By Sarah D. Park

I still cannot believe that I ended up on a boat. I was bobbing on the water, sitting there with multiple layers on and a life jacket, chomping on a cold fried chicken sandwich while holding a can of makkoli in between my knees, listening to a crank radio broadcast on a baseball game that I could care less about, when I found myself thinking, “How did this happen?”

It was a Saturday afternoon and the Giants were playing the Dodgers at Oracle Park. A whole side of the stadium is open to McCovey Cove, a pocket of the San Francisco Bay, and just the night before, I had learned about the phenomenon known as a splash hit. It’s when a batter, usually a leftie, hits a home run out of the park and the ball lands in the water. Then suddenly, a flurry of fans on kayaks and motorboats swoop in to vie for the ball. These aren’t fans who paid for a ticket; they can’t even see the baseball field from the cove. They’re specifically there to grab a splash hit. And that’s how my friends and I found ourselves floating on a boat.

Maybe it was the roar of fans that carried over the bay, or the fact that we were warm under our puffy jackets, grinning into the cold breeze, but I felt such a tangible hope for the first time in a long while.

It didn’t matter that we were less maneuverable in our bulky inflatable compared to the smaller hard-hulled vultures, and even if there was a splash hit, it had to land close enough to us for my friend Steph to jump in and claim it, 50 degrees with wind chill be damned. The tiny chance of us succeeding filled us with a hope that blanketed the hour it took to inflate the vessel and it did not diminish during the two hours it took to deflate, pack, drive back home, and towel-dry the boat. Something about that hope colored our day with a new narrative of shared and present joy.

We did not catch a splash hit. But I caught something I had forgotten: the taste of hope.

Isolation in a protracted pandemic combined with a waxing and waning depression can make you forget what hope feels like. Hope can even feel counter to your well-being, that it’s dangerous to hope only to be let down again.

Dare I hope that our society will become less individualistic after this pandemic passes? Do I hope that I will ever learn to be alone without feeling lonely? Can I hope that I won’t dread tomorrow because it only feels like another chance to fail?

What frustrates me is that my questions about hope are so oriented toward the future when I need hope now. And somewhere in the waiting for a splash hit lies the answer.

Maybe putting ourselves in the path of hope is enough to open us up to new ways of experiencing the same hours of the day. So I close my eyes and I will my bones to remember the feeling of that hope: electrifying, abundant, and light.

Sarah D. Park is a freelance writer whose work focuses on the cultivation of cross-racial dialogue with a Christian faith orientation. She is also a story producer for Inheritance Magazine and manages communications for several organizations. She currently calls the Bay Area her home but is an Angeleno through and through.