I went to church yesterday with Mom because it's what she wanted on Mother's Day. As we sat there with Dad, I looked over at a stained glass window at the front of the small Methodist church 200 feet from my house, on appropriately named Church Street. It was my grandmother's favorite: A pastoral setting with a moose leaning into a river for a drink. The river comes from a waterfall in the background, with pine trees atop the rocky cliff. On the side of the river with the moose, grass leads down to the waterline; on the opposite shore, the land is overgrown and rocky, and trees -- oaks or maples or something -- grow on both sides. It looks like Maine, and that must be why my grandmother loved it. She and my grandfather bought what basically was a garage with living space above it and 200 acres with a few acres open, the rest wooded, and a river through the woods. They planned to move there someday, at least for the summers, but my grandfather died in 1982 or 83 and soon my uncle (Mom's brother, Grandma's son) bought the place. He left New Jersey to go to college at the University of Maine and everyone knew he wouldn't move back. He met his wife there, and they've since made the garage a home, building a new garage and a family of four.

It was nice sitting there looking at the window, thinking of Grandma and Maine.

During the afternoon, I covered the baseball game and Mom and Dad came down to watch. I spent five innings during the middle of the game sitting with them 11 rows behind home plate in the sun, and then went back to the press box to finish "working."

And, for the first time in a while, after the game was over and my story filed, I was done, and I went home for dinner and some TV and went over to Dave's to watch a movie. The kind of nights you're supposed to have when you're young and come home from work. Not working from 6 p.m. to midnight, then going out for a few drinks in the last two hours until the bar closes or coming home and watching taped TV or going online.

Which I did anyway.