Shea home, and will move across the street to their new stadium, because it is actually out with the old, in with the new. So it made me feel old, cause I am not ready for the new. But what truly dawned on me was that this stadium, at the beginning of my school years up until High School, it was my safe haven.

You see, when my mom and dad divorced, it seemed as if life would never get back to normal. But my mom took it upon herself to make sure that we had a place to go together that would be our place. She would take Vanessa and I to games, this started since we were younger, but there was a bigger need here. It was a place that we could go to and not focus on what was going on in our lives, but maybe smile again. A place where we could just be ourselves again.

It didn't dawn on me while watching the end of the game unfold, that this stadium would no longer be around, that my place of refuge will never be standing there again. It just made me sad, because no matter what, it was the place where my mother decided we wouldn't be sad, we would be together and share those times together and enjoy ourselves. We had some great times back then, met a lot of players, Yes the Mets were bad, but it didn't matter, because we were having fun.

We tend to forget those places in our lives that made us feel new again. We tend to put them to the side, but at that moment on Sunday, I relived those years again in my thoughts and realized how much Shea Stadium truly meant to me after all these years. It is a place that I will never forget and a place that I am so grateful that it existed.