Just a reminder that these are sections are of Emma's overall memories. She and Jay are at Liam's college graduation and she is steeped in her memories. Since these were both very short parts, I included two of them. I am working on a couple of requests.

My Treasure

Now my mind whirled to a time when Liam was a bit older and not nearly as dramatic of situation.

I thought of the evening back when he was nine, that held a sweet moment at the dinner table that had started with a troubling day at school.

"Why aren't you eating?" I asked as Liam pushed his food around his plate. He only shrugged and mumbled something about not being hungry.

"Can I be done?" He asked looking over at me.

"No you cannot," Jay said laying his fork down on his plate. "It's dinner time, I'm home and we are going to eat as a family."

Clearly something was bothering him, but he remained mute, and returned to pushing his food from one spot to another on his plate until my phone rang.

I got up and grabbed the phone from the nearby counter, as I listened to Jay trying to pry information out of Liam as to what his problem was. I was attempting to hear what Liam's response was when I looked at the caller ID, stating it was the school calling. I figured this call might clear everything up as it wasn't the robocall number that was used for all the school information that went out on a constant basis.

"What's wrong?" Jay asked our son.

"It's not my fault," Liam stated as I was greeted by Mr. Lorenzo, Liam's vice principal. I tried to split my attention between the two.

"That's an interesting way to start a conversation," Jay said as he turned his body to look at Liam. "Tell me what happened."

"Chester said Mom talked funny and he wouldn't take it back so I pushed him. I didn't mean to do it so hard, but he fell. He was okay though, I swear!"

After the confession, I heard Mr. Lorenzo echo what my son had just explained. Chester had been teasing Liam about my accent and different sayings I used. I had often said A stór a Gaelic term pronounced uh store, meaning my treasure. I had always told Liam he was my treasure and would often leave him with the word as I said goodbye, which was often at the school. I also often called both Jay and Liam, Love in English as a term of endearment that was common in Ireland, but not often heard by the natives of Chicago. But the biggest one is that I always used a hard T for TH and therefore three sound liked tree. That always got laughs. And apparently Chester weaponized the words, all of them, which earned him a good shove after demands to be quiet went unheeded.

Chester was fine. He ended up with two scraped palms, but nothing more. He was serving after school detentions for the rest of the week for his bullying, while Liam had to sit out a day and serve in-school suspension the rest of the week for his part in the conflict.

As I watched Jay in action with our son, I couldn't help but smile. "Buddy, that's brave and amazing that you wanted to protect your mom, but you can't shove or try and hurt people to get them to stop."

"But I told him to stop and he wouldn't," Liam stated, his contempt for the whole ordeal, coming through in his voice.

"What else could you have done?" Jay asked, his total focus on Liam.

Liam shrugged, crossed his arms and stared at his full plate. Jay turned Liam's chair around so it faced him and bent down to look him in the face. "Come on, think," Jay encouraged.

"Left," Liam said quietly, still looking down.

Jay put his hand under Liam's chin and gently lifted it up. "Exactly right. You could have walked away."

"But why should he get to say that stuff and I have to pretend he didn't?"

"Because you're the stronger person," Jay said, sliding out of his chair and kneeling in front of Liam. "Because I know that you are a better person than someone who tries to hurt other people."

"I am?"

"I've known you, your whole life and you most certainly are," Jay assured.

"Am I in trouble?" Liam asked taking a quick look at Jay.

"Some, but we'll talk about that after you eat your dinner. And by the way, your mother does talk kind of funny," he finished, smiling.

I had finished my phone conversation just time to hear the gentle teasing.

"I do not, it is all of you who speak so oddly," I said with mock astonishment causing smiles and laughter.

Perfection or Jinxed

My accent always did attract attention, which was not what I had wanted by any means, but I couldn't seem to lessen my intonation. I thought I had, but apparently to all the ears around me, it wasn't by much. I recall finding new friends at many of Liam's sporting events. With life so busy we told him he could only play two sports, but I still spent much of my free time at these events. Baseball games in the spring and summer while soccer games took up our fall. At least I understood that sport, it was the American past-time that still had me confused.

Jay had attempted on many occasions to explain the rules to me, but in all honesty, I just didn't care enough to retain the information. I had watched Liam play some form of the game since he was four, but found it much more peaceful to follow along without the knowledge that seemed to irritate all the other parents. So I cheered when they did and when the annoyance turned deeper than that, I sunk back into my lovely chasm of ignorance.

When Liam was young the three of us would make regular trips to Wrigley Field, which quickly dwindled to just the two of them, as staring into the sun, watching men in pinstripes run around without reason—at least in my mind—was a waste of time.

But I went to as many of Liam's games that I could, avoided the group photos at all cost, kept my ball cap on and kept to myself, often bringing a book to bury my nose in-between innings. One evening, when Liam was in high school he had been pitching well. Even I could tell he was doing a pretty good job since nobody from the other team had been to first base yet. It was the fifth inning and buzz was going through the crowd, and not just on our side, but even for the other team. Joey Baker's father asked if Jay was here to watch his son pitch a perfect game.

I told him we had been in touch and he was trying to get here, but I hadn't mentioned anything about a perfect game, mostly because I didn't know what one was, or that Liam was even the least bit involved in it.

"Tell him he has to get here. I know four years ago Aaron Kemper had pitched a no-hitter, but as far as I know, nobody in this league had ever pitched a perfect game."

I tried not look like the idiot that I felt like as Mrs. Baker popped over and told her husband not to jinx it. When she dragged him back to their seats, I googled 'perfect game' it stated that no opposing batter reaches base. That must mean nobody gets a hit or walked or that the fielders make a mistake. I had noticed that Liam was striking a lot of them out. But some had hit them into the field and been thrown out at first base or the ball caught in the air. The team's defense wasn't too bad, well most days anyway. Once I realized the ramifications of what was happening, the tension that had been hovering in the air suddenly found its way to me. I would have preferred the ignorance I had been steeped in until Jeff Baker had decided to inform me that I should be a nervous wreck and get Jay here on top of it, so he could be a nervous wreck alongside me.

I dutifully texted Jay and brought him up to speed, but after hitting send, I regretted it. Would his presence 'jinx' it as Melody Baker had implied by doing or saying something different, as that seemed to be the definition of jinx in sports; a very superstitious group, sports people are.

It was the bottom of the fifth inning, two more to go as Liam sat down in the dugout and opened his blue sports drink and took a big swig. He hadn't looked over at me as he walked towards the dugout, was that part of this jinx thing or did he ever look at me? I couldn't recall. I sighed and checked my phone to see that Jay had read the text but there was no response. Either way it wasn't going to be good. If Liam did this perfect miraculous thing and Jay missed it, it would be bad. If Jay made it and the perfection didn't happen, then that would be bad. But if I didn't say anything, then it would have been bad as well. Who said this stuff was supposed to be fun and character building?

Liam was on third base after being walked, stealing second base and getting batted over to third, when Jay showed up with the whole damn team trailing him. This had to be a jinx if I had ever seen one. I noticed none of them said anything, nor did Liam acknowledge that his father and gaggle of "aunts" and "uncles" had showed up. I decided to keep my mouth shut, uncertain of all these extensive new rules that I had been introduced to in the last half hour.

"What inning?" Jay asked me quietly.

"Bottom of the fifth," Jeff Baker whispered pointing towards the scoreboard. "He's got six outs left. I just asked stats guy and he said Liam's only thrown sixty-five pitches. He can do this. The bottom of their order is coming up. He's got them scared and uncertain."

Jay merely nodded as the next batter popped up and it was time for the teams to change places. Liam warmed up and then turned and looked back at the outfield as if it would offer some kind answer or inspiration and perhaps it did as he did get the final six outs with the help of his teammates who mobbed him at the end of the game.

I had done some more research, while at the same time trying not understand the gravity that this all held, I had unfortunately become cognizant that this was in fact a big deal; a true sports rarity. But since Liam had completed this perfect game, I was glad I knew what all the celebration was about and what a true accomplishment this was. Then I found myself having to come up with constant excuses as to why I wasn't around for all the pictures that they wanted of Liam with his parents. I let Jay share the spotlight, not that he was all that excited for his face to be out there, but he was excited at what our son had completed. And I, as always, watched from afar, away from the video taking, the picture snapping, the uploading, trying to be there without the rest of world knowing it.

To be continued...