So it's 1975, give or take.  The Phils are good and settled in Tacky Palace, er, um, Veterans Stadium.  My grandparents have reached some kind of financial, psychological, and marital equilibrium.  My parents would probably still be classified as newlyweds, living in a bug-infested apartment and taking steps to buy the house in which they will later raise me.

As with Sisyphus who pushes his boulder almost all the way up the hill every day and then rolls back down, unsuccessful, business unfinished, every night, only to do it all again the next day, forever, so with my Phils and my family in this era.

First, the Phils.  1976 marks the beginning of something unprecedented--a whole run of years, an actual by-God era, in which the Phils contend successfully and consistently over a sustained period of time.  Fans of the Damn Y****** know this sort of this as "business as usual."  Every other normal baseball fan in the world understands these runs of years as the stupendous, outrageous, rare and beautiful gifts from the baseball gods they are. 

The Phils win their division three years in a row (again, those who grew up as neither Y****** fans nor 1990s Braves fans understand how frackin' amazing this is).  Astute readers will note I said "win their division"  but nothing more.  Granted, the Collapse of 1964 pretty much inures phans to everything that comes after, but it can't have been fun watching the Phils get swept by the Reds in the 1976 NLCS; living through the infamous Black Friday playoff game and eventual 1977 NLCS loss to the Dodgers, highlighted by an unfortunate outfield play by Greg Luzinski; or watching the Phils go down again to the Dodgers in 1978, this time involving an unfortunate outfield play by Gary Maddox. 

The Phils do have one unqualified success in 1978, introducing the greatest mascot in the history of sports: The Phillie Phanatic.

Up in Boston, the team that will one day become my American League team is having a Sisyphean time of its own.  As if the whole Babe-Ruth-sold-to-finance No No Nanette thing weren't enough, as if the 1946 and 1967 World Series (there is an actual reason I don't like the Cardinals, despite how adorable I find their fans) weren't enough, as if 1975 "Keep it Fair" followed by losing Game 7 the next night weren't enough, bring on 1978.  Fairly late in the season, the Sox have something like a 14-game lead.  Taking a page from the 1964 Phils, they blow this entire lead, ending up in an end-of-season tie and thus a one-game playoff with (of course) the Damn Y******.  Bucky F. Dent.  Curtains.  Of course the Damn Y****** then win their second straight Series.  Of course they do.

And boulders are rolling back down from near-summits for my dear little family as well.  So far as I know my grandparents are doing okay in this era, though the depression and the uncertainty will never really go away.  And my parents are more or less fine.  They've bought the house, fixing it up in between both working and my dad going to school at night for his MBA.  My mom quits her job and they start trying to get pregnant.  And keep trying.  And keep trying.  And see specialists.  And keep trying.  There's finally a pregnancy, which ends in miscarriage.  Everyone else they know is having kids without apparent effort. 

I've always known this story, and it always ended with "and then we had you" and a hug.  Two years ago, when I was eyeball deep (on a slow day) in an insane teaching schedule and an academic job search, my dad told me what it was like when they were in the situation.  Before I was born.  Before the story had an ending.  Before there was any reason to believe or even hope that there would be an ending, let alone a happy one.  How they questioned God, and feared they were being punished, and that they would never be happy.

Granted, I wasn't born yet in 1978.  But I remember a certain October night in 1993, and another ten years later, so I know how both my fan bases feel in the late 1970s--will we ever get anywhere?  And I've never been married, but I do love someone who persists in the face of struggles that make Sisyphus look like a weekend golfer.  And I am bone-deep terrified that I will never have a child.  I know how my family feels after 1978.

I didn't know it in 1993 or 2003.  Phillies phans, Red Sox Nation, and my future parents don't know it yet after 1978.  But better days, days of arrival, days of completion, are coming.

But no one knows that yet.  All they have to go on, the only way to find out if there will be better days, the only way to keep going forward . . . is to keep going forward.  No promises, no assurances, no roadmap, just faith: "the substance of things hoped for, the wisdom of things unseen" (Hebrews 11:1).