In his book Eternal Echoes, Catholic scholar John O'Donohue writes, "One of the most crippling prisons is the prison of reduced identity." Early on in my life, my mother could not figure out what the future had in store for me. This gnawed on her and she worried greatly.

     No matter that I loved to play baseball, or read a book. She didn't see either as anything that would last  or bear fruit. Mind you, my mother is dead and unable to take exception to this. What matters for me is that once upon a time I was quite willing to follow her direction.

     In some cases, I had little choice and in others I accepted willingly. Reading we reconciled, but the baseball thing haunted me for a long while. Because of my mother's wishes, I stayed away from the sandlots of my youth in order to practice a piano I abhorred.

     All of this happened a long time ago, and as an adult, I have even come to joke about it. So it was in keeping with my light heartedness that my sister-in-law emailed me that my brother, a musician from the womb, had just attended a high school band reunion. They laughed along with me at the fact that I could have qualified for this reunion as well. In my youth, I not only learned to play the piano, but the trombone and the trumpet. As a result, I played in both orchestra and band. So in truth, they were right, I qualified for this reunion.

     My brother's band reunion would be just another joke on me if there had not been a man at the reunion who came up to them and said, "What I remember most about Bob is that he was the star pitcher on our little league team."

     Many times as an adult I have mourned the loss of long ago moments on sandlot teams, but I had all but forgotten my time in Little League. Remembering it took away my lightheartedness and made the music jokes serious. It brought back to me an identity that I had once celebrated and then given up.

     The team was named for a local banking establishment. Our uniforms were maroon. They might have even been made out of the same material as our band uniforms, but their differences were vast. The baseball uniform I wore proudly even though our team struggled for a win, while the band uniform, although celebrated by many, shut me down. It clawed at my body as if I were a victim of a monster in a horror film. It reduced my identity, and I have come to learn that this is nothing to joke about.

     The piano and the trombone were like dealing with a vampire. They sucked away my life. It took me years to reconcile and recoup the damage. So yes, I identify with Donohue's words about the "prisons of reduced identity." It took the supernatural to make me whole.

     All of us have crosses to bear, and many far worse than this small experience of the cosmos that was mine. But rather than reduce it to the realm of the unimportant, I have come to claim it, and with the claiming has come a sliver of knowledge of who I can be.

     I laugh with recognition at the fact that this word "sliver" was my mother's word; one she often used. I find bliss knowing that even as I claim self I can claim her.